Why I Got Involved in Community and Activism

Amélie and I at one of the many marches for Palestine. Brooklyn, Spring 2024

Or how to feel whole in a fragmented world

My friend Amélie and I had been thinking for some time about collaborating on an activist, social change initiative. With her expertise and mine, we felt we could create something expansive, rooted in sharing and collective experience.

Rejecting numbness

When the massacre in Palestine began in the fall of 2023, we naturally found refuge in each other – and in others – through the friendship and feeling of engagement that connected us. But also because we realized how many people around us were choosing not to see what was happening, opting instead for ignorance, cynicism, or apathy, and blocking any emotion that such a disaster would naturally generate. Instead of facing, embracing their emotions, they hid behind false semantic battles, diving into a kind of rationality emptied of reason. They opted for intellectual postures that, far from broadening our clarity, doomed our human relationships to a kind of morbid sterility.

Our emotions, on the other hand, overflowed, pouring out in an uninterrupted, uncomfortable stream. Rather than trying to contain them, we let them flood everything, grow, and become a fertile current through which we could try to build connection, care, and collective healing, with the few tools we had at hand. Instead of succumbing to apathy or decay, a cascade of ideas swept over us, and we decided to create something in our own way. Something we had glimpsed long ago. Something we had dreamed about, but whose first step felt daunting. How? When? With what legitimacy?

Then, when the stars aligned — and one of them, Storm, shining brightly, offered us the space to pour all that energy into — there was no turning back. We chose to embrace that space, carried by the emerging energy of the community that Storm was beginning to cultivate in Brooklyn, to gather, to engage, and to move toward social transformation – with militant joy, and with the strength of our collective power.

Stepping outside

That’s when some of my friends asked me: how do you balance this with your job? How can you reconcile your role as an international civil servant at the United Nations with leading an activist workshop?

Of course, I asked myself those questions. I still do. But we each have to do our own math, between intellectual and spiritual integrity, loyalty to and trust in what is just, and the responsibilities we hold not only as civil servants, but as citizens and as human beings.

For some, drawing those lines might be difficult. But I know, deep down, that this combination of roles only amplifies our humanity and vitality. It fills us with complementary, necessary, and meaningful facets, allowing me to grow both as a citizen and as an activist for a more just society.

This complementarity also allows me to continually sharpen my critical eye toward failing institutions that are clearly not living up to the responsibilities they’ve been entrusted with. My duplicity – or rather my multiplicity – of roles and hats in these various projects and initiatives is not a contradiction. On the contrary, it’s a layered and complex grounding that enables me to engage with the institutions I’m part of with clarity and lucidity.

The same goes for my work as a lecturer. For the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of teaching graduate students at the CELSA-Sorbonne as they prepare to enter professional life. I am acutely aware of the responsibility this carries: helping guide these students to reflect, question the world, embrace the legitimacy of their complexity, and develop a sense of global engagement, creativity, and resistance to collective apathy.

This complementarity is, in itself, a form of resistance. A resistance to the logic of modern society that seeks to format us, fragment us, box us in, and bind us to such rigid frameworks that we become smaller, constrained, unable to exist beyond them. Without those frameworks, we forget who we are; we don’t know how to define ourselves otherwise. It’s a society that teaches us we have much to lose by trying to break free. We risk losing our jobs, our financial security, our families, even our very sense of purpose.

It’s up to us alone to tell our stories. To build an identity not solely anchored in the institutions we belong to for just a few years of our lives. We must forge connections that help us unlearn beliefs that are too deeply rooted, perspectives that are too certain, convictions that are too unshakable.

So yes, I committed to this activism alongside my friend Amélie – and with a whole network of friends and connections. It took a bit of rebellion, a bit of courage to step outside the frame. And without trying to glorify myself (especially because I know many don’t have the privileges I do, e.g. the ability to risk losing a job without it being completely devastating; with a safety net and existing support system), I simply hope this is just the beginning. I believe we need to be a little more rebellious, a little more brave. But I also deeply believe that doing so will reward us with a richer life, a life of excellence, in the words of Audre Lorde, and a multifaceted, abundant life filled with beauty and meaning:

“To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.”

Against fragmentation and separation, choose connection

Militant with your friends. Engage in all sorts of activist actions. Organize. Expand your social fabric. Open yourself to experiences that enrich your life as much as they may enrich – or soothe – someone else’s. Show up where you’re not expected. Surprise people. Reach out. Be a support. And above all, never, ever shrink yourself into the boxes imposed by our modern society, which looks down on anyone who dares to step outside the frame.

Find all upcoming events at Storm to step outside the frame: https://stormbookstore.com