Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

By intertwining her observations on life’s chaotic nature with personal stories, brown highlights the ability of nonlinear approaches and iteration to create better relationships and organizational strategies. In processing her feelings of grief, brown emphasizes the importance of recognizing and validating the complex, nonlinear nature of human feelings. She encourages self-kindness and understanding rather than succumbing to self-criticism. Individual and collective acceptance of the varied, often chaotic, essence of life induces the collective embrace of people’s whole existence, good and bad. For that to happen, the nonlinear quality of human emotion should be welcomed and celebrated in movements. Community members need to hold space for themselves and also have outlets within organizing spaces to fully engage with their emotions.

This perspective challenges the traditional detachment often associated with effective leadership and organizational structures, which often encourage dismissing one’s emotions since they are viewed as a hindrance to progress. However, brown argues that her approach can alleviate the burden of masking emotional states, or pretending that one’s emotions don’t exist. It can also foster deeper trust among organizers and strengthen the bonds among members who stand in solidarity with and support one another.

Within the context of nonlinear organizing, brown addresses the weariness and criticism that can arise. Multifaceted movements allow for a broader range of concerns to be heard and a wider array of voices to take part, but not without the need for a constant loop of learning and evolving. Just as nature has its cycles, so does community organizing, and it often opposes the conventional notion of linear progress. For community organizing to shift toward more adaptive, collaborative, decentralized, and nonlinear approaches, their systems and practices must seize opportunities for experimentation. brown warns of the dangers of unproductive critique, competition, and control, as they can undermine the potential of nonlinear methodologies and discourage members. As such, she sees collaboration as a natural next step for the field to bring forth emergent strategies.

In Chapter 7, brown looks once more to nature for grounding, stating that the regenerative abilities shared between humankind and other natural organisms symbolize resilience. Even amidst conflict, nature finds a way of reprocessing harm and loss and healing itself to reestablish balance. Similarly, there is a need for a social shift toward a culture where conflict and difference can inspire change instead of destruction. Nothing in nature is discarded; rather, it is transformed and reintegrated back into the system. brown draws from this observation to highlight the transformative potential that lies within our own capacity for change and growth. Central to this is the concept of transformative justice, which challenges traditional punitive models and seeks to repair harm through healing and restoration. Transformative justice reflects this ecological wisdom by promoting a variable process centered on peace, accountability, and equity. With it, communities and social movements can address conflict, nurture healing, and create lasting change without perpetuating cycles of harm and violence. It offers an alternative to the discarding mentality of punishment, encouraging individuals to engage in processes of transformation and reintegration that mirror the resilient regenerative cycles found in the natural world.

brown is careful to anticipate counterarguments when discussing transformative justice. While it offers a framework for healing and repairing harm and conflict within relationships, distinguishing between healthy relationships with problems and abusive ones is an imperative first step. By cautioning against misusing transformative justice to excuse abusive behavior, brown highlights the need to understand the practice’s boundaries and limitations while maintaining a clear understanding of its principles. She advocates for responsible and informed practices, where careful discernment and ethical engagement are needed. Transformative justice relies on a community framework where people are working together to create positive change. Without that, the model can be co-opted to perpetuate or justify abusive behavior. This is compatible with the book’s focus on community change rather than just individual change.

The concept of building a future that leaves no one behind and encompasses the rich diversity of human existence is Chapter 8’s main focus. Just as ecosystems thrive on the collaboration of varied species and elements, the inclusion of diverse voices, experiences, and identities enhances social movements’ abilities to effect meaningful change. However, a world as diverse as nature and that works for all can only be actualized if it is imagined first. brown’s keynote speech at the Afrofuturism Conference calls attention to the significance of marginalized communities’ engagement with futuristic thinking, particularly within the African diaspora, as a means of shaping a more equitable future. Through her exploration of concepts from Afrofuturism, brown unveils the transformative power of speculative storytelling and visionary thought in catalyzing social change. She draws upon the works of Octavia Butler and her own collaboration with co-author Walidah Imarisha in Octavia’s Brood (2015), a short story collection, to underscore the notion that “all organizing is science fiction” (158). At its core, this statement challenges the conventional understanding of organizing as a purely pragmatic and utilitarian endeavor. Instead, it invites recognition of the inherent imaginative and speculative aspects of all social action, which, like science fiction, envisions alternative realities and possibilities that extend beyond the present’s limitations. It opposes the current imagined world, where the needs and fear of a few dictate what is possible. In essence, it calls for a departure from the confines of what is deemed realistic or feasible at present and invites engagement in storytelling, imagination, and visionary thought to reshape the world we inhabit.