Equity and the Imagination
On the left, Bayard Rustin, Deputy Director of March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, speaks to Cleveland Robinson, Chairman of the Administrative Committee on the right.
Early in the movie Rustin, a scene depicts one of the first brainstorming meetings for the event that would ultimately become the 1963 March on Washington. Bayard Rustin–the primary visionary, strategist, and operational leader of the March–is holding court in a living room filled with young, “angelic troublemakers,” trying to inspire them to join him in his vision. He opens up the conversation for people to share their ideas. One woman suggests overwhelming Congress with a massive lobbying effort of church, civil rights, and labor delegates. “Write it on the wall!” Bayard exclaims, gesturing towards the rough sketch of the National Mall hanging behind him. But his assistant interrupts to squash the idea, arguing that it would be impossible to train thousands of people to be effective lobbyists.
Rustin cuts him off: “No, no, no, do not kill an impulse before it’s born!”
The brainstorming momentum continues to build for the rest of the scene. The butcher paper on the wall is filled with notes and sketches and the room is filled with joy and laughter. Not all of their ideas will be incorporated into the final event–not even Rustin’s ideas. Compromises and sacrifices will necessarily come. But not at that first, most exhilarating moment of imagining.
In my experience, one of the biggest obstacles to advancing equity is the resistance that manifests as skepticism, perfectionism, and the knee-jerk “impossibility thinking” that can disrupt a brainstorming session or casual daydream spoken aloud before the ideas can fully blossom. This frustration inspired me to make explicit the need for us to “Try to create the world we want to see, even if we might fall short,” as a necessary mindset for approaching equity work as elaborated in the SHIFTING framework.
When introducing this mindset during workshops, I often invoke Walidah Imarisha’s words from the introduction to the sci-fi anthology, Octavia’s Brood:
And for those of us from communities with historic collective trauma, we must understand that each of us is already science fiction walking around on two legs. Our ancestors dreamed us up and then bent reality to create us…..we think of our ancestors in chains dreaming about a day when their children’s children’s children would be free. They had no reason to believe that it was likely, but together they dreamed of freedom, and they brought us into being.
If enslaved people could imagine an alternate, more liberated future, why can’t we? What chains are we allowing to constrict our imaginations and why?
Until recently, I thought this was sufficient inspiration for people to start noticing and disrupting their instinct to dismiss or critique an idea before it could blossom. However, in this era of political repression, attacks against DEI, and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, I now believe that I haven’t been taking the point far enough.
Every day the news headlines prove that as long as we consent to live within the imaginal boundaries of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, we have no hope of creating more humane, just, or sustainable systems and societies for ourselves and future generations. The authors of Project 2025 have not only imagined their ideal future, they are bending reality to make it so. We who believe in a liberated future for all people cannot win by playing according to the rules they have written.
The imagination is not simply a necessary tool in our equity toolbox, it is a battleground upon which we must fight if we truly want to advance justice. As Ruha Benjamin writes, in Imagination: A Manifesto: “Imagination is a field of struggle, not an ephemeral afterthought that we have the luxury to dismiss or romanticize.”
The contest we are in is not just about which people win at the ballot box or what programs get a line in the federal budget. We are competing over which vision of the future we want to create. We are in a contest for the collective imagination.
And more days than not, it feels like we are losing.
I understand why so many organizers and activists are currently preoccupied with defensive political strategies when rights and communities are under attack.
I know that some organizations must focus on meeting people's immediate needs so they can live to see another day.
I understand that oppressive environments can limit our capacity to see possibilities beyond our current reality.
I know that cultures of urgency limit the spacious time needed to do the deep dreaming work that can lead to creative, proactive, long-lasting solutions.
But if we truly want to win, I believe we all have to spend more time intentionally dreaming up new, more just realities together.
And if you don’t have the capacity or time to do that, at least try not to squash the ideas of those who are trying.
