We have just heard that the Grand Jury did not indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown. The brilliant and courageous young people of Ferguson know that justice has not been served. The relentless profiling, criminalization, harassment and killing of young people of color is a an old an ongoing crisis in this country. It must stop.
Ellen Gurzinsky posted this on facebook this week (in honor of International Women’s Day).? Rather than adding my own words, I thought I’d pass it along here — a beautiful piece by Maya Angelou.? In the spirit of Melinda’s recent posts of wonderful poetry, here’s another gem. Really – what more is there to say?
A very interesting thing has been going on in the Development Community. They’re getting it wrong. And while the norm is to hide failures away out of fear and embarrassment – and concern about funding being affected, they’re doing something different. A group of people working in development have just started a new website, called “Admitting Failure” – sharing their failures and trying to build transparency, collaboration and innovation into the development sector. They’re building a shared resource, saying that “the only ‘bad’ failure is one that’s repeated.” Take a look!
|Photo by RandomChu|http://www.flickr.com/photos/randomchu/251646898/sizes/m/|
Just yesterday in a meeting of the Senior Associates at the Interaction Institute for Social Change, Gibrán Rivera made a comment about the ways in which being too fixed with an identity prevent us from getting to a place of liberation. I’ve heard him talk about this before – and am challenged by it every time he says it.
This is our last week in the Cambridge office – as of Monday, we’ll have moved to South Boston, in the Seaport area. Most of the IISC staff have been driving to work over the years we’ve been in Cambridge (with a few taking the bus or riding bikes). Once we’re in our new office, we’ll be switching to most of us on public transportation or on bikes. It’s good news for the planet! I’m looking forward to shrinking my carbon footprint. Thought you might enjoy this video!
|Photo by IronRodArt|http://www.flickr.com/photos/ironrodart/4290027967/sizes/o/|
This is a re-post of a post from last summer, just as I returned from a sabbatical – seemed appropriate in the beginning of the lazy days of August… in hopes that we will all have some Lazy Days …
About ten years ago, I spent three weeks at Plum Village, a Buddhist monastery in Southern France. The time there was primarily spent in silence – with long periods of sitting meditation, walking meditation, and even working meditation. (No surprise, I struggled with over-working during working meditation!) One of the practices at Plum Village is that each week, everyone takes a “Lazy Day”.
|Photo by CatDancing|http://www.flickr.com/photos/catdancing/2442760677/sizes/m/|
Yesterday, Steve Waddell wrote an excellent post on the Networking Action blog about initiating a network. In it, he talks about four lessons he’s learned in starting a network:
Be passion-driven and work-focused
Think “community-development” not “governance structure”
|Photo by CatDancing|http://www.flickr.com/photos/catdancing/2442760677/sizes/m/|
Yesterday, Steve Waddell wrote an excellent post on the Networking Action blog about initiating a network. In it, he talks about four lessons he’s learned in starting a network:
Be passion-driven and work-focused
Think “community-development” not “governance structure”
|World of Oddy|http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldofoddy/146446352/sizes/s/|
I wanted to share this link to a short discussion by Pema Chödrön about the importance of staying with the hard stuff – not the story we create about a situation, but the underlying feeling itself – to create change. This follows along with previous posts I’ve made about the importance of “staying” – with conflict, in situations of privilege. The message being the same – the importance of learning to stay! And so I wonder how this applies to organizations and movements. I hear it this way – rather than trying to fix a situation too quickly, stay with it, learn about it, learn to live with the tension while we look for ways to create change. What do you think?
|Photo by Lee Adcock|http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeadc/2821894989/sizes/m/|
A few of us at IISC have been talking recently about network governance – trying to gather what we’ve learned about what kinds of governance structures have worked with networks. It’s sparked a lot of questions – and I had the great fortune of meeting with the amazing Jessica Lipnack recently to ask her advice about what she would suggest. For those who don’t know Jessica, she and her husband Jeff Stamps have been working with and studying networks for over 30 years and have literally written the book (actually the BOOKS) on networks and working with virtual teams over these many years.
|Photo by hangdog|http://www.flickr.com/photos/hangdog/23172852/sizes/m/|
A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post about the constructive engagement of conflict – called Stay! Stay! Stay! It was some thinking sparked by reading the beginning of Bernie Mayer‘s new book “Staying with Conflict“. I’ve been reading more of that book this week – and thinking as well about the work IISC is doing to become an anti-racist, anti-oppression, pro-liberation organization. (And yes, we do know that’s a mouthful!)
|Photo by eqqman|http://www.flickr.com/photos/eqqman/17854302/sizes/m/|
Based on the recent conversation we’ve been having here, I thought I’d re-post from last April.
For a while, I’ve been fairly unsuccessfully trying to create a space in my apartment that works both for my heart and for my head. My meditation cushion is there as well as my altar and poetry and spiritual books. It also has my desk, computer and bookshelves overstuffed with books and journals about power, white privilege, race, class, genocide, conflict and social issues. If I’m honest, it’s the most chaotic room in my apartment.