Maintaining Advocacy and Wellness in Times of Digitally Broadcast Genocides

Many individuals and organizations, in the United States and other areas of the Global North, have been struggling to figure out our place and how we can best help our spaces and communities in these times of genocide and conflict. Many in and out of the gaming industry have never been active in fights for human rights and movement organizing, which is the case for many. Those of us who are intimately familiar with on-the-ground grassroots movement and organizing and daily life as a member targeted group, are also struggling with the weight of years of fatigue. With that being said, silence in these situations is damaging to those most in danger as well as those keeping the silence.

I will start here: Genocide is a horrific process for which there is never a justification. There is never a reason which will be good enough to make ethnic cleansing an acceptable choice. We are all witnessing more than 10 genocidal efforts around the world happening right now. We can see these atrocities live on our screens every day at any given hour side by side with business as usual posts and denials of what we can see and hear happening. This juxtaposition has people feeling angry, depressed, hopeless, defensive, and generally uncertain of their own experiences.

The current order of our society is not conducive to life. To be more explicit than just the links, I am referring to the rampant systems of oppression like settler colonialism, neoliberalism, capitalism, racism, and others which amount to a world of greed, war, loneliness and a dying planet. What we are feeling is a reaction to years of witnessing mass death of people and the planet with our own eyes, ears, hands, mouths, and noses and being told that we aren’t or that it is not as bad as you can see and sense it is. This is called cultural gaslighting.

Since early 2020 the interconnected nature of the world has been undeniable. This has meant seeing tragedies and atrocities near and far in ways never before possible. This witnessing has taken a toll on populations which were raised and sold on the ideals of hyper-individualism and profit over people. Now we watch as many of the most powerful governments, including our own (this is written in the United States) justify, fund, and commit multiple genocides and humanitarian crises around the world. This is in the context of our communities struggling and suffering from pandemics, layoffs, and myriad other threats against our rights and humanity while being told there are not enough resources to address these issues.

So this article is to serve as an affirmation and resource about living in times of pandemics, genocide, and cultural gaslighting.

Please Remember: You are Having a Human Reaction to Inhumane Circumstances.

Here I find it important to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “…there are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted. There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. … racial discrimination and racial segregation … religious bigotry … economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few … the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence..:”

The existence of uncomfortable emotions is not inherently bad. In the face of injustice and atrocity it is vital to community and individual wellness to remember that anger, sadness, and other emotions are part of our signaling system and can help us understand ourselves and each other. We should feel discomfort in witnessing tragic and traumatic events and conditions. Normalization of feeling nothing means we must embrace abnormality if we hope to challenge injustice.

Humans are a social species and we experience empathy, sympathy and more because connection and interconnectedness is how we survive and thrive. This also means that witnessing and hearing about traumatic events is a double edged sword. Witnessing the state violence against civilians combats bystander inaction and acceptance of the state, but also can result in vicarious and secondary trauma reactions.

A Primer on Vicarious and Secondary Trauma

According to the American Counseling Association’s definition, vicarious trauma is the emotional and spiritual residue of exposure to traumatic stories and experiences of others. The term was originally coined to describe experiences of therapists, doctors, paramedics and other helping professionals.

Secondary trauma is another term that is used to refer to the trauma that can be caused by witnessing the trauma others experience. These terms are frequently used interchangeably. In recent years the study and discussion of vicarious and secondary trauma has expanded to examine and explore the experiences of everyday people seeing videos online of mass shootings, murders by police and other atrocities.

For those who wish to seek resources for vicarious trauma the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies has a vicarious trauma toolkit. The Secondary Traumatic Stress Consortium also has a host of free resources for individuals and organizations.

It is important to note that while important, self-care alone is not enough to mitigate secondary trauma. Community care and activism are needed both in the short term and long term to address the root causes of the events which are causing the trauma.

Combating Despair and Disillusionment: The Movement Cycle

Getting involved in activism which aims to address, combat, reform, or abolish systems of harm and oppression can decrease feelings of despair and hopelessness. Various studies show the positive effects of movement, collective action, and activism, but it is also important for people to know about the possibility of disillusionment as they start to find their place in movement and collective action.

The Movement Cycle Chart below was created using Zunin and Meyer’s Phases of Disaster Diagram.

Movement Cycle Graphic is from Movement Net Labs

As we have seen, people tend to get involved with activist movements after something personally or publicly has happened; in the movement cycle that event is called a trigger event. When things start to get difficult or we do not see the desired effects of our efforts we can get disillusioned. Disillusionment is where many people are now.

Some tips to manage wellness and prevent/work through disillusionment in these times:

• There is No One Right Way: Online and Off people can be quick to create a hierarchy of activism. The truth is that while there are some wrong ways to do things, there are MANY good ways to be involved in movements. In fact, as frameworks like the Social Change Map emphasize, we all have a role to play and there are different roles that are needed. Material donations, critical consciousness raising, volunteering, marching, protesting, letter and calling campaigns, elevating the voices of targeted oppressed groups, boycotts, banner drops, direct service provision, and bail-support are only some of the various ways to be meaningfully involved. (These lists are starting places and not meant to be an exhaustive list)
• Quick Links to Trusted Organizations for Information and getting Involved or Donating
• Care for Gaza
• Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund
• Friends of the Congo
• Eyes on Sudan Trust Org List
• Hope for Haiti
• Pure Hands Yemen Relief
• Vostok SOS (Ukraine)
• Council on Foreign Relations (Information only)
• Take Breaks: Educating yourself is important, and learning happens best when we are rested. Breaks can be small five minute moments to breathe or days for those with the ability. We all have different levels of capacity and learning to honor and work with your capacity as it expands and contracts is vital. Compassion is also important to learning and doing better. Taking time to celebrate successes can also go here as it helps fend off despair. The important thing is to take a break so that you can continue helping yourself and others.
• Build Community: When we have mutually supportive people around us, it means we are less likely to fall into the trap of thinking we have to do everything ourselves. Working together in movement means that there can be plans for breaks, support, and multiple forms of actions. It is important to connect with people and build communities both online and offline which are supportive, affirming, but also challenge us.
• Curate Your Content: It can be very easy to get caught up in the endless scrolling news, bad takes, and hot takes. While staying updated and educating yourself and others is important, you can’t do that if you are fatigued. Having a separate account for heavy topics, blocking people engaging in harassment and bad faith, having feeds dedicated to content that makes you happy, and using phone and parental settings to manage your screen time and content consumption can go a long way towards helping make things feel more manageable.
• Issues are Interconnected: Disillusionment can also stem from beginning to understand the deep and intricate roots of ongoing issues and feeling that you can’t attune to them all, or that your efforts are not enough. However, when we acknowledge our interconnectedness and the interconnectedness of the issues, it allows us to work on our part within our capacity and know that we are contributing to the collective good.

Final Thoughts

The world is a difficult mess for a lot of people right now. Whether it is Black Women being targeted in games, Global Anti-Trans and LGBTQIA2S+ Policies, Genocides or any other local or global, big or small harm to our humanity, we are connected and need to support each other as such. More than ever it is important to engage in both self-care and community care. We can move towards compassion and care for ourselves and others who are struggling to learn, help, and manage day to day life in the age of digitally broadcasted genocides. That compassion does not mean we have to keep people in our lives who are currently committed to harm. However, it does mean that in the movement for collective life and liberation we leave the door open for people to find their way back. In Black Liberation Movements we have sayings: “We are What We Need” “We Keep Us Safe” and “The People United, Will Never Be Defeated”.

Together we can End Genocide while taking care of ourselves and our communities.

A Note: The best time for this article was weeks ago, however, this article was originally written to be published by Take This. I have since resigned from my position (effective April 30th, 2024) with that organization due in part to consistent and unaddressed issues with racism (especially anti-Blackness), communication, accountability, safety, and lack of care for the mental health and wellbeing of communities of the Global Majority. I believe that upholding our values and maintaining meaningful solidarity sometimes costs us in the short term, and that is ok. This article and my insistence that the ongoing genocides in Congo, Palestine, Ethiopia, Myanmar, India, Sudan, Ukraine and many other places ARE mental health issues which impact and implicate the games and tech industries and must be remarked on by people who understand that and care is part of what delayed this article’s publication and pushed me out of my job. This version has been edited to remove mentions of Take This and is published independently for these reasons.