An open letter to my future less-radical self

I’m sitting in bed writing this—my old room, with the lime green walls, purple bedspreads and shelves overflowing with books. I’m wearing those orange almost-basketball shorts I paid two dollars for at Goodwill, and I’m thinking about revolution.

I think I know you. You’re thirty-five or forty, with a good job that pays enough. Maybe you even have a husband or kids. You travel, and you still read anything and everything you can get your hands on. I’m not sure if you have the biggest garden anyone’s ever seen inside the city limits, or if you buy organic at the grocery store and promise yourself that next week, you’ll learn how to can vegetables, but either way, I know you still pay attention and you still care.

I’m writing you because recently, something happened. You read about it in the news, or saw a video, or heard from a friend. Someone did something illegal, the kind of thing you used to think about doing. Someone smashed a bank’s windows during a protest or rescued animals from a lab or blew up an oil pipeline. And I can see you sitting there, shaking your head at the wild-eyed revolutionaries who chose to be violent, who alienated people because they were too young and stupid and idealistic to realize that illegal actions won’t solve anything.

I want to remind you what you used to be like, before you settled down. The nights you fell asleep thinking that sometimes, you wanted nothing more than to watch Issaquah burn to the ground and see a forest grow back in its place. The evenings you spent plotting guerilla schemes to plant carrots in the middle of golf courses when you had papers you were supposed to be writing. The day you walked through one of the largest coal plants in the country, when you thought about leaving the group to attempt a one-woman sabotage of the computer system, but opted to take two hundred photos of generators and clouds of smoke instead. The weeks and months you searched for a revolutionary who lived up to his legend, who wasn’t just another dictator-to-be waiting to abolish term limits and seize land. Your burning desire to be a journalist, to uncover the worst of humanity, to travel the globe in search of suffering and resilience and speak truth, no matter its costs.

You probably remember all of this and more. You might shrug it off, or laugh at how young you were. You’re probably proud of some of the things you’ve accomplished, and you probably should be. And I want to make sure you know that you wouldn’t be the woman you are if you hadn’t spent your twenties plotting writing, reading, praying and searching for revolution. If you hadn’t cared enough to be willing to go to jail for what you believe in, you wouldn’t have gotten where you are today.

I know you probably know this. But there’s one other thing I need to let you know. Revolution doesn’t have to be a phase. You’ve always been more of a reformer who likes to keep radicals close. You’re too pragmatic to light the fuse or pull the trigger and too invested in shades of grey to see evil as clearly as some of your cohorts. You’re not a risk-taker, especially when it comes to putting human life on the line.

But we need the radicals. You need them, though you may not remember it. Factory farming will never end if people aren’t willing to break the law and videotape the atrocities being committed in slaughterhouses. Serious changes to existing power structures won’t come without serious threats. Sometimes, threats are external—the end of cheap oil, maybe. Sometimes, they’re legal. But sometimes, they’re not. Cochabamba didn’t get their water back because they asked nicely and filed petitions. They got it back because they took to the streets, occupied the center of town for several days and were willing to endure tear-gassing and being shot to stand up for their right to control their own water supply.

This isn’t to say that activists for causes you believe in haven’t done things that are wrong or that you disagree with. Legality and morality are separate issues. Actions may be illegal and moral (the civil rights movement), illegal and immoral (rape), legal and moral (growing your own food) or legal and immoral (covering up reports saying that your product kills people so you can keep selling it). Just because something is a supposed act of resistance doesn’t make it ok. But I’m asking you to remember that you stand on the shoulders of fighters, radicals, anarchists, feminists, ecoterrorists, communists, union organizers and people from all walks of life who were willing to speak truth to power and put their bodies on the line for causes they believed in.

I’m sure you’re happy with your life, and I’m glad you’re not in prison. I’m happy that you’re doing something you believe is meaningful, and that you’re making a small but important contribution to making the world a more just, equitable place. But I want to make sure you never forget your roots. I want to make sure you understand, when you hear that story about those people who did something crazy and illegal, that they’re fighting for the same things you are in the only way they think will work. I want to make sure you know you’re only here because of people who are far braver, stupider, radical and idealistic than you were ever going to be.

all my love,

Rachel