Resistance Matters
My BIG, BEAUTIFUL Adventure in Boycotting
The Goal: To Spend Joyfully and with Purpose
By Chalmer Thompson
October 20, 2025
Photo credit: Flash Studios
Remember, resistance doesn’t mean exhausting yourself. It means persisting. Right foot, left foot—every day. Check in. Keep each other going. That’s the real engine of a movement --- small, stubborn networks, linked together, impossible to stop.
The Resisters’ Report, Substack, 8/21/25
I love these words. They remind me of Ella Baker, the late, indomitable architect of the Black Freedom Movement. Baker risked life and limb as she traveled through the segregated South, offering concrete guidance to poor, Black people on how they can work collectively to escape racial oppression. She was a model of persistence and seemed unbothered by the chorus of naysayers, even fellow human/civil rights activists. The Montgomery (Alabama) Bus boycotters are also heroes of resistance, as are the countless others who confronted the injustice and violence during the struggle for freedom in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
In this month’s post, I focus on one aspect that can prevent many of us from practicing resistance: shame. This shame can emerge when we have an excessive fear of being physically harmed or of not being capable of withstanding the discomfort that can come with engaging in acts of resistance. Our shame may come from not being strong enough to be vocal about our beliefs.
Another source of shame is feeling as though we don’t know enough about a particular issue. This discomfort can lead to feeling shame about what we do not know and cannot defend.
Here are two critical points to consider. First, shame stems from our sensitivity to others' opinions. In other words, it is other people who influence our feelings of shame. We feel shame when we believe others will think of us in unflattering or unforgiving ways. Others often can determine how you believe you ought to be seen.
The shaming can come from the people in your life who encourage your self-doubts. They may do so without knowing their influence on you; they may even project their own fears onto you.
The shaming can also come from people in your past whose voices have influenced your own. These voices communicate to you inwardly that “this is not who you are, or who you should be. The problem is that you recognize, deep down inside, that you are much, much more than the boundaries you have adopted as “you.” The voice inside you may sound something like, “This issue is not something you should fight for or against because you’re not strong (or vocal, informed, brave, intelligent) enough.”
The second point to consider about shame is that it is the source of our reluctance, while the reasons we choose not to be active come later. First comes the shame, then the reasons. When we find ourselves in a non-hostile conversation when someone who defends fascism for example, talks about an aspect of history or the context that you are not aware of, it becomes easy for many to feel shame about the not-knowing, and then establish excuses, such as “I didn’t know about all the good things that have happened historically when there have been fascist leaders. Maybe there’s much more to this than I already know. I'd better stay out of it!”
If we erase the shame from this scenario, the person in the conversation may indeed respond that they were unaware of the information but still engaged in acts of resistance. They may even choose to explore the issue if it appears to them to be a reasonable exercise.
Keep in mind that the decision to explore factual information is an option that can lead to a deeper understanding of the issue, not necessarily to a change in one’s view or perspective. Personally, I like learning about the different facets of an issue because it helps me think about it more complexly. I have also found that many people are not sincerely trying to understand an issue better. They may be fiercely for or against an issue based on limited or even false information and are unpersuaded by facts or evidence of any kind. Sadly, when Black people present an alternative viewpoint on a particular topic, like advocating that public schools include a richly informed history of slavery in the U.S., Whites (and others) can automatically dismiss these viewpoints as not legitimate or, ironically, overly subjective.
The good news is that shame, also linked to fear of vulnerability, is something we can do something about. Some of us have experienced trauma, which contributes to shame. We can learn that these experiences need not “stick” to us like ugly scabs. Self-healing begins by ensuring that negative talk—the voices—eventually disappears and is replaced with positive self-talk.
“No human is better, nor worse, than another person.” Reciting mantras like these alone can help people increase their self-love. To ensure that they have a full impact on our psyches or souls, we need to repeat them frequently. Reciting mantras, along with other healing practices, re-shapes our brains. See psychiatrist Dr. Tracey Marks’ video for more on brain development and mental health here.
And I’m so very pleased to hear that actress Taraji J. Henson has committed time and resources to cultivating positive mental health among Black people and other racial/ethnic groups (see here).
A Bit on Information Sources
Newspapers and televised news programming are funded and controlled by very wealthy corporations whose leaders have a stake in what gets reported and what remains un- or underreported. I realize that this statement is evident to many. Still, all too often, mainstream media outlets are deemed merely “the news” and understood to be the information source serving all people in the U.S. It took me a long time to fully understand the extent of bias in the mainstream media. Then, gradually, I began seeking information from multiple sources. Picking and choosing which sources to use is an individual decision, but I have found incredible value in tapping into several journalists and historians from Substack. Some align themselves with political parties, but most do not.
It may seem as though I am a glutton for punishment, but I want to be informed of major genocides occurring in the world. As a psychologist, I find that societies with escalating rates of violence by people in power are worthy of study because their “sickness” coincides with what happens with individual people. Stated another way, sick societies create sick people.
In the link below, journalist Chris Hedges outlines how corporations amass considerable wealth from wars and genocides. Hedges centers his article on the genocide occurring in Israel (see here), but it’s essential to view the news from sources that report on the genocide in the Sudan, where two wars have been raging since 1996 (see here), and where men have raped tens of thousands of girls and women. I would strongly urge boycotting any companies that are not in compliance with organizations that advocate for boycotts.
In addition to current news outlets, it is valuable to tap into the enormous body of scholarship that helps us understand recent events. Many of these works are borne out of the rise in Black, Latino/a, Indigenous, and Asian Studies programs from the 1960s to the present, which are an outgrowth of the civil and human rights movements of the 20th century. I recommend only a few here, which are among my very favorite books: Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, and Saidya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals.
Finally, I viewed a film last week titled “The Inquisitor.” The film is about the life of Barbara Jordan, the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. I end with a quote from this larger-than-life figure, another heroine of the 20th century who persisted, right foot then left foot:
"If you are dissatisfied with the way things are, then you have got to resolve to change them." ~ Barbara Jordan
