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Rowan Tilly asks, "Why is it that some individuals experience extreme trauma following arrests, while others come through it empowered?"
Feeling the fear but doing it anyway
Rowan Tilly
Some actions can be traumatic and disempowering. In my experience, public genetix (GM crop-pulling) rallies are most likely to produce these situations. But much ofthis can be avoided through careful preparation and good support.
Typically, at open/public genetix rallies, people surge on to the GM crop,apparently "spontaneously", but in reality many have inwardly planned it.
Often a few inexperienced and unprepared people get swept up by the tidalwave and end up getting arrested and charged and have to endure variousdegrees of trauma afterwards. This can include anger, stress, anxiety, fear, paraly-sis, isolation, confusion, humiliation, defeat, indecision, feeling like a victim,powerlessness.
It often seems to be the most vulnera-ble people (eg with a disability, with a child, inexperienced) that get arrestedand experience trauma. And sometimes this person's difficulties will get trans-ferred to the rest of the group of defendants and this may result in serious con-flict emerging within the group, dragging everyone down.
Making the case
So, given all that: how can four women take the risk of destroying #13 millionworth of warplane, go through six months of remand in prison and come outstrong?
How come they survived that and wereempowered by the experience (even before they were acquitted). How come two ofthem went on to do further high-risk actions and go to prison again and again.
They claim there is nothing unusual or heroic in their characters, but it makes thecase for careful preparation before an action and the need for support afterwards.
How trauma can be avoided
Most experienced activists confirm repeatedly that the most important stepto avoiding trauma is to be well prepared, especially emotionally and psychological-ly - and spiritually if so inclined.
This simply means to reflect on what isahead, imagine how it will feel, think about what you can do about it. Emotions
like fear are usually about the unknownand will dissolve if you think about the things that could happen and plan whatto do.
There are lots of practical solutions tothe negative stuff, most are common sense and easy to find before the action,but not so when you are locked in a cell. For example, if you think you might getbored or frustrated in the cell take a book to read, if you are afraid of being isolatedstay together with a buddy.
The best kind of preparation for openpublic rallies is an open public preparation session, including a legal briefing,encouraging everyone to attend. This will reduce the likelihood of "action casual-ties" occurring.
Of course preparation means that some people will decide not to go ahead, or to do something less risky like supportsomeone else. Better that they avoid the trauma and hopefully decide to go aheadwhen they feel more prepared.
Knowing our limits
However "brave" we are, there will always be a limit to what we can cope with,something worse they can do to us. The trick is to get familiar with our per-sonal limits and go up to those limits but avoid going over them. Some of us live ina secure setting that means we can stick our necks out further. Nobody is invinci-ble and we don't need to be. Perhaps the greater effort needed to prepare for actionswill mean that initially the actions are less frequent with fewer people — but perhapsthey will be so improved that eventually the net result is better.
If the preparation as above doesn't happen then the very least we can do is pro-vide good post-action support. Be on the look out for anyone experiencing trauma(they may try to hide their feelings) and be sensitive about offering support toeveryone (including the ones who might be irritated by the person who is trauma-tised).
Providing information
Often organisers don't want to provide public preparation because this mightalert the police or the company. A solution to this would be for all organisers tomake it standard practice to provide a verbal and written legal briefing prior to
rallies or actions at bases or sites, whatev-er the intentions of the organisers — we don't necessarily know the intentions ofothers.
The experience of going through the court/punishment process when well prepared and supported means that though you are likely to experience some of the emotions already mentioned — anger, stress, anxiety, fear — it will likely be less intensely. And you are also likely to expe-rience clarity, feeling alive, inspired, a sense of achievement, centred, in control,vulnerable yet powerful — and sometimes very intensely.
From participant to organiser?
Some people say prepared actions seem to have more depth and meaning which goesbeyond their own experience — touching
others more deeply too.
These positive experiences make it possible to walk through the negative ones:"feeling the fear but doing it anyway". They also inspire other people to takeaction. So it's understandable that people who have had a few of these experiencescarry on, become more effective and many also become organisers.
Rowan Tilly is a British peace activist and GM crop puller. Read this article in full at http:// healingtrauma.pscap.org/active-trauma.html
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