The Bystander is the Fulcrum
As an American who's lived outside the US for most of my life, I’m usually reminded that it’s Martin Luther King Day by my colleagues when I try to schedule something, and it comes as a happy surprise.
There are few, if any, public holidays devoted to civil rights and social justice in the countries where I live and recognizing the women and men who help us to achieve these liberties is something to celebrate.
This year, I was shocked into awareness a few days before the holiday weekend by a line in Harper’s Weekly that “The owner of an anti-Semitic and white-supremacist website ... announced that he would hold an armed march in opposition to the Jewish community in Whitefish, Montana, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.” I read it, paused and swore under my breath.
Whitefish is my hometown.
I called my mother a few hours after, and she explained to me how the Nazi demonstration has not been given City Council permission to march, although the group has been persistent.
The local Nazis are not a new thing, apparently, and their leader has gone so far as to post online photos of Jewish families, including a local Jewish child, marked as he would’ve been by Third Reich Nazis.
In response, a group called Love Lives Here put on an event of their own where they hold the farmer’s market, with the local rabbi's wife speaking, along with numerous bands and festivities. It was a much-need and beautiful public move, but in response to the hate incited by the Nazi website and their continued attempts to protest, it seems from a distance a bit like throwing a Care Bear at a child with a butcher’s knife in his hands.
After I spoke with my mother, I found myself getting upset that hate speech and inciting violence can be met with gentle tolerance in a free society, and that thinking that those of us who witness something we know is wrong have a moral responsibility not just to speak out, but to act up.
For this specific injustice, I wanted someone, anyone, to take the Nazi group to court on behalf of the children and families who have been targeted. I feel strongly that it’s not up to the families themselves to do this – it’s up to us.
If we don't stand proactively and aggressively for the civil liberties we believe in and that others have sacrificed even their lives for, then we allow the wave of hate and intolerance sweeping not just the US, but other places in the world, to win.
Because, as my colleague David Roberts points out in his amazing talk on technology and changing the world, when we talk about change, "The bystander is the fulcrum."
When David explains it, he does so eloquently and full of facts, but I'm going to give you the summary version and share the YouTube video he uses to illustrate his point. In the video, you'll see the following happen (spoiler alert), once the baby buffalo has been taken by the lions:
The buffalo come to a group consensus that this cannot be allowed to happen and they head over to the lions, as a group, to confront them.
A few brave buffalo lead the way and even split off from the heard to take on the lions directly.
At first, the lions aren't having it, but the strength of the buffalo's numbers and their determined response sends a few scattering.
There are some stubborn lions who are intent on the status quo, which is that they get to pick off baby buffalo and the herd can't do anything about it.
The lead buffaloes continue not to stand for it and individually split from the group to charge the lions, again and again, until they send them running.
David speaks about how the buffalo are used to being bystanders watching the tragic and uncomfortable, citing the natural order and the way things are, but in this encounter they turn from bystanders into actors, and how this makes all the difference. And then he throws down the challenge that when we see injustice and know something is wrong, as bystanders, we are the only ones who can actually make a difference.
The reason he gives is because the perpetrator is the aggressor, and we can't rely on them to change. Likewise, the victim is doing all they can to stay alive, literally or figuratively, and all their energy and awareness is focused on this.
It is only we, as bystanders, who have the ability to shift into action mode and change what's going down.
Sending counter-messages to the community with talks and concerts is beautiful and right. But more is required when faced with a threat to the basic values of tolerance and human rights that our society is built upon.
As a fellow bystander, I can't tell you what to do about the injustice you see in your life, or in your hometown, or the community where you're working to be of service. But I can tell you what it feels like to say "Enough is enough," and to shift into action.
We may not know what to do, but we know where we're going.
We may not have a strategic plan (yet) for how we're going to get there, but we know we're not alone.
When one of us steps forward to defend what needs defending, whether it's a Jewish child whose face is posted online with Nazi symbols, to speaking out when your friends make casually racist comments or rape jokes, when we take a stand for others who have been singled out for their difference or their weakness, it makes the world better for all of us.
It is when we awaken to our power as actors within the system, in every way, that our power begins to become apparent and our ability to create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible begins to take shape.
Here’s to the journey.
***
If this resonates with you, I hope that you’ll share it with someone who you think it might resonate with.
If you’d like to get email updates from me, you can sign up here.