“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify!
I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen …
and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Image by Bill Smith, shared under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.
Earlier this week I posted on our blog a piece drawing from lessons learned in over a dozen years of supporting Food Solutions New England to launch and evolve as a network. These lessons were also drawn from other collaborative networks we have supported over the years at IISC, and fed forward into our work with FSNE, not as a way of forcing fit, but seeing if the system/network reacted favorably.
A colleague and collaborator from outside of IISC read the post and fed it to into an AI interface and asked about the top three take-aways (the original post has a list of 25 developmental milestones and lessons). That generated a very interesting summary, which I continued to play with a bit. Collaborating in this way has yielded the following three core elements for long-term collaborative and networked success in our experience, without declaring final victory (which is surely a bit of fiction).
1. **Foster a Culture of Collaboration and Shared Vision/Values**: The importance of working together as a collective rather than as isolated entities underscores the need for a unifying vision and values. The vision and values should bridge real and perceived differences, creating a sense of belonging and purpose across diverse groups. Co-creating a guiding vision and values not only aligns efforts but also amplifies impact through collective action. Engaging in storytelling and shared experiences, like breaking bread together, further solidifies shared vision and values by humanizing the collaboration, making it more than just a professional undertaking. This approach encourages a deeper understanding and appreciation of one other, fostering a more cohesive and inclusive network.
2. **Build and Maintain a Robust, Trust-Based Network**: The call to build networks that are vertical, horizontal, and diagonal emphasizes the importance of creating spaces where trust and accountability can become the foundation. This involves not only bonding within similar groups but also bridging across different ones, ensuring a rich tapestry of connections that are resilient and creative over time. These networks are strengthened by dedicated support for convening, coordination, and facilitation, ensuring that collaboration is effective. Enrolling network weavers or ambassadors to keep the network vibrant and inclusive is crucial through ongoing outreach.
3. **Commit to Continuous Learning, Equity, and Systemic Saluto-genesis**: Recognizing and addressing social inequities within the system is vital for achieving a fair and sustainable future. This involves a commitment to racial and other forms of equity, both broadly and deeply. Leveraging “network effects” for spreading learning, understanding the persistence of dominant systems/power structures, and identifying leverage areas for “collective impact” are critical steps towards systemic saluto-genesis (ongoing health-promotion for all “participants” in the system and the system as a whole). This also highlights the need for integrated policies that reflect the network’s core vision and values, making policy along with financial and other resources more equitably available and relevant to people. It also encourages embracing complexity while striving for simplicity in tools and approaches, preparing for disruptions, being trauma-informed, well-being oriented and dedicated to accessibility.
Image by Kevin Dooley, used under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.
As mentioned in a previous post (see “A Network Leadership Institute Goes Virtual With an Appeal to the Senses”), this summer, the core convening team of Food Solutions New England was able to attend a number of different trainings to heighten the team’s awareness and facility around issues of trauma and racialized trauma. This was made possible through the generosity and understanding of the Angell Foundation, which has supported FSNE in offering the Network Leadership Institute since 2016. Last year, in light of COVID, the calls for reckoning and repair, and so much uncertainty, along with the very place-based nature of the Institute to that point, we elected not to jump into the virtual fray. Instead we took a step back, and had some deeper conversations about the future of the NLI, what we had learned over the past years, how we wanted to evolve the offering, and what new capacities we needed as a team and broader network.
Now we are poised to offer the 5th Institute over the next six months (September 2021-February 2022), anchored in 6 day-long virtual sessions, complete with many of the same components we have had in the past: (1) community and relationship building, (2) grounding in the history and present work of the Food Solutions New England Network, (3) meeting and hearing from other food system leaders and change agents in our region, (4) sharing practices to cultivate personal and collective resilience, and (5) developing deeper collaborative and networked capacity to realize justice, equity, sustainability, and democracy in our regional food system. In addition to these six sessions, we will offer a number of optional inter-session gatherings, in the early evening, with either a cooking demo, relevant movie (such as Gather and Homecoming), or special speaker.
We enter into this year’s offering knowing that the baseline for our work is connection and care. And thanks to Jerrilyn Dixson and team at Progressive Therapy, LLC out of Jackson, MS, Cultural Somatics Institute, Class Action and Quabbin Mediation, we have more enhanced sensibilities related our collective work for equity and well-being. What appears below are some of the lessons that we are bringing to this year’s Institute, and all the on-line gathering work of FSNE.
3 Realms of ACEs (sources of child trauma)
Important overall learnings and take-aways…
Class is not just wealth; class is about a combination of resources + culture (status/power/education, etc.)
Class can be a driver for anxiety, stress, comparison, confusion, shame, inner resistance …
The levels of classism can mirror and connect to the levels of racism (internalized, interpersonal, institutional and structural).
Harm-doing can take many different forms, including: racism, sexism, misgendering, aggression, unpaid labor, miscommunication, exploitation, abuse …
At least 70% of people have had at least 1 traumatic experience; thus, trauma is the norm, not the anomaly
6 core principles of trauma informed care: safety, trustworthiness and transparency; peer support and mutual help; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice and choice; attention to cultural, historical and gender issues
“Trauma happens when people feel disconnected,” not seen, heard or valued.
Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard and values and when they give and receive without judgment.
Challenging behaviors are almost always about creating connection and/or safety, even if that doesn’t seem to be what’s going on to the outside observer of the behavior
The concept of “protest behaviors” — these are things people do to get what they need to feel connected, when not getting their needs met. These show up in all different kinds of ways — be on the lookout.
Fight/flight/freeze/fawn reactions — protest behaviors vary based on which one of these reactions you are wired for — learn to recognize and respond accordingly.
“People who experienced trauma often do not do well with [unexpected] change.”
“Overwhelm can look like rage.”
Harm doers can be trying to meet basic needs, but not in ways that are not helpful.
Inhibitors of addressing harm-doing can include fear, confusion, diffusion of responsibility and danger.
Not intervening in harm-doing can engender vicious cycles of disengagement and disregard. Being an “active bystander” can, on the other hand, create virtuous cycles of care and connection.
Basic needs include feeling safe and secure, and having control over what’s important to us. There is little chance of learning if these aren’t being met.
“Helping one person might not change the world, but it could change the world for one person.”
Quabbin Mediation
Practices to consider …
Be aware of language used and how it might help people connect or lead to disconnection =on the basis of class and other aspects of their identity.
At the beginning of a session, invite people to come up with an image that helps them to feel connection and belonging, to which they can return.
Consider integrating “morning risers” into group sessions that invite people (optionally) to do mindful box breathing, shoulder rolls, and/or head rolls.
Ask what participants already associate with/know about a particular topic before presenting material as a way to encourage self-reflection and openness to material.
Create opportunities for people to tell their stories, and more about what is important to them, including their values .
Invite people to name themselves (including on Zoom) and add identifiers (such as pronouns) that are meaningful to them.
Make sure to offer assistance with technology and do not assume, or convey the assumption, that everyone is comfortable with any given technology or technique.
Build community agreements collaboratively and by consensus.
Ask people to name any accessibility needs, discomforts and triggers (this could be done in a survey and/or during group activity).
Create safe and soothing space (white noise to drown out distracting noise or to let people know that what they are sharing is not carrying beyond the room, soft/relaxing music, natural imagery, calming scents)
Be aware of your own triggers as a trainer/facilitator/coach – realize it isn’t the person, it is the action andthe interaction. Recognize, take a break. Have a code between facilitators for when one of us is triggered and needs to step out to re-regulate.
Consider having a “3rd party” (not one of the facilitators) that a participant can talk toif there is a perception that the challenge lies with the facilitation approach.
Use a grounding/re-connecting exercise or opportunity after a challenging moment or episode of disconnection in a group (breathing, movement, shaking, tapping, etc.).
Use a scale of 1-10 for mood check/how people are entering or leaving space. Use a scale of 1-10 on how connected you as facilitator feel to [the group or the topic we are working on today.
Invite people to make themselves feel comfortable as participants (bring fidget toys, food, water, something that makes them feel at home).
Pay attention to the choices of colors, images, etc, in the slides that you use.
Create some predictability and transparency by sharing goals and the agenda of a session in advance, along with timeframes, roles, expectations and any supplies/materials needed.
Stay online 15-30 minutes after a session for anyone who would like to talk more.
Agree on a hand gesture signal that allows people to take space as needed (i.e. when they want to leave the room to use restroom or take an unscheduled break).
Consider structuring in identity-based caucuses. Give them topics and structure. Use when needed or desired.
Use entry passwords, and make sure everyone in the group can get easy access to them, for virtual settings, ensuring that all feel it is literally a safe space
Apprise guest speakers of group agreements, before they show up and brief them on the vibe/pet peeves. Let the group know this is being done to demonstrate you value the trust-based environment you are trying to create.
Have mental-emotional-spiritual health and support resources information available.
Should things get volatile with someone who is triggered, reflect back (name the behavior), create space for them to be heard, do not take it personally and check your privilege …
Be ready to recognize if an individual is not ready for the group or program (and vice versa) after employing all of these practices. No one person is bigger than the mission/goal. Have procedures in place for non-compliance that maintain the dignity of all.
Have a “consent/agreement” about actions that will be taken should challenges arise, including the possibility of determining the program is not the right fit for participant. “In the event of a conflict or a feeling of harm being done, here are [2-3] ways to start the process of addressing or resolving the issue. If, even after these efforts, the challenges remain, we may collectively decide that this program is not a good fit for your needs….”
Photo by Denise Cross, used under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.
“Non-violence is the constant awareness of the dignity and humanity of oneself and others. Non-violence is a courageous acceptance of active love and goodwill as the instrument with which to overcome evil and transform both oneself and others.”
Wally Nelson, African American civil rights and peace activist (1909-2002)
Image from Monica Secas, used under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.
“True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”
Image by Nicolos Raymond, “Vibrant Hot Air Balloons,” used under conditions of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.
Over the past several years we at IISC have had to opportunity to work with colleagues to go deep over a relatively short period of time (2-3 years) with a few organizations facilitating internal culture change for race equity and inclusion. The intensity of this work has offered up opportunity and a number of important lessons, perhaps first and foremost that it is critical to have in place an ecosystem of support and resources to do this work for everyone involved, facilitators included.
IISC President Kelly Bates wrote wisely in a blog post that the work for racial equity is about undoing as much as it is about doing. We do not simply build new culture or behavior on top of old, especially in situations that are characterized by oppression. Some things must be released, and this letting go does not come easy.
There is power and identity and comfort and resources of various kinds invested in the status quo, including in chronic busyness that does not make space for the work or for much of substance to happen. In some cases, there is a preference for existing discomfort that is familiar and that for some is better than uncertainty and instability (the devil you know). But this is exactly what this work calls for – stepping boldly, and together, into the unknown and unknowing and being open to changing who we think we are, how we relate to ourselves and one another.
This can get quite fraught, opening up hard feelings, mistrust, suspicion and trauma. The diagram above from DismantlingRacism.org highlights the “liminal” space in racial equity processes that groups enter when they move beyond the familiar, including “familiar dysfunction,” to unfamiliar dysfunction. This phase is described in the following way:
The stage of “not knowing,” [is] a place where many experience frustration and/or fear. Many if not most people want the process to offer clarity and quick fixes; when the process does not, both POC and white people give into the tendency to identify people and actions as “right” or “wrong.” Some people in the organization move into positions of high righteousness, believing that race equity is based in “one right way” of doing things; energy goes into identifying who or what is “right” and who or what is “wrong.” People can feel very unsettled because this righteous judgment can either lead to significant self-doubt and/or a desire for the organization to address personal ego needs. At the same time, in the middle of this “not knowing,” relationships may begin to subtly shift as some individuals within the organization work to negotiate conflict with heightened personal awareness and increased accountability to the mission. In addition, the organization as a whole begins to recognize ways in which racism is tending to reproduce itself and attempts are being made to address those.
SOURCE: “Racial Equity Stages” from DismantlingRacism.org
Here, while ideally we would hope to be able to lean on one another, it is the reality that other supports are going to be necessary, and beyond what external change facilitators and coaches are able to provide. On the way to achieving more relational trust with and commitment to one another, there are a variety of handrails that can be helpful.
For one of our engagements, my colleague Jen Willsea put together the diagram below to sketch out some of the systemic supports that can be useful for organizations going through race equity change work.
A few notes about what appears in the diagram:
Contemplative and embodiment practices can be done alone or in groups and include things like meditation, prayer, general somatics, and focusing. This Self-Care Wheel, which I learned about from my colleague and IISC Racial Equity and Training Practice Lead, Aba Taylor, has many great suggestions of practices that can contribute to well-being. Another good resource is the Tree of Contemplative Practices from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.
There are many rich places to find resources for learning. Consider Racial Equity Tools as a place to start. Also consider the Healing Justice podcast and community. The Perception Institute offers cutting edge research on the science of implicit bias, racial anxiety and stereotype and identity threat. In addition, the Food Solutions New England 21 Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge website has a lengthy resource list.
Mental health professionals may or may not have experience around race-based trauma, racial identify formation, internalized superiority and inferiority, etc. It is good to do your homework around this.
Human resource professionals can be key to providing support especially when they are trained in dealing with racism and white supremacy. A helpful resource on this front is this guide from RoadMap.
The board of directors of an organization is an important lever for change and support, provided it has an unwavering commitment to racial equity, ideally is collectively trained in the history/shared language/key concepts around race and racism, and has people who bring some relevant lived experience and expertise around healing, organizational change and political action.
There are more and more resources that address the reality of trauma and intergenerational transmission of suffering that results from racism and white supremacy. Consider books such as Trauma Stewardshipand My Grandmother’s Hands.
For more political and historical education, consider books such as Stamped from the Beginning, White Rage, Under the Affluence, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, Waking Up White, The New Jim Crow, The Fire Next Time, White Fragility, Who We Be; and videos such as Race: The Power of Illusion, Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity.
For more on the what, why and how of racial affinity groupsand caucuses, check out the resources on this page.
Thanks to the guidance of Melinda Weekes-Laidlow and inspiration of Christine Ortiz, prototype teams are increasingly a feature of our work with organizations doing race equity and inclusion culture change work. What this looks like is that departmental and other cross-functional teams each create a small testable and scalable experiment at strategic “choice points” to address internalized and institutional racism and white supremacy. When well-facilitated and guided, these are powerful engines of learning and relational trust-building. We are are happy to share more about our experience with these teams, how they operate and what they produce.
Race equity design, planning and implementation teams are a feature of the work we do around culture change in organizations and networks. These teams are ideally diverse (with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, seniority/tenure, age, function … ), process-savvy and invested in the long-term success of this work. Again, we are happy to share more about these vital teams.
And we certainly welcome additions! What have you found to be helpful, if not crucial, to the work of race equity culture change?
“I need love Not some sentimental prison I need god Not the political church I need fire To melt the frozen sea inside me I need love.”
– Sam Phillips
Image by Luke, Ma, “Love by Nature,” shared under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.
I started this year with a post focused on love, and this idea that 2018 would be the year of love. This thinking wasn’t offered through rose-colored glasses, but from a shared sense and conviction that love would be required to see the year through. And not just any kind of love. In that original post there were a few definitions and quotes that we have been playing with at IISC, including these:
“All awakening to love is spiritual awakening… All the great social movements for freedom and justice in our society have promoted a love ethic.”
– bell hooks
“Justice is what love looks like in public.”
– Cornel West
“To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make him [sic] an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.”
– William Sloane Coffin
“Love is seeing the other as a legitimate other.”
– Humberto Maturana
“The ultimate act of love is allowing ourselves and others to be complex.”
On April 22nd, the fourth annual 21 Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge wrapped up. This project with Food Solutions New England was originally conceived as a “network innovation” to spread and deepen the conversation about and commitment around addressing race and racism in food and related systems. This year the organizing team sought to go deeper, noting how much the national conversation has evolved in the past year. And we were heartened by the numbers (over 3,000 people from all 50 states and parts of Canada signed up) and by the quality of the conversation on-line and in different in-person venues where we met people who were participating. Certainly no one is under the illusion that the Challenge is enough, but we have heard that it is changing the way many see their work in food systems. Below you will find some of what was generously offered on-line in response to the daily email prompts and associated resources (readings, videos, audio clips).
History of Race and Racism in the Food System: What is the history you hold in your head (and heart and body) about our current food systems?
“In my work at a non profit in the ‘good food’ movement, we constantly use language like ‘fix the broken food system.’ Reading these pieces on the historical underpinnings of racism in our food system illuminated for me just how much that statement (almost a throw away now) is situated within a racial caste system. To presume that ‘we’ must ‘fix’ a system ignores (by not naming) the racism present in that system. It lumps the goals of racial and food justice in with other, non-racialized issues (like soil health) also plaguing our current system, thereby continuing to perpetuate injustice through silence.”
“The consistent glorification of a food system, broken or fixed, imagined or real, that has systematically ignored the people that make it function, throughout the past and yet still in the present, is something I think I unknowingly participate in. Will naming this, calling it out, help us to change the structural racism that fuels this reality? How? I hope that by learning, studying, reflecting, and communicating that this group can indeed be somehow change-making, but it’s challenging to see a positive horizon when the change to be had is so large and primarily resides in legal, political and social institutions and structures. Forgive me for being still inside a state of feeling overwhelmed.”
The Colonization of Indigenous Land Rights and Food Ways: How does colonization continue to exist in our food systems and how can you support decolonization and celebrate indigenous rights and food ways?
“I just finished listening to The True History & Foods of Thanksgiving. My immediate reaction is shock and shame. I accepted Thanksgiving as an American celebration without ever wondering about its history. The podcast is a great conversation that educated me about how interwoven food, land, location, spirituality and culture are for some traditions within Native Americans. I wish we treated our lands and environment with the same care that many people were able to do before they were colonized.”
“In my state, treaties still continue to be broken with Native American communities, the most recent agreement being broken in 2015. State programs aimed to “help” are rooted in white supremacist ideologies. I think of Audrey Lorde when she declared, “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.” Read More
Last week I had the privilege of co-leading a three day Facilitative Leadership for Social Change training for a group of health equity advocates in Springfield, Massachusetts. It had been a while since I had done a training of that length, and it was a nice opportunity to not only cover more material, but to deepen the conversation and practice. Along the way there were many good questions about what to do around various challenges when one is co-leading a collaborative change effort. And a common response was, “It depends.”
Every group is different, every circumstance is different, and while it might make sense to take some cues from what has been successful in other situations, the caution is not to assume that it will work, or work in the same way, in other situations. This is one reason that I personally do not like the phrase “best practice” when talking about collaborative and facilitative change work. Given the complexity of people and social systems, I find it more helpful to think about “promising practices.”
That said, a promising practice that came up time and time again in our three day training, was the practice or practicing, of ongoing devotion to muscle-building in leadership skills such as process design, facilitation, coaching (leading with listening and inquiry), systems thinking, visioning/imagining, mutual learning and collaborative decision-making/governance. And in undertaking such practice, we at IISC would suggest this is not about achieving perfection. The humbling and exciting thing about collaborative leadership, in my humble opinion, is that it is a life-long learning pursuit and an endless opportunity to deepen understanding of ourselves, others and living systems. For this reason, one of my mantras is:
Practice for presence, not for perfection.
That is, practice can help practitioners get beyond being caught up in simply “learning the scales” of collaborative leadership, in trying to get the skills “right.” Practice at its best can contribute to a state ofbeing more fully present to what is happening in any given situation and being able to work with that in powerfully improvisational ways.
Furthermore, over the past year, there has been a clear call for practice and practices that are explicitly about cultivating spaces to hold difference and tension and trauma. That may be another order of presence characterized by a deeper tuning in and movement away from more transactional processes to ones that are emergent, co-created and geared towards supporting moral courage and imagination. What that can require is vulnerability and a humble sense of “being with.” What it stands to make possible, as opposed to business-as-usual, is growth and real movement forward, together.
Last year, in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing, I was facilitating a group of students and faculty at MIT reflecting on the impact and meaning of the bombing. The participants ranged from people who had been at the marathon site to those who witnessed it on TV. All experienced the lock down that occurred in Cambridge and felt the impact of the death of eight-year-old Martin William Richard, and many of them shared something deeper, the trauma of being an unwilling victim and sometimes perpetrator of planned, unexpected, unwarranted or thoughtless violence. From a former Israeli solider, who asked “do I kill these 4 men in my line of sight because of the threat they may pose?” to a woman who survived a brutal rape, the bombing made visible the deep trauma so many people live with from day to day.
But something remarkable happened that evening. As we sat in circle listening to each story a young veteran spoke up about his experience with violence in the streets of LA and the deserts of Iraq. He spoke with a deep passion that disrupted the quiet reflection of the group. “We can’t just sit around and talk about this. If things are going to change we have to shift something fundamental in ourselves in order to stop the massive violence in our world.” He continued, “For me it is the following commitment I have made to myself and that I tell each person I am engaged with I Will Not Harm Your Children.” Then he stopped.
|Photo by Reenie-Just Reenie|www.flickr.com/photos/flickrchickr/2589059730|
In a previous post I referenced the work of Marcial Losada, which indicates that elevated group performance is associated in part with a high degree of “positivity.” Specifically, groups that excel in terms of innovation and productivity tend to be those where there is at least a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions. The importance of this ratio has been further highlighted by some other findings and experiences I have had working with community-based activists.
On April 22nd, the fourth annual 
