NOTICINGS: Leaderless Organizing
When the ordinaries are more than they appear to be.
No leader. No command center. Just attention-each starling responding to its seven closest companions.
Photo source: Sjo, www.sjo.nlWith the idea that feeling good makes dealing with hard things less hard, and with the lived experience that taking care of business via a call center can drive one nuts, I’ve taken to asking a question or two of the human person who slides in—via a call center—when AI cannot do the job. At first, I thought I was doing that person a favor. Or, as Apple Care AI instructs each and every caller: “Remember that our advisors are here to help. Please treat them with kindness.”
Surely, I thought, there’s gotta be a way to escape this encapsulated world that traps users within online formats, if only for a minute—without screaming my frustration with executive decisions onto the person speaking to me. I was looking for a way to pierce the anguish and boredom of someone bound, as much as the caller, to the bottom line of corporate systems.
But this morning, when I made a request to my health plan, I realized I was serving myself as well as the person at the other end of the line. Yesterday, it was in South Africa. This morning, the call center I reached is located in Guatemala. I noticed her accent. I asked her about learning English and, with more sincerity than I can convey in words, told her how much I admired her English. Then I stumbled through answering the necessary questions — birthday, address, telephone number — in Spanish. And because I am now studying Italian, I said tre instead of tres and due instead of dos. We giggled our way through, turning tedium into something true, a brief connection while she earned her paycheck, and I got the permission from corporate I needed to get past Go.
Christopher Armitage writes about the profound experience of leaderless organizing in Minneapolis. “None of this organizing had a single leader. None of it required permission.” Against the current government’s three thousand immigration agents —ICE—that descended on city residents, tens of thousands of citizens showed up: unions, labor leaders, faith leaders, Native people organized by the American Indian Movement; bookstores, print shops, grandmothers, grandfathers, teens, students, moms and dads using handheld cameras; and multitudes providing mutual aid. They showed up to resist, to protect, and to care. Armitage describes these actions unfolding across far-flung locations as mosaics. Like a mosaic, each piece is placed with care. Each and every piece continues to count toward seeing the whole. And if a piece is missing, no matter—the whole still works. One can see the picture.
I write with awe about the leaderless murmurations of starlings—each bird among thousands keeping its eyes only on its adjacent seven. I see us murmurating democracy. Each and every day, in each and every act, we breathe—bird and human—safety, coherence, and equanimity into being.
(Folly wonders whether this counts as call center activism.)