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Archive for month: August, 2015

  • Photo: Mohamed Azakir / World Bank, Licensed under CC BY 2.0

Our Family, Our Future: My Global Migration Pledge

By Taj James   |  August 28, 2015
Reflections | 2 Comments

As I write this, the bodies of hundreds of people are being pulled from the water off the coast of Libya, after two boats sank, drowning women, men, and children migrating in desperation from places like Syria, Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa.

The images become a horrific blur. Last week: Riot police in Macedonia firing tear gas at thousands of families trying to cross the border from Greece.  April: Seven hundred people dying when a smuggling ship sank off the coast of Italy.  Right now: Officials recovering the bodies of 71 people found rotting in a refrigerator truck left on the side of a road outside Vienna.  We don’t know who these 71 people were, only small heart wrenching details: three of them were children, a Syrian passport was found.  What we know is that they were migrating, that they were 71 of the millions of people around the world who have been uprooted from their home countries by economic, political, and climate chaos.

The global magnitude of this chaos is staggering.  The numbers for 2015 continue to swell, possibly higher than the 59.5 million people the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says were forcibly displaced in 2014.  In other words, one in every 122 human beings on the planet is now either a refugee, asylum-seeker, or a person who has been internally displaced.  Here in the US, thousands of African Americans were displaced by hurricane Katrina and the “second storm” of racism that followed in the water’s wake, with many still demanding their right of return.

All this is a shadow of the migration that is to come.  In the years ahead we face huge waves of migration by economic, political and climate refugees, at an almost unimaginable scale.

Tonight, as I write this, I ask myself who is responsible. I ask myself what can we do.

What I know is that we are all responsible.

What I know is that we all must act.

What I know is that people, in defiance of states, must embrace our global human family and provide refuge and support to those who have been pushed off of their lands due to growing economic inequality, climate drought, war and conflict.

What I know is that the President’s Trans Pacific Partnership will make this problem one hundred times worse and one thousand times harder to solve through “legal means.” It will create the conditions that will accelerate harm and increase human trafficking and the loss of human life.

What I know is that we must open borders, stop criminalizing migration and migrants, and defy any state that does violence to members of our shared human family.

What I know is that we are living in a time in which we will truly live together as brothers and sister or perish together as fools. I know those are our only choices. I know the cries of those dying at sea warn us of what lies ahead for all of us.

What I know is that even if all our “clean power” dreams were implemented today, the level of climate disaster already underway will continue to drive huge levels of human migration as people leave their lands in search of places where there is enough water to grow food so their children can eat.

What I know is that we must continue the fight for climate mitigation, but step up our work on adaptation and increasing social equity. Embracing all migrants and our global human family is a core responsibility in everything we do.

What I know is that even as we insist that our government bring an end policies rooted militarism, materialism, and racism – the policies that are driving this migration — we cannot to wait for states to take action.

What I know is that we must insist – immediately in the upcoming Paris climate talks — that our national, state and local governments do all they can to protect human life by reversing the impacts of climate change.

What I know is that we must pour all our hearts and souls into the movements for global democracy, global governance, and people-to-people sovereignty.

What I know is that there is no such thing as domestic policy or foreign policy in an interconnected world. We must insist that all national leaders act in the interest of our global family.

What I know is that we must find ways to be good neighbors, to defy the state and provide safe harbor to those pushed out of their homes by an economy that has benefited many of us at the expense of the rest of the world.  I know we can and should insist that our government mitigate the harm of human trafficking.  To end this trafficking we must end the violent inequality that drives it.

What I know is that we must pledge allegiance to our global human family. Migration is a human right.

My pledge is this:

I pledge allegiance to my global human family and to

defend the web of life that is our home.

One world. One love. One family.

Interconnected, Interdependent

Indivisible.

I vow to defy the state or any authority

that promotes violence, hate or

the lie of separation.

In the name of love

I pledge.

What is your pledge?

#GlobalHumanFamily

#WhatsYourPledge?

#MigrationIsBeautiful

#MigrationIsARight

#ForcedMigrationIsACrime

#TheRightToStay

#TheRightToMove

#TheRightToReturn

#ActForHumanity

#ActForClimate

#DefendThePeople

#DefyTheState
#AssertTheRightToDoWhatIsRight

  • Aparna Shah (Mobilize the Immigrant Vote) and Beth Glenn (Education Justice Network) connecting at MSC

Parenting for Liberation: My Practice & the MSC Transitions Lab

By Trina Greene Brown   |  August 19, 2015
Reflections | 3 Comments

I am raising a young Black boy in a society that is set up to set him up for failure.

This means I am often in protection mode: protection against educational inequity, unfair discipline practices, preschool-to-prison-pipeline, stereotypical accolades, and most importantly, his own self-hate and internalized oppression (don’t get me started on my 5 year-old-telling me he wanted to “be white”).

This is the daily battle I try to prevent my son from dealing with, the daily battle where I try to be the buffer between him and the real world.  I imagine myself as Super Mama, a powerful, badass mama with one hand holding a massive shield blocking my son, and the other, a powerful fist raised in resistance.

But in all of my fighting, resisting and protecting, I now realize that I have been blocking my own heart: my hands have not been open to nourish and nurture my son. I see more clearly that I have been parenting from fear.  I know that I must transition from parenting for protection to parenting for liberation.

My practice commitment is simple and affirmative: “saying yes.”

Yes to liberation.

Yes to freedom.

Yes to self love.

Underneath all of these affirmative statements is an internal struggle against a fearful and safe “no.”

After an amazing three days at the Movement Strategy Center’s Transitions Lab in July, with brilliant leaders working across distinct but intersecting movements, I am metabolizing and distilling the lesson from the foundational question of our Lab exploration: “How do we transition from a world of domination and extraction to a world of interdependence, resilience, and regeneration?” As a movement maker and staff of Move to End Violence, I am familiar with thinking about the “movement pivots” we need to make in order to go in a new direction. Now, as part of the MSC Transitions Lab, I am digging my heels deep into the “transitions” we want to make.

Transition is defined as “the process or period of change from one position or condition to another.” As a social justice movement leader, I have spent a lot of time focusing on the first part of this equation. Reflecting on my work in the violence against women movement, I know I expended a lot of energy naming the current period and existing conditions. This focus is present in the traditional names of our organizations.  Much of our language and framing is issue-based (what we’re fighting against). We’ve become so skilled at naming the problem it’s become hard to name the solution.

The key word in the definition of transition is “another” — not just focusing on the issue but also transitioning in order to experience and create another circumstance or condition. My past work with young people was filled with opportunities to envision solutions. Young people (I know this sounds cliche) are the future and therefore have the capacity to vision a different world.  A violence prevention curriculum I wrote with young girls was entitled “Be Strong” and spoke affirmatively from a strengths-based method for ending violence.

At the Transitions Lab, MSC guided us to think and vision a new world. We explored examples of movement strategies that employ visioning as a core element, such as my work with Move to End Violence, Octavia’s Brood, and Black Lives Matter. In each of these social justice leaders are supported to think differently about their work.

I invite you, too, to spend time visioning, looking toward the horizon, and sharing ideas of the world you hope to create.

Online for Power? Shifting Our Movements Toward the Future

By Julie Quiroz   |  August 13, 2015
Reflections | 0 Comments

Last year, as the uprising in Ferguson and the movement for Black lives sparked direct action all across the country, many of us turned out on the streets – and actively spread the word to others via the Internet.

On our organization’s Facebook page we planned to broadcast information about actions as far and wide as we could, using “boosts”, a click that allows you to pay a few dollars for Facebook to proactively place content into the feeds of your followers and their followers, boosting visibility for important things.

But, when I went to boost these calls to action I found that for the first time in my short Internet career, my boosts were denied. Thinking it was a glitch I tried again and again, until it was clear that boosting any #BlackLivesMatter action would be denied – an experience I confirmed with other people trying to do the same.

Of course a denied Facebook boost is minuscule and embarrassingly unsurprising, especially compared to really dangerous things like government surveillance and white supremacists breeding violence online.

And of course #BlackLivesMatter has always (in the words of co-founder Alicia Garza) used “social media and online platforms to expand people’s consciousness about the lives of Black people” and “create a space for Black people to organize.” With great care #BlackLivesMatter has built real relationships online and off, so the trust and momentum and communication was deep and ready for action when the moment demanded it.

Blackfreedom.org t-shirt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The movement for Black lives was powerful enough. But my moment of Internet struggle was real and maybe a little too familiar for a lot of us, reminding me how limited and vulnerable our ride on the Internet is, and underscoring the findings of a report released today:

Unlike mainstream media, which is moderated by external gatekeepers, [social justice] groups see the Internet as a platform they control – the effect of the corporate ownership of the Internet is less visible to them.

The report, The Digital CultureSHIFT: From Scale to Power – How the Internet Shapes Social Justice Movements and Social Justice Movements Are Shaping the Internet was put out by Center for Media Justice in partnership with ColorOfChange.org and Data & Society and analyzes results from interviews with 22 progressive social change leaders (folks from places like from Presente.org, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, Jobs with Justice, #BlackLivesMatter, and CREDO Action). DigitalCultureSHIFT found that:

  • 100% of those interviewed said that digital strategies and platforms provide a voice when mainstream media ignores issues.
  • The vast majority widely uses digital platforms to catalyze action, but say over-reliance on these tools can limit relationship building.
  • The Internet is changing the meaning of membership and forcing social change leaders to re-think the forms of organization. More than 80% of respondents indicated that Internet was helping to shift national organizations from centralized to de-centralized, from geographically specific to geographically diverse, and from hierarchical leadership to multi-level leadership.
  • Targeted surveillance is a top concern, particularly for organizations working with communities of color, migrants, or poor communities—but the vast majority of leaders interviewed felt that the movement for digital privacy did not include their voices or their visions for change. Still, digital rights groups are finding common cause with legacy and emerging civil rights groups to counter the discriminatory collection and application of data.

These findings make it clear: there’s a lot at stake.

Nonetheless, says DigitalCultureSHIFT,

The use of the Internet to drive strategies for racial and economic justice remains disconnected from fights to promote and preserve digital rights and access. This separation reduces the effectiveness of each, and weakens overall movement strategies for change.

DigitalCultureSHIFT asks an important question:

As activism for police accountability, fair wages, just immigration, and more takes center stage– social justice movements of the 21st century are using technology to achieve greater scale and reach wider audiences. But, are these digital strategies building power for long-term social change? Or helping maintain the status quo?

How can we, as movements, shift so that our digital strategies build power?

Recommendations put forward by DigitalCultureSHIFT include things like:

  • New approaches in both the field and philanthropic organizations, in which digital strategies are driven by values, focused on equity, rooted in a long-term social change vision, supported by universal digital access and rights.
  • Changing the platform to change the issue. The more open and democratic our systems of communication are, the more those platforms will drive a healthy and participatory public debate on social issues.
  • Scaling up successful projects like Van Jones’ Yes We Code, or the Open Web Fellows program to inject digital experts with best-in-class algorithm skills into social movements.
  • Changing the way we “do change”: those in social justice fields and in the philanthropic organizations that fund this work must develop new approaches that trust and support organizers, fund at intersections, and invest in shared infrastructure, multi-level stakeholder collaboration, and digital leadership development.

The moment is urgently now, writes Color of Change’s James Rucker in the introduction to DigitalCultureSHIFT, for our movements to engage with the Internet as both a tool and as arena for change:

As the nation emerges from a decade-long fight to keep the Internet open into a period of extraordinary contest for the role digital technologies will play in the lives of Black Americans and others, missing this opportunity would empower the forces that benefit from a corporate-controlled media: large, incumbent corporations and those who currently enjoy disproportionate power.

“After years of progress bridging the gap between technology, Black representation, and social justice, writers Rucker, “this is a cost Black communities – and all those pushed to the margins of both democracy and debate – just can’t afford.”

  • BLM

365 Days After Ferguson: Vision More Than Ever

By Aisha Shillingford   |  August 8, 2015
Reflections | 1 Comment

One year after Michael Brown’s murder and the uprising in Ferguson, we need vision more than ever.

As a Black woman, I know that we must aggressively imagine what it looks like when we are free, that there must be a prize to set our eyes on, a promised land…a mountain top.

Even as we resist the #worldasitis we must envision the #worldasitshouldbe.

Our movement must become sophisticated enough to put up a fierce resistance in the streets while at the same imagining a new economic paradigm that is based on racial equity and the empowerment of communities that have been disenfranchised for centuries. We must work to shift policy that chips away at the current system until it topples, while dreaming up a new system to take its place.

We need resistance and alternatives.

We need to practice and prototype alternatives in pockets of safety created by the breathing room that small wins affords us.

We must structure our movement so that direct action is holding the line while others are shifting narrative, others are prototyping prefigurative alternatives, others are shifting policy, others are providing the sweet relief of good, healthy food, dance, love, pleasure, massages, hugs, and smiles.

Our movement needs all of us and we need to come in to it with an ever expansive love that sees the value in all our approaches.

More than ever we need to work on our personal spiritual development, ground ourselves in unshakable certainty and truth, develop our own discipline and sense of focus, know how and when to soften and harden our hearts: soldiers by day, monks by night.

More than ever we need to create perspective based on our movement’s past, our current context and our future.

More than ever we need to read, learn, teach.

More than ever we need to truly learn to love and support each other. Far beyond the rhetoric we need to know what love and support really, really means. What does it mean to love each other only because we are in this together and our liberation is tied up in each others?

More than ever we need to know what changes in society after we win.

More than ever we must value simple, beautiful things that make life worth living. We must take it easy on each other, and practice radical forgiveness.

We must re-imagine the value of labor and the role of the human in the economy, particularly the human of color.

We must re-articulate our purpose and put humanity at the center.

We must think what is beyond mattering and beyond survival.

We must believe in what happens when #BlackLivesAreFree.

#SurvivalandBeyond

#BlackRenaissance

 

On Sunday, August 9 at 11:55 AM CST, the exact time of the death of Michael Brown Jr, the Brown family has asked for a national moment of silence.  Throughout the day, commit collective acts of remembrance, mourning, healing, and resilience in response to the violence and harm inflicted on Black women, men, and children.

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