Confession: I am wildly prone to crushes. But these crushes do not limit themselves to the bright and chronically disinterested men to whom I seem to be inexplicably drawn. No no. They often are what I call “academic crushes” – usually strong women, often a tad older than myself, who are funny and independent and terribly smart and unabashedly irreverent and often radical in their own ways. They are the women I want to be someday – the living picture of what I hope my own future might look like ten or twenty years from now. They are the women whose very existence says:
You are okay. You, with all of your quirks and idiosyncrasies and neurosis, are very terribly and oh so fantastically okay. You do need to have shinier hair or wait to have it together or find away to fit into a box for which you were not made. Strength and beauty and wildness take all forms. You are finding yours. And that is so, so okay.
Cindy Milstein is the newest of these crushes. You guys, I love her. I kind of secretly want to make her my new best friend. I went to a conversation facilitated by her on Saturday and I really wanted to meet her. So, after doing some mental pep talks and repeating of my own name to myself (lest I forget it, as I am somewhat prone to do under stress), I went up to introduce myself. But then I got all shy and awkward. Thankfully the lovely Sarah-Cakes was there to smooth the way and say some nice things about me and make me feel less like a blushing school girl. Which is totally what I was. I kept making this unfortunately weird clenchy excited face I seem to be woefully fond of, where I am so excited that I can’t stop smiling and I am know I am smiling Too Hard but I can’t control it so I try to sort of bite it back and my eyes are all crazed and spastic and I kind of stop blinking. It’s like I become one of those tiny dogs that shakes because it Just Wants You To Love It So Damn Much. It’s way awkward.

Crazy Face: Not my strongest look
I’m sure she was terrified. Wouldn’t you be? It didn’t help that after finding my voice a little I started to ramble somewhat incoherently. I’m already like a drunk chattering monkey most days of the week and being near someone I admire only seems to make it worse. I don’t remember much of what was said, other than at one point talking about space. Which is a thought that stuck with me for the rest of the day and well into Sunday, when We All Showed Up To Fight At GA.
It kind of made me wonder if maybe, at the heart of it, a lot of our fighting isn’t about space, or the fear losing it. Maybe we keep fighting because we are so used to not having space in the world that now that we have claimed a little, we are terrified of someone else taking it away.

Making space is a funny thing and one I learned about on very, very crowded buses. It used to take me forever to get anywhere on buses in Botswana, because the bus would arrive, chaos would ensue, and I would sort of stand back and let everyone push and crowd past me to get on, until there simply was no more room. Because that is when the bus is full – when every last inch of space has been claimed. This passive approach to transportation went on for quite a long time, really, until one day a friend from my village said to me:
Mma. The problem is that you are trying to make yourself small when really you should be trying to make yourself big. No one will make space for you. You have to make it for yourself.
Or, as my friend Natalie puts it:
You gotta throw some ‘bows.
You just have to make space for yourself. And that is what we are doing with Occupy, I think. We are making space for ourselves in a world that has taken it away. We are throwing out our elbows against the state and the police and the 1% and the corporations and whomever and whatever else and making space. Reclaiming space.
But sometimes we get confused. We forget that we aren’t throwing our elbows up against each other, to push each other out, but against something much bigger. And we get scared. We see other people making space for themselves and think maybe that means there isn’t room for us too.
But here is the thing: there is.
There is space for you in the movement. There is space for me in the movement. There is space.
But we have to make it.
We have to make it collectively. We have to make it individually. And we have to remember that when we puff up our chests and throw out our elbows, it isn’t to force one another out, but to force out room in our society for ourselves and, ideally, for one another too.
Making space is messy and hard. Just as on a very, very, very crowded bus, you sometimes end up accidentally stepping on toes or with someone’s ass in your face or standing pressed up against someone you would really rather not be touching or getting bumped in the face and jostled around, this process isn’t clean-cut. It is hard and sometimes frustrating and really, really, really messy. Making space isn’t easy. It just isn’t.
It never is.
It never has been.

Last night, I felt inspired by the crowd that showed up for GA. Maybe we were all there to fight. Or maybe we were there to watch the show. I don’t really care, honestly. Because we were there. Last night, a bunch of people showed up and made space for themselves. We didn’t all agree all of the time. Sometimes tempers flared. Sometimes people yelled. There was a fair amount of arm flailing and sighing and the general making of exasperated noises. But we showed up. Each of us. We threw out our arms and created a little more space for ourselves in the world. And there was still room for all of us. Sure, we occasionally looked like the activist version of a junior high dance with a clear split down the room. But we took a step. We learned that making ourselves big doesn’t mean making anyone else in the movement small: it just means making all of us a little bigger. We still got something done and we got it done well, I think.
When I think about my academic crushes, the thing that stands out the most about each of them is that they are women who made space for themselves in a world that would never have handed it to them. They had to fight for it and they have to continue to fight for it, and the way they fight inspires me. They have found ways to do it with grace and humor and stunning insight and tremendous light and beauty. But there is no doubt that they aren’t to be messed with. They may sometimes cry in public but they will also fuck your shit up. They made their space and they are keeping it, damn it.
I want there to be space for me in the world. I want there to be space for you in the world. And I want us to create that space together. I don’t know how the hell we do it, other than by showing up. We will learn the rest. We will learn how to communicate better. We will learn how to be more effective. How to stand in solidarity more fully. What it means to really love and respect each other. But to do any of that, we have to be there. We have to make space.
Space is where it all happens.