PAC: In a recent blog, “Hope Versus Fear in these Perilous Times,” you affirm that despite all the instability and uncertainty that surround us right now, the Children’s Agenda is choosing hope. Your blog quotes Dr. King calling on civil rights advocates to be courageous. How do you define courage?
LM: I guess courage is taking risks and stepping out of what feels comfortable for the greater good. I think courage is a muscle. And I think the more that we flex it, the more we develop it. And it is particularly important in this day and age right now.
I keep this Marianne Williamson quote on my desk:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you… And as we let our own light shine, we give other people permission to do the same.” -Marianne Williamson
PAC: Williamson is definitely drawing directly from her faith when she speaks about courage. What are the moral principles that are driving you to have hope and courage in the face of fear right now?
LM: Faith is still a bit of a mystery for me. I definitely have a faith in the quote so often repeated by Dr. King, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
These are the high holidays for people of Jewish background. My dad was a refugee from Nazi Germany when he was a kid. He took his younger brother through the underground to Amsterdam before they came to the States. My grandfather was sent to Buchenwald, one of the first concentration camps, on Kristallnacht. So with Rosh Hashanah just behind us and Yom Kippur ahead of us, I feel a strong resonance with its time for renewal. It’s time to take moral inventory.
My faith also comes from the great Jewish tradition that it’s not what you believe, it’s what you do. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with King, was questioned by his Orthodox colleagues as to “why are you out on a Saturday doing a civil rights march? You should be at home with Shabbat.” And he said “I’m praying with my feet.”
That has always been really resonant with me. So that’s what my faith is. My faith is an action. It’s organizing people for the greater good.
PAC: What experiences are you drawing on that trained you for this moment? Any particular tools or strategies you find yourself turning to more often?
LM: Pretty early on in my career, I was 21 or 22, when I first went to the Midwest Academy. That’s a training center in Chicago that was founded by the legendary organizer Heather Booth to teach the principles of strategy and organizing people for social change. And I’ve always fallen back on the three principles of the Midwest Academy. They’ve been like north stars for all of my life:
- First, win concrete improvements in people’s lives. People need to see a tangible difference that social change is making. Otherwise, what’s the point? Most people have such a hard time with just the daily struggles of life, they need to experience a benefit for being involved.
- Secondly, give people a sense of their own real power to make change. So as opposed to doing things for people, do things with people. There’s an organization in New York with a motto of “nothing about us without us.” I really believe strongly that advocacy requires us to organize, particularly in this line of work for children’s advocacy, parents who are directly affected by these issues – and give them a sense of their own real power, not only to make changes for their kids, but for all kids.
- And then thirdly, the Midwest Academy has a principle about altering the relations of power between people and the institutions that dominate our lives, that make decisions. So if it’s the Housing Authority or if it’s a corporation, reducing their ability to dictate the terms that affect us so deeply, and working to win reforms and changes in policy and budget decisions that show we’re the boss. Democracy requires a demos, and we are the ones that must have the power over the decisions affecting our daily lives.
PAC: Bravery is a choice. Can you share an experience in your advocacy life when you have had to make that choice in the moment, to be brave?
LM: There are all kinds of moments in my career that stick out. One was when I lived in Milwaukee. We organized a group called Parents Against Lead and helped win the first landmark ordinance of any city that required landlords to get a lead inspection in districts that were particularly high in lead, and then to comply with what those findings showed. Anyway, we were sitting in a meeting with the mayor. I was the director of the organization, and I was there with some parent leaders, we called them the Mod Squad. There was one Hispanic leader, one African-American leader, and one white leader for our Parents Against Lead. And the mayor kept interrupting the Black parent. I was so offended by the way he was talking to her, so I cut him off and said, “You’re not listening, mayor. This is your voting constituency. You need to listen to her now. She is the expert on her life, her house, her kids.” And the Health Department chief, who was just behind the mayor in this meeting as I recall, just blanched and his face went totally white and his mouth fell open, like nobody talks to the mayor that way. And it changed the meeting. But apparently that didn’t happen a lot.
PAC: What are you doing to cultivate joy, fun, rest, or self-care in such uncertain times? Any tips for those of us who need a boost?
LM: Not enough! For me, live music is really incredibly important. Tonight I’m going to see Vieux Farka Touré, who’s been described as the Jimi Hendrix of Mali, a really terrific guitarist. I’m really excited about that, and we went and saw The Black Keys recently at an outdoor concert. That kind of stuff really fills my soul.
I have a meditation practice in the morning that I’ve been pretty spotty at in the last few weeks and I was just realizing that some of what I’m feeling right now can be massaged out of me through that practice. That is very calming and centering. Being outside in nature is really important to me – to go outside, be hiking or biking, physical activity in nature is just like music. It’s really water for my thirst.
Many thanks to Larry Marx, CEO of The Children’s Agenda, for graciously sharing his time and perspectives for this interview.