In response to a critic of children’s participation in Climate Activism, and of their anger…
Justified or ‘righteous’ anger, expressed constructively and responsibly, is a positive, reforming force. It, in concert with fierce protective love — of humanity, of noble ethics and principles — has reformed our world many times over. Women’s righteous, ancient anger is reforming India as we speak, in marvellous ways, after millennia of abuses. Women’s anger in the #MeToo Movement has meant that in an incredibly short time, historically, the trend has become to more readily believe the complainant in sexual assault cases, and not automatically believe and protect the male perpetrator — a cultural and social reform borne out by statistics.
Powerful, righteous, justified, holy anger is what mobilized Abolition, Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights, the end of Apartheid in South Africa, Truth and Reconciliation in response to the Church-run Residential Schools atrocities in Canada, restitution in response to the theft and appropriation of Indigenous lands, and art works from the potlucks and other Indigenous ceremonies in Canada, and many more cases of systemic, institutionalized abuse. Angry children are NOT “fearful children,” not by a long shot. Why? Because getting hold of your righteous, holy anger is the remedy for fear. Why? Because anger is active and reforming, whereas fear is petrifying and freezes the individual afflicted by it in inaction, depression and helplessness.
Fear paralyzes; anger galvanizes. Anger frees one to act, and can trump fear — especially in a justified, altruistic cause, where one is thinking of the Greater Good, or of a cause greater than oneself. I first felt a bursting, fierce, clarifying anger — a holy fury, really — when I saw strip mining in North Wales for the first time. I was 3, I felt no fear — only a clear and highly focused purpose that has remained with me my entire lifetime. I clearly knew what I was witnessing was wrong, un-necessary, and wantonly destructive of the very harmonies we live by the grace of.
I had unbounded courage of my conviction, that has never waned, and which is precisely what funds hope and, in my case, the absolute confidence that we will come to consciousness as a function of survival, to collectively deal with this crisis. No adults taught me that. It was immanent consciousness of injustice, containing the solution(s) as an inherent aspect of the consciousness, felt and experienced like a clarion bell at the gut level, a kind of pattern-recognition, or ‘knowing,’ that we are all hardwired with, and that we retain for our lives-long, as I have, IF we are not ‘educated’ (or trained and indoctrinated) away from it.
Righteous anger in the service of Climate and social justice is sacred, and — if pure of heart, truly felt, and authentic — must be respected, whether in Indigenous activists, Indian feminists, Equal-, Civil-, and Human-Rights activists, Climate activists, and in these clear-eyed, fearless, true-hearted children.
