Recently, I was listening to Palestinian Queer Activist, Ghadir Shafie, who said: \u201c<\/span>One of the best things you can do to expand hope right now is to expand and maintain your own integrity, because that is the only thing you can control.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n And: \u201c<\/span>Think about what you can do, not what you can lose.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n In a moment when all of us in US movements for justice are overwhelmed by losses \u2013 of funding, civil liberties, for some of us \u2013 our jobs, homes, and colleagues and family members \u2013 Shafie\u2019s words have brought me immense comfort and resolve.<\/span><\/p>\n They\u2019ve helped me affirm what I know to be true: Rockwood\u2019s shift several years ago to center BIPOC feminist leaders and amp up intersectional approaches to securing justice and caring for our communities was crucial and prescient.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Over the past 5 years especially, we\u2019ve been part of a \u201cchanging of the guard,\u201d through which BIPOC women especially have taken on key roles in non-profit organizations, public service, corporate leadership, and electoral politics. Rockwood alum have been a huge force in this transformation and redistribution of power.<\/span><\/p>\n While everything seems to be crumbling around us, we have to remember that the past 40 years or more of constant struggle has brought us to this tremendously challenging moment.\u00a0 It\u2019s the immense power we\u2019ve built that the authoritarians are pushing back on, decrying and belittling the vibrant, more just worlds we\u2019ve built \u2013 the communities we\u2019ve resourced, the legislation we\u2019ve passed. So many of the wins of the last decade were unfathomable to us at the start of our work, and yet we delivered them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, let\u2019s not forget ourselves as missiles are lobbed daily into the painstaking order we\u2019ve rebuilt. Instead, let\u2019s think about what strategic opportunities lie in the rubble. What needs rethinking as we consider rebuilding? What needs discarding? Who do we need to bring into the circles of resistance we\u2019ve been cultivating? What has been left out all along that needs to be at the helm of our next campaign, or zoom call, or morning meeting?<\/span><\/p>\n We don\u2019t have easy answers, or a prescribed path out of this mess, but we do know how to pivot when moments of opportunity present themselves. I feel certain we are creating those moments of opportunity now, even as we flail about, and sometimes blame each other for how bad things have become, and how fractured our resistance appears. Everything always looks chaotic and unproductive \u2013 until it doesn\u2019t. Until our work adds up and comes together and we find yet another opportunity to press forward, to take care of each other, to win.<\/span><\/p>\n As Rockwood alum, adrienne maree brown has said: \u201c<\/span>small is all.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Let\u2019s start with ourselves, with Shafie\u2019s charge to expand on our own integrity, and to build where we have influence or control. Let\u2019s keep reminding each other about what we are doing, and what we can do.\u00a0 Because \u2013 and I say this with enormous gratitude and hope \u2013 we have each other. And that\u2019s everything.<\/span><\/p>\n Darlene<\/p>\n CEO, Rockwood Leadership Institute<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/rockwoodleadership.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/AL100874-300x200.jpg.webp)
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