image credit: Davide Guglielmo

This article gives a thoughtful, honest take on the influence of white identity politics. 

Whiteness has a political meaning as much as does Black or Asian or any other racial category. In order to define non-whites as inferior and deviant, whites needed to be defined as superior and normal. By claiming the category “normal,” whites imagined themselves outside the racial paradigm they had created. But, in fact, they were and are at the center of it.

For this reason, unless whites consciously oppose white privilege, their identities are defined by it.

Read more…

Original article on Race Files, posted May 14, 2012.

image credit: Shadia Fayne-Woods

this past weekend was reimagining organizing, movements and leadership in detroit. once we heard that author and thinker margaret wheatley was going to be in kalamazoo and was willing to come to detroit, we built the event as a way to immerse her in our work here in detroit, and immerse detroit in the ideas wheatley has been speaking to for the past 20 years.

wheatley’s book leadership in the new science was written 20 years ago, the same year detroit summer was founded. grace lee boggs read the work a few years ago and started incorporating some of the key ideas into her speeches and writing. hip-hop artist invincible got inspired by these speeches and began crafting a multi-media music project to connect complex science, social justice and hip-hop.

some of the key ideas uplifted were:

- how do we transition from a newtonian way of understanding the world (that things happen in a linear way, that it’s all about getting mass, getting as many people as possible to do one thing) to a quantum leap, or a complex, way of understanding things (that lots of small, seemingly disconnected actions can spark or emerge a transformation)?

- critical connections, deep trusting connections between points in a system, are more crucial to social change than critical mass. my friend gibran talks about the integrity of the connection between the nodes of a network being as important as the strength (or brilliance, or charisma) of the nodes themselves.

- thinking of change in the sense of fractals…fractals show us that the same patterns that exist on the smallest scale exist on the largest scale. in terms of the social changes we are working for, how can we try to create massive systems which we do not have an experience of at any scale? another way of thinking of this is that the pattern at the largest level can only be what it is at the smallest level. if we are chaotic within ourselves, our society will be chaotic. if we are fearful, gossiping, angry, dysfunctional, wounded at the small scale, then that is the society we will inhabit. this is a scientific impetus to transform ourselves to transform the world.

image credit: lokigrl616

- emergence and feedback loops. for years i have raged against plans, because it feels like we spend a lot of time making plans that don’t adapt for, or account for, the constantly changing landscape. emergence felt like a balm to my brain when i learned about it – it’s the process in nature that explains the beautiful movements of flocks of birds and schools of fish.

a few days before the event, we got news that wheatley had come down with pneumonia and wasn’t going to make it. while we sent her healing energy, we had to reflect that just a month ago, we had supported another gathering that the boggs center organized, where the special guest, vandana shiva, had also gotten ill just before the gathering and was unable to come.

our local conclusion from this was that we must have all we need to have these conversations in detroit already. but luckily we had structured the events to mostly focus on detroiters getting to interact with each other.

we had an initial intimate dinner for members of various networks in detroit to come in contact with each other and see what questions they share. the questions focused on transitions of leadership, how to face urgency with integrity, how we heal – moving from fragmentation to wholeness – in the process of the doing the work, bridging the gaps (real or perceived) between new and old paradigms, and how to make organizing a “path of least resistance” the most natural thing a community can do?

yesterday we had a large public event that opened with beth james blessing the space as an indigenous and african-american professor and healer from detroit.

grace lee boggs and invincible grounded us in the ideas above before a three-part fishbowl conversation where detroit-based organizers discussed the relevance of these ideas for our work here.

then we jumped into an assessment process where folks looked at the organizations and networks they are part of, and then at their own personal lives, to see how visionary they are now, and what the next step in transformation might be.

the assessment process yielded powerful conversations in small groups and pairs – it is always beautiful to me to watch folks open up, listen deeply, come into self-awareness and see the possibility of their lives and their work.

afterwards there was a youth-only event, a collaboration with the monthly detroit future youth network. the youth event, which included an exercise where the youth got to feel what it was like to be in a flock, was a space for young people working in networks across detroit to talk about their visions for leadership. they talked about how their work in movement could be focused on building each other up, rather than tearing each other down.

finally there was a series of performances, started off with invincible’s complex movements (where i got to wear a projection dress!!). then there was an open mic with a magnificent competition between the youth and adults. one of the highlights was a young woman named talitha who did a song about how fly she was. the chorus was “duh-duh-duh-duh-duh – it’s me!!”…and it’s been in my head the whole day.

watching young people in detroit burst with love and excitement about the community they are in, watching them build confidence on the stage, seeing the incredible life in them – it is restorative in and of itself.

with all of the adaptation and emergence in creating a wholeness out of wheatley’s absence, there were definitely moments where we had to release expectations and be present to a new situation. a few times i found myself frustrated that i wasn’t able to communicate clearly enough these ideas which excite me so, and which i feel i see in practice in detroit every day.

but the beauty was how open and raw people were about the fact that we all have limitations. we kept coming back to a quote from the late jimmy boggs – “you’re nobody until you are in relationship with a bunch of somebodies.” and ultimately that’s what we were doing – modeling relational intelligence, creating safe space, and all doing our best.

it was leaderful, and it was beautiful.

Original article on the Luscious Satyagraha, dated December 12, 2011.

image credit: nikita golovanov

On Mother’s Day, NYC Anarchist Black Cross calls for a world without cages as most of the women in prison are mothers, and the prison system makes it very difficult for women and their children to be in relationship with one another.

The West Side Highway in New York, which traces Manhattan’s westerly edge, is dotted with luxury condo buildings and office blocks with views onto the Hudson River. Around 20th Street, an eleven-story modernist mural of geometric shapes, “Venus,” decorates the south face of a vast concrete block, but the famous painting by Knox Martin is now almost entirely obscured by a recently completed condo complex.

Just as “Venus” now goes largely unnoticed by the cars whizzing up and down the highway, so, too, does the building it decorates: Bayview Correctional Facility, a medium-security women’s prison and rare example of a state penitentiary in the middle of a major metropolis.

Read more…

Original article by Natasha Lennard for Truthout, posted May 15, 2012.

image credit: Mihai Tamasila

Learn more about Ioby, an organization that fundraises for environmental groups. They’ve already raised a ton for New York grassroots environmental efforts.

Environmental organizations from around the country last week got a chance to seek support for local projects by creating fundraising pages on Ioby, which stands for “in our backyards.”

The nonprofit hopes to become the environmental equivalent of DonorsChoose.org, which raises money for teachers in classrooms across the country.

Read more…

Learn more about Ioby

Original article by Raymund Flandez and posted in the Chronicle for Philanthropy, May 4, 2012.

image credit: Pablo Rios

A more humorous take on the map of marriage equality in America.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama finally announced that he supports gay marriage. He emphasized that this is his personal opinion, and that he still thinks states should decide the issue on their own. Despite that caveat, gay rights supporters still had plenty of cause to celebrate.

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Original article by Samantha Oltman and posted in Mother Jones, May. 10, 2012.

image credit: Dimitri Castrique

I was recently reading through Stephen Levine’s book A Year to Live, which encourages people to live as if this year were their last. This article is a concentrated version of the same, giving us a chance to face our fears and live more fully, among other things.

As humans, our awareness of death is inherent. When confronted with this reality, we tend find ways to self-soothe that, though largely unconscious, are limiting to us in our lives, our relationships, and our goals. In his book, In the Wake of 9-11: The Psychology of Terror, Dr. Sheldon Solomon describes how in the period of time following the September 11 attacks, the country saw an increase in rates of drinking, gambling, and other common vices.

Read more…

Read about A Year to Live

Original article by Lisa Firestone, Ph.D. and published in Compassion Matters & posted in Psychology Today, May 15, 2012. 

image credit: xandert

True Vote is a watchdog group (King Street Patriots Texas Tea Party spin off) that will be making sure there is no voter fraud at the polls this year. Some people are wondering why they’re there at all. 

One of the first sights to greet attendees of the True the Vote national summit was the face of Martin Luther King, printed above the quote “PEACE if possible. TRUTH at all costs,” on t-shirts for sale in the hotel lobby. Of course, King didn’t actually say those words; the quote is from Martin Luther, the German theologian who predates King by about three centuries. But that was besides the point for True the Voters…

Read more…

Original article, “Voter Suppression Groups Plot a Million-Person Army to Swarm Polls,”  by Brentin Mock posted on Colorlines May 10, 2012. This article also appears in the May 28 edition of The Nation magazine.

“This lively RSAnimate, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.” 

Watch The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Original text from Superconsciousness Magazine.

image credit: Gabriel Rochette

Climate change, oddly enough, is something you can believe in–or not. Whatever you believe, global warming is affecting us, and the changes are happening more rapidly than scientists originally expected. 

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

image credit: Daniel Yara

Soy is everywhere, even in things that you might not suspect–salad dressing, for instance. It’s supposed to be good for you, especially for menopausal women. Not so. In Asia, soy was historically fed to livestock. It was considered inedible. And these days it makes a lot of people sick. One woman tells her story below:

As someone who is conscious of her health, I spent 13 years cultivating a vegetarian diet. I took time to plan and balance meals that included products such as soy milk, soy yogurt, tofu, and Chick’n patties. I pored over labels looking for words I couldn’t pronounce–occasionally one or two would pop up. Soy protein isolate? Great! They’ve isolated the protein from the soybean to make it more concentrated.

Read more…

Original article, “The Dark Side of Soy,” written by Mary Vance Terrain and posted in the Utne Reader on July/August 2007.

Few families will ever be able to pay off their inflated mortgages. Many will default. As long as this $700 billion in underwater mortgages remains on bank books, foreclosures will increase, the housing market will struggle, and our entire economy will stall.

image credit: Zochi Young

But there’s a solution: through principal reduction—rewriting underwater mortgages to reflect their fair market value—experts agree we could jumpstart the housing market and the economy.

Big banks must write down at least $300 billion in underwater homes. That’s not enough to bail out vacation homes and investment properties. It’s enough to put money back in the pockets of struggling middle and low-income families. And it’s enough to right the market. —Rebuild the Dream/The New Bottom Line

Look at the Photo Essay

Reprinted under Creative Commons license; Original article ,”Mortgaging the Future | Portraits of Underwater America,” posted on YES! Magazine by Rebuild the Dream, May 3, 2012.   

image credit: Luke Gillam

President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage Wednesday, capping days of frenzied speculation about his views and intensifying pressure from gay campaign donors that began with surprising comments on the issue over the weekend by Vice President Biden.

The announcement marked an apparent end to Obama’s self-described “evolution” on the issue.

Read more…

Watch the video interview

Original article, “Obama Endorses Same-Sex Marriage,” in the Washington Post, written by Peter Wallsten and Scott Wilson, Updated: Wednesday, May 9, 2012.