I’ve never believed in jobs. I believe in individuals showing up for their communities in the ways that they know how and are able to. In the ways that excite them, not how they are told. Jobs, and especially non-profit jobs, extract and rarely regenerate human energy. They suck you dry, leeching on passion and desire for change with very little actual impact. Yet, we are told that we need them to survive. That the stolen land that holds us all so generously and freely, who produces fruit and oxygen and stability even when the nourishment is not reciprocated, must be parceled up and sold off for anyone with the right price. That those willing to invest genuine care and live in right relationship with the land are not able to afford it without bloodying their hands with sin and self-denial in exchange for dollars. As if our words, our work, creation, our hands, are not enough to care for each other. And with these realities dominant, since 2015, I have been seeking “jobs” that align with my values of environmental, racial, and food justice in order to live on a planet held hostage by the greedy.
Ruth Tyson, An Open Letter to the Union of Concerned Scientists: On Black Death, Black Silencing, and Black Fugitivity.
