A look at my reviews over the past year should make it pretty clear that I am someone who cares about a lot of things. In fact, I am finding that reading broadly is a double-edged sword, in that it’s wonderful to develop more empathy, but it’s overwhelming at times to constantly be learning new dimensions to inequity and cruelty.
When you care about a lot of issues, it can be hard to decide where to direct your energy towards improving things. It’s easy to either make a lot of very small actions across a number of causes (and feel like your effort is diluted and doesn’t accomplish much) or to get paralyzed with indecision and not do anything.
Let’s Move the Needle by Shannon Downey is a book about craftivism (using arts and crafts in service of activist causes), but it’s also a book about learning how to focus your attention. The author claims she’ll help you choose one cause to focus on for the rest of your life. To me that feels like a bold statement, and also a bit weirdly limiting. While there are definitely some people who find their One True Cause and stick with it for their entire lives, I think it’s pretty natural to have your focus shift as you move through different stages in life (or perhaps, if you’re focused on a very hyper-specific cause, you might make so much impact that you feel like your work is done! What a dream!).
Setting aside the idea of finding a lifelong pursuit, I think the steps outlined in Let’s Move the Needle will be very useful for not only figuring out the cause you want to focus most of your resources on for the next however long, but also for figuring out how you can best contribute to that cause. And while it’s framed as a book on craftivism, these steps can be used even if you don’t consider yourself creative and are just looking for an opportunity to lend your time in some other way.
One thing I liked about this book is that the author chooses an example problem — the danger of used needles on a local public beach — and a project — a beach clean-up day and informational event — and uses those to illustrate each step of the process, making it really easy to see how one decision naturally lays the groundwork for the next.
Another thing I like is that Downey really pushes back against the idea of craftivism as a kinder, gentler form of activism, or a less valid form. She presents it instead as just another way to work. It can be as loud and brash as you want it to be. It can be your primary form of activism, or it can go hand-in-hand with what we tend to think of as more traditional activism — for example, creating handmade postcards to send to politicians or businesses, rather than using pre-printed ones. Making your own signs and banners for protests can quickly become craftivism if you decide you want to get artistic with your design.
Finally, I really appreciated the progressive attitudes Downey expressed throughout the book. The most obvious is that in talking about her example beach clean-up day, she speaks compassionately about the reasons why drug users are leaving needles on the beach, and suggests long-term solutions that could make things safer for both the drug users and the other people who use the beach. The beach clean-up is not meant to solve the problem, but rather to rally the community while educating them about options like setting up a needle exchange or a safe consumption site.
But it also shows up in little ways, such as the several times that Downey asks the reader to consider whether they have a partner or partners who could help, or when she mentions increased drug use or using different drugs in the list of potential signs of burn-out. The way she casually mentioned the potential of polyamory or recreational drug use as something that might be part of the average reader’s life felt like she was more in touch with the sort of creative, progressive people that I know.
I will say, I took this out of the library as an audiobook, and that was not the best choice. There are a lot of prompts for reflection and journaling, so I feel like if I wanted to use this book as intended, I’d have to rewind and relisten a lot. It would be much easier to work with a physical copy or ebook, and I think I will be purchasing the book so I can take my time working through it in order to get some direction for my activism in 2025 and beyond. The audiobook did serve as a great preview which helped me determine if this book would actually be useful and interesting to me, which it definitely was!
If, like me, you’re a creative and compassionate person feeling pulled in all directions by all the urgent causes out there, this book may help you get focused and organize yourself and maybe even some like-minded friends and neighbors to choose one good cause and actually move that needle.
CWs and TWs: This book discusses a lot of activism-worthy causes, but doesn’t really get into too much detail, so it hopefully should not be too triggering for most readers.
Source and Format: I borrowed this audiobook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Book Bingo Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): Setting Boundaries. One thing I’ve struggled with in the past when doing charitable work is setting good boundaries. When you care about a cause, it’s easy to give and give and give of yourself, until you end up burned out and resentful of those who don’t seem to be giving as much. I’ve been pretty wary of getting actively involved in anything for some years now (and my brief foray into being a Municipal Liaison with NaNoWriMo did not help…). Downey not only lays out a process for determining what skills and resources you have to offer, and what you feel excited about doing, but she also has a chapter specifically about the importance of rest, not over-committing yourself, and not allowing yourself to burn out. She also acknowledges the validity of walking away, either because you feel like you accomplished what you wanted with your one-off event. or because you realized the work you’re doing or the setting you’re doing it in isn’t serving you. It all feels very healthy.
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 24 out of 25 prompts complete. 10 bingos.