Alexandra 1/28/21 Alexandra 1/28/21

Justin Dawes gets into necessary trouble

Justin Dawes and his longboard. | Photo: Kristine Jones

Justin Dawes, an activist and second-year student at New England Law | Boston (NELB), has been arrested once in the eight months since he co-founded D.C. Protests last summer. On August 14, 2020, he was taken into custody in the Adams Morgan neighborhood—but his arrest (along with most of the 40 others that night) was “no papered” the next day, meaning that the charges were dropped.

On January 8, a Boston news station erroneously reported that Dawes had also been arrested in the Capitol riots and charged with “assault on a police officer, crossing a police line, and resisting arrest.” He says he was nowhere near the Capitol on January 6; WHDH 7News issued a correction, but a few days after the siege, Dawes received a call from his school’s registrar. During a call that lasted just 53 seconds, Dawes was dismissed from his law program.

Although failing to disclose his August arrest was not the only reason cited for his dismissal, Dawes says that he was still waiting on two final grades when he was told he didn’t meet his program’s GPA requirement (which he says had been in flux due to the pandemic). Thanks to the support of a few of his teachers, Dawes is appealing the school’s decision, but as a result, he is unable to enroll in classes this spring and is looking at finishing his law degree elsewhere.

Getting arrested in the U.S. has never been a one-size-fits-all experience. It should be obvious by now to anyone paying attention that those who are white, or simply just white enough, often have drastically different encounters with law enforcement than those who are neither. The list of Black people who, by some combination of luck and skill, managed to not only survive, but to thrive after one or more arrests is painfully short.

A notable exception may be Congressman John Lewis, who was arrested at least 45 times during a long life devoted to activism. He served in the House of Representatives for decades and in the end, was admired for his rap sheet. But honors seldom make up for the horrors that precede them. Over a lifetime committed to what he called “good trouble,” Lewis was no stranger to the sting of tear gas. He nearly died when he was just 25; his skull was fractured by state troopers during what was supposed to be a peaceful march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He had the photos—and lifelong scars—to prove it.

In an Instagram post, Dawes writes: “It’s become the unfortunate reality that while fighting for Black futures, my own has been jeopardized by a lack of understanding and support from my law school.”

D.C. PROTESTS

A cloud of tear gas was still lingering just north of the White House on June 1, 2020, when Dawes and a few others co-founded D.C. Protests. He says he and his friends had been sitting in Lafayette Park when U.S. Park Police and National Guard troops began violently clearing the plaza in front of St. John’s Church ahead of Trump’s now-infamous Bible photo-op.

Dawes, who lived in Virginia at the time, had been surveying the protests while skating with friends around the Capitol. When chaos broke out around them in Lafayette Park, Dawes says it was his first time joining, and somewhat accidentally, leading a protest: “I didn’t know what to do so we just started marching.”

When someone asked the nascent group, “Who are you?” they made an Instagram page that same night—and a grassroots organization dedicated to “confronting the injustices that disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities” was born. The group grew quickly; they continue to march and organize mutual aid efforts with regularity—often co-led by Dawes threading through the crowd on his ever-present longboard.

D.C. Protests may have started with a flashbang, but their marches quickly became a Saturday staple. Meeting in Malcolm X Park (also known as Meridian Hill) in northwest D.C., the group marches for miles; the route varies, but their message does not: “You can’t reform the police,” Dawes says. “We just have too many cops.”

Angela Davis has said, “Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.” And while calling to “defund the police” has become a political hot potato, abolition is a well-researched and nuanced movement with real potential to create a more mutually beneficial society. Dawes says his group has tried to humanize the insidious evils of systematic racism while also stressing the importance of grassroots politics.

“Your mayor or city council person can do a lot more than you might think they can,” he says. “If we invest back into the community—into schools and education, where it counts—we won’t need the police.” Abolition may be a hard concept to grasp, but in theory, it would happen naturally if we properly allocated resources to the point where people can truly rely on one another—instead of on police departments that often have no real connection to the communities they serve.

Similar protests have played out in streets all across the country since last summer (and on and off for most of our country’s history). Dawes and others criss-cross through disparate communities—shutting down bridges, tunnels, and highways in the process—engaging with anyone who will listen (and perhaps, especially those who do not). Dawes says the group intentionally plans their itineraries to take them into high traffic areas. Georgetown, an affluent neighborhood popular for brunch and other weekend activities is a favorite. “We just try to get people to pay attention,” he says. “We’ve received mixed reactions—people either join the march or try to fight us.”

TACTICAL VESTS AND ARRESTS

The trench coat and backpack worn by Lewis on Bloody Sunday may have become iconic—but they didn’t offer much in the way of protection when he found himself on the receiving end of a nightstick. After just a few weeks of protesting, during which the police response became increasingly erratic and violent, Dawes began wearing a camouflage tactical vest.

Like most people I encounter during the countless Black Lives Matter and other protests I attend during the pandemic, Dawes’s nose and mouth is almost always covered with a grey, red, and white bandana emblazoned with jagged teeth—reminiscent of the painted nose of a WWII fighter plane. For a few weeks in the summer he wore an eye patch. And the longboard? “I’ve just always loved longboarding,” Dawes says. “Plus it’s an efficient mode of transportation.”

If it seems as if Dawes is dressed for war, it’s because he is: Almost immediately after forming D.C. Protests, “There were threats to our lives,” Dawes says. And Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers—whose slogan is “We are here to help”—seemed all too ready to deploy rubber bullets and tear gas on the non-violent protesters.

Far from helping, Dawes says, “The police have always made me feel unsafe.”

After George Floyd was killed by a police officer at the end of May—and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser designated the space between Lafayette Park and St. John’s Church as Black Lives Matter Plaza— “people were just always out,” Dawes says. But as interest in the protests grew, so did pushback from the city’s dozens of police departments. As time went on, the “police ramped up and got a lot more violent,” Dawes says. “You’d get shoved in the back of a protest if you weren’t moving fast enough—every month it would intensify.”

On the night of August 13 (and early into the morning of the 14th), Dawes says that tensions were particularly high. Police and protestors found themselves in a “huge cat-and-mouse game” that resulted in 41 arrests. D.C. Protests had begun to preface their weekly marches with a warning: “We told people to write the National Lawyer Guild’s number on their arm, explained how aggressive the police could be, and tried to tell people what to do and what not to do,” Dawes says.

Five months later, Dawes struggles to remember the exact details of the events leading to his arrest—only that it was chaos. He does remember the police, who regularly followed protesters through the streets, rushing forward into the crowd for seemingly no reason. They pushed surprised protesters out of the way, kettled others, and began making arrests. Eventually, Dawes says, someone told the crowd they were free to disperse; as he was running away, he was tackled and handcuffed. When he asked why he was being detained, the officer said he had crossed a police line—the same one that Dawes had just been told no longer existed.

‘SUCK IT UP’

On the Saturday immediately following the arrests, I am one of a large group of protestors departing the hilly park for a late afternoon march. Cleared of all charges and clutching a portable speaker, Dawes nimbly navigates a sea of moving bodies like a cat weaving through a crowded shelf: with confidence, precision, and only the occasional minor misstep. We’ve barely started down a steep hill when the group grinds to a halt. Dawes’s longboard has gone rogue; it rolls beneath several cars before nearly disappearing into a storm drain.

Several comrades spring into collective action and Dawes’s beloved board is spared the sewer. It’s the first time I see him smile. Seeing a smile in the summer of 2020 is rare; having a reason to smile might be even more so—especially, I suspect, for someone like Dawes: politically engaged, and not white.

Dawes says that when he got into some not-so-good trouble as a kid, his lawyer simply told him to “suck it up.” Looking around the courtroom packed with white people in positions of power, Dawes vowed to one day be the one giving—instead of receiving—legal guidance. “White people were making decisions for me and about my life,” he says. “I just really wanted to see someone in the legal field that looked like me.”

Like many others, Dawes was horrified by the graphic video of Floyd’s grisly murder. This was one instance where he would have preferred to see less representation; it wasn’t a big leap for Dawes to imagine himself in Floyd’s position. “Seeing someone like me die in the street was really scary to see,” he says. “We needed to be out there. I don’t want the next person to be me or be someone I know.”

When his classes at NELB went virtual due to the pandemic, Dawes says he was forced to reconsider how he was using his downtime. “When I got sent home from law school, I thought “I could be doing better things with my life.’”

MUTUAL AID

Although they were initially motivated by tragedies that captured national attention in 2020—including the murders of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others—Dawes says they started D.C. Protests primarily as a way to keep the local community safe. As the summer progressed, they began to highlight local victims of police brutality or gun violence, creating memorials and incorporating candlelight vigils into their regular marches.

Emulating similar collectives such as They/Them, D.C. Protests began to support and expand upon existing mutual aid efforts around the city. In the beginning, Dawes says that the group would collect monetary donations, stop the march at a Whole Foods, and distribute whatever they could buy to communities in need. “We wanted to show people how easy mutual aid is,” he says.

Every Saturday, groups working under the umbrella of FTP Mutual Aid build and winterize tents for unhoused communities, cook, transport, and serve hot meals, and distribute donated supplies such as clothes, diapers, and other necessities. Dawes says that the mutual aid efforts have become especially important during the winter amid an ongoing pandemic; members of “communities that are overlooked and restricted by governmental red tape” have come to rely on the weekly pop-ups in Dupont Circle.

Mutual aid efforts in Dupont Circle. | Photos: Kristine Jones

In an open letter to NELB, Dawes writes that he himself “began facing housing insecurity at the onset of the fall semester. This not only altered my sense of stability, but also affected my access to stable internet connection in order to complete assignments and attend class. Despite this hardship, I remained determined and maintained a nearly perfect attendance record.”

When he reached out to the school for support, he says they “scoffed” at his problems.

“In such challenging and discouraging times, the administration’s solution should not be to turn its back on its students,” he writes. “I am of the opinion that compassion and an extension of trust and good faith would result in a prodigious class of noteworthy lawyers.”

Wherever he completes his degree, Dawes is still committed to fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming a noteworthy lawyer. Drawing upon his own experiences, Dawes says that he simply “wants to help people,” and intends to do so by practicing criminal defense law. Instead of being in conflict with each other, Dawes foresees his legal career informing his organizing work, and vice versa.

“You don’t have to know all of the ins and outs [of the system] to dismantle it, but it helps to be realistic,” he says.

Police block alt-right groups from Black Lives Matter Plaza in December 2020. | Photo: Kristine Jones

NECESSARY TROUBLE

For activists and other targets of alt-right fascist groups like the Proud Boys, the reality on the streets of D.C. had been grim long before the rest of the country was shocked into paying attention on January 6. When thousands of people descended on the District in mid-November, encouraged by Trump’s insistence that they “stop the steal,” anti-fascist groups were quickly outnumbered. The police—decked out in riot gear—mostly kept the opposing sides separate, but it was clear they had much more tolerance (and at times outright camaraderie) for one side over the other.

Before they threatened Congress, white supremacists had been targeting local activists for months; Dawes was not interested in a repeat of the night of November 14, when he says he was stabbed by a member of the Proud Boys.

Dawes says his only goal that day was “to keep everybody safe.” But after overhearing a group of Proud Boys say they intended to “go out hunting and clean up the streets,” he knew he was in for a long and potentially dangerous night. When a cop pointed to Dawes’s tactical vest and all but challenged him to go head to head with the domestic terrorists—some of whom were not-so-covertly armed with clubs, bear mace, and other weapons—Dawes once again found himself in the middle of chaos. He narrowly avoided being seriously injured when a knife was thrust into his vest by one of the alt-right agitators—several others weren’t as lucky.

A ‘Stop the Steal’ rally outside of the Capitol in November 2020. | Photo: Kristine Jones

Dawes says he was not at the Capitol on January 6; he was helping to coordinate transportation for others concerned they wouldn’t be able to get home safely that night. But he wasn’t surprised by the lack of police presence around the mostly-white mob. “They were older white men who used their privilege to storm the Capitol,” he says. “God forbid if any of us went anywhere near the Capitol steps—we’d be shot with live ammunition. Meanwhile men with weapons and zip ties used their power to do what they wanted and [most will likely] get away with it.”

Dawes cites precedent: in 2013, Miriam Carey, a Black woman, was shot to death by the Secret Service and U. S. Capitol Police after she made a U-turn at a White House checkpoint. A car chase took Carey to the Capitol and a nearby Senate office building where officers discharged 26 bullets, killing the 34-year-old while her 13-month-old daughter was in the car. Eight years later, the list of Black lives lost too soon—or ruined long before they even got a chance to begin—is painfully long.

While he sifts through the fallout from months of what Lewis might not call “good,” but certainly “necessary trouble,” there’s one thing Dawes isn’t going to do: stop fighting for Black futures, including his own. “We want to show people the circumstances of how these people died and how horrific it was,” he says. “If it happened to them and it happened to someone who looks like me, or my sister, or my brother, it can happen to anyone.”

This is a crucial moment in history; we have a real opportunity to rebuild and restructure our society to be more equal, more just, and more habitable for all. In an attempt to better understand what motivates and inspires fellow activists, I’m profiling people and how they’re trying (in ways both big and small) to make the world a better place. If you know someone I should profile, let me know (maybe it’s you!?). You can see all of the profiles here.

Alexandra 10/30/20 Alexandra 10/30/20

Nicky Sundt Jumps into fires

On July 9, 1978, Nicky Sundt joined a friend—and more than a hundred thousand self-identified feminists including Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Bella Abzug—at a march in Washington, D.C., calling for an extension of the deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

At the rally organized by the National Organization for Women, Steinem told the crowd that “the lawful and peaceful stage of our revolution may be over. It's up to the legislators. We can become radical, if they interfere with the ratification of the ERA, they will find every form of civil disobedience possible in every state of the country. We are the women our parents warned us about, and we're proud.”

In a photo from the march—the first of many to capture Sundt protesting in the streets—she stands tall, surrounded by dozens of people clad in suffragette white. Her fist is raised and she appears to be the only one in the crowd who is aware of the camera—if not the dress code. “I didn't get the memo that I was supposed to wear white,” Sundt says, laughing. “I showed up in a striped shirt that made me look like Waldo. Can you find me?”

Sundt at the 1978 ERA march in Washington, D.C. | Photo courtesy of Nicky Sundt

Nearly four decades later, Sundt still stands out—but she’s much more savvy about how and why. On January 21, 2017, she once again joined thousands of women on the streets of D.C. for the first Women’s March, the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. People from all around the world descended upon the District—and this time Sundt, who is transgender, joined them presenting publically as female for the first time.

Although she says that transitioning in her early 60s is scary, Sundt—a former smoke jumper who fought forest fires in the western U.S. for a decade—is not one to shrink under the weight of a stressful situation. “I thought I’m going to do it now,” she says. “I'm going to be there as a trans woman at that march because it just felt like this was the time to do it. I thought I should present as who I am, as opposed to what I'm supposed to be. It was hard. I wasn’t entirely ready yet, but I’m a late bloomer.”

PERENNIAL PROTESTER

The more I find out about Sundt, the more I would argue that the appropriate plant comparison might be a perennial: one that flowers over many different seasons during its lifetime. She was born in San Francisco; when Sundt was seven years old, her family moved to the Centre-Val de Loire region of France. After their parents divorced, she and her four siblings split their time between Europe and the U.S.

Her dad worked abroad as a computer systems analyst for the U.S. government. He was a big supporter of Pete Seeger, who was blacklisted—along with his group, The Weavers—during the McCarthy era. “As soon as I was old enough to reach the record player, I was listening to The Weavers,” Sundt says.

In the ‘60s, Seeger struck out on his own to become a fixture in the folk music scene, writing and recording songs in support of civil rights, environmental issues, and disarmament. “I think I probably got some of the temperament for protest from my dad—to my knowledge, he himself never protested but that’s where his heart was.”

Sundt says the roots of her environmental activism in particular can be traced to the time she spent as a teenager in suburban Georgia. “There was garbage everywhere—people would just throw their bottles out the window,” she says.”It was such a contrast for me to see how careless people could be.” In 1972, two years after the first-ever Earth Day, Sundt organized a large protest at her high school in Germany.

When she enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, Sundt was able to combine her interests in the environment and international policy. She wrote her senior thesis on ozone depletion, and completed her graduate degree in a new energy and resources program started by then-27-year-old professor John Holdren.

Holdren eventually served as the senior advisor to President Obama on science and technology issues, and Sundt’s career trajectory has been no less impressive. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, she worked as an analyst for the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, co-authoring several of the first official reports on climate change including Changing by Degrees: Steps To Reduce Greenhouse Gases.

Sundt says people were generally receptive to the science sounding the alarm on climate change—at least in the beginning. “There were people who took me seriously,” Sundt says. “On all of these big problems there’s always someone sounding the alarm—it’s the people in powerful positions who don’t listen.”

FIRE DRILL FRIDAYS

Hoping to attract the attention of at least some of those powerful people, Jane Fonda temporarily moved to D.C. at the end of 2019 and teamed up with Greenpeace to form Fire Drill Fridays. The weekly protests took place on Capitol Hill; frontline activists spoke about environmental justice, called for an end to all new fossil fuels, and pressed for the advancement of the Green New Deal.

Sundt, who lives near Lincoln Park, joined several of the Fire Drill Friday rallies and was arrested for civil disobedience three times. She spent time in police detention with Fonda, Ted Danson, Joaquin Phoenix, Martin Sheen, Catherine Keener, Rosanna Arquette, and hundreds of others, including myself. On December 20, Sundt found herself protesting alongside Steinem once again—albeit under different circumstances than the 1978 ERA march.

“I was next to Gloria Steinem as they read her Miranda rights,” Sundt says. “I asked her if she had been arrested before and she said ‘Oh yes, but it’s been a long time.’ I asked her how she ended up here, and she said ‘Oh well, Jane [Fonda] was at my house and she made me come.’”

Fonda, a notoriously persuasive and prolific activist with a history of championing LGBTQ issues, made a positive impression on Sundt—a feeling that appears to be mutual. At a post-protest dinner with fellow climate experts, Sundt says that Fonda immediately enveloped her in a big hug and they later shared a piece of carrot cake for dessert.

Not only was Sundt surrounded (and accepted) by the revolutionary women Steinem had been warned about—but now Sundt was officially one of them too. “The women were all amazing,” she says. “It was scary, I had never been arrested before—and now I have a police record. But I’m proud of it.”

WHERE THERE’S SMOKE

Sundt’s police record may be relatively short, but her resume is not. In the late ‘70s, Sundt started firefighting for the U.S. Forest Service; she is certified as a parachute rigger, squad boss, and tree faller. “It looked like a blast,” Sundt says of smoke jumping. “But it was absolutely terrifying. The first time I jumped, I forgot to do the roll and landed on my feet. My boss said ‘You should have broken both legs.’”

After a decade—and a few more injuries—Sundt decided it was time to hang up her parachute. She stayed in the District, wrote and edited several newsletters and magazines devoted to climate change, and worked as a communications director for the U.S. Global Change Research Program Coordination Office.

The first national climate assessment came out just as the Clinton/Gore administration was departing, which Sundt calls “really bad timing.” She says there were forces within, and outside of, the Bush/Cheney administration that wanted the climate assessment buried—but that she “found all sorts of creative ways to make it really hard for them to do that.” These so-called “gatekeepers” were censoring reports, altering scientific documents, and watering down the language to make climate change seem like a minor threat.

“Suddenly the powerful people recognized that this was no longer an academic issue or a science issue—that this couldn’t be confined to perpetual research any more and it was starting to pose a threat to their bottom line,” Sundt says.

Sundt, whose ex-wife works with infectious diseases, might joke that they raised their daughter in a “disaster household,” but her bottom line is pragmatic. “My approach is rooted in my own personal experience which is, if you’re focused on preventing stuff from happening, then you’re going to feel like you’re losing,” Sundt says. “Things are not getting better—climate change is permanent, the planet is going to continue warming, we’re going to see continued disruption, and the magnitude of these disruptions is going to grow.”

Sundt understands—both in her own life and in regards to the climate crisis—that you can’t turn back time. “The question is not ‘Can we get back to where we were?’ but ‘What are the alternative futures we can have?’” she says. “And the alternative futures are very different depending on what we do now.”

But one thing is certain: “You cannot have an unfettered energy industry and an effective climate policy,” Sundt says. “It requires massive government intervention in the energy market and there’s no way around it. The people who have the power to change things aren’t suffering the consequences of their actions and they don’t have to listen. They’re not even hearing you because you’re not in their orbit—but also they are choosing not to hear you, particularly given the implications.”

It’s been almost a decade since Sundt wrote an article published in the Huffington Post calling on politicians to “Wake up, smell the smoke, and act on climate change.” With each passing year—increasingly full of super storms, devastating wildfires, and rising temperatures—the implications of government inaction become more and more clear.

“Alas, many of our elected representatives in Washington are napping on the fireline,” Sundt wrote in 2012. “They need to wake up and smell the smoke. They need to take climate change seriously. They need to help Americans cope with the impacts we’re feeling now, and prepare for the impacts that will grow more disruptive in coming decades. And they need to reduce the risk of catastrophic consequences from climate change in the longer-term through policies that help us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”

NAPPING ON THE FIRELINE

In 2016, Sundt was napping on her own fireline: while working as the Director of Climate Science and Policy Integration for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), she woke up and smelled smoke. Thanks in part to therapy, the internet, and the popularity of trans celebrites like Laverne Cox, Sundt finally realized that she was transgender.

When she was a kid, Sundt says she begged her mom to let her wear dresses. When her mom eventually acquiesced, Sundt recalls being ridiculed by her peers: “I realized this was not an experience I wanted to go through again.” In the early ‘90s, Sundt got married and started a family; she stopped fighting physical fires and started fighting mental ones.

“So many of us are forced to spend some portion of our life trying to be something that we’re not,” she says. “It’s so hard. We just did what we thought we were supposed to do and it creates all this stress. You think, ‘What’s wrong with me? Is this normal? Why am I feeling this way?’ You just kind of keep it to yourself.”

Sundt says she didn’t even know the word “transgender” existed until fairly recently. But once she did, “it was such a relief—realizing what you are—understanding yourself and then getting other people to accept you for what you are and being able to live that life,” she says. “I just thought ‘I can’t live my life as something else.’ I mean what a pity. What a wasted life if you can never actually be who you are. I thought, ‘I can’t live this way anymore. I can’t deprive myself of my identity.’”

Before she had even decided what her own alternative future would look like, Sundt helped change the WWF’s discriminatory insurance policy to cover transition-related expenses. “I just knew that I wasn’t going to hide it and that I was going to be an advocate for trans people, including myself,” she says. “It’s hard if you don’t fit—you’re left to make your own road map, which makes us stronger and more resilient. But, of course, I would have preferred not to have had to go through some of it.”

Because she started her transition later in life, Sundt realizes that she “just can’t pass for a lot of people, but that’s OK,” she says. “I’m trans, and that’s what I am. I’m not trying to be anything else. I’m just a trans person. I want to present the way I feel, but I don't want to change for other people.”

THE ‘WORST POSSIBLE THING’

Sundt left the WWF in the midst of her transition, hoping that her first job presenting as female would be within the Hillary Clinton administration. Then of course on November 9, 2016, “the worst possible thing happened.” During the campaign season, trans people had become a hot button issue for Republicans. “They were using us to stir up their base,” Sundt says. “We became like flag burning or prayer in the schools or abortion—it was now ‘trans people are in your bathrooms!’”

Sundt tried to channel her energy positively while working with trans groups and candidates—and into the streets. She estimates that since Trump took office she’s been to more protests in the last four years than in her previous 60. “I think that for all the negative stuff that Trump has done, he has done a lot to galvanize groups to act,” Sundt says.

Although Sundt says she was taught by her parents to care about people, she admits that “it’s so much easier to tear things apart than to build things.” As she watched the Trump administration ignoring or actively dismantling so much of the climate policy she had helped create over the years, Sundt felt largely powerless. Living in D.C. without proper representation in Congress limited her options further. “It just seemed like street protests were one of the few things we could do,” she says.

She says that doing so as a woman has been eye-opening in a lot of ways she didn’t expect. “You start seeing patterns of behavior that were invisible to you before,” Sundt says. “I’ve become more sensitive to the different perspectives that people have depending on their race, their religion, their ethnicity—all of those things can make people see the world very differently.”

But Sundt knows instinctively that no matter how stark our differences, meaningful change can only be achieved by focusing on what connects—not divides—us. “We have to sew these different movements together into a coalition that deals with a whole range of concerns,” she says. “If we’re all pushing and pulling in different directions, we’re too easy to defeat. We need to unite, we need to focus and accept that maybe our issue is not going to the top one this time.”

In her own life, Sundt tries to practice what she preaches. She says she tries to be a “good ambassador” for the trans community and prefers not to scold people who may misgender her. She encourages people to ask her questions, and tries to be cognizant of the times when she should speak out, or step back and let others have the spotlight.

“I believe strongly in the power of example and trying to find a positive way forward, not letting fear dominate what you do, and in being generous,” she says. “When I go to a protest I try not to be angry, I try to make people laugh. You can have a good time and also change the world while you’re doing it—we can all be happy warriors.”

HAPPY WARRIORS

The idea of a “happy warrior” may seem contradictory, but Sundt sees no reason why social justice can’t be served with a smile. Her statement earrings and colorful leggings make her easy to spot on daily bike rides or while she’s walking her dog, Blue, around Capitol Hill. During the past few months she passed out coupons to friends, each redeemable for a free hug once the pandemic is over. When she went to the police station to post bail after her third arrest with Fire Drill Fridays, Sundt brought along a ‘Get out of jail, free” card from Monopoly. She asked the officers “Is this good here?” (they said no). At the most recent Women’s March, Sundt wore a feathered face mask and carried a sign adorned with tombstones that read “Scare ‘em on Halloween. Bury ‘em on election day.”

Whether or not she has always embraced it, Sundt knows that she wasn’t made to blend in. Drawing on her strengths as a communicator, Sundt crafts simple and evocative protest signs; she knows how to position herself in front of a camera (or climb a light pole) and knows how to provide journalists with the perfect protest visual. When Sundt got arrested with Danson and Fonda, her dad called her from France; he had seen her photo in a local paper.

“To me, there’s no point in making a sign if the only people who see it are the people at the protest,” she says. “You want to entertain people and make them laugh but ultimately what you really want is for your message to be broadcast everywhere.”

She may smile—or even sparkle—while she says it, but Sundt has always been serious about the climate crisis: “We no longer have the luxury of time,” she warns. “We need to disempower these people who are standing in the way so the rest of us can get things done. That means voting, knowing what your representatives are doing, putting pressure on them to do what they need to do, and keeping white nationalists, climate deniers, out of our politics so we can get shit done because we’re out of time. We are fucking out of time.”

As such, she sees this election as a “framing event,” something so monumental that it shakes people to their core. “These opportunities don’t come that often and you have to be ready for them,” she says. “But if you’re ready for them—and you take advantage of them—you can get lasting change.” After taking four years off from focusing on her career, Sundt is ready to go back to work—hopefully in the Biden/Harris administration, she says.

But no matter what happens on November 3 and beyond, Sundt says she’s not yet ready to retire; there are simply too many ideological fires that need to be fought. And she knows better than anyone that whether you’re dealing with climate change—or questioning your identity—sooner or later the time comes when you have to stop napping, wake up, and jump into the fire.

“It’s never too late to start,” Sundt says. “You can make a difference. Every movement has started with a small group of people and sometimes they take off and sometimes they don’t. But you don’t want to look back on this period and say—if you’re talking to your grandkids or just to yourself—‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do what I could have done.’ So do what you can, when you can, and how you can. There’s always something that people can do.”

This is a crucial moment in history; we have a real opportunity to rebuild and restructure our society to be more equal, more just, and more habitable for all. In an attempt to better understand what motivates and inspires fellow activists, I’m profiling people and how they’re trying (in ways both big and small) to make the world a better place. If you know someone I should profile, let me know (maybe it’s you!?). You can see all of the profiles here.

Alexandra 8/1/20 Alexandra 8/1/20

8.1.20: Black Lives Matter

Alexandra 7/31/20 Alexandra 7/31/20

Antonio Mingo is moved by spirit

Antonio Mingo outside of the Lincoln Memorial. | Photo: Kristine Jones

In 2018, Makiyah Wilson went to buy ice cream when multiple shots were fired in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood where she lived. Wilson was struck and killed; she was just ten years old. Shortly after her tragic death, Wilson’s uncle marched more than 100 miles on foot from D.C. to Philadelphia, and in 2019 he did it again. The second time, he was joined by others who felt moved to make the pilgrimage in honor of Wilson’s too-short life, including D.C. native and co-founder of His Mission Organization, Antonio Mingo.

Mingo has two children of his own—including a daughter the same age as Wilson—but he has always felt a deep need to call out injustice no matter who it touches. When he tells me that he’s a passionate person, I believe him—not only because he repeatedly insists “I cannot tell a lie,” but because over the past two months, I have witnessed his passion, and its lasting impact, firsthand.

Mingo in front of a crowd at the Lincoln Memorial.

My first encounter with Mingo is as a spectator. Moved by the protests spreading across the country demanding justice for George Floyd, I somewhat impulsively decided to drive to D.C. for a weekend in early June. It’s blazingly hot and bright when I first catch sight of Mingo, who is speaking into a megaphone to a large crowd assembled on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and beyond. Maybe it’s a trick of the midday sun or maybe it’s the sense of “spirit” that Mingo repeatedly claims to be compelled by—whatever it is, I swear he is almost glowing.

Mingo is wearing a black t-shirt printed with the now-ubiquitous words “Black Lives Matter.” The white letters are formed from an ever-growing list of names, each representing a Black life lost too soon. A homemade purple face mask hangs around his chin and a tattoo on his right forearm brands him as a “Miracle Child.” His speech—in which he recounts marching for Wilson until he was rushed to the hospital outside of Baltimore because of a leg injury—moves me to tears (nothing short of a small miracle in itself).

Later, when I ask him about the inspiration behind his most prominent tattoo, Mingo explains: “It’s because I’m still here—as in living life and breathing despite a lot of life obstacles—and I’m a child of God. It just let’s me know that I'm not done yet.”

MOVED TO MARCH

Not only is he not done, but I’m surprised to learn that Mingo is just getting started. Although, despite his claim that he “doesn’t have much experience” with activism, that’s not entirely true. In addition to the Wilson march, he has always been active in community outreach programs; he works with people who are homeless, and has planned backpack drives for children. But it wasn’t until the George Floyd video sparked a wave of protests that Mingo took to the streets in the more traditional sense.

“I turned the news on and I’m seeing people with signs and it was just an impulse,” Mingo says. “I’m very obedient with God and I felt like he just told me to move.” Running on adrenaline and feeling a pull from deep within, he jumped on the Metro and headed straight to the heart of a spontaneous protest that had sprung up on U Street. “I just planned on being an observer,” Mingo says. “And then, not only am I a part of the march, but I get pushed to the front. It was shocking to me because I had never before in my life done anything like this.”

Nearly two months later, Mingo has led dozens of marches and has been out in the streets almost every day and night since. Hundreds of people, myself included, have followed him over highways, bridges, and rivers; past monuments, buildings, and neighborhoods erected (or devastated) by a system he is hoping he can help change. He has organized candlelight vigils for Davon McNeal, another D.C. child who was shot and killed recently, collected money to buy a basketball hoop for Black Lives Matter Plaza, and continued his outreach efforts with the District’s growing homeless population. The protests may be receiving less and less media attention, but Mingo is not going anywhere.

“The main thing is consistency,” he says. “With this protesting stuff, you’ve gotta be consistent. Yeah, we’ve got some hot days—but they’re still making some messed up laws. Yeah it’s hot, but the police are still killing—they don’t care about the temperature and neither should we. We should be protesting every single day if need be.”

Not everyone may be blessed with Mingo’s seemingly bottomless energy, but he repeatedly insists that there is “strength in numbers,” and he’s quick to downplay his individual contributions to the movement. “I don’t want people to get so strung up on me,” Mingo says. “I know I may motivate people but other people have it too. I’m not perfect—I have flaws, I make mistakes all the time.”

Mingo, luckily, has more than a little help from his friends. He formed His Mission Organization with St. Louis native Aaron Covington and others, all of whom he met recently while out protesting. They’ve been planning marches via conference calls, but Mingo isn’t a big fan of turning protests into ticketed or “must-do” events, preferring the type of spur-of-the-moment gatherings that first inspired him to take action. Mingo says he’s also had to be more careful about the routes or actions he suggests—because he’s still surprised to find that (to paraphrase Carole King) where he leads, others will follow. “I joked about shutting down the highway the first night,” Mingo says. “People said ‘So we’re going to do the highway? We’re following you.’”

Despite the well-deserved attention, Mingo says he’s careful not to appear as if he’s “clout chasing,” his term for the type of performative activism that results in an Instagram photo and not much else. “All those people that were here when this first started—where are they now?” he asks. “They only want to come out when there’s an event planned on a Saturday. But we’re still battling every single day.”

While he acknowledges that not everyone can devote themselves wholly to a cause, he views protesting as more of a relay race than a solo sprint. “If I can’t do a march today, then whoever else is a leader—or claims to be—you should be doing a march that day. Then I can pick back up—it should be a rotation. I don’t expect any organizer to do a march every single day but it should be passed on.”

But Mingo knows that it’s not easy to maintain momentum; he even likens the constant stress of protesting to “going to war.” He’s been shot at with rubber bullets, tear gassed, and watched as fellow activists struggled with the debilitating side effects of PTSD. Urged to rest by friends and family members who care deeply about him, Mingo says he’s been more mindful lately of taking time for himself. “But we’re used to working hard,” he says, referring both to his family and his Black ancestors in general. “We’re no stranger to labor. I could go home right now and turn on the news and something else has happened. I’d feel guilty, thinking I should have been out there, I probably could have stopped it. It’s like trying to be a superhero in a way.”

A SENSE OF HOPE

Although he spends most of his time around the two-block-long section of 16th Street NW recently renamed Black Lives Matter (BLM) Plaza, Mingo is skeptical about D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s commitment to real, structural change. Just a few weeks after creating a de facto hub for the growing movement, confrontations on the plaza between largely peaceful demonstrators and the police have grown increasingly violent—and occur seemingly at random.

Medical supplies, tents, and food stations have been raided and trashed, t-shirt vendors were banished (and threatened with hefty fines), and depending on the time of day—or officers on duty—something as simple as jaywalking could suddenly be deemed an arrestable offense. “BLM brought people back a sense of hope—which is a good thing,” Mingo says. “But a lot of these people are homeless themselves and they’re still finding ways to give. Having their stuff thrown away? That’s just pure evilness. That’s not how I was raised.”

It may seem like destiny to those that believe in such a thing, but no one is as surprised at how quickly and easily he’s slipped on the proverbial superhero cape than Mingo himself. “Back in high school, I didn’t like bullies or anything that dealt with injustice,” he says. “I just like to stand for what’s right. It’s second nature to me—an impulse.” Although he says he never thought of himself as a leader, now that he’s seen that way by others, he says he’s up to the challenge. “It’s a badge of responsibility if people are putting their faith into marching with me,” Mingo says. “It’s my job to protect them as much as I can.”

Mingo at Black Lives Matter Plaza. | Photo: Kristine Jones

I don’t believe in the idea of ‘God,’ at least not in the traditional sense, but I’ve put my faith fully in Mingo during several marches since I first stood in awe of him at the Lincoln Memorial—and it’s hard to deny that the ‘miracle child’ seems to have been destined to motivate and inspire others.

Mingo’s great-grandfather was a 33rd degree Mason and his dad is a marine veteran. “I have a structured background,” Mingo says. “But I don’t agree with any of it. I’m not a fan of the government because I know that they’re not for us—from the city officials on up. You’ll catch them out here at a march trying to get a photo-op to further their campaign but they’re not really here for the people.”

The women in his family may have assumed less traditional leadership positions—his grandmother works for the Census Bureau and his mother raised Mingo and his siblings as a single mother—but they were no less influential in Mingo’s life. He says supporting women is crucial in maintaining the soul (and shear numbers) of any movement. “Women are already strong by themselves,” Mingo says. “But we have to keep building them up.”

Although he “didn’t worry much as a kid,” Mingo says that when he entered his teens, he came to expect police harassment as a simple fact of life. “We were terrified then but it wasn’t ‘Will we get shot or killed?’ it was more like ‘Ok, we might get beat with a nightstick or something.’ That doesn’t make it any better, but today it’s really out of hand.”

On July 4th weekend, 11-year-old Devon McNeal went to fetch a phone charger from his apartment complex in Southeast D.C. when he was shot and killed by a stray bullet. A few days later, Mingo worked with McNeal’s family to organize a march from BLM to the Anacostia neighborhood where the boy lived and died. I joined that march, which stretched over several hours and continued well into the night. The group started small but grew along the way—people are drawn to Mingo like a protest Pied Piper, who is not only a compelling speaker, but a magnetic frontman. It’s nearly impossible to not feel something when you’re in his presence; at one point, our small group stopped traffic on a highway and I found myself linking arms with people I had met less than an hour before, in a tense standoff with a line of cars. Mingo, first raised high above his head, paced back and forth, weaving in and out of traffic like a lion in a cage.

When we stopped for a candlelight vigil in front of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, a larger group joined us and we marched through the neighborhood, shouting “Black kids lives matter,” and calling for information on McNeal’s killers. “It broke my heart,” Mingo says. “At the vigil, a mother was out there with her son. She said ‘My son was terrified because he saw the police lights’ and he told her “Mommy, I don’t want to get shot.’”

A few weeks earlier, Mingo brought his 10-year-old daughter, Jaidyn, to a march he planned for Father’s Day. The more than six-mile, midday march was grueling, but Jaidyn is clearly her father’s daughter. It was her first protest, and she’s already asking to do more—but Mingo is fiercely protective and reluctant to put her in a situation that might turn dangerous. “I felt the atmosphere out on that one but I’m still cautious because in a split second something can happen,” he says. Both of his children currently live in Maryland with their mother, but Mingo says they’re in near-constant contact—and the worry goes both ways. “Jaidyn watches the news—she knows what’s going on—and she’s constantly checking up on me,” he says.

Last year, Mingo himself was arrested in Maryland and spent five days in 24-hour lockdown—for something he didn’t do. Months later, he is still paying down his debt to a bail bondsman for a crime that everyone—including the judge and attorneys—agreed he never committed. Still, Mingo says, “It could be worse.” His own mom agrees. When I ask how his family views his recent foray into activism, Mingo says, “They’re proud and happy.” But his mother has mixed emotions. “She’s happy, she’s proud—but also terrified,” he says. “She always says, ‘I don’t want you to be another hashtag.’”

Leading a Father’s Day march through the tunnel.

PEACEFUL PROTESTS

Maybe it’s God or maybe it’s just luck, but thankfully Mingo has so far managed to avoid the grim fate of so many people like him, whose only “crime” is to be Black in America. Despite the constant awareness that comes from living within a system that is actively working against you, Mingo has shown remarkable restraint in his interactions with police officers. “I don’t have a beef with the police, personally,” he says. “In general I don’t like them, but if the officer is showing me respect, I'm going to treat him with respect back. But if that officer pulls out their gun or tear gas then yeah, we’re gonna have a problem because now you’re trying to instill fear in me. I’m unarmed. There’s no reason for you to do any of that.”

While some may argue that the act of protesting can never truly be peaceful, Mingo’s philosophy on non-violence is backed by a long history punctuated by leaders to which he has inevitably drawn comparisons. But even Mingo admits that a commitment to non-violence has its limits. “If you have a bully that keeps bothering you, keeps poking at you, you’re soon not going to be peaceful anymore,” he says. “That’s what we’re dealing with right now.”

Mingo leading the Father’s Day march with his daughter Jaidyn.

The star-spangled elephant in the room—or the “bully” to which Mingo repeatedly refers—is, of course, Donald Trump. Mingo sees an obvious link between the Mayor Bowser and Trump standoff, and the so-called riots and looting that occurred early in June: “When the head is out of order, so does the body follow,” Mingo says. “People in high positions—law makers, specifically—if they’re not respecting each other or the laws that they are making, how do they expect the people to respect them? This is why you’re getting riots and looting. People are not doing it for no reason. We’re fed up.”

Mingo recently attempted to keep the peace at Lincoln Park when a rally concerning the fate of the park’s polarizing Emancipation Memorial quickly devolved into a shouting match. Although he usually finds himself behind the megaphone, Mingo tries to encourage conversations over confrontations, whenever possible: “As the saying goes, ‘God gave us two ears and one mouth so we would listen more and speak less.’” Incidentally, Mingo is on the side of those calling for the statue’s removal, but he’s wary of anyone who wants to do it in a destructive way—especially after Trump issued an Executive Order calling for the extreme punishment of anyone caught doing so. “Yes, it needs to come down,” Mingo says. “But the right way.”

UNCONDITIONAL FAITH

A few weeks after I first hear Mingo speak, we’re once again at the Lincoln Memorial. The day is just as hot and sunny, but this time we’re sitting in the comfortable shadows of the monument’s massive marble columns—and in the figurative shadows of everyone who has stood on the historic steps nearby to give similarly stirring speeches. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech just a few hundred feet from where we’re sitting. But it’s another speaker from the 1963 March on Washington who is on my mind while I chat with Mingo. John Lewis, who visited BLM Plaza just a few weeks before he died on July 17, once said, “Our struggle is a struggle to redeem the soul of America. It’s not a struggle that lasts for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. It is the struggle of a lifetime, more than one lifetime.”

Mingo—who cites Lewis, along with Malcolm X, Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton, and the rapper T. I. as important influences—also understands that the fight for justice has no beginning or end. “A lot of people are trying to put time limits or days on it saying ‘We’re going to end it when …’ but I say, ‘No, what we’re doing it for has not been accomplished yet. I’m 30 now and I could look up and be 50 and still be out here marching.”

If the ‘miracle child’ tattoo doesn’t make it obvious, Mingo is undeniably a man of faith. He attended a Bible college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and studied youth pastoral ministry. He says he does a lot of writing and thinking before his speeches, but in the end, he simply let’s the spirit flow through him. “I ask God to ‘put the words in my mouth that I may not have or may not know’ and then I just face the day,” Mingo says. “He hasn’t failed me yet. I’m just a vessel that God chose to use. I don’t want him to have to take his hands off my life and say ‘You’re out here for the wrong reasons so I’m going to let the enemy have his way.’ That’s probably my only fear in life. I don’t want to face God with that.”

I can attest that listening to Mingo speak is nothing short of a spiritual experience, but unlike the mega-church from which he recently severed ties, all are welcome to worship beneath the powerful, perpetually-raised fist of Mingo. “I’m for any and all people who are on the right side,” Mingo says. “I don’t care about your sexuality, your race, your religious beliefs. When God looks at everybody, he looks at the intentions of the heart. That’s it. I’ve never known a heart to be black or white. A heart’s a heart.”

It can be difficult to maintain one’s faith in normal times, and no one would fault Mingo for buckling under the overlapping sorrows of 2020. But faith is more important now than ever, he says, and should never be conditional. “Faith is probably when you’re scared the most. Walk by faith, not by sight. We’re more scared of things we don’t know. We don’t know how long this will last. Evil never wins—it might feel like it is winning right now. But it never wins because God always has the last say so. God made life simple for us. Man made life complicated.”

Mingo, who usually wears a t-shirt, jeans, immaculate sneakers, and a rotating selection of statement face masks, is in many ways, a perfect representation of our current reality. He lost his job due to the pandemic, and is about to start working nights at an Amazon warehouse. Once again, Mingo has every reason to be angry and despondent; he thinks it’s no accident that people have reached a breaking point now—and he says that unfortunately, sometimes it takes a personal tragedy to light a fire under people who wouldn’t have otherwise cared. “God is exposing the truth on a lot of things that have been kicked under the rug,” Mingo says. “It’s like the rug has been lifted up now and a lot of things are coming out now. People are losing jobs, they’re out of work. The pandemic has everyone’s attention. It really exposed people’s insecurities in their own lives.”

He knows that the issues he’s fighting for are not new, but says that people do seem to be more receptive to having more meaningful conversations about them. “These are the same problems we’ve been having—police killing did not just start—but it hit differently with the pandemic,” Mingo says. “People can’t claim anymore that they’re so busy that they’re not paying attention. You’re not busy, it’s in your face, so what are you going to do? You could be next.”

BLACK LIVES MATTER

For Mingo, simply acknowledging that Black lives matter is the starting gun—not the finish line. “It’s not even about race anymore,” he says. “It’s about what’s right and what’s wrong. I’ve seen some white people, Spanish-speaking people, LGBTQ people going hard for us—because we’re all dealing with the same thing. I feel like all people should have a voice.”

While being a Black man in the U.S. comes with its own unique set of challenges, Mingo recognizes that he has privileges as well—but, as MLK Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“I don’t know how it feels to be transgender,” Mingo says. “But I think I know how it feels in general because they feel mistreated. Immigrants came over here trying to create a better life for their family and now they’re trying to send them back over the border. I don’t know how that feels but I may have an idea because they feel mistreated. Black people are being killed by the police. I don’t know how that feels because I’m not dead—thank God—but that’s the common thread. Feeling mistreated.”

Mingo stops short of using the now-incendiary phrase “All Lives Matter,” but he does insist, “I’m here for everybody. Yes Black lives do matter. But at the same time everybody matters.”

While I agree with Mingo, I also can’t help but think that not everybody can—or should—follow exactly in his sneaker-clad footsteps. But that’s the good thing about mass movements, there’s a place for everyone—and clearly Mingo belongs at the front of the crowd.

Mingo, who also has a budding music career, may always be in constant conflict with his impulse to lead and his fear that his ego may unintentionally eclipse his higher purpose. But he’s actively working to make sure he remains focused and in service of others, and, of course, God. “I don’t think I’m bigger than anybody—I don’t think I’m doing a better job than anybody,” he says. “I like coming together with others. Maybe you can give me a different outlook on something that I didn’t think about. But you gotta understand, you’re dealing with the streets and the streets are going to call your bluff. If you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, the mask eventually falls off. It may not fall off in a week or two weeks—it may take a month—but eventually people are going to see.”

What I see in the time I’ve spent marching and talking with Mingo is nothing short of complete sincerity—and I try to assure him that his fears of being seen as a “clout chaser” are more than unfounded. But he admits that his inability to properly finish the Makiyah Wilson march might still be motivating him to go extra hard for other families mourning similar losses of their own.

“Maybe it’s a self pride issue,” Mingo says. “I didn’t get to finish [the Wilson march] out the way I wanted to. So I’m looking to finish this out—however long it takes. I don’t half ass anything. If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it all the way. I know what I signed up for. I know I can’t save the world but I’m going to try.”

This is a crucial moment in history; we have a real opportunity to rebuild and restructure our society to be more equal, more just, and more habitable for all. In an attempt to better understand what motivates and inspires fellow activists, I’m profiling people and how they’re trying (in ways both big and small) to make the world a better place. If you know someone I should profile, let me know (maybe it’s you!?). You can see all of the profiles here.

Alexandra 7/28/20 Alexandra 7/28/20

7.28.20: RIP John Lewis

Alexandra 7/19/20 Alexandra 7/19/20

7.19.20: RIP John Lewis

Alexandra 7/17/20 Alexandra 7/17/20

7.17.20: Black Lives Matter Plaza

Alexandra 7/7/20 Alexandra 7/7/20

7.7.20: U.S. Capitol

Alexandra 7/6/20 Alexandra 7/6/20

7.6.20: Justice for Davon McNeal

Alexandra 7/4/20 Alexandra 7/4/20

7.4.20: Black Lives Matter

Alexandra 6/24/20 Alexandra 6/24/20

6.24.20: TPS Car Caravan

Read the story on Roadtrippers Magazine.

Read the story on Roadtrippers Magazine.

Alexandra 6/23/20 Alexandra 6/23/20

6.23.20: Lincoln Park

Alexandra 6/22/20 Alexandra 6/22/20

6.22.20: Lafayette Park

Alexandra 6/21/20 Alexandra 6/21/20

6.21.20: Father's Day march for Black lives

Alexandra 6/7/20 Alexandra 6/7/20

6.7.20: Black Lives Matter

Alexandra 6/6/20 Alexandra 6/6/20

6.6.20: Black Lives Matter

Alexandra 6/5/20 Alexandra 6/5/20

6.5.20: Black Lives Matter

Alexandra 5/22/20 Alexandra 5/22/20

Kristine Jones Fights Protest Fatigue

Kristine Jones is more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it.

If you’ve been to a protest march or rally in Washington, D.C. in the last few years, chances are good that you’ve seen Kristine Jones. Even more likely is that Jones has seen you, probably through the viewfinder of her camera. It’s human nature to put people into tidy categories, and it’s not wrong to call Jones a photographer. But she’s also an activist, a mother, an artisan product development and marketing consultant, a wife, a real estate agent, and a generous friend. I’m exhausted just typing that list, so I’m not surprised when Jones tells me recently that she’s tired.

“I feel like I’ve been protesting something for a very long time,” Jones says. “The burnout is crazy. I’m feeling a little burnt out. I swear to god if it goes badly in November, it’ll be very bad. How can people sustain that anger and frustration?”

Jones has more than earned the right to be burnt out. She was just a senior in high school when she attended her first protest rally on June 12, 1982. Jones and her sister took a bus from West Hartford, Connecticut to New York City, joining one million people in Central Park in what would turn out to be the largest anti-nuclear protest and one of the largest political demonstrations in U.S. history.

“Listening to the speakers I thought, ‘These are my people,’” Jones says. “I felt as if I was a part of a club. I felt the rage and the injustice.”

From 1991 until 2002, Jones and her husband lived abroad while working for non-profits in Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Bosnia, and Jerusalem. They worked with internally displaced peoples (IDPs) and immigrants; on long drives through Azerbaijan in the mid-’90s, Jones and her husband noticed that once-plentiful trees seemed to be disappearing. They weren’t wrong: the IDPs were living in abandoned buildings and burning the trees for heat and to cook their food.

Growing up, Jones had spent a lot of time hiking through national parks, but she didn’t immediately see the connection between her anti-war work and the climate crisis. “I thought if we couldn't stop wars and conflict, there was no way we would be able to stop deforestation,” Jones says. “But it also seemed like [deforestation] was a superficial problem considering what else the refugees and IDPs were facing.”

Even when they returned to the states in 2002, Jones continued to focus her activism within the anti-war, women’s rights, and immigration movements. “Basically I thought the climate crisis didn’t need me,” Jones says.

The climate crisis doesn’t just affect coral reefs and obscure tropical frogs; this devastating loss of biodiversity is important, for sure, but focusing entirely on stereotypical crunchy-granola environmental issues may allow the naysayers—especially those that feel disconnected from, or somehow above, nature—to have a false sense of security. But for at least three decades, the Brookings Institution has known that “the greatest single impact of climate change may be on human migration,” and it has estimated that “by 2050, 150 million people could be displaced by desertification, water scarcity, floods, storms, and other climate change-related disasters.”

It wasn’t until recently that Jones began to connect the dots between the issues she had been championing for decades and the climate crisis. “The concept of melting glaciers was a concern, but these ideas forming in my head were not based in science or logic, I was just acknowledging that it was bad,” Jones says.

When she had a child of her own, Jones says her connection to—and the urgency she felt to help protect—Mother Earth increased. But it took another young person, the teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, to really light a metaphorical fire under Jones. “Having a young girl look at you—without trying to make you feel better—and say ‘What the hell are you people doing?’ is pretty shocking,” Jones says. “It was a wake up call. I thought, ‘What the fuck are we doing?’ She made me feel like we should all be doing more.”

No one can accuse Jones of not doing enough over the years, but instead of slowing down, she sees a direct correlation between her increasing age and fervent activism. And she’s not alone: she says it’s not uncommon for her to find herself surrounded by “mostly old ladies,” at protests. “I think it's mostly women because we care, but also because for the last 100 years we have been fighting for so much that it must be in our DNA,” Jones says. “At 55, you’re invisible anyway so it doesn’t matter so much what people think. We just can’t take this shit any more. We’re tired.”

Despite frequently insisting that she’s exhausted, Jones’ seemingly bottomless energy suggests otherwise. During our nearly four-hour phone conversation, Jones recounts how she broke her ankle on the fourth day of a six-day backpacking trip through Alaska’s Wrangell St Elias National Park and Preserve. Her foot was in a boot for months and she relied on crutches—but that didn’t stop her from going to the Capitol on the morning of October 11, 2019, to photograph a “die-in.” Jones’ friend was battling cancer and participating in the action to persuade Congress to allocate more money for late-stage cancer research. Afterwards, Jones walked (slowly) up the hill and joined the first of Jane Fonda’s Fire Drill Fridays rallies.

Jones, who says she owned several of Fonda’s workout outfits in the ‘80s (“I think I liked the outfits more than the actual workouts”), was moved by Fonda’s passion and her ability to articulate the complexities of the climate crisis. But in the end, Jones says it’s kindness that keeps people engaged, no matter the issue(s) at hand.

“I don’t judge anyone because I’m never really in it—I’m usually on the periphery,” Jones says. “Unfortunately, there are people in the movement who are a deterrent. When you’re not kind, and when you’re not encouraging, and when you look at people like you’ve never seen them before, it makes it hard for people to stay. All it takes is for someone to be kind like Jane Fonda.”

Jones subsequently attended about half of the fourteen D.C. Fire Drills, missing several only because she eventually had to have surgery on her ankle. In November and December, she was arrested for civil disobedience twice—partly because she had one prior arrest on her record (in conjunction with the Poor People’s Campaign), and partly because she says she was “torn between photographing the event versus being a participant. Which was more important?”

Sometimes, Jones says she thinks that taking photographs is more useful in the grand scheme of things. Despite a recent hard drive crash and Jones’ claims that she “does nothing” with her photographs, that’s not exactly true. She posts them to her personal Instagram account, sends them to the people who appear in the photographs, and allows organizations to use them for fundraising purposes. She’s the perfect friend with which to attend a march—documenting everything so you don’t have to; like an Instagram husband, but much more attentive and festively attired.

I understand the photographers’ dilemma—always hidden behind the camera and never in front of it—so I’m forever indebted to Jones. Just a few hours after we first met, she beautifully captured several Fire Drill Friday moments that were particularly meaningful for me. Yes, I’ll always have the memories, but it’s extra nice to have the photos as well. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Jones still calls herself an “amateur photographer.” Having witnessed her in action, I’d say she’s being much too modest; she manages to capture the complex emotions and fiery passions of her subjects—no small feat in the crushing crowds and chaotic atmosphere of a large march or protest rally.

It’s not surprising that Jones says she honed her quick-reaction skills in conflict zones abroad. “The injustices—that’s what I gravitate towards,” she says. “At first, I would just take pictures of things that interested me. The subject matter was always some sort of conflict.” When Jones and her husband returned to the states, she began photographing anti-war rallies. Balancing her dual roles as both participant and observer can be tricky, but sometimes—like during her second arrest with Fire Drill Fridays—she manages to do both.

“I’m always seeing [an event] as I would be as a photographer,” Jones says. “I want to be a part of it, but I also feel like the value of having the photograph is useful—it’s something you can share, it’s a record.”

Mostly, Jones is looking to capture—and then convey to others—the same passion that continually drives her to the frontlines. “I'm looking for the thing that says ‘I’m here because this is so fucking important to me,’” Jones says. “When people look at the picture they must think, ‘This person is so worried about this situation,’ and I’m trying to say ‘Are you not as upset as they are?’ I want to share other peoples’ sense of urgency and have people feel the same way.”

In between the marches, rallies, and protests, Jones also somehow finds time to devote to myriad political causes. Jones lives just a few blocks from the Capitol, but for her birthday in 2018 she took a trip to Texas to work on Beto O’Rourke’s senate campaign; in 2017, she traveled to Alabama to help Doug Jones defeat former Alabama Supreme Court judge (and alleged sexual assaulter) Roy Moore. She canvasses and helps with voter protection outreach for the DNC, advocates for immigrants, and runs another Instagram account called I Vote Democratic, after she discovered that “a lot of people really felt like they didn’t see themselves in our party anymore,” she says.

Even though Jones admits that she can see the appeal of the concept that “ignorance is bliss,” she still sees the value in trying to work within the current system to affect change. “You look at these things, and how much work it takes, and the setbacks, and the dealing with the government, and the B.S. and the deals. It’s depressing,” Jones says. “Sometimes my head wants to pop off. But then I can’t let it go. I see it and think ‘Ok that’s just not right, I need to do something about that.’”

Jones and her son worked hard on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and they were understandably morose on the morning of November 9, 2016. Her son tried to console his mother by scribbling a message of hope on her bathroom mirror. “We just need to work a lot harder to make change,” he wrote. “Always forward.”

Four years later, Jones is still angry. But she’s trying to channel that rage into something productive. Not doing something has never felt like a viable option for her, but despite the inevitable burnout, Jones says now is not the time to be complacent. “People didn’t think this was such a big deal in 2016,” she says. “I felt like I was the boy who cried wolf, but I was right actually. I’m afraid that if I don’t get out there, it’ll be worse.”

Although she cherishes the time she spent traveling, Jones says that she “would never want to live anywhere else in the world.” One of the best things about living in the U.S. is that “no one is American—because everybody can be American,” Jones says. “You don’t look at someone and say ‘That person is American’ because we could be anybody. I have friends with German passports that say ‘I’m from Africa, I’ll never be German. But in America, people could think I’m American.’”

The years she lived abroad provided Jones with a fresh perspective; while she is the first to acknowledge that the U.S. has its flaws, her love for her home country runs deep. She says she cried when George W. Bush got reelected, but she has the opposite of a “love it or leave it,” mentality when it comes to how she views her role as a citizen. “We’ve got to fix [the U.S.] because this isn’t really who we are,” Jones says. “Plus, I feel like it’s everybody’s responsibility to do a little bit. We all live here. It’s like maintaining our home in a way.”

It may not always be easy, but Jones is trying to pass this sense of obligation on to her son, who graduated high school this year with significantly less fanfare than previous generations thanks to COVID-19. He has attended every Women’s March and is forging his own path as a somewhat-reluctant activist-in-training. Jones is cautiously optimistic about her influence. “I don’t ask,” Jones says. “We just have things that we do and that’s one of the things. But he would be good at it. Who knows, I might have created a Republican—but I hope not.”

The climate crisis is not a partisan issue or a singular, cataclysmic event—and Jones thinks that may be part of the problem. Americans, and humans in general, seem to be better at reacting to catastrophes than they are at preventing them. But even in these times of seemingly never-ending and overlapping crises, Jones sees an opportunity to motivate those who might, for various reasons, not think they can make a difference.

“It’s crazy how many people have found their creative outlet just because this moron is president,” Jones says. She says that her work trying to secure protections for immigrants (which are often motivated by looming legal deadlines) has shown what might work—or not work—as we try to address the climate crisis.

“With climate change, nobody sees the end, it’s not a big action, it’s not something that happened all at once,” Jones says. “It’s amazing what people can do when they’re forced to, at the last minute. But there almost needs to be a deadline associated at the end of it. I feel like, with the climate, there’s not that end date that’s scaring people.”

One of the main missions of Fire Drill Fridays is to try to counteract this very real problem of inertia—and light those metaphoric fires underneath people who may have never considered themselves activists in the traditional sense. It worked for me; I was arrested three times for civil disobedience and was lucky to have Jones as a fellow detainee for two of them.

It may be easy to dismiss a group of mostly white, middle class women (and especially celebrities) in zip-tie handcuffs as a meaningless publicity stunt, but Fonda says the arrests shine a light on her inherent privileges—and that’s part of the point. Jones has a similar view on the effectiveness—and often complicated optics—of civil disobedience. “It’s easy for us to get arrested,” Jones says. “I think it’s a big thing and I get nervous, but I know it’s not like other people’s experiences. I feel bad about our privilege but I understand the need of the theatrical aspect of what we do. It's important for us to stand up.”

Jones, a visual person by nature, also recognizes the lasting impact that a photograph can have on the historical record—for better or worse. “The visual of people getting arrested for the climate is a similar visual to that of Kent State [on May 4, 1970], or the visual that haunts Jane Fonda—of her sitting on that tank [in Hanoi]—these are all visuals that we keep in our head, so it’s useful.”

COVID-19 has changed life dramatically for almost everyone, and all of Jones’ pursuits have been affected in different ways. She says it’s weird being a real estate agent without in-person showings or an artisan product consultant with the future of trade shows uncertain. But the biggest change she has noticed is in her own neighborhood: after three solid years of not going a full week without some sort of protest, Capitol Hill is eerily quiet. There have been a few nurses advocating for better protections and car caravans along Pennsylvania Avenue, but for the most part, “everything has changed,” Jones says.

She’s still able to shoot portraits—wearing a face mask and using a zoom lens from a safe distance—and she acknowledges that it could always be worse. “I like to see how people make it through conflict—how they survive,” Jones says. “People lived in quarantine-like situations like this during the Bosnian war, and they still did art. They didn’t even have Netflix; we have Netflix. Most of us are not really suffering.”

In the current pandemic (and post-pandemic) world, the usual methods employed by activists may have to change, but not everything is obsolete. “The most important part [of activism] is—and what Jane Fonda did so amazing—is to make everybody think that they are important and crucial,” Jones says. “Jane was the best hostess ever, thanking everyone for coming and making sure everybody knew they were important.”

We may not be able to gather in the streets for the foreseeable future, but humans are remarkably resilient; the tools available today are just as varied as the activists themselves. Jones says she sometimes feels intimidated by new technologies, but she’s particularly excited about new opportunities to reach large groups of people without ever leaving home (Open Progress likens its texting tool to “knocking on digital front doors”).

“There really is something for everybody,” Jones says. “There is something that matches your skillset. Everybody has different levels of caring, different levels of putting themselves out there.” The level of participation may vary, but Jones thinks the very human need to feel as if we’re making a difference, no matter how small, is universal. “If people feel like they’re needed, it makes a big difference,” Jones says.

Whether she feels it or not, every movement needs people as dedicated and tireless as Jones. But even she admits that she sometimes needs a break. “Sometimes I just need to watch Real Housewives,” Jones says, laughing. “I want to watch stupid YouTube videos. I want to laugh. I want to not feel overwhelmed by all the crazy crap that’s going on. Who wants that dour shit all the time? Nobody does.”

We may not want it, but we all have our fair share of “dour shit” to deal with in life—ankles break, hard drives crash, graduations are cancelled, and candidates lose elections. But no matter how bad things get, Jones refuses to lose hope or even think seriously about slowing down. “When things seem bad, if I can go out and do something, that makes me feel better,” Jones says. “If you’re feeling helpless, help someone else.”

A RECIPE FOR CREATING AN ACTIVIST FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE, BY KRISTINE JONES

Start with the following fiction books:
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Then add these three blockbuster movies:
Norma Rea (1979)
Silkwood (1983)
Dark Waters (2019)

Add non-fiction books that feel like fiction:
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, by Isabel Fonseca
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, by Anne Fadiman

Then throw some documentaries into the mix:
Roger & Me (1989)
Dolores (2017)
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Crip Camp (2020)

Bonus! For activists with kids or kids who want to be activists:
March: Book One, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

We may not be able to take to the streets right now, but that doesn’t mean the climate crisis is any less important. This is a crucial moment in history; we have a real opportunity to rebuild and restructure our society to be more equal, more just, and more habitable for all. In an attempt to better understand what motivates and inspires fellow activists, I’m profiling people and how they’re trying (in ways both big and small) to make the world a better place. If you know someone I should profile, let me know (maybe it’s you!?). You can see all of the profiles here.