On Making Change When We Feel Powerless

The first trick of the powerful is to make others feel powerless.

But let’s linger on that word trick for a moment. Because it’s got a telling ancestry. It comes from the old French meaning to cheat or deceive.

So if the first deception, the first cheat, of the powerful is trying to make us believe we’re powerless, then a useful first response is to refuse to believe it.

And keep on refusing.

But here’s a useful second response: don’t play by the powerful’s rules. Across history, the powerful’s tools are brute force, threats, sewing distrust.

What a lousy, lonely world that is to live in.

A pillar of nonviolent resistance is that you don’t attack your opponent where they’re strongest. Or as Audre Lorde put it, "The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."

I’m not going to beat Steph Curry at basketball. But I might beat him at chess. (Notably, I would not beat San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama at basketball or chess. But maybe Connect 4...) In other words, refuse to play on their terms.

If they use brute force and threats. Try bold love. And humor.

The Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins were, among other things, bold love. A couple of fierce and fiercely trained hearts sitting down at Woolworth's and refusing to give up the seats they deserved. They courageously - which means with heart - modeled to the present the future they wanted to walk into.

Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević was as self-serious as he was brutal. The student movement Otpor!, which helped overthrow that "Butcher of the Balkans,” paraded “for” Milosevic’s socialist party with sheep wearing signs that read, “We support the Socialist Party.”

Humor, as Srđja Popović, one of Otpor!’s leaders, put it, "broke the fear and inspired the tired, disappointed and apathetic Serbian society."

If they’re always looking behind their back, invest deeply in neighborliness and community.

Across history, the powerful have tended to sneer at the connective tissue that binds us together. They are often of the belief that people only care about themselves, not their neighbors or the wellbeing of strangers or some common good.

What a sad, cynical belief.

Investing in community reaffirms that we belong to each other, look out for each other. That our destinies, as Martin Luther King said, are tied up together. That we are all just walking each other home.

A practice I adopted from a friend is waving at everyone when I’m walking in my neighborhood. No clue who 95% of them are, but I still give a big wave. Nearly everyone waves back. Delightfully, one guy often gives me a big, friendly thumbs up.

If I see someone regularly - at the gym, park, library - I’ll introduce myself, ask their name. Then I create some goofy mnemonic to remember it: librarian Charlotte, who’s quite cheery. It’s amazing how someone saying your name creates a sense of being known, which is another way of saying belonging.

My mother once described walking down a lively street near her house, seeing two people who knew her name, and feeling like part of a community. Two people was all it took for a street to feel like a neighborhood.

Every time we risk a bit of connection, we are thawing the fragmentation that can leave us feeling unseen, lonely, distrustful. As Mother Teresa put it, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

Across history, the powerful have believed that people are powerless. And they have used every trick in the book to make people believe that, too. But beliefs are an expression of our values, and I’d guess we have few shared values with the powerful. So why would we share this belief with them?