Accidental Activist

It’s a mandatory training session. On April 1 at 8:00 a.m. in Fayetteville, which is more than three hours away. I know what mandatory means, so I arrange lodging for the dog here and lodging for me there.

With my favorite Arlington activist

After a night on what is arguably the world’s worst hotel mattress (you’ve been warned, do not stay at Holiday Inn Express), I check in early at the meeting facility. As a first-timer I am a little nervous, but eager to hear Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II speak.

The moral voice of our time, Rev. Barber is the electrifying leader of North Carolina’s Forward Together Movement, President of the NorthCarolina NAACP, educator, minister, and so much more.

I’ve heard him speak twice before – in 2014 at Asheville’s Moral Monday in the Mountains and at a July 2015 march at the start of the federal voting rights trial in Winston-Salem. But, I’m in Fayetteville for training, not marching. I’m the recently elected secretary of the Catawba County NAACP branch and Fayetteville is the site of the annual training.

Last summer, I’d gone to my first NAACP branch meeting after seeing a notice in the newspaper. I kept going.  It felt right; I felt welcome. The branch president asked me to be on the nominating committee. Okay. I can do that. Then, I raised my hand and offered to be secretary. I’m a writer. A secretary takes minutes, how hard could that be?

Fast forward to Fayettevile. I’m sitting at a table I’ve staked out for our chapter in a cavernous room with about 300 other people. After a press conference and introductions, the training begins. At my age, I’ve been to a lot of training sessions. Who knew that learning bylaws could be so lively and interesting? Our trainer-in-chief, the eloquent Rev. Barber, has lots of stories that he uses to punctuate the bylaws discussion much as a conductor uses percussion to punctuate a movement.

He goes through a portion of the bylaws, line by line, with a voice that can move mountains. After another story, he gets to the role of branch officers. President: Check. Not my problem. Secretary:  Geesh, no mention of minutes, my strongpoint, but a list of other duties and the importance of the position. Heck, Rosa Parks was a branch secretary.  No pressure or big shoes to fill there.

I pull myself from hanging on every word of our trainer-in-chief’s discussion of policies and politics (my favorite) and retreat to the training for secretaries (um, not so favorite). There are lots of us, and lots of questions. The ladies who run this training know their stuff, inside and out. But, nothing is clear. I am so right-brained. The woman seated next to me, from the neighboring county, looks at me as if to say, “There, there, dear.” She gives me her name and number. Then, I remember that before lunch my chapter mates told me they’d have my back. Whew. My breathing returns to normal.

As I begin my drive home how I came to this new role reminds me of how I became president of the Democratic Women of Catawba County. I showed up. At the early 2014 meeting to elect officers for the brand-new chapter there were seven women in the room. No one wanted to be president. Okay, I’ll do it. How hard can it be?

Driving north on U.S. 421, I muse on my retirement path. None of this – president and now secretary – was planned. My involvement was a byproduct of wanting to meet people, and people with whom I share values. That’s why I went to the Catawba County Democratic Party meetings and the meetings about the women’s group. I decide somewhere between Fuqay-Varina and Winston-Salem that maybe I’m an accidental activist.

Yet, it’s my fourth year as president of our women’s group. I kept showing up. I stood for reelection. Okay, it was not a coveted position. Leading is getting a little easier, but offers new challenges because we’ve grown from the founding few to more than 60.

Dem Women founders portraying legends

The good news about the now-crowded meeting rooms is that instead of a handful with their hands full, we have more people doing more. We’ve got a strong issues group working to educate and advocate on our priority issues -- public education, access to health care, and voting rights. We’ve got a great group for events – with a signature fundraiser set for May 6. And, we’ve got a team of communicators, including our youngest member, a teen-aged Instagram and Snapchat maven.

The founding few cannot take all the credit for this growth.  Do you think there might be a link between who got inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017, and 70 people showing up at our meeting eight days later?

And, yes, that is a rhetorical question. 

Timothy Egan, among others, points out the silver lining of this era of orange-haired government, of having a national leader who has never been in government at any level or in any capacity. As Egan wrote in The New York Times, “… we may be experiencing a great awakening for the humane values that are under siege by a dark-side presidency. People are going inward, to find something bigger than Trump, and outward, to limit the damage he inflicts on the country.”

Yes, we are waking up.

One hundred and ninety three miles later, I arrive home and retrieve the newspaper. Turns out, I’m on page one, pictured talking with one of the participants at the previous day’s Transgender Day of Visibility.

Okay, perhaps my activism is not so accidental. Maybe it’s accidentally on purpose.

There is purpose and a lot of work to be done. Our state and nation need so much work – on justice, equality, education, and the environment, to name just a few. And, I’ve already got something to show for my involvement -- my picture with Rev. Barber. 

Sweet.

Now to live up to it.

In Fayetteville with Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II