In 1980, Poland’s Solidarity movement became the first labor union in Soviet bloc countries. The “Solidarność” banner became iconic.
King, Michnik, and the Impossible
Birmingham and Gdansk
Years ago I discovered Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Adam Michnik, a major spokesman for the Polish Solidarity labor movement. The principles they learned under duress still guide and inspire me today. I was fifteen when Dr. King was assassinated: too young, stupid, white and concerned about what to wear to take proper notice, let alone become radicalized. Over decades I discovered his prophetic voice, and the cloud of witnesses he represented.
As a monk in a Carmelite community in the eighties, I became fascinated by the grass roots ferment in Poland that undermined the Soviet Union’s iron grip. Workers in the “workers’ paradise” went on strike in 1976, and the government attacked and jailed many strikers. Supporters organized to aid strikers’ families and drew up a charter of workers’ rights. Then, after a huge strike in Gdansk’s shipyards, various labor groups joined to form Solidarity. It became the first labor union in Soviet bloc countries.
The government soon declared martial law and suppressed Solidarity. But labor unrest festered for seven years. Then, in 1988, new strikes broke out and Solidarity pressured the government to legalize the union. By 1990, Lech Wałęsa, leader of Solidarity, was elected president of Poland.
Adam Michnik was one of the major brains behind the scenes, organizing and writing while in and out of jail. Jonathan Schell’s New Yorker portrait of Michnik and King’s “Letter” taught me ten principles to help us engage in effective social action as we face a daunting drift toward populist fascism.
Solidarity then and Now
Here in the United States, many of us white citizens face for the first time what most people around the world face daily: a government that shows little or no concern for the well-being of most citizens. It can feel impossible to resist effectively. But my friend Adam Bucko, who grew up in communist Poland, writes that solidarity is exactly what we need now in the United States. We can “shift power away from those who dictate, to those who live. We must cultivate friendships that are stronger than fear.”
I recently heard a psychologist insist that human beings are designed for the stress we feel now, as authoritarianism encroaches. First, we freeze, flee, or fight. These instincts flare and burn out. And then our minds and hearts adapt to the new environment, and we mobilize. We get creative. Here are the nine virtues (and one vice) King and Michnik reveal:
Leisure
This may sound like a strange place to start, but activists face the challenge of burnout. Leisure can help. Leisure, according to philosopher Josef Pieper, is the basis of culture. If you need some convincing, read Maria Popova’s lovely reflections on Pieper here. Leisure isn’t utilitarian “time off” from work to go back to the grind with more energy. In its deepest sense, it can be the fertile soil of revelation: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Leisure, tranquility, is a traditional monastic virtue. And contemplation is for everyone, not just for “professional” monks.
Michnik and King, though not monastic, spent time in jail. Not exactly the harmonious atmosphere of a cloister, but the enclosure gave them time to ruminate. As King put it,
…what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers.
Faced as we are lately with a flood of falsehoods, injustices and illegalities in the highest places, we could use some “jail time”: reflective leisure, meditative fallow sanctuary time, that allows our minds to sink into our hearts, transforming dull monotony into deep communion with Reality. It produces wisdom, a virtue that combines knowing and acting in liberating accord with justice.
Humor
Michnik’s attitude toward his jailer is an example of a contemplative-in-action’s light heart. As Schell notes:
In his essay “Letter from the Gdansk Prison,” Michnik notes that in his recent six months of liberty he had been unable to write, but when he found himself in jail again literary production resumed immediately, and, with characteristic irony and good humor, he offers to the general who had him locked up ‘gratitude for your thoughtful watch over my steps and for providing proper direction to my meditations.’ … At large, Michnik stirs up so much trouble for the regime that it finds it must lock him up; but once he has been locked up he starts to write, and his letters, smuggled to the outside, are read all over Poland, and abroad, and cause, if anything, even more trouble for the regime.
Self-Purification
Wise people teach that when our hearts open to love, a small gesture of kindness may have a more-than-expected positive effect. The opposite is also true: when I close to love, a gesture of contempt may spread like an infection. How can we awaken to old unconscious habits that resist transforming grace? We need purification that empowers us to break old habits and form creatively counter-cultural habits. In Michnik’s words:
I … believe that the totalitarian dictatorships are doomed. By now, no one gives credence to their mendacious promises. They still have the power to jail and kill, but almost no other power. I say ‘almost’ because (alas) there still remains their ability to infect us with their own hatred and contempt. Such infection must be resisted with our whole strength, for of all the struggles we face this is the most difficult.
As Michnik wrote from jail, he sounded almost too confident in the inevitable demise of the regime. Was he naïve? History proved him at least partly right: the Soviet system crumbled. And it’s hard to imagine someone who spent years in jail, served in the Polish parliament, and edited Poland’s leading newspaper, as naïve. When Solidarity had gained enough strength to drive the Polish government to the bargaining table, writes Paul Wilson, Michnik’s
bargaining skills—his determination to reach a deal without giving an inch on principles—were formidable, and the regime negotiators watched him ‘the way a rabbit might stare at a cobra,’ [Polish journalist and former Solidarity activist Konstanty] Gebert said. He also had an uncanny capacity, honed by his study of history, to see things from the other side’s point of view.
This ability to see the other’s point of view is especially important today. Timothy Shriver, educator, film producer, Chairman of Special Olympics International and co-creator of the Dignity Index, points out that not only does contempt ruin marriages; it ruins communities. As we grow beyond contempt, we learn to listen, work together to find common ground, air our differences with respect for each other, look for breakthroughs, and finally, let go of hatred and offer dignity to everyone. In The New Republic, July 2, 1990, Michnik referred to the temptation to take revenge against the old order:
Where does this taste for kicking those who are down come from, this ever-growing area of intolerance, this urge to imprison people of the ancient regime, this dream of vengeance, this chauvinism, this xenophobia, this egalitarian demagoguery proper to populism that conceals simple envy? … we wonder, after all, whether we are not all children of totalitarian communism, whether we do not all carry inside ourselves the habits, the customs, and the flaws of that system. The death of the Communist system does not mean the end of totalitarian habits.
Michnik affirms that no political order is perfect, and because of the imperfect order and human sinfulness, we need to “reach out for the truth of our own roots, for the ethics of the power of the powerless, or simply for the Ten Commandments. The rest is lies, and has the bitter taste of hypocrisy.”
As children of imperial capitalism, we carry habits, customs and flaws that unconsciously contribute to dehumanization at home and abroad. I’m reaching for the truth of our roots. For me, this means embracing a preferential option for the poor that leads to liberation for all of us, rich and poor.
Timing
A wise person senses when the time is ripe for change. When it is ripe, patience is a vice. Dr. King was disillusioned by white moderates who told him to be patient. Time would bring freedom. But:
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. … human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of [people] willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
In Poland, Solidarity members developed a moral authority and social force out of nowhere. Solidarity decided not to postpone freedom until “after the revolution.” According to Schell, they let the means be the end, living in truth, trust and freedom now, no matter what the cost:
Its simple but radical guiding principle was to start doing the things you think should be done, and to start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in freedom of speech? Then speak freely. Do you love the truth? Then tell it. Do you believe in open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely.
By being stubbornly indifferent to the government, Michnik and his colleagues strove “not only for the proverbial better tomorrow but also for a better today.” In a democracy, or at least in a would-be democracy, we cannot be stubbornly indifferent, since you and I are, or ought to be, our political representatives’ “bosses.”
Tempting Toxins
Here’s the one vice in this list of virtues. My root teacher liked the phrase “pretty poison,” and I did, too when I heard it. But I propose this updated version of the same phenomenon: death-dealing actions and attitudes that look, taste, and feel good. Michnik didn’t face this as much as U.S. citizens do. No Pole was fooled into thinking the regime was benign. But in our current American world of doublespeak, when many accept the Big Lie as the Big Truth and park rangers as cogs in the machinery of the diabolical Deep State, we have a problem. One citizen’s paradise is another’s hell.
Dr. King’s contemplative vision allowed him to see through the polite veneer of complacent white society to a toxic core. He saw it especially in the religious establishment. He sought allies among white ministers, priests, and rabbis.
Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of the stained-glass windows.
Many of King’s non-black Christian and Jewish contemporaries wanted the civil rights movement to be more patient, less political. They wanted what they called “peace.” King saw this “peace” as a smoke screen for preserving the inherent violence of the Jim Crow status quo. I like the description of a prophet as someone who bears a crisis. His neighbors don’t want a crisis. They’re fine. They are white, comfortable, and favor stability, with occasional improvements here and there in our policies. The white moderate, King observed,
… is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; … prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice … we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help [us] rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
King knew that “Jesus was not brought down by atheism and anarchy,” as writer, speaker and “spiritual contrarian” Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will from their own.”
Humility
Is politics a battle between good and evil? That kind of dualism was a basic tenet of the third century Iranian prophet Mani, who taught that our material world is inherently evil, while our souls, are pure and good and eternal. A few highly evolved persons manage, through ascetic practice, to liberate the soul. These people become the elect. Mani’s community was known as “Manichaean,” and their dualism seeps, even unconsciously, into many of us. Much of today’s political and religious rhetoric falls into this dualism.
Michnik rejects “political Manichaeanism.” He tries to understand his opponents and to be wary of identifying himself with the Good. He knows, as twentieth-century Russian writer and Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn discovered in the gulag, that the line between good and evil doesn’t cut between countries or political parties, but right through every human heart. Each of us is a strange concoction of good and evil and “no one can be wholly written off as a ‘maggot’ and no one granted exemption from the human condition as an ‘angel.’”
Martin Luther King had plenty of enemies to humiliate him. But humiliation from without often forces us into self-defensive denial. King was different. He knew he was a sinner, and he knew that the FB.I.’s knowledge of his sexual infidelities could ruin him and undermine the good for which he fought. His life was “almost unimaginably difficult,” according to biographer David Garrow, and full of anxiety. King knew he wasn’t the man people thought he was; but he also believed that God forgives. He suffered the inner conflict of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Still, as he preached in a sermon in 1968, “God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives.”
Hope
St. John of the Cross taught that true hope arises as our memory is “emptied” or “unencumbered.” I find this hard to understand. I think he meant that when we integrate, forgive, and let go of the past, we can stand in hope. We are less likely to project either the joy or the pain of the past into the future. What lies ahead is unimaginable, unprecedented, completely surprising. We abandon ourselves to the Love who is ready to do a new deed. This emptiness liberates us to co-create rather than react in fear or vengeance. Nor do we try to recapture past joy, what poet Denise Levertov calls “flame and song”:
… don’t
expect to return for more.
Whatever more there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body …
Michnik and his friends knew that their position was hopeless. Armed revolt was impossible. Instead of wallowing in despair, Michnik developed an approach he called “a new evolutionism,” Levertov’s “next song,” in which he staked out a small but potentially liberating sphere in which the Poles could live and move.
The government seemed all-powerful but was only as powerful as the people allowed it to be. The Polish government’s political appointees were caught between the power of world opinion pressing for justice, and fear of losing their jobs if they displeased the Soviets by being too lenient.
Solidarity recognized a moral territory outside the system, where they began a new “government,” a community life based on a moral code rooted in an authority deeper than the official government’s power. Quixotic and hopeless as it was, Solidarity opened that territory wider and wider. The song found its body. Walls tumbled down.
Loving Sacrifice
Contemplatives are lovers, and love is holy. And it bestows holiness. “Sacrifice” means “to make holy.” During Lent Christians sometimes associate sacrifice with deprivation, maybe more than with love. But the two need to go together. Years ago, when I read Dr. Zhivago and saw the movie, I was struck by the tremendous sacrifices made by the Bolshevik Strelnikov. But rage motivated him, not love.
Schell notes the disproportion between the cost of Polish resistance and the gains:
It was just one of the remarkable qualities … that members were willing to suffer government reprisal not in the name of some sweeping political program or visionary goal but in order to get some money into the hands of a fatherless family or to arrange for favorable testimony in the trial of a worker. Only great goals might seem to warrant great sacrifices, but … workers were ready to make great sacrifices for modest goals.
King believed in law and order. But he had a hierarchy of values that made civil disobedience imperative in some instances.
In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law as the rabid segregationist would do. This would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do it OPENLY, LOVINGLY (not hatefully as the white mothers did in New Orleans when they were seen on television screaming “nigger, nigger, nigger”), and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
Triumph of the Cross
Does it feel like the quantity of terror and contempt outweigh the quantity of peace and good in our world? Wealth inequality appalls. The richest one percent of us control half the world’s wealth. Eighty-one people control more wealth than the combined wealth of four billion of us. It’s a world of necropolitics: death is the cost of doing business. Poverty is a policy, not an accident. A CEO wants terrified workers and a “reformist” government official wants his civil servants traumatized.
The good news: you and I are in the majority. We just need to team up across the crazy bloody divisions that the system loves to see us maintain. How can we go deeper and find solidarity? Can it be that a flourishing quality of goodness and solidarity can outweigh the quantity of systemic injustice? Is there a light no darkness can extinguish? Can a young rabbi buried by an Empire be a seed of Life?
King was not completely fed up with churches. He believed in a remnant that takes God seriously. He saw evidence of this in people who left comfortable congregations to join the struggle.
Some have been kicked out of their churches, and lost support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have gone with the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.
Michnik understood the Solidarity struggle as participating in an ancient debate between prisoners and their jailers and torturers. “These people, with their lifeless but shifting eyes, with their minds that are dull but skilled in torture, with their defiled souls that yearn for social approval” initiated him into the unfinished drama of truth imprisoned, from St. Paul in Rome to Solzhenitsyn in the gulag, the “Silent Sentinels,” (American suffragettes, including Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day) imprisoned and beaten In Virginia’s Occoquan Workhouse, King in Birmingham, and Mandela on Robben Island.
Goodness, truth, beauty, and justice have a way of rising from the jail cell and the tomb.
Love
The last word! And a scary one. Just ask Diana Butler Bass. In a world that scoffs at empathy, “Love is upsetting. Mercy is maddening. Following Jesus’ teachings is literally scary.” It sets us up for heartbreak and opposition. It is extreme. In his Birmingham jail cell, King pondered accusations that he was an “extremist.”He gradually embraced the term:
Was not Jesus an extremist in love? … So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love: will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice—or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? … maybe the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Jesus was savvy, but his last words to his friend Peter are strange. He didn’t seem to have a plan. He just asked, “Do you love me?” And then said, “Feed my sheep.” That’s it? That’s it: costly, creative, extreme, nutritious and liberating love.
Thank you for this compilation–your words and references give me hope.