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Archive for month: February, 2015

Calling for Love With Power

By Kristen Zimmerman   |  February 12, 2015
Reflections | 0 Comments

Editor’s Note: Let’s Talk is proud to offer this excerpt from MSC’s newly-released publication Love With Power: Practicing Transformation for Social Justice.  

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

We, humanity, need a movement, a really big movement.

A movement big and bold enough to get us out of the mess we have gotten ourselves into, and one that will get us to a better place.

A movement that can transform the world and each one of us in it.

A movement through which we shift from a world based on domination and extraction to a life-affirming world based on regeneration and interconnection.

Over the past decade, Movement Strategy Center has explored the big yet simple questions echoing across social justice movements:

What is the change we most need and want in the world?

Who do we need to be to make that change?

How do we get there, all of us, together?

On this journey we are learning from and experimenting alongside many incredible people who are charting the way forward. We are excited to see that the contours of where we need to go—and who we need to be to find our path—are beginning to emerge.

The transformation we need in the world requires what Grace Lee Boggs calls a revolution of values: one that includes systems and political leadership but that stretches beyond to shift the very DNA of our culture and the people encoded within it. This is a revolution that can be actualized and sustained because it leads from the power of love to fundamentally change individuals and groups, communities and systems. It’s a revolution that does not divide or conquer but instead, as Taoist strategist Sun Tzu writes in the Art of War, keeps everything under the universe whole.

When movements are transformative they radically shift the way we think, the way we relate to one another, and even the way we perceive change. They fundamentally alter the way our society and our communities are structured, the way we live with one another and even who we are. When movements embody our deepest human values they bring out the best in us, spark our imagination, inspire us, and embolden us to take big leaps forward together. Today, humanity and the planet need a movement of power and love that can catalyze and sustain the massive, integrated change we need right now.

There are many signs that “another world is not only possible, she’s on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe.” At the heart of this movement—and the world it is bringing—are individuals and groups that have experienced deep change in themselves and have brought the power of intentional practice to catalyze this change. It is in their breath, our collective breath, that we can hear if we listen.

When tackling humanity’s biggest problems (e.g., slavery, apartheid, and colonization), only social movements, mass movements, have had the courage, inspiration, power and practices to change the world and each of us in it. Social movements are about big, collective impact and a quality of change that is not possible through other means.

Social movements provide a scale in numbers, a scale of ambition, and a scale in our capacity to love and to redefine and harness power.

Through practicing transformation individuals and groups are developing the capacity they need to generate and navigate transformation in the world. Transformation—profound, fundamental, irreversible, sustainable change—depends on and is made possible by the internal shifts in people and groups, as well as on external shifts in our culture, systems and lived reality. In transformative moments these two forms of change—internal and external—fuel each other in an interdependent catalytic dance. At times this change begins internally, at other times externally.

Real change requires us to believe that fundamental, irreversible, systemic change is possible and that we are each a part of that change. We begin by allowing ourselves to experience the hunger and appetite for something more than what we have now. We can then take intentional action to embody this change in ourselves and with one another.

Systems and structures are ultimately a reflection of human beings, of our relationship to ourselves and to one another. Collectively, we create, run, follow, condone, and/or fight against systems and structures. They, in turn, shape us, our relationship to one another and to the natural world. But, we can commit to a vision beyond what we have inherited. When we come together as a critical mass of people who are ready to fundamentally change ourselves simultaneously with our culture and its structures and systems, we can then achieve the fundamental change we desire.

In the words of Staci Haines, executive director of generative somatics,

We are at this unprecedented moment where the phase of critique is done. We need to create different structures and build different ways of being. We need to compel people with alternatives. We need to ask what institutions, economies and social myths we need, to have masses of people embody cooperation, interdependence and sustainability.

Movement Strategy Center and many others believe that transformative movements arise when individual and collective practice is embedded within a holistic path and a commitment to social transformation. Through practice we increase our awareness of the problem we are trying to solve and the personal and social patterns that keep the status quo in place. We open and allow ourselves to change in ways that feel fundamental to who we are. Transformative movement includes practice, cultivating ourselves personally and collectively to increase our skill, wisdom, relatedness and vision. When we are involved in transformative movement, we hold a big and bold vision of the world we want, hone methods to catalyze and link internal and external change, and implement concrete practices to support and embody these shifts.

Today I have the honor of introducing Love With Power: Practicing Transformation for Social Justice, a new MSC publication that focuses on transformation guided by core human values including interconnection, dignity, justice and love. MSC offers Love With Power as inspiration for all of us who believe that another world is possible and that we must find ways to get there together. In Love with Power we honor groups who are creating the new ways to bring about social transformation—organizers who believe the time for Love with Power is now.

We hope Love With Power will inspire social justice groups and other change agents to explore, adopt, and strengthen collective transformative movement building and practice as an intentional and ongoing part of their work.

  • By xddorox licensed under CC BY 2.0

#Black Lives Matter: “It’s about how we are together”

By Julie Quiroz   |  February 12, 2015
Reflections | 0 Comments

Editor’s Note: With great love MSC offers this excerpt from our newly-released publication Love With Power: Practicing Transformation for Social Justice.  

Collective transformative practice is not some hippy dippy thing.  It’s about how we are together and how we are successful as movements.  This is how #Black Lives Matters thinks about transformative practice: It’s about transformative relationship building. It’s about practice as ritual.

– Alicia Garza #BlackLivesMatter and National Domestic Workers Alliance

In early October 2014, Alicia Garza arrived in Ferguson, Missouri. Less than two months after Ferguson Police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown, the community of Ferguson was under siege. In the wake of Brown’s death, grief and rage enveloped the city like dense smoke. Centuries of pain from racism, alive and embedded in schools, jobs, neighborhoods, and endless police harassment, rose to the surface. Police and white city officials responded to community protests with brutal force, trampling on the most basic aspects of human dignity and rights.

National and international media descended on Ferguson, turning the spotlight on every corner of residents’ lives. As national organizations arrived—often removed from local relationships and experiences—residents reeled. The chaos of the moment and the trauma of witnessing and experiencing police assaults and murders left them not only angry, but disoriented and deeply mistrustful.

With the backing of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Garza traveled to Ferguson to support local organizing, collect the stories of women on the front lines, and participate in the #BlackLivesMatter Freedom Ride. Garza hoped to engage Black communities in “building a movement to transform our nation.”

One year earlier, Garza and two other women, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, had conceived “Black Lives Matter” as a vision and response to Trayvon Martin’s murder by George Zimmerman in Florida. At the heart of Black Lives Matter was a message about humanity and human rights, shining a light on one question: what are all the things that stand in the way of humanity and valuing Black lives, all Black lives, in this country? Black Lives Matter was clear: police violence is a crucial focus, and just the tip of the iceberg. In a communication from Ferguson, Garza wrote:

Every 28 hours, a black woman in this country loses her child to police or vigilante violence. When a child is killed by police or vigilantes, we all fall short in upholding the values that connect us all—care, love, respect and dignity. In a democracy that protects all of us, no child should have less of a chance at a future because of the color of their skin.

Garza, Cullors and Tometi had deepened their personal and political relationships with each other for over a decade. During that time, they cultivated transformative practices, including building a practice community together through Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, and applied these practices to organizing. They honed their vision for a changed world. When the outrage at Michael Brown’s death erupted, they were able to move into the moment — ready or not — with new ideas and the sense that they wanted to support family in the biggest sense of the word.

Garza spent her first few days in Ferguson listening and getting to know people. She wondered how local organizing could be strengthened in this excruciating time, particularly given the deep suspicion of outsiders, like her. Bringing the skills and politics she had developed in her 15 years of organizing, Garza knew that focusing on building authentic relationships and shifting people’s way of being together could transform everything else.

My personal practice helped to ground me and reciprocate compassion, love, understanding even when I was faced with “who the hell are you?”

Seeking to bring out the best in themselves and others, the Black Lives Matter team began to explore questions that people could connect to from the heart, asking, “Why does this movement matter to you? What does “black lives matter” mean to you? What is your biggest hope for this movement?”

My work in Ferguson training organizers was about cultivating a practice of taking care of each other.  When someone got a job they had been waiting for we celebrated. When someone else couldn’t be with us because her mother was dying we made sure to call her and share the love and let her know her spirit was still there with us. When someone was fired from his fast food job for talking about organizing, we all came together, giving him love and telling him how brave and courageous he was. He came in upset but left feeling held.

These practices helped Garza build authentic relationships with the local organizing team relatively quickly. They were then able to return to the community and engage community members with that same spirit.

We went door to door simply trying to connect with people, finding what they need and where we share purpose and vision.

While they only spent two weeks together, Garza and the community of organizers she worked with found a rhythm, established practices that grounded their work in purpose, and built deep and authentic relationship with each other.

At the end of each day together we would come back and share food and experiences. Then we’d end with a chant or a song or a prayer. These rituals are really important.  They ground us in our bodies and remind us how we got to this place. They remind us that all our ancestors did some kind of ritual. We were only together for two weeks in Ferguson but the people I connected with are still family.

Alicia Garza’s story from Ferguson is complex and still unfolding. It is a story of Black communities rising up to say no to the daily inhumanity of structural racism. It is the story of Black communities seeking to build from purpose and love. It is a story of movement builders nurturing transformative practices within social justice, then, stepping up and into a movement moment.

The future depends on building these moments of high quality presence, clarity, insight, and heart-felt love. “Together,” says Garza,“ we are organizing to build a new democracy and a society that values and protects all of our work and, all of our families, and embraces who we truly are as a nation.

Alicia Garza’s story from Ferguson leaves us with many important questions: How can we develop the collective strength and insight needed to transform a culture and an economy built on racism and domination? How can we cultivate our readiness to engage with extraordinary challenges—even when we don’t feel ready? What aspects of our social movements will continue to serve us, and what do we need to leave behind? How can we respond to a world of injustice and violence with the love and power we are just beginning to imagine?

How can we embody the world we want and need — right now?

 

 

Check out two new publications on transformative movement building! MSC’s Love With Power: Practicing Transformation for Social Justice and TRANSFORMING LIVES, TRANSFORMING MOVEMENT BUILDING: Lessons from the National Domestic Workers Alliance Strategy – Organizing – Leadership (SOL) Initiative from the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity.

 

Feature photo by xddorox licensed under CC BY 2.0

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