I’ve thought a lot about how either/or thinking reinforces hierarchies of oppression. As Tema Okun recounts in The Emperor Has no Clothes, “Inherent in western culture is the very act of defining ‘us’ in ways that claim superiority over an opposite and increasingly threatening ‘them.’”
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Last Friday, I had the privilege of facilitating Alta Starr’s Funder Briefing on New Paradigms in Organizing for Social Transformation. It was a rich event. Organizers, funders and capacity builders from across the nation came together to explore their work at the intersection of personal transformation and systemic change. The field is definitely shifting! We are seeing progress and experimentation towards a more holistic approach to the quest for social justice.
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Last week, colleagues Andrea Nagel, Jen Willsea and I facilitated the workshop, Fundamentals of Facilitation for Racial Justice Work for staff at the Boston Public Health Commission. One of the most powerful parts of the workshop was an exercise where participants had to listen to a view with which they disagreed without opposing, fixing or leading the speaker to another viewpoint. Challenging, to say the least! It raised a great question about not just how, but when to listen without attempting to shift anything. Like many of the workshop participants, I struggle with this practice, particularly when the speaker’s views fly in the face of realities I see and history I know, or when the very act of listening seems to give comfort to views that diminish my humanity. The struggle brought me back to a classic essay, “The Art of Listening,” by feminist author Brenda Ueland.
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Talent thrives within diverse ecosystems. The straightforward and linear has given way to the complex and emergent. This is the nature of evolution. So it’s no longer about putting two and two together but about noticing patterns – it’s about sensing our way into the web of connection.
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I too, sing America
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed –
I, too, am America.
~Langston Hughes
I write this on a train to New York City, after a whirlwind half-weekend in the nation’s capital a/k/a Chocolate City. My time spent in DC is always edifying — good for my soul. Monday, I attended the opening day of what I expect will be a history making event – the Take Back the American Dream Conference 2011, sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future and the Institute for America’s Future. Read More
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Today I’ll once again have to turn to Kevin Kelly, our contemporary sage of the technium. His recent blog post “Why the Impossible Happens More Often” is a must read and it is extensively quoted below. For a long time I have been trying to make the point that what is happening in the web is not just about social media and new technology – it is about us, and how we are with each other.
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Photo by: December005
I am part of a community of practice organized around networks and decentralized organizing. Some of us have been pondering the relationship between scale and relationship. We want to nurture movements that can bring social transformation to scale, and we know that authentic relationships are at the heart of real transformation.
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Our first son was born on Saturday, he came two months early and he is AMAZING. Clearly I am gushing with joy, excitement and love! I have spent very little time with our baby (who hasn’t yet told us his name), but I am already enraptured by him – bonded, mightily connected. And isn’t that so much of what we talk about here on the IISC Blog? Love, connection – life, evolution. Read More
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Picture was taken by Dmitri Markine. Check out this amazing portfolio!
In case you missed my earlier posts in this series, I am raising a series of questions about power and privilege in social change work at the invitation of the “Walk the Talk” zine/book project. Prior questions included:
Today I also want to pose two related questions.
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“Our ability to live in reality is essential.
But that takes some training.”
-Robert Fritz
If you have followed this blog in the past week and a half, you know that the IISC staff completed an intense and valuable retreat last week, focused on issues of power and privilege as they manifest in our organization and connect to the ways that we show up and are perceived in the world beyond our walls. Last time I blogged about this event, I mentioned my take-away about the challenge and importance of embracing paradox. With a week’s worth of time now to reflect, I am happy to report that the conversation continues internally among staff, and I for one am seeing movement. There is plenty of dialogue about how to keep the momentum going, to maintain and firm up our hold on the individual and collective truths we accessed last week.
It turns out that one commonly shared insight about staying on track was, drum roll please . . . Read More
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Photo by: i-loot-i
I write from vacation in Puerto Rico, my place of origin. I am amazed by the fact that I left when I was 12 but the place still feels like home – in a very deep way. I’m on vacation after facilitating a retreat for the Barr Fellows Class of 2009 in Vieques, PR. It was a phenomenal experience, certainly for me but most importantly for the Fellows.
I have witnessed the significant deepening of relationships among these fellows since they first came together as a cohort during on our learning journey to Brazil in June of 2009. We have had a number of retreats and events since, some as a class, some with the larger network of Barr Fellows. At this mid-way point through their three-year process (though their being part of the network has no formal end), it becomes absolutely moving to witness powerful shifts towards greater possibility. Read More
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|Photo by Keith Williamson|http://www.flickr.com/photos/elwillo/5440401913|
The more I do our collaborative consulting work here at IISC, the more interested I become in the role of the convenor in complex multi-stakeholder change efforts. This role, typically held in our work by a funder or someone else with convening power (local/state government, school district, a well-connected community-based agency) has much to say about the success and nature of a social change effort, and yet from my perspective remains under-appreciated and/or poorly misunderstood. Over the next few months I’ll spend some time in this space reflecting on what we and others are learning about this critical role and soliciting your thoughts, reactions, and experiences.
But first, what does it mean to convene? In our practice, convening is one of a few central leadership functions in collaborative and networked approaches to change. Read More
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