Acting Out of Uncertainty

by Gilberto Villasenor

This June I attended the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, Michigan. There were many memorable moments; one of the most meaningful was a panel discussion with Grace Lee Boggs and Immanuel Wallerstein. They were articulate, intelligent, and provocative. It was the first time I had heard about Boggs, 95, the philosopher and Detroit community activist, who I learned had at one time collaborated with the famous Trinidadian anti-colonial thinker, C.L.R. James. Wallerstein, 80, is a historian and theorist of the global capitalist economy. Their commentary informs my own reflection.

In many ways, the top priorities for the international peace and justice movement are hybrid and intricately interrelated. Perhaps the highest priority should be the continuous search for ways to bring environmental, social, and economic movements together.

Grace Lee Boggs said living at the expense of the earth and others had brought us to the edge of disaster. It strikes me that even as many in U.S. peace and justice circles are aware that our economic system is alienating people from each other and the environment, we still haven’t found a way to consistently address the human needs, belly needs, and cultural needs that would make our movements a more compelling alternative. Boggs mentioned Will Allen, an urban farmer based in Milwaukee, as a hopeful example of work that addresses these needs.

For Wallerstein, capitalism is about an endless accumulation of capital and unending growth. He spoke of the need to develop a culture of living well and adopting a rational arrangement with the world.

Before the Social Forum I participated in a bicycle tour organized by the Spoke N Heart collective, going from Chicago to Detroit. The tour was an inspiring opportunity for me to build community with 20 amazing people. Among its many pleasures was seeing the beautiful small towns and country roads one would bypass on a typical car trip or airplane flight.

We also surveyed other, more troubling, facets of the contemporary Midwestern landscape as we rode through Chicago’s Southside, Northwest Indiana, and Michigan. We passed an enormous and bleak expanse of oil refineries in Whiting, Indiana. British Petroleum operates the fourth-largest oil refinery in the U.S. there, which also happens to be the sixth-largest source of pollution in the Chicago area and an important polluter of Lake Michigan. Our ride through Gary, Indiana, also impacted me, as it is a place that I had often heard about on public radio but had never really seen. Gary has been hard hit by the elimination of U.S. steel sector jobs over the past 50 years. What I saw on the bike ride reinforced the urgency of the conversation between Wallerstein and Boggs.

Immanuel Wallerstein argues that everyone lives in historical systems, and that ours will not last forever. He maintains capitalism is coming to an end because it doesn’t provide the possibilities for it to succeed on its own terms. In Detroit, he argued that we don’t know who is going to win the struggle to replace the current system in the next 20-50 years. While I remain hopeful about the prospects for positive change, I share his ambivalence about the future. I believe that as activists we have to learn to live and act out of this sense of uncertainty.

Gilberto Villaseñor is finishing his masters in international studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, and studying to become a yoga instructor. He formerly served on FOR’s Colombia Program in Bogotá and San José de Apartadó, and also on FOR’s National Council.