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Archive for month: December, 2014

Movement Voices of 2014

Year in Review | 0 Comments

Over the past year Let’s Talk has been honored to share the words of inspiring movement builders from every corner of social, ecological, and economic justice.  In these waning days of 2014 we offer, with deepest gratitude and joy, these 17 inspiring quotes from the past year of Let’s Talk.

Isaac Luria
“Organizations and movements need not be machines. They can be overflowing, abundant gardens, to be tended with care, where each human being is encouraged to live a full life.”
—
Isaac Luria

Stop Strip Mining Our Souls; Let’s Compost Nonprofit Culture
Dana Kawaoka-Chen“I am clear that we in philanthropy need new habits to support new ways of intersectional organizing, as well as new habits to radically transform the very systems that allow and perpetuate state violence without accountability.”
—
Dana Kawaoka-Chen
Changing Funder Habits to Change the Game
Tomas Garduno“We need embodied practice — the conscious, steady physical development of awareness that makes cooperation, connection, compassion, and effective movement strategy possible.”
—
Tomas Garduno
The How of Transformative Change
Remember Trans Power by Micah Bazant“Just like we are facing a global crisis of extinction around different languages, seeds and species, and we need that biodiversity to survive, I believe we need a cosmos of different understandings and stories about gender.”
—
Micah Bazant
Remember Trans Power – Fight for Trans Lives
2014MovementVoices-Tammy_Johnson
“Whether it is flipping the script on how we define gender or who is a citizen, the nation-building task of storytelling makes cultural workers of all of us.”
—
Tammy Johnson
Race & Culture Shock: 3 Lessons from South Africa
Rinku Sen“Building bridges requires a strong foundation, and that foundation can’t come from anything outside of your self.”
—
Rinku Sen
You v. Structural Racism
Victor Carter“Being involved in youth organizing not only helped me as an individual to heal from traumas and grow as a leader, but it also allowed me to take a step back from the situations that I am in and find ways to dismantle the systems that create the inequalities that I face.”
—
Victor Carter
My Voice: Youth Leadership & My Brother’s Keeper
Chris Crass“Beyond the nightmare of patriarchy is a world of possibility. Let us be courageous and go there together.”
—
Chris Crass
Soldiers NO MORE in the War Against Women: A Call to Men
Aya de Leon“That voice, that determined black girl voice has been crucial in my own black woman’s life.  I have counted on that determination, that way out of no way I WOULD to guide and sustain me in many things.”
—
Aya de Leon
Rest in Power Maya Angelou: Writer, Survivor, former Sex Worker & Icon of Black Female Determination
Rona Fernandez“Being surrounded by so much nature at turns made me feel broken open and vulnerable, then strong and self-assured. And it renewed my burnt out spirit in a way that nothing else could have.”
—
Rona Fernandez
Where the Wild Things Are: Courage in Uncertainty
Pecolia Manigo“Education organizing is a critical element for achieving any level of justice within any sector. It is where oppression beats down the sparks of light in the next generation and trains them to believe they cannot learn, they do not matter, that they belong in prison or dead. It is our organizing, our leadership development, and our faith in our students and parents that, in the darkest times, keeps their hope alive for creating a different life for themselves.”
—
Pecolia Manigo
Discrimination Today: One Education Organizer’s Outrage
Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan“Our work and our stories will equip our children to love the world they are creating—a world where people act courageously to defy the old rules and instead, fight for a just transition to an economy for life.”
—
Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan
Mothering Through Climate Chaos – Mamas Day Our Way
Jodeen Olguín-Tayler“Let’s learn to lose our fear, try new things, and to be okay with — even celebrate — what we learn from failed experiments.”
—
Jodeen Olguín-Tayler
Creating Sea Change — To Win
Rebecca Aced-Molina“This year, let’s set out to re-write the narrative, give our inner bullies a break, and truly open ourselves and each other up to make real changes in the lives of our communities.”
—
Rebecca Aced-Molina

Give Our Inner Bullies a Break
Jidan Koon-Terry“Parenting is the long term, multi-generational conduit of ancestral memory and culture, of fulfilling dreams and struggles begun millennia ago.
—
Jidan Koon
Movement Lie #4: Parenting Makes You Less Effective
Erica Woodland“Cultivating the practice of gender and racial justice is an on-going process. The moment we think that the work is done, we are faced with our own blind spots and unconscious prejudice. Be open to feedback and doing things differently in these moments — they are a gift.
—
Erica Woodland
Gender As We Know It Is No More
  • Compost Pile

Stop Strip Mining Our Souls; Let’s Compost Non-Profit Culture

By Isaac Luria   |  December 19, 2014
Reflections | 2 Comments

After a brutal election, it’s time for progressive politics to deploy a new living model of movement building.

In the last few seconds before my son was born, the midwife had a hard time finding his heartbeat.

Everything happened so fast that I didn’t have time for fear, and I’m certain my wife’s mind was focused on getting that baby out. What I do remember is the quiet focus of the birth team, and a call to prep a pediatrician next door.

When he came out, he was rushed out of the room to that waiting pediatrician, crying vigorously.

The pediatrician cleaned him up, and handed me my child. He was alive! I had a son! “Caleb,” I remember whispering, “welcome to the world.”

I didn’t look at my email that night, but looking at it the following day, I scanned through the emails. In my raw state as a new parent filled with love, the stark reality of the viciousness of my political world filled my iPhone’s screen. I got whiplash reading about an angry colleague, a political opponent doing something mean, a nasty editorial attacking my organization for something I said, and a fight brewing at the office.

Up until that moment, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. A political professional who was respected and powerful, who put aside his heart to win. But I couldn’t imagine my son growing up in the world I was creating. I didn’t wish that for him. Now that I look back on it, that’s when I knew I had to try to change what my kids might encounter when their time comes.

For much of my career, I’ve respected activists who are the hardest working, most professional, smartest, most disciplined, and most strategic. And I didn’t leave room for heart.

Since the birth of my son, I’ve been searching for different ways to understand how change works. How can we make change without strip-mining our souls and bodies for whatever ounce of strength we have left? How can we live full lives, be present parents and partners, and fight for what is right?

Without children, it was easier to turn a blind eye to the way that we worked in progressive politics and how we treated each other. Yelling in my early career wasn’t out of the ordinary, neither was a thirst for unhealthy control, nor a deep disrespect for one’s body and spirit, or a singular over-emphasis on winning short-term fights, no matter the cost.

If we took time for self-care at all, it was entirely in service of the work. We’d talk about how we needed to get our “batteries recharged,” despite the fact that we’re human, not a rechargeable power drill.

Movement folks, especially younger activists, tell me that they cannot, in good faith, participate any longer in movements that expect people to give up their lives, souls, and spark of the divine in order to pursue a phantom image of social change.

They see that our work, organized in an extractive, urgency-driven way, only reinforces a mainstream’s culture’s degradation of human value and spirit, foreshadowing the whiplash back from temporary, hollow victories towards the long-term community evisceration and economic destruction that we have felt these past 30 years.

Our have-it-now culture is making us attempt to deliver short-term results, taking a painful shortcut around the hard stuff of deep strategy, relationship building, and community rootedness. Our funders encourage us to look for the hot new tweet or message, the flashy image, or new program — and we’re too happy to oblige. But organizations with limited resources — like non-profits — quickly go bankrupt on the currency of now.

In this system, it’s no wonder that many organizations and executives find themselves in friction with natural allies over limited resources and thirsty for more control over the sector.

Part of this story is how we, as activists, deny ourselves love in our own lives. It’s a surprise that so many of us leave the movements we are a part of when we see that love — real love of self, of family, of people — cannot exist alongside certain kinds of activism, especially when people become disposable commodities.

Yet this isn’t just about our own lives; it’s about this whole justice project.

Indigenous peoples say a society must meet the needs and aspirations of the seventh generation from where we stand. I doubt any of us are looking much farther than the next year or funding cycle in our work, if we’re lucky. This short-term thinking may allow us to win a battle here or there. But we are losing the war.

It is genuinely shocking, the degree to which talented change-makers have internalized inhumane, consumerist, anti-environmentalist, non-living, deeply individualist modes of thinking about our work and our souls, and have been complicit in the ripping out of our own hearts, stunting our capacity to envision a world that values all people equally.

None of this is cause for individual blame or guilt. Given the siren call of the system we operate in, a blame-game isn’t helpful or warranted. However, we do have responsibility about what comes next.

First, we can start by listening — and observing — the ways in which our movements make human flourishing more difficult and learn from those who are experimenting with more life-giving models of movement work.

Second, we can refuse to reinforce dominant cultural paradigms of radical individualism and inhumane, unnatural mechanical thinking in our work. The primacy of extractive approaches to resources (people and money), top-down decision making structures, the hyper-professionalization of staff roles, the near-complete domination of short-termism, dependency on non-native resources, an overreliance on corporate efficiency models for the work of transformative culture change, and a bias against locally rooted change efforts are sicknesses that must be treated.

Third, we can compost what is dead and dying so it can be the life force for the new. We can envision and create new movement and organizational structures that help us, as the prophet Wendell Berry hopes for humanity, leave what we have better than when we found it.

With a different movement model borne out of ecological understandings of the world, we can spark and sustain irresistible communities of resistance that will work to heal us as individuals, as communities, and the world. Organizations and movements need not be machines. They can be overflowing, abundant gardens, to be tended with care, where each human being is encouraged to live a full life.

Drawing on the wisdom of sustainable farming would help us relate more sustainably to each other as individuals, organizations, and to the broader sector — and to steward our limited resources wisely for future generations.

This shift will be difficult yet essential to building the world where true human flourishing is possible. The non-living approach to movement work is deeply ingrained in our movements, our leaders, our economic system, and our culture.

I know from personal experience, however, that transformational organizations exist. With a dose of humility, a soulful commitment, and a good ear, the human capacity for adaptation and transformation makes far-reaching change possible. Seven generations from now — hopefully earlier — our descendants will thank us for the change we were able to make.

  • Dana Kawaoka-Chen

Changing Funder Habits to Change the Game

By Dana Kawaoka-Chen   |  December 12, 2014
Reflections | 1 Comment

We need new habits — philanthropic habits, that is. We need new habits that reflect the state of our country as it is now: a first-world nation where young black men are 21 times more likely than their white peers to be killed by police, where one-third of the workforce is comprised of contingent workers, and where our country’s carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to what will likely be the warmest year ever recorded on the planet.

Habits are recurrent, unconscious patterns of behavior that are acquired through frequent repetition. Earlier this year, Staci Haines of Generative Somatics introduced me to the concept of 300/3,000, the idea that it takes a person 300 repetitions of a behavior before that behavior can be a conscious action you choose, then 3,000 repetitions of that behavior before it became an automatic response. (Think of a professional golfer changing her swing, or a baseball pitcher changing the release of a pitch).

While these are very physical examples, I think they apply in a philanthropic context.

What of our current grantmaking habits actually constrain movement? What of these habits are actually based on a dated analysis of the world? What new habits will get us a different outcome? How can grantmakers play a different role with community groups and thereby change the rules of the game?

Jen Sokolove of the Compton Foundation recently wrote on the “What is a Justice Funder?” blog: “Funding only the kind of work with which we’re comfortable is precisely what limits innovation.”

To Compton’s credit, they are very transparently trying to develop new philanthropic habits to “build alignment across real divisions.” Another grantmaker to change their habits very publicly to “increase the net grant” is Unitarian Universalist Veatch program at Shelter Rock who recently did away with asking for the “fake funder budget.”

In my work with the Bay Area Justice Funders Network, I have observed that changes in strategy at philanthropic institutions aren’t always accompanied by a change in the grantmaking practices to carry out the new strategy, or vice versa. The results are challenging for the funder and their grantee partners. And when multiplied across multiple institutions, what is the cumulative effect on our ability to transform systems at the scale we need? What philanthropic habits get us closer to transformation?

Recently, I had the opportunity to reflect on habits from a very unique perspective. The Movement Strategy Center hosted a two-day Transitions Lab where two dozen social justice leaders and funders gathered and, among other things, found ourselves passing a ball around in a circle. What this playful exercise surfaced for me was how rote our individual and group behavior can be unless we are intentionally trying to be different. It didn’t matter whether the prompt was for us to share the ball “abundantly” or “competitively,” we all have life experiences to draw from that allowed us to play together when bound by these rules. But this exercise made me think about how we play when we know that the current rules aren’t the ones we want to operate under anymore? Then what? How do we develop a new schema to work from?

I am clear that we in philanthropy need new habits to support new ways of intersectional organizing, as well as new habits to radically transform the very systems that allow and perpetuate state violence without accountability. We need new habits because the very definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over, yet expect different results.

While I may not yet have the answers to these questions, our group exercise of throwing the ball reinforced my belief that we need to intentionally choose what habits are moving us closer to what we want and what new habits we need to develop.

So, let’s talk . . . what habits need to go?

What new habits are folks trying on?

Who is interested in practicing some new ones together?


Dana Kawaoka-Chen is the Network Director for the Bay Area Justice Funders Network. She can be reached at dana@justicefunders.org, and on Twitter: @justicefunders

  • Prasi Gupta, Kimi Lee, Jose Oliva / MSC Transitions Lab

The How of Transformative Change

By Tomas Garduno   |  December 2, 2014
Reflections | 0 Comments

A few weeks ago I got to spend two days in Oakland with a tremendous group of wonderful people brought together by the Movement Strategy Center.

We came together to explore one big question: “How do we transition from a world of domination and extraction to a world of resilience and regeneration?”

Tomas Garduno

Tomas Garduno / MSC Transitions Lab

Over the course of the gathering we discovered that why we were coming together was less important than how.

At the risk of sounding overly simplistic, the answer to the big question is actually pretty straightforward: stop dominating and extracting and start cooperating and connecting.

The deep question within the question is how we do this.

In other words, we need embodied practice — the conscious, steady physical development of awareness that makes cooperation, connection, compassion, and effective movement strategy possible.

Embodied practice is how we get to the “how.”

Embodied practice — whether it’s somatics or Forward Stance or just breathing together — is how we proactively develop the strength, insight, and joy to transform a world that includes the injustices of Ferguson and Ayotzinapa and Bhopal.

More and more social justice movements, and even society at large, are beginning to understand the power of embodied practice — and I think we’re all going to be better for it.

In fact, that may be the only way to get to that world of resilience and regeneration.

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