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Mental Health and Activism in 2020

Francesca Von Krauland COVID-19, Global Future, Racial Justice, Uncategorized December 16, 2020December 16, 2020activism, black lives matter, climate change, mental health, pandemic, racial justice

Earlier this year, the previous Climate Justice Now blogger, Dominique, wrote an article entitled Taking Care of Yourself and the Environment. As 2020 winds down, I think mental health, especially as it relates to activism, the events of this year, and racial factors, is an important topic to readdress. No one’s life was unaffected by COVID-19, but rather than giving into the despair that sometimes accompanies massive upheaval, many people focused on working toward positive change in areas they felt more control over—addressing racial injustice, making progress in the climate movement, and (particularly in the U.S.) political campaigning to ensure that we have forward-thinking leaders to guide us into the next year.

While admirable as a coping mechanism, and a necessary part of creating change to protect others in the future, those who engage in activism often experience adverse mental health effects because of their work. Often, the issues that people fight for are deeply personal, fueled by identity and trauma. Having such a stake in the outcome of one’s work makes for powerful activism, but also poses a threat to the emotional stability of those who engage in it. Activists are at a higher risk of developing PTSD and suicidal ideation when their identities are wrapped up in the causes they champion, and even those whose identities aren’t experience vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue, which also pose a risk. This organization points out that movements struggle to hold onto their most passionate, committed activists because of burnout. For people who make careers out of activism, the effects are magnified: the hectic schedules and low pay associated with activism can result in stress from familial tension, a lack of access to medical services, and anxiety about the future in regards to retirement or even homeownership. Those in the field emphasize that addressing activist mental health is essential to the protection of both individuals as activists and the movements themselves.

While mental health has long been an issue in relation to activism, this year, with the added stress of the pandemic and all of its associated disruptions, our collective mental state is perhaps more precarious than ever. The WHO explains, “Fear, worry, and stress are normal responses to perceived or real threats, and at times when we are faced with uncertainty or the unknown. So it is normal and understandable that people are experiencing fear in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.” In addition to the very-valid fear of microscopic particles floating about, ready to send any non-mask wearing person to the ICU, there’s the added burden of isolation from all the joys of life that usually help with coping: seeing family and friends over a meal, working out at the gym, and browsing one’s favorite stores, for example. Added to this, the fact that unemployment is rising, many people have lost loved ones to the virus, and living situations are altered, the rise in anxiety, depression, substance abuse, insomnia, and other mental health conditions is unsurprising. To compound the issue, the pandemic has disrupted or halted critical mental health services in 93% of countries worldwide at a time when they are most needed. As Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, urges, “World leaders must move fast and decisively to invest more in life-saving mental health programmes—during the pandemic and beyond.”

As the sun sets earlier and people retreat indoors, people who struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) are more at risk than ever of experiencing overwhelming symptoms of low energy, poor mood, and social withdrawal, among others. Dr. Desan of Yale Medicine states, ““We are seeing an obvious increase in the number of people seeking help for anxiety, and that’s not unreasonable. People are anxious about catching COVID-19, among other related issues,” Dr. Desan says. “This is a major mental health event.”

As with most other major issues, the collective suffers, but a particular segment of the population feels the effects most acutely. On the topics of both mental health as it relates to activism and mental health during the pandemic, while U.S. adults reported considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions this year, younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers reported having experienced disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, according to the CDC. Particularly for people of color, who this year led the Black Lives Matter movement through emotional protests deeply tied to their identity, heightened rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide compound the pressures associated with the discrimination they protest in the first place, in addition to the pandemic, and the climate-related problems, and so much more. It’s no wonder that the term self-care was coined by black woman activist Audre Lorde when she famously said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” After a year like 2020, everyone, but especially those most impacted, must look after themselves—starting with mental health.

The language we use for particularly successful activists—”champions” of a cause—reveals the underlying psychology that fuels the mental health problem in activist movements. Linda Sarsour, one of the founders of the Women’s March and a Muslim Palestinian-American activist, says, “Activists often become caricatures to people, for some even super-human. Many don’t realize the deep depression and anxiety we experience. The work is overwhelming and [it’s] compounded by not feeling safe and worrying about your life and the lives of your children.” Recognizing that caring deeply for the world is a kind of emotional labor that taxes the mind and body is a good first step in the direction of protecting one’s mental health. Next, mental health care needs to be made more accessible to everyone, especially those from marginalized communities who most need it. And finally, until then, the most powerful tools activists, and anyone struggling with mental health has, is self-care.

Dominique’s blog wisely recommends that people feeling overwhelmed spend time in nature, reach out to others, and “remember that anxiety is rooted in love for the people and places in your life.” I think that last one is particularly important—gratitude is perhaps the strongest cure for despair. It is a privilege to love something so deeply as to ache at its absence, its obscuring. Acknowledging that pain is often rooted in one’s ability to imagine better means that hurting and hoping go hand in hand. This is the power of language: we can rephrase the problem. 2020 changed almost everything for almost everyone. This is a time of opportunity, not of crisis. We’ve ripped the bandage off of a wounded world and it burns. The world in 2020 is a messy gash with still-drying blood, but without the bandage, we can imagine what the skin will feel like when it’s healed.

Healing, despite its poetry, is a science. The world will not heal with hope and imagination alone—certainly, those need to be there, along with despair at how things are now, but most of all, we need science. Thought and logic and clear-headedness drives movements. Science makes up vaccines and holds the solution to climate change. Logic battles the judgement we have for the parts of us that are struggling: what is more logical a reaction to the horrors of 2020 than to, in fact, feel horror? And then to acknowledge it, and then to channel the horror into yet more logic, that needed to solve the problem. All is not as it should be—but only because the work isn’t quite done yet. We’re getting there. Painfully, hopefully, and with science and gratitude.

Featured Image from AmGen

Intergenerational Movement Building

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future, Racial Justice, Uncategorized December 15, 2020December 15, 2020black lives matter, climate justice, history, march for our lives, multigenerational activism

Few individuals bring as much attention to the climate movement as Greta Thunberg, whose efforts have rallied children, lawmakers, and skeptics alike to the cause of tackling climate change. Though perhaps the best known young activist, Greta is far from the only student taking the lead in a cause. In fact, historically, young people have led the way for social change, working alongside professionals and older activists to overhaul problematic norms all over the world. Today, in movements like Black Lives Matter and Fridays for Future, multigenerational movement building is an effective and necessary goal to achieve lasting improvements.

Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager, has addressed both the U.S. Congress and the United Nations about taking drastic measures to address climate change. Despite bringing attention to a movement involving several million people, the Global Climate Strikes, Greta emphasizes, “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.” Yet societal problems affect young people profoundly, and they can’t always wait until they’re older to do something about it. The lives of young black and indigenous activists are shaped daily by systemic forces far older than them, and they can’t afford to hope that their parents’ generation will make the changes that are so long overdue. As I discussed in my previous article, people of color are particularly impacted by climate change, and are therefore very active in the climate movement. Indigenous young people who protested at Standing Rock, Kanaka Maoli youth who defended land at Mauna Kea, and students in Flint, Michigan are just some of the children whose lives are at stake because of environmental threats.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every person under the age of 18 has the right to participate in the decision-making processes that impact them. Organizations like UNICEF work to give young people a platform to participate in climate action, hosting events like the 2019 United Nations Youth Climate Summit in New York City for activists to express their views in a public forum, but many young people actually founded their own organizations to spread their messages. For example, a youth group founded the Black Lives Matter Youth Vanguard to protect black children, particularly in schools, New Jersey teenager Anya Dillard founded Next Gen Come Up, an organization “dedicated to encouraging youth activism and community service through media and creativity,” and 18-year-old Sophie Ming organized large protests in Manhattan and founded the New York City Youth Collective to educate young people on issues related to the BLM movement. Some youth are even writing books to help other youth build the movement, such as Jamie Margolin’s Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other young people working for justice every day, even and especially throughout this chaotic year of the pandemic.

Throughout history, social change has always been spearheaded not by those in power, like lawmakers and judges, but by visionaries too young to be constrained by outdated ideas of how things should be. In fact, Ben & Jerry’s (another reason to love their ice cream) created a succinct outline of global student activism within recent history, from the 1960 Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-Ins to protest segregation, to the 1968 University Uprisings against government censorship in France and capitalist consumerism in Poland, to the Vietnam War protests of the ’60s and ’70s, to the Soweto Uprising of 1976 against South African Apartheid, to the Velvet Revolution in Prague to push the Communist party out of power after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protest in Beijing, to the 2010 Arab Spring, 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, and 2018 March for Our Lives against gun violence. The list includes movements led by college and, more recently, high school-aged people working to address the corruption, prejudice, and oppression that would limit their futures. It’s astounding that people so young could be so forward-thinking, but who better to envision a safer future than those who will live it?

Young activists are more likely to be flexible, think of the big picture, and use innovative means for campaigning, like social media, but without the support of adults who can actually implement changes, progress would still be years away. This is why it’s so important for older people to be involved with movements too—not only are they more likely to have wisdom to share on how to build and sustain social movements, they might also have the funds to fuel the movement, the expertise to guide its focus, and the wisdom to mentor young leaders, and protect them from the emotional exhaustion and physical threats sometimes tied to activist work. Movements today are not just intergenerational—they are also interdisciplinary. “The number of marchers is unprecedented, from different economic, ethnic, and racial groups—an awakening unlike any that I’ve seen on this Earth in over 70 years,” Bullard, a professor for urban planning and environmental policy, and activist, explains. “Today, the different movements are converging, and I think that convergence makes for greater potential for success.”

Movements also shape higher education, which in turn shapes the students who will then begin their careers with the goals of social and climate justice at the forefront of their minds. For example, Dr. Beverly Wright, a professor of sociology, trains leaders from historically black American universities in the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. She founded the HBCU Climate Change Consortium and the HBCU-CBO Gulf Equity Consortium, where her students assisted Hurricane Katrina victims and researched climate impacts on vulnerable communities. She also took them to the COP21 in Paris to witness the negotiation of the Paris Climate Accord. Such programs might not exist if climate activism were not so widespread, and students exposed to these kinds of opportunities are more likely to continue to pursue work that centers on sustainability and climate justice. The field of environmental engineering is another example of the institutionalization of the progress of the climate movement; a relatively new field in higher education, environmental engineering focuses on the prevention, control, and remediation of hazards to the environment using engineering expertise. With the existence of such fields, a young person today could learn about climate change in school, become an activist with the support of adult mentors, study a relevant field in university, and then go on to become a scientist, lawmaker, businessperson, or other global shaper in a position to implement the changes he or she studied the need for. It’s a hopeful path, but just one of many that exists for young people today who care so deeply about the planet and the people on it.

It’s easy to see young activists as heroes—altruists and outliers to their age group. But the reality is that young people have always cared, because they’ve always had to—it’s a matter of survival. Perhaps the fact that activists are younger, high schoolers and even middle schoolers rather than young adults, is a sign that no one is protected from the stark realities of our warming planet—least of all those who will inherit it.

Featured image from Time

Racial and Climate Justice: Shared Goals

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future, Racial Justice, Uncategorized December 12, 2020December 12, 2020activism, black lives matter, climate justice, defund police, racial justice

Skimming headlines, it’s clear that a few issues dominated our collective headspace this year: the COVID-19 crisis, racial injustice in the United States, and the increasingly alarming problem of climate change. Written out, they seem like separate categories, like one could place a given newsworthy event within a single topical classification without acknowledging the existence of the others. Obviously, this is not the case. In a country (and world) in which people of color are disproportionately affected by both the changing climate and the pandemic, in addition to facing direct discrimination, the three problems are closely intertwined, so that the discussion of one necessarily links to another. The movements for racial justice and climate justice share goals, and the ways in which these aims can be achieved have considerable overlap as well. One of the most-discussed ways of addressing the racial violence in the U.S. this year can be summed up by the slogan “Defund the Police.” But what does that actually mean, and why could it be a step in the direction of both racial and climate justice?

The idea of “defunding the police” actually refers to the idea of reallocating police funding away from traditional law enforcement. Much of the violence making headlines this year—in addition to the violence that hasn’t always made headlines for many, many years before this one—is perpetrated by the police against the black community in the United States. American cities collectively spend $100 billion per year on policing, resulting in police departments with military-grade equipment, while education, housing, health care, and other essential programs suffer chronic underfunding, disproportionately effecting communities of color. By decreasing the police budget and funneling money toward these programs, communities would be strengthened and the potential for the police to abuse their power severely undercut.

The social benefit to such a policy is matched only by the environmental one. Money previously put towards enabling violence could instead support environmental initiatives. According to this report, “As the state faces a pandemic-driven budget crisis, the programs that cap-and-trade revenue funds—including climate and environmental justice programs, investing in jobs and climate mitigation in black and brown communities—could now be at risk.” Freeing up funding to support these initiatives would be essential both to continuing to combat climate change and to supporting people of color, directly and indirectly. The Black Lives Matter movement has long supported what it refers to as a policy of “Invest-Divest,” or investing in Black communities by divesting from the forces that oppress them, such as police, prisons, and fossil fuels. It’s a policy that other countries have adopted with success. Sweden’s criminal justice system emphasizes short prison sentences that actually reduce the rate of reoffending. It focuses on rehabilitation rather than punishment, unlike the American system. In the U.S., it’s well known that long prison sentences stunt disproportionately-black former inmates’ successful reintegration into society, but a lesser known impact of the jail system is the environmental damage it causes. Many prisons produce waste and emissions far above local and federal standards because of overcrowding, an issue exacerbated by the growing prison population and the length of their punishments. Clearly, a reform of the criminal justice system, to include defunding the police, addressing unfair sentencing, and reconceptualizing prisons, would have both social and environmental advantages.

People of color also disproportionately live near these polluting prisons, in addition to other facilities emitting harmful pollutants. This study finds that people in poverty are exposed to greater quantities of fine particulate matter—including automobile fumes, smog, soot, oil smoke, ash, and construction dust, which are carcinogens—than people living above the poverty line, because they are much more likely to live near polluters. This exposure causes lung conditions, heart attacks, asthma, low birth weights, high blood pressure, and premature deaths, conditions statistically linked to poorer, nonwhite populations. The EPA states that decreasing the production of these particles and regulating emissions would directly benefit these populations—another example of the overlapping aims of the climate and racial justice movements.

The idea of combining the aims of the two movements is nothing new. Just as feminists support climate activism, black activists have drawn up their own version of the Green New Deal and Build Back Equal, which places racial and climate justices’ considerable overlap at the center of their goals. In 1966, the Freedom Budget by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin planned for a ten year program that would address employment, wages, health care, and clean air, with the aim of economic justice. Even then, the condition of the environment was a priority for the nation’s future—an essential component of ensuring a good standard of living for black and white Americans alike. This is a goal that has only become more urgent as climate change—and racial violence—worsens. Perhaps 2020 can be the year that movements converged, and racial justice became the goal of climate activists, and climate justice that of racial activists, because, after all, black or white, we need to make sure our shared future is green.

Featured image from Climate X Change