Pick one thing with Sally Burtt-Jones
This is the sixth in a Q&A series available to paid subscribers of What Do We Do Now That We’re Here. Know someone who might like this newsletter? Forward them the subscribe link here.
I’ve always felt a little conflicted about the idea of being an “activist.” And in the post-2020 landscape, this unease has only deepened. Too often, activism feels like it means pledging unwavering allegiance to a cause or worldview, without much room for nuance, complexity, or messiness. These days, it also means doing that in increasingly public and highly-documented ways, about all kinds of issues at once. One misstep or ill-timed Tweet, and you might find you’re no longer the right kind of activist anymore.
However recently, I read a piece in the Observer about a group of activists working on a cause that was literally at the end of my road: the UK’s wildly outdated sewage system, which allows privatized utility companies to dump literal shit into the ocean on a regular basis when the treatment systems become overloaded by storms. This practice is totally legal, and has been happening in waterways all over the country for years with little oversight or transparency. However in the last 12 months or so, it has come to national attention — and become a rare cause that pisses off hardline Brexiteers and lefty wild swimmers alike.
Last summer — my second living in the English seaside town of Margate — there were days and weeks where we weren’t allowed to swim in the sea due to these sewage dumps. It was deeply upsetting to me and so many others. After all, there are so many things about day-to-day life that are deeply depressing and potentially problematic — and now you’re gonna tell me that swimming in the sea is one of those things too?
Sally Burtt-Jones is one of a number of people who decided to do something about it. A sustainability consultant, year-round sea swimmer, and now a self-described “sewage geek,” Sally has been using her professional background in media, strategy, and communications to marshal an impressive campaign against Southern Water, the utility company to which I begrudgingly pay my water bill each month.
The effort she is a part of is called Save Our Seas Whitstable (SOS Whitstable), and I really encourage you to read the full backstory of their campaign in the Observer. It’s genuinely refreshing and inspiring.
Reading about Sally and her team’s work, I was struck by how different the kind of activism they are doing is. It’s granular, hyper-local, has defined outcomes, and is focused on people and land that people like Sally are in contact with every day. The fact that it became of national importance and attention seemed more an artifact of its authenticity and tenacity, rather than the result some highly orchestrated viral social media strategy.
Sally and I spoke about her activism work, the art of picking one thing rather than trying to fix everything, and how tiring it is to, as she put it, “exist as a sensitive soul in this world." Our conversation convinced me that I can perhaps find a place for activism in my own life too. I hope it will do the same for you.
Rosie: I’m interested in that moment where you go from just thinking “this is an issue that’s horrifying and angers/saddens me,” to “this is an issue I’m going to do something about.” Anyone who is awake these days feels totally overwhelmed by all the things to be outraged by, but so few people make the jump to pick one thing and do something about it. So what was happening in that group where ten or so of you with busy lives and jobs and families made that decision to take action?
Sally: I think as with most things in life, the motivation was emotional. It became an injustice, it became something that was making us angry, but also it was stopping us from doing something that brought us a lot of joy.
The sea is a leveler, and just encompassing your body in water is such a natural, wonderful thing to do. The fact that these corporate guys in horrible suits were able to … inform and change the way that we were living our lives and negatively affect the lives the local residents … we just all felt this isn’t good enough.
R: I wonder whether you identify with the term activist. That’s obviously how you were framed in that Observer piece, but I find that word has quite a lot of baggage now.
S: I agree it’s an interesting word. We’ve organized a protest, we’ve organized a petition. So in terms of making things difficult for big corporations and standing up to people, then yeah we’re totally doing activism.
But it has become quite extreme, and I wouldn’t say we’re at the extreme end of it. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved and I’m proud to use that word, but I agree with you, I think it’s become somewhat associated with extremism rather than the kind of things that we have the time and energy to do as ten people with full time jobs who are doing this in our spare time.
R: I think maybe there is something about picking an issue that’s super local that helps prevent that from becoming too extreme. You’re not campaigning for the entire concept of climate change or racial injustice or gender equality as a whole — that’s too big. You’re working on something you can see the effects of every day, and you know the people it affects.
S: It’s tangible. We’ve had to come at it from ground up and top down. Sometimes that can be a bit of a struggle. From the ground up it’s things like getting 1000 people along to a protest or being available for stuff that comes up, like if the BBC wants to talk to us. That takes quite a lot of energy. I care very very deeply about the things I get involved with. If I’m going to put effort into something I want to see change happen. But every time something good happens it’s a burst of energy to use for the next thing
We’ve had two objectives from the beginning. One is: How can we help people understand when it’s safe to swim. Because we don’t know, Southern Water doesn’t know, nobody knows what sewage is being released and when, how diluted it is, how quickly it’s going to move through the tides. And then the long term goal is: How we can stop the shit being released into the sea. How can we stop this practice from happening because it’s been part of the way that these treatment plants have worked since they were built.
R: It’s striking that you’ve picked this hyper-local issue, but because of the media coverage, it’s become national. I can’t really think of another issue in Britain right now that everyone, left and right, is pissed off in the same way about.
S: Because water is a utility, like gas and electricity prices — it affects everyone. It’s a utility that gets privatized, which means the government has no control over it anymore and someone somewhere is making a lot of money out of people’s discomfort. It’s not okay. We’ve always said from the beginning that even a little kid can understand that no one wants to swim in shit.
R: Being a journalist gave me the belief that it’s rarely the case that there are evil people sitting in a room scheming how to do awful things and make money from it or get away with it. It’s more often the case that the awful things in the world are caused by incremental decisions, calcified systems, just sheer inertia. And then people who are in those systems are too busy or disempowered or disillusioned to change it.
And yet activism post-2020 often frames it as: “You are an evil fill-in-the-blank and you act intentionally knowing every sinister impact of your actions.” It’s too simplistic, and it misunderstands how evil actually functions in the world. But my definition of evil also means it’s really hard to change things. You can’t just slay the bad guy, because the bad guy is everywhere.
S: Yeah, we need system change. It’s not about Southern Water fixing its operations at one location, it’s about the fact that the government has privatized water as a utility and then allowed private corporations to not invest in infrastructure during a time of huge population growth and climate change. It feels logical to me that at some point — and maybe this is incremental rather than an evil plan — the infrastructure is probably going to implode. It’s 70 years old. So at the point at which it implodes the company goes bust and they can’t afford to fix it. And then they take all the money that’s in the holding company in the Cayman Islands and the taxpayer pays the bill. Argh!
R: Right, so then here’s the big question, knowing that you’re ultimately asking for systems change, and that in all these cases you’re essentially asking for capitalism to stop making shareholder value the only metric of success … How do you not give up? How do you stay motivated when that task is so much bigger than one issue?
S: One of the things I was concerned about when the environment bill went through in October/November was that the conversation would stop. And it definitely hasn’t. It’s still so high on everyone’s agenda, it’s still in the media, so for me that’s a massive win. Because without that it would feel scrabbling around a bit.
It was always a plan of ours to start local and go national. To stay involved, to stay motivated, you do need to see things change but they don’t have to be total victories. Some examples for us have been the article in the Observer, getting mentioned in the House of Lords, being interviewed by the BBC. All these things help us see collectively that we’re making things happen.
R: I’ve realized from the conversations in this newsletter that what I’m looking for these days, above all else. is a meaningful life. It doesn’t mean that life is easy, it doesn’t mean that everything is perfect and fixed and better. Rather, it’s a way of moving through the world where in spite of all the stuff that’s bad — in spite of all the shit — you’re still able to feel connected to things and feel like you have purpose.
For example, even though in our lifetime we’re not going to see the climate emergency solved, that doesn’t mean we should spend the rest of our lives not engaging with it at all. So I wonder if there is a spiritual or philosophical element to why you’re doing this work? Is it a way to engage with the world that makes sense to you right now?
S: I moved to Whitstable seven years ago as an alternative to corporate life in London. I’d done this workshop where I was asked to write down all of your favorite emotions, in other words how you like to feel. My favorite three were safety, excitement, and freedom. I realized that all of the things that make me feel like that — I wasn’t doing any of them in my life.
So freedom for example, I find huge inspiration and huge joy from traveling alone. And part of that is being a sensitive soul in a world full of people who aren’t. When I experience joy, I experience it on a very deep level and sometimes being alone in really beautiful places actually really nourishes me because I can have that experience without worrying if another person doesn’t feel the same way. But then on the flip-side of that is a darkness, right? If you have the privilege to experience such deep emotional joy then often it comes with a darkness. When I feel down, I feel really down.
So I realized after this workshop that navigating through a world like that without a sense of purpose meant I’m not taking care of myself. I’m not feeding my soul with what I need.
R: I think you’re a good example of a person who has found meaning by picking one thing they can make a difference on, and then just going for it. Do you have any advice for someone who is trying to find their thing, or trying to pick their one thing out of the 20 issues they care about?
S: You’re talking to a really sensitive empath here, so I would always come back to having an emotional connection to something. Trying to do something good in the world to maybe cover up or try to solve a problem with your own internal purpose might not give you the same rewards as coming to a place where you feel like you’re nourishing and rewarding your soul anyway.
I don’t manage to practice this all the time, but moving here, having that connection with the sea, moving into a career in sustainability, and building a life around what I need to feel good — and then fighting for a cause which is so directly relevant to that has been a journey, but it’s a been a logical one for me. So I would say to people to find the cause that they connect with on an emotional level and not worry about trying to solve the big problem.
Start with incremental steps, be passionate about it, talk to people about it, take ideas from other people who maybe don’t have as much time to work on it as you but can still feel your passion. There’s an energy exchange that happens there that is meaningful.
To conclude, I remember doing a creativity workshop years ago and we were talking about how to decide on the final creative idea and one piece of advice which I’ve never forgotten is: Move towards the things that give you energy.
You can follow Sally on social media at @Salburttjones and SOS Whitstable’s work at @SOSWhitstable on Twitter and Instagram. And you can sign their petition here.
Persnickety readers may have noticed this month’s Q&A edition is a week late. My apologies. I really try to avoid that happening, but life, as they say, happens. I’ll be in your inbox again next Friday to get back on the regular schedule.
Thank you Rosie!