Sometimes you fall in love with a client. There is a sweet spot where your own heart’s purpose is fully aligned with what your client is trying to do in the world. In that sweet spot they are no longer really a client – you become true partners.
I’ve just wrapped up the contracted part of our work with Urban Bush Women, but I’m certain that ours is a partnership that will continue.
Leave a commentGrace Lee Boggs: You Have a Chance To Change The System from Bhawin Suchak on Vimeo.
“We are the children of Martin and Malcolm. Black, white, brown, yellow. Our birthright is to be creators of history. Our right, our duty is to shape the world with a new dream… We have to begin to thinking of ourselves, we are the ones who are going to shape the world with a new dream. The old American Dream was based so much on exploitation of the earth and of other peoples. So our revolution can’t be the way that we thought of revolution to acquire more things; our revolution has to be one that grows our souls.”
Leave a comment
I asked my colleagues for suggestions about grassroots leaders and organizations doing great things in the world. One suggestion was Boston-based Reflect & Strengthen, which turned ten in 2011.
Leave a comment
Last Tuesday, Curtis Ogden and I had the privilege of hosting an LLC webinar on collective leadership. Much of what we did was point to observable patterns in ways of working together and how these tend to open up possibilities for shared leadership. The metaphor of tilling the soil is most appropriate precisely because we have run up against the limitations of industrial implementation. The appropriate response to increasing complexity is one that can get beyond linear causality and into a mindset of ecosystems.
Leave a comment
The following is a letter by Akaya Windwood, President of the Rockwood Leadership Institute and member of the IISC Board of Directors.
As you can see from my new photo, I’ve decided to stop dyeing my hair. I am now officially a gray-haired woman. When I turned 55 last year, I made a deeper commitment to authenticity, and that included looking in the actual mirror (and not just the mirror of my conscience).
Leave a comment
I am made greater by the sum of my connections, and so are my connections
– Stowe Boyd
Today, Curtis Odgen and I will be hosting an LLC Webinar on Collective Leadership. We are talking about a significant shift in how we organize our work for social transformation. Stowe Boyd, the net’s social anthropologist, recently posted what he calls the beginnings of an elevator pitch on “New Mutualism.” I found it resonant, relevant and tremendously exciting; here it goes:
4 CommentsThis is the 26th official celebration of the national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I remember the struggle to establish the holiday and wonder what Dr. King himself might think of what it has become.
Leave a comment
What has been the most important epiphany in your life?
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany and I’m from Puerto Rico where we celebrate it as Three Kings Day. In fact, I’ve just heard it argued that Puerto Rico is the country with the strongest tradition of “Día de los Reyes.” Our Christmas gifts used to come on this date instead of December 25. We would leave grass under our beds so that their camels could eat as they went from house to house. I grew up in a nationalist household, so my family was among the last hold outs as “Americanization” (which was really commercialism and marketing) led more and more people to get into Santa Claus. To this day my father hates Santa – it’s actually kind of funny.
Comments Off on EpiphanyThe Black Mesa Water Coalition is an inspiring group of Navajo and Hopi young people who organized to protect the Navajo aquifer which was being depleted by coal production and transportation processes. They are a great example of people power, coming together and winning important gains for their community. And, they are an important reminder about the many ways in which Native people in the U.S. continue to face structural barriers to their own well-being. As we move the conversation about structural racism forward, I have to ask myself, as a black woman who grew up on land that was taken from the Wampanoag people, how can I be an effective ally?
Leave a comment
I’ve been reflecting on five years of work here at the Interaction Institute for Social Change. As inside so outside. My life has changed dramatically over the last five years. And so has the world. Seriousness about social transformation, commitment to the evolutionary process, a burning thirst for justice – a posture that demands sharp attunement with the present moment.
Leave a commentWe’ve been having a good conversation at IISC about ways to challenge and re-frame race discourse in ways that are truthful, loving, compelling, welcoming and so much more. Last week, I posted a video from Jay Smooth about shifting from a discussion about “being” to a discussion about “doing.” Let’s keep the conversation going.
Leave a comment
The following post is from Founding Board Chair, Thomas J. Rice. It is a little longer than we post, however, we hope that you will find it is rich in content and helps continue to challenge the way we think about various systems and movements.
Historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream when he coined the term at the depths of the Great Depression. What we seek is “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.” If there’s one thing we could all agree on, we have lost our way in this quest. And there’s no GPS to find our True North, or the way home.
Enter the Occupy Movement, a spontaneous cri de coeur from a millennial generation that feels betrayed and abandoned by the people and institutions they believed in. No American Dream for them. Their prospects are bleak, in no way better or richer or fuller than their parents. In spite of great effort and expense to move up and out, the millenniums are back in the nest, in serious debt from college loans and working at some menial or dead end job with no health benefits.
Leave a comment