Joy is a revolutionary force

In 2018 an Iranian teenager found herself forced to issue an apology on state television for breaking moral norms after authorities clamped down on her Instagram account. She had posted videos of herself dancing.

This inspired #dancingisnotacrime, a viral protest of Iranians dancing everywhere and every way they could and posting their videos online, all of this despite the illegality of dancing in public spaces (see: TACTIC: Cultural disobedience) (see: PRINCIPLE: If protest is made illegal, make daily life a protest).

In many authoritarian regimes, there are forms of joy that are restricted or banned. Oppressors know joy can be a dangerous force indeed! Anything that fuels glee can be hard to control and threatens to upend rigid structures of power. So even though anger may come more easily than joy in the face of injustice, abuses of power, climate chaos, and the uber rich cynically wasting millions of dollars to hang out in space, joy and laughter are often the more powerful response (see: THEORY: Hamoq and hamas).

In our efforts to fight against injustice, we can end up consumed by the seriousness of it all, avoiding the things that bring us happiness, but by coming together under happy signifiers and celebrating in every little space we can, we open ourselves up to new ways of being and doing. For millennia, carnivals and other joyful holiday celebrations have upended power relations to prefigure other ways of being. And today, pride parades across the world celebrate LGBTQI+ culture and the rainbow flag has come to symbolize both joy and power.

Joy is an affirmation of life and a marker of our humanity; denying it dehumanizes us. For centuries, people facing oppression have used music, dance, humour, art, and food to experience joy amidst the most grueling of circumstances. Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War in the United States, people enslaved on plantations maintained, repurposed, or created forms of celebration and recreation — what D. Wiggins called “moments of unguarded merrymaking” — that helped generations endure and resist the dehumanizing institution of slavery. Today, the concept of Black Joy is a multi-dimensional practice of expression, liberation, resistance, and humanity. Kleaver Cruz’s Black Joy Project is one of many initiatives that recognize the need to counter dominant narratives of suffering, trauma, and fatigue.

One of the key challenges of activism is that our fights can be long, slow, and painful. Burnout is a serious risk, and taking care of yourself and each other has to be more than just an after-thought (see: PRINCIPLE: Burn brightly, but don’t burn out). Practicing joy doesn’t have to be an act of resistance either. Research shows that small bursts of positive emotion can be enough to help reset our responses to stress. Moments of release (like the celebration of victories, no matter how small!) can nurture and revitalize the body and mind.

Facing charges of undermining national security, Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova danced in court as her trial began. Sometimes, in the face of oppression, you just have to have the audacity to be joyful, and oh what a powerful force that can be!