Shake the Cage Posted on January 16, 2008 Challenging the system may be the way to instigate community change, states Darrell P. Wheeler (bio).

If you're going to really be a change agent, if you don't like the way the data are emerging today, then you have to rethink what we've been doing. And sometimes, that really shakes the cages, and you have to be willing to sit with that a little while because the system is in place to sustain the system, not necessarily to produce change for community. And that's a dilemma.

So I think in doing this kind of work, we have to, I think one of the great challenges is balancing again. It's always coming back to this balancing my desire to move forward and my understanding of the incremental process of change that policy and systems go through.

And making critical decisions about how I'm going to contribute to the incremental change, when in fact I want cataclysmic change. I need change, big change, and that's probably not going to happen. And how do I find ways to make small movements and still feel true to self?

So I think those are really big challenges in doing this work, whether it's with LGTB, African-American issues, HIV. But those are challenges because you know in your face that the walls are there. But challenging the walls actually means challenging the structures that put the walls there.

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