Have you ever seen a murmuration of starlings as they fly through the sky? Here’s a great video of that phenomenon:
How do they do it? Why don’t they collide?
I love what adrienne maree brown writes in her book, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds:
“Starlings’ murmuration consists of a flock moving in sync with one another, engaging in clear, consistent communication and exhibiting collective leadership and deep, deep trust. Every individual bird focuses attention on their seven closest neighbors and thus manage a larger flock cohesiveness and synchronicity (and times upwards of over a million birds).”
The experiences underway in Minnesota have been traumatic, yet at the same time, many people have been moved by the ways that neighbors are caring for neighbors. People are showing up for the most vulnerable. And often, they are doing this by watching their own block or their own local school. They are present and protective of the people in their vicinity.
And then last week, I heard Jelani Cobb make connections between the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and current ICE raids. He is the Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, and when he teaches about the outpouring of people who resisted this act, many of his students assume that these were all abolitionists. In many cases, that was not true. But they couldn’t tolerate their neighbors being snatched away from their communities. “The fundamental civic unit in this country is neighbor.”
When we are in solidarity with our neighbors, our movements can make murmurations, too.
Smuggling Grace 