What's Your Word?

I was at a lunch table the other day and we were asked to pick a word that described what the non-profit community could expect in the next year. You could almost see the wheels spinning inside our heads because those types of set-ups usually has everyone trying to think of the most creative or positive word to describe their situation (whether they just got a million dollar grant or they're hovering on the edge of bankruptcy) but one of the people at the table said, "revolution." It's an interesting concept and one that I absolutely love for a variety of reasons. Mainly I think it's the power inherent behind the word. It's like the word "holocaust." Once someone puts that word out there, it's hard to put it back and everyone else definitely has something to say about it so we tend to use those kinds of words either very willy nilly (in an effort to disempower them) or very carefully.

I like the word revolution because I spent a lot of time in the nonviolence community and it's a word that frames certain forms of action. It was a very powerful moment for me to realize that a small group of people could build social change if they all believed in and acted upon the same thing. It's a two way street too, the people who don't share my views can also create change. But lots of us in non-profits spend our entire careers just working to stem the tide. We don't think of ourselves as powerful...after all, we are often more subject to the vagaries of money and funding so why rock the boat and put all our hard work at risk? Our jobs become more about protecting ourselves and our programs than about standing up...but Rome is burning people!

So "revolution" is a perfect word to describe what we want to do and how we get there...no fear! As a friend of mine said last week, "We all die," and we do and so do we want to come to the end of our life without fighting for something?

"Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up." Hannah Arendt

I know what power looks like.