Specificity Is Necessary For Concrete Change

Why Getting Angry About Everything Isn't Helpful

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Social Justice Burnout & Disability

Disabled people are so often facing the brunt of societal issues. Because of intersectionality, global problems affect marginalized people most because they have the least resources to shield themselves from violence.

Additionally, disabled people often are excluded from social spaces outside of the internet. This means much of our social exposure is to distressing news content about devestating social issues.

Finally, disabled people have less energy and ability to contribute to making change and to processing difficult news.

All of this makes it extremely understandable for disabled people to burnout of social justice and choose to (or wish they could) cut it out of their life entirely.

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Outrage Doesn't Help People

In progressive spaces it is common for outrage to be a sign of intelligence, social compassion, and caring about the world.

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

The problem is that internet outrage based on a surface level understanding of todays hottest injustice helps no one but social media companies.

You do not have to be aware of every issue. You simply can not. Attempting to do so can be devastating to mental health and causes compassion fatigue. Our brains are not equipped to know about every bad event happening in the world.

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Internet Activism

All of these criticisms of internet based performative outrage often lead people to dismiss internet activism as pointless "slactivism."

But for disabled people living in an inaccessible world with limited free energy, the internet may be the only way to voice important social issues.

Like all activism, it is essential that internet activism focuses on

•Actionable Advice

•Concrete Goals

•Social Support Structures

•Collecting & Distilling Lived Experience Into Structural Knowledge

Examples in the MECFS community would be:

•Teaching patients to pace, advocate for themselves, and get proper diagnoses

•Petitions & media campaigns to free specific patients from abuse and neglect

•Fundraising for specific studies and treatments

•Sharing mutual aid needs within the ME Community and giving if able

•Running online support groups, message boards and chat rooms

•Surveying severe and very severe patients who have been left out of most studies

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Its Okay To Be Angry

Being angry at injustice in the world is completely natural. Furthermore, the more you and your direct network of friends and family are impacted by systemic injustice the harder it is to "look rationally" at the situation or "not default to anger."

Thus we should neither judge those whose anger at systemic injustice overflows nor try to stifle our own anger. Those who urge "respectability" and "calm diplomacy" in politics are often those who either can afford to wait with or benefit from the status quo.

Anger is often the firestarter for change. We feel angry when something is not right and that energy can be harnessed.

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Action Requires Specificity

But even though anger over injustice is justified, to turn that anger into action requires specificity.

Anger without specificity of action is unhelpful to both the angry person and broader injustice.

Without a specific outlet in which to work, anger can lead to nihilism and despair at the state of the world.

Without specific actions, being angry does not move to create positive change.

Actions do not have to be large. Especially if you are already living in an overburdened position in society. But even small acts of supporting your friends, family and community matter.

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All Opression Is Intertwined

It doesn't matter which cause you start with, if you consistently prioritize listening to the voices of the marginalized people most impacted you will discover the same truth over and over:

All opression is intertwined and the only way to unravel it is solidarity with other movements.

But, you must be part of a specific movement or cause to offer real solidarity with others.

Systemic opression is like an evil tapesty and anger is like punching it over and over. It may be satisfying but it is unlikely to cause real damage. Instead, we must pull it apart thread by thread. Pull away enough threads and everything unravels.

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Bodily Sustainability & Advocacy

Bodily sustainability is one of the pillars of disability justice. What this means is: if the organizers of a movement do not take care of their own health the movement will not continue.

Anger will light a fire, but it will also burn you out. Building solidarity and community not only creates the networks necessary to organize coalitions, protests, and mutual aid but also builds the interpersonal resiliance necessary for bodily sustainability.

Anger may start a movement. But community and solidarity sustain it.

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Working On One Thing Is Actually Working On Everything

Advocacy at the level that produces real actionable items might get less clicks, its probably less flashy, and focusing on one thing means you won't always be informed on the hot discussion of the day. But it is the only way to produce real change.

It might not be immediately obvious how your specific issue relates to another, but materially helping opressed peoples anywhere contributes to liberation everywhere far more than unspecific outrage ever could.

All this to say, if you are working on one specific injustice passionately with whatever bandwidth you have left after taking care of yourself, you are truely doing the best you can to help with all injustice. Much more than simply getting angry about everything.

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It's ME Awareness Month, Fibromyalgia Awareness Month, Behcets Disease Awareness Month or MCAS #MCS and so many more.

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For those in the Complex Chronic Illness and Disability Community, it can feel like everything is one crisis and essential advocacy event after another.

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How can we show that we care about everything when we simply do not have the energy to?

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Indeed as we near the end of the month it can feel like we simply don't have the energy to care about anything.

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Burnout is a problem for everyone in our society where productivity is so often equated with value.

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But for marginalized people with disability and chronic Illness we are given both more reason to care and less ability to do so.

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This natural conflict is a recipe for burning out and crashing.

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For those of us with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or MECFS this is compounded by the fact that we must Stop Rest Pace and limit our activities if we are to maintain our failing and limited health.

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It is so easy to be angry in our broken world.

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But anger will burn you out. Anger is only the firestarter for change. community and solidarity are what sustain it.

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We cannot only look outward in our ME Advocacy. We must also look inward and build self-advocacy, internal resilience, and community support structures.

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Bodily Sustainability is an essential part of disability justice. When the world tells us our bodies are worthless we must fight to resist this and fight to sustain ourselves and our communities.

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Self-advocacy is ME advocacy.

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Survival is protest.

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Community Care is how change is built.

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Have self-compassion, take care of your health. When the world is telling you the opposite, these actions are resistance.

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If you care about pwME and you are a person with ME than you must extend that care to yourself.

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The burden of ME Advocacy CANNOT falls only on pwME. You are not solely responsible for the fate of our community. You are a part of that community, a mutual relationship.

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So do not give up on making change. But remember: change starts with caring for ourselves and our communities.