by Bill Teng
Movement is life. This is true for an individual and for a collective. Movement is also the foundation of Third Act Maryland — who we are and what we do.
But what sustains this movement?
1. A community of skilled and dedicated people, of course, without which there is no movement.
2. The planning and carrying out of episodic actions that provide focus and expression. Actions like sit-ins at Citibank, one of the big dirty banks, and collecting signatures to petition Costco to clean up its affiliation with the Citibank credit card.
3. A vision of what else the world could be like.
But a movement is also sustained by the ongoing work between actions, work that provides the necessary stability, continuity, connections and relationships, self-healing, and self-improvement. In essence, the work in between actions forms the foundation of a movement.
Writer, activist, and Third Act advisor Rebecca Solnit provided a wonderful mushroom metaphor for this work in an illustration based on this article in The Guardian. Solnit wrote, “After a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many come from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms, mycologists call the fruiting body of the larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but it is the less visible long-term organising and groundwork — or underground work — that often laid the foundation.”
A similar metaphor was shared last February at a Third Act training on nonviolent direct action. California redwood trees, which, though shallow-rooted, grow higher than 300 feet, are highly resilient and stable. Over time and mostly out of sight, their roots intertwine, widely and densely, forming a community of mutual support.
This centrality of relationships and connectedness, and the importance of the in-between, foundational, and often not very visible work can be found nearly everywhere, including, of course, in the foundations of buildings. For competitive athletes, for whom movement is literal, the analogy is the long periods of training in between competitions. In the environmental movement, Julia Butterfly Hill is a perfect example of the importance of in-between work. Hill is perhaps best known for her tree sit of over two years in Luna, the name given to a particular redwood tree in Humboldt County, California. One of the purposes of tree sits is to prevent clearcut logging by lumber companies. Hill’s tree sit was the visible episodic action, made possible by broad, in-between, foundational community support, support that was ongoing by the movement and that made her specific tree sit possible.
Given the importance of in-between work, how can we in Third Act Maryland more thoughtfully and consistently incorporate it into what we do? With the November election fast approaching, the obvious near-term and critical in-between work is showing up to do the organizing and groundwork such as canvassing and phone-banking necessary to ensure that we can keep a republic. We would love to hear your ideas about near- or long-term in-between work that Third Act Maryland could undertake! Please email us at maryland@thirdact.org.