"That's part of the process of growing up"

Via The Obama Diary and The Only Adult in the Room, this says it all.



I personally want to take the President's words to heart about not only talking to people I agree with. I think in order to get there, we still have a lot of work to do in understanding the difference between what Bernice Johnson Reagon calls "home" and "coalition" in an essay titled Coalition Politics: Turning the Century from the book Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology.

Here's how she defines "home."

Now every once in awhile there is a need for people to try to clean out corners and bar the doors and check everybody who comes in the door, and check what they carry in and say, "Humph, inside this place the only thing we are going to deal with is X or Y or Z." And so only the X's or Y's or Z's get to come in. That place can then become a nurturing place or a very destructive place. Most of the time when people do that, they do it because of the heat of trying to live in this society where being an X or Y or Z is very difficult, to say the least...And that's when you find a place, and you try to bar the door and check all the people who come in. You come together to see what you can do about shouldering up all of your energies so that you and your kind can survive...

But that space while it lasts should be a nurturing space where you sift out what people are saying about you and decide who you really are. And you take the time to try to construct within yourself and within your community who you would be if you were running society. In fact, in that little barred room where you check everybody at the door, you act out community.

And here's a little bit of what she says about "coalition."

Coalition work is not work done in your home. Coalition work has to be done in the streets. And it is some of the most dangerous work you can do. And you shouldn't look for comfort. Some people will come to a coalition and they rate the success of the coalition on whether or not they feel good when they get there.They're not looking for a coalition; they're looking for a home! They're looking for a bottle with some milk in it and a nipple, which does not happen in a coalition.You don't get a lot of food in a coalition. You don't get fed a lot in a coalition. In a coalition you have to give, and its different from your home. You can't stay there all the time.

These days, we seem somehow starved for home at the very time that what's needed most is to work in coalition. I suggest that we need to feed that need for home as much as possible, but remember that its not an end in itself. It's simply a way to nourish ourselves for the hard work of coalition.

It also strikes me that what Giordano described as activism is done in your home. In order to do organizing, you have to build coalitions - and that means compromise. Here's what Reagon said about that.

There is an offensive movement that started in this country in the 60's that is continuing. The reason we are stumbling is that we are at the point where in order to take the next step we've got to do it with some folk we don't care too much about. And we got to vomit over that for a little while. We must just keep going.

So I say we need to feed ourselves with a home. But then toughen up those stomach muscles, grab your barf bag and get to work.