2017 Compassionate Communities - Day 1 | Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Summary

At the 2017 Compassionate Communities conference, Adrienne Maree Brown delivered a profound and engaging talk on "Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds." Brown emphasized the importance of adaptation, interconnectedness, and resilience in addressing societal harms and creating transformative change. Drawing inspiration from Octavia Butler's works, she encouraged participants to rethink hierarchical structures and embrace collaboration. Through exercises and dialogue, attendees explored their personal and collective roles in fostering justice and transformation. Brown's talk was a call to action, reminding everyone of the power of community and individual agency in shaping a better future.

Highlights

• Adrienne Maree Brown emphasizes adaptation and interconnectedness. 🌍
• Octavia Butler's influence on shaping emergent strategy is highlighted. 📚
• Participants engaged in exercises to explore personal and collective roles. 🌀
• The importance of grassroots organizing and small-scale change is discussed. 🍃
• Brown encourages embracing tension and not indulging in drama. 🎭

Key Takeaways

• Embrace change and adaptation to foster resilience and interconnectedness. 🌟
• Collaboration and unity are essential for transformative change. 🤝
• Everyone has a role in addressing societal harms and injustices. ✊
• Avoid hierarchical structures; embrace decentralized and inclusive organizing. 📉
• Practice compassion and love towards ourselves and others to create change. 💖

Overview

Adrienne Maree Brown captivated the audience at the 2017 Compassionate Communities conference with her thought-provoking talk on emergent strategy. Drawing from the works of Octavia Butler, Brown unveiled a framework that focuses on adaptation, interconnectedness, and resilience as key components of transformative change. She encouraged participants to embrace change, challenge hierarchical structures, and collaborate to address societal harms.

Throughout her engaging presentation, Brown led the audience through various exercises that invited them to reflect on their personal and collective roles in shaping a better world. By fostering community connections and practicing compassion, Brown highlighted the power individuals have in creating meaningful change. Her vibrant storytelling and practical insights provided attendees with a sense of agency and possibility.

The talk underscored the importance of grassroots efforts and small-scale changes in achieving larger societal transformations. Brown's approach is grounded in the belief that through interconnected actions and shared intentions, communities can rise to meet current and future challenges. Her message resonated deeply, reminding all present of the impact their choices can have in building a more just and equitable world.

2017 Compassionate Communities - Day 1 | Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I am deeply honored and humbled and proud to welcome to the stage Adrienne Ray Brown hi I'm agent ray brown it's so nice - I love all growls and sounds like that Wow y'all look beautiful and
• 00:30 - 01:00 there's a lot of you and I want to before I start anything I want you to all just actually look around really look around and take in that in this moment of real hardship and oppression and trauma that y'all are choosing a different way so just like look at the people at your table and that other tables and there's a ballroom full of people and I keep talking about
• 01:00 - 01:30 Harriet Tubman lately like Harriet Tubman's been on my mind and I just think about Harriet Tubman like this is about the number of people that she got free if it was all in one room at one time right and just thinking about like what it would have been like if she had started out with this many people all going out to get this Meany you know each person getting the same people free I just think sometimes we the scale we're always operating at such a large scale and we bring it down and actually look around it's like oh we're doing all
• 01:30 - 02:00 right you know for the species we're doing it's hard for our species right now but at this granular level this one on one level we're doing okay so for folks who are open to it I'd like to open with Octavius words as sort of a grounding meditation Octavia Butler was a black science fiction writer she wrote 12 novels and a collection of short stories and I'm gonna share basically she's one of the core pieces of the lineage of everything I do with my whole
• 02:00 - 02:30 life I'm a fan girl of her ancestral spirit so yes that's how I feel like I feel like whenever if someone says Octavia's name everyone should have like a Beyonce level response or like like that that's how I respond so she deserves it so what I wanted to do is just get your get yourself centered in your chair in yourself and just notice how you are in your body this morning all right you
• 02:30 - 03:00 might close your eyes to do this sort of turn inward like am i hydrated you know have I eaten enough of the right foods this morning I had breakfast with someone who got all the good foods and I got all the not good foods at the same breakfast scenario so just notice like re the one who made those choices this morning are you well-rested not just on a like last night level but like on a generally in life I'm taking good care of my sleep in my dream time and not judging any of
• 03:00 - 03:30 it just being with what is like how am i surviving right now how is my body self surviving that was my heart self surviving am I in touch with here's my grief here's my joy it's all it's all happening and into that Octavia offers all that you touch you change all that
• 03:30 - 04:00 you change changes you the only lasting truth is change God is change so again open up your eyes and look around at all these divine creatures around you who are wielding change and imagine that someone at your table might be the one who breaks it open for everyone else and you don't know who it
• 04:00 - 04:30 is you can't tell by looking you might not even be able to tell by being friends with them you know like oh I didn't know you were genius at getting people to heal from trauma it's amazing so I'm really honored to be with you all today I was really compelled by and I have continued to be compelled by all the choices made in the creation of this space looking through the booklet like landing into the space there's just so much love and care and intention at every single step so I just wanted to say thank you thank you to the land here
• 04:30 - 05:00 and to the water here to the people of here and then thank you to the folks who created this space for us it really means a lot and I was really excited because I'm like we choose all of us is such a compelling invitation I was like okay I can come there I fit and it's a compelling conversation because right now we're in this upheaval of all the harms all the harms so many of the harms are just getting exposed and unveiled I
• 05:00 - 05:30 said something last year well I posted something on my Instagram last year and it ended up going viral and I didn't put my name on it which I think was good I think that's the you know the universe being like you know it's not about you girl but I said that things are not getting worse they're getting uncovered and we must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil and you know people were like no it's getting worse it feels worse and for me I'm like I think if it feels worse that's a sign of how covered it
• 05:30 - 06:00 was for you right this is why I do science fiction writing and I always talk about the distinction between utopia and dystopia and that I'm not trying to create utopias because they always sit on top of dystopias for someone and I've never seen it done separately from that I think it's some of the humans struggle with but I'm trying to create something that's beyond a utopian or dystopian addition and it means choosing all of us and it means that we all do harm and in
• 06:00 - 06:30 this moment with things getting uncovered what we would rather be able to say is you did harm you did and I did nothing I'm good right it would be so nice if we had that but I don't have that yet the only person I've met people I've met who have it are in the one-month-old range after that it's I'm like I know you just pooped on purpose that was harmful
• 06:30 - 07:00 that was the diaper wasn't on yet it was not nice you know but this idea that none of us are disposable none of us are disposable really finds its root in nature in the natural world everything has a use someone will eat it someone will use it for fuel the ground will swallow it up the ocean will turn it into a place for barnacles and coral reef it out and you know in in the natural world we see this over and over again this is why I'm a mushroom huge
• 07:00 - 07:30 mushroom fan and whenever I say that people like me too and I'm like all mushrooms are great mushrooms except the poisonous ones but mostly I'm talking about the way that mushrooms can detox anything like you put them in the soil and they will process whatever's there even if it's chemical toxins in New Orleans after Katrina the mushrooms will like I'll take it I can use this right but how do we get like that with our human experience when what our recent socialization is it's not our original
• 07:30 - 08:00 ways but what our recent socialization is has been exile or engage in entrap people try to put them away from us and say that they don't deserve to be a part of society they don't belong to us because we don't do harm those people do harm and it allows us to individuate every single harm instead of stepping back and being able to see oh there's this massive system and we're participating in it and we're complicit in it this past year how many people
• 08:00 - 08:30 after the election were like I'm either moving or I'm not going to pay my taxes or system right and then how many people are still here paid their taxes and so far have not engaged these system that intimately yeah so I want to say this because I'm like I feel very much that anyone who's living in this country paying taxes in any way is very complicit in the most massive harms that are happening on the planet and then inside of that there's interpersonal
• 08:30 - 09:00 harms there's organizational harms there's all this other stuff how do we say no one is disposable when we're such harmful beings how do we have compassion love for each other and for ourselves that's what I want to explore I'm good with that so emergent strategy is my best offer into that void of overwhelming harmfulness of the human species and it comes from a lot of places but one of them like I mentioned is Octavia Butler
• 09:00 - 09:30 and she wrote in a novel called the parable of the sower and a parable the talents she basically wrote in a belief system just cuz I can they gave me a lavaliere I know just cuz I can you how's that woo how's that I'm gonna walk away from this thing oh my notes over here alright y'all just tell me what to do
• 09:30 - 10:00 stand back here how does it sound on the lavalier versus this one it's the same it's better alright let's do that how about for my friends in the back and it's bad it's better over here all right trying to serve the peace so this is better for my folks in the back all right see we're gonna make we're not disposable not even as listeners okay so
• 10:00 - 10:30 Octavia wrote about this belief system called earth seed right and our see the concept of visit the destiny of human beings is to take root amongst the stars that the experience of being on this planet is actually kind of a growing ground almost like a womb where we get all of our parts and we generate our capacities so that we can go off into the stars no there's a lot of problems with this manifest destiny right is it involves some colonialism at the end of it she
• 10:30 - 11:00 actually names the ship the Christopher Columbus because she promises it right she's like oh wouldn't it be so great to get off this planet full of messy people but you'd still be in a messy people situation and taking these messy people elsewhere in the system though one of the things she talks about is that we have to get a right relationship with change and that humans hate getting a right relationship with change we really want things to we want to set it up and then have it stay that way this is what's familiar to me this is what I feel right with but her system was like
• 11:00 - 11:30 that's not how the natural world works that's not how our universe works what we've come into as a system that is actually changing all the time and until we get a right relationship with those changes we're not going to be in my relationship with ourselves and we won't be able to be in right relationship with each other will be disappointed by each other will be harmed by each other because people are gonna be changing all the time and I remember being so moved by this the first time I read it which was back in like high school I grew up in a military environment military environment is like we're not changing we're wearing uniforms we're running the
• 11:30 - 12:00 same thing every morning you know we're just like everything is here everything is linear we conquest in a linear way right we conquest from a hierarchical phonetic understanding of the world when I read this it turned my world upside down this idea that actually everything is changing all the time and you can't control it and you're not ever going to be in control of it but you can shape it if you actually take responsibility for the world that you're a part of you can actually shape it in that shapingg we can do collectively actually shaping
• 12:00 - 12:30 something individually it very rarely makes a change that lasts for any of time it's all about what we do as the collective body so I was like boom collective shaping change got it that's my life path it wasn't quick quite that clear I was 19 I've had many like boom moments how many of you have had like mini boom moments yeah like this is my life path I found it and then everything changes right changes from external causes or changes from internal causes right so I want to share with you some more words
• 12:30 - 13:00 of Octavius this I feel like I keep telling people like emergent strategy in a nutshell is this or emerges tried you know oh great thanks hi I'm talking a lot huh okay I'm always very aware I'm like I'm talking really fast let me know if I should slow it down okay I'm going to read you something from Octavia that I feel is emergent strategy and in nutshell I also feel like if you have the book and if you want a cheat sheet if you're like most humans who don't read books anymore
• 13:00 - 13:30 which is a challenge when you write a book is you're like I know people don't really read books I still need to say all these things in 300 pages what to do right so you write a book you put it out you travel around you talk about it people don't read it but they still like the ideas and so I want to just invite you all into that that's okay with me like if you don't read the book that's fine if you do want to know about the ideas in the book though pages 15 41 and 42 boom that's the whole thing and 15 is
• 13:30 - 14:00 mostly just a graphic and it has these words of Octavius and then the other side and then the facilitation training is going to talk about pages 41 or 42 so that's it I did that on purpose because I really wanted to be like how would I tweet if I needed to just tweet the book what would I do so I was like page 15 is very important so here's what it says all successful life is adaptable opportunistic tenacious interconnected and fecund
• 14:00 - 14:30 understand this use it shape God so I was reading Octavia Butler's work over and over again and I thought that it was so interesting to me because it was young black female protagonist and his you may have seen my sweatshirt today [Music] for those who are not wearing glasses it says I'm rooting for everybody black it's ISA ray who created the HBO series insecure said this when she was heading
• 14:30 - 15:00 it to the I think we figured out Emmys and I was like yeah exactly black and I've always been this way like since I was young is I wanted to tap into an experience of blackness that was not just about the oppression and the harm and the trauma that I don't want to feel like I'm bonded to black people because of trauma I want to feel like oh I'm bonded because of something else I'm bonded and I'm rooting for blackness in the world as another force as a beautiful force as an equal force to any other force yeah so I got excited when I saw all these young black protagonist in
• 15:00 - 15:30 Octavia's books but then as I kept reading it I she was tapping into something that goes deeper than any identity she was tapping into a way of leading and she sums it all up in those words this is my powerpoint by the way his little sticky notes she sums it all up and so the way it's translated into the work if you look on page 15 if you just listen is it's fractal nonlinear decentralized adaptive resilient and it creates more possibilities right and I'm
• 15:30 - 16:00 gonna just speak about each of those briefly so adaptable that you can actually adapt with change not purely reactive right we can always be reactive just reacting to whatever happens with no clear intention of where we want to go and you can just reactor reactor yourself all the way through your life I didn't do that one right that wasn't me where's the sound friend who's the person who's handling sound am I good it's okay hi thank you sound friends all right
• 16:00 - 16:30 so adaptive means we adapt with intention we're trying to get somewhere when birds are flocking and they're flying south if a storm knocks them off by 50 miles or something they're not just like you know what it I can't I don't feel like going to Mexico anymore I just I think we should just land here in Delaware and just like you know huddle right they're like no we just have to figure out how to you know we just still need to find fresh water we need to get back on our path and they feel it inside them and so when I hear that it
• 16:30 - 17:00 makes me think what is it that we feel inside us what is it so compelling that it brings out the best of us and it helps us go beyond what we're capable of so adaptation with intention I think our intention is around love I'll get to that later but how do we make sure that we're constantly adapting to change and the faster we can let go of like well I thought it was going to be this way the faster we can let go of that and be like it's this way and how can I still get to justice and liberation and transformation this way right so that's the first piece fractal which I love
• 17:00 - 17:30 fractal is basically all about scale right that the same patterns in the world they they from the smallest to the largest scale you see the repetition of these patterns spirals in the waves spirals on our fingertips spirals are the shape of the very galaxy that were a part of broccoli is also a miraculous thing if you look at broccoli all the way down to the smallest aspect of the stem you have the same shape repeated over and over again we humans are fractals right we're
• 17:30 - 18:00 little cells moving the whole body of our humanity all the time and some of us are toxic cells right that doesn't mean we can't heal regenerate figure it out but fractal says if we can't do this on the small scale it's not going to happen on the large scale so when we talk about the experiment of democracy for instance I often will ask people and actually I ask you now how many people here would say your immediate family functions as a really functional democracy
• 18:00 - 18:30 yeah raise your hand be proud you're like we vote we make decisions the budget is transparent we are functioning all right how many people if you add your extended family so your racist uncle your grandmother your nieces now you still right do in democracy how many people are you on your block right no I've lost you all know we've got a blocker one block okay what about your whole community functional democratic
• 18:30 - 19:00 process in your community so I say this to say that then we look at the federal level like this democracy is not working they don't know how to do government it's like no none of us do right we actually haven't spent our time doing government we've spent our time doing capitalism and domination so we've gotten really good at those things and then we could have like flirt with democracy on the side but we actually who we elect is like whoever lies the best to us right it's like I told you
• 19:00 - 19:30 the best story about yourself we don't pay attention to actions that much we don't actually track like well what did you actually do what do we actually want done right so small d-- democracy I think about that is one of the main places where we need to practice our fractal thing if we want it to happen on a large scale we have to do it on a small scale transformative justice is also one of these right if you can't forgive your partner for putting the toilet paper roll on the wrong way how are we supposed to build this up to a level that our whole society can do this
• 19:30 - 20:00 right nonlinear and iterative is the third one nonlinear and iterative so things don't happen in a linear way we try to make them happen that way and one of the ways we do that is we make five-year strategic plans right we're like here's this doechigi claim I figured it all out we're gonna do this this this this and that here's the opportunities and the challenges of this moment and based off of that we're gonna say how the whole future is gonna be we have a plan right and then the plan
• 20:00 - 20:30 doesn't work often I work as a facilitator for about 20 years I've been doing facilitation for social justice or you might you're like who is this girl anyway so that's what I do that's why I'm talking to you now is that I've done that work and that work showed me that a lot of people take their strategic plans back in the day when they used to print it out now people just put it in a virtual file but it used to be printed out and it would still go in a file cabinet somewhere and be like we have a strategic plan remember and slowly people would forget and then things would be nonlinear again like they normally are and then they would come back and like five years later be like let's do another strategic plan right so
• 20:30 - 21:00 trying to get groups to let go of thinking that things are gonna go linearly and get in tune with what really matters to us our strategic intentions that need to be realized in every action that we do what are the strategic intentions that will guide all of our work so that we can be nonlinear but also so that we can be iterative iterative means we're practicing right we're always practicing things and what are some of the things you Octus now that USA are not aligned with
• 21:00 - 21:30 your values you can shout them out are you too ashamed I'll just say this I watched the Bachelorette I practice it like I watch it and I know it's bad and I know I don't agree with the values of it the Kardashians write what the walking dead so television right like we know that we should be spending that precious miraculous life energy you know feeding the hungry but
• 21:30 - 22:00 instead we're like I need to sit on my couch and just watch other people's messy lives for a couple of hours or three days you know now that the binge watching thing binge watching is so deep okay so paying taxes for some people might paying federal taxes for some people might be another one of those what are other practices you're in shopping just consuming consuming consuming this culture right so iterative practice says that if you want to be something different you have to practice different things right because
• 22:00 - 22:30 you become what you do over and over and over again and I think for instance one of the things I talk about often in the in the process of justice or trying to get to justice is that one of the major practices and is that we lie all the time like we live small-scale levels and large-scale levels and we do it to make each other comfortable right we're like I'm gonna be polite I don't wanna disrupt anything and then we end up in genocide or conditions for our people over and over again either
• 22:30 - 23:00 enacting it or being enacted upon because we're too polite to disrupt the conditions and then when people do so I do a lot of work with black lives matter and movement for black lives and it's so fascinating to see people be like why do you have to be so loud and disruptive and that was not Bernie Sanders was talking you know like these things happen you know real things happen right where people were like why are you being like this and then what doesn't get noticed is like now we're having a conversation
• 23:00 - 23:30 around the safety and well-being of black people in this country that black people have been trying to get politely for the last 40 years right so this is question like what do we practice how do we practice interrupting I was like if everybody in this room interrupted racism every single time they saw it like what would be the wave of that would we still need to do these disruptive wakeup actions right so iteration iteration iteration yeah then we talk about resilience and I I
• 23:30 - 24:00 pay rent in Detroit live in Detroit love Detroit and one of the things I talk about in Detroit is that resilience has been used kind of against us as a it's like oh you're so resilient you don't need heat you know you guys just bounce back like we all just take this water it's fine because these are resilient people and so you're just like oh the harm keeps piling up because you're like we were we were strong we survive so I want to reframe a reclaim resilience I really feel like resilience
• 24:00 - 24:30 is our inheritance that we can recover from harm they were honest species that were on a planet that recovers from harm and there were of that right so I talked to my dad about this my dad has chronic back pain and I'm like I think it's emotional I think a lot of chronic pain is actually emotional and my dad's like what do you tell you know like way to talking about it says like well the body the human body would harm happens has like a six week to six month recovery time for most harm
• 24:30 - 25:00 so something continues to act up you know like his lower back or the spot on my neck right I'm like what is the story or what's being held in there that needs to be resolved that needs to be let out that needs to recover I've actually been talking about this I really think that so much of the chronic illness we're dealing with now is that we live in a society there's actually moving too fast and doing too much where we are required to take in so much harm with no tools for how to navigate it how to choose like where can I actually be of use and
• 25:00 - 25:30 so when that fire hydrant gets opened up and it's like here's all the harms today there's hurricanes there's earthquakes these people are at war these people are being genocided this person just got shot all of this is just yesterday that's just like one day of the human experience now and we have the internet so you can get the pictures the sounds you can see every single harm has happened and then maybe you'll be told you can find a petition to help this or maybe you can send a package but it's not enough like what we're able to
• 25:30 - 26:00 do in response to the harm that we're seeing is not nearly enough so it ends up overwhelming the system so the place that I entered this now is in transformative justice is how do we actually say what are the places where we can actually transform the conditions at their root right where are the places where we can get our hands dirty get in there be transformed in this process of the work and actually create transformation it's meant that I've turned a lot of the news off and you know I've always had a real feeling or
• 26:00 - 26:30 like I have to be the most well informed person at the table like I always have to know all the things and I've had to let that go like I don't know I can't take in all the things I'm working very very deeply on a few things and I'm gonna let myself be transformed by and transform those things and figure out how to transform them outside of the power of the state because I don't trust this state because as we just all saw no one knows how to do democracy much less transform chances at the state level so what do we do so got it so far aware is
• 26:30 - 27:00 so good the last piece of it is creates more possibilities so in a military so strategy you know when I was choosing to use the word strategy it was a risk because strategy is a military term it means a plan of action towards a goal but people use it like it means something different like it means made of crystal brilliance you know so when people say like that person so strategic you know what they're saying is like that person is better than you and thinking so we're gonna listen what they said and a lot of times that's tied into
• 27:00 - 27:30 stuff right men are more strategic white people are more strategic consultants that are men and white people are the most strategic right so then you end up being like oh how do I find a strategic thinker to guide me right and try to break out of that way of thinking that also that strategy means narrowing down to one way and trying to eliminate the complexity to eliminate all the variants in the diversity right so a lot of times how we're taught to be strategic is
• 27:30 - 28:00 actually anti-nature or anti-natural then when you look at the natural operating systems of the world is all these fecund ecosystems that are incredibly bio diverse and those are the healthiest right those are the most likely to survive apocalyptic conditions I'm like humans should tap into that stream that feels like it's working those dominant creatures where they try to make a monolith out of an area tigers lions bears the ones we love to sing about when we read The Wizard of Oz
• 28:00 - 28:30 sorry in my head I was like you know every time you say lions and tigers and bears it just has to be a Wizard of Oz moment and that's just how it has to be I'm a born of a certain age but this idea that those month those creatures that try to say I will dominate those are the ones that are going extinct mostly because of our influence but they're unable to adapt the hierarchy is unable to adapt to what we're doing all these smaller adaptive biodiverse creatures that live on each other bacteria viruses gnats flies roaches
• 28:30 - 29:00 they're super resilient they're doing great they're all like creating more possibilities they're like I can live anywhere I can live in your walls I don't care right it's all good with me so I keep thinking that those little creatures and being like how do we not be the roaches of the future I mean if that's what it takes you don't want to think of ourselves that way we're like we're so superior to roaches you know they're disgusting but I'm like they're really they're surviving so anything on this planet that's surviving I'm like we need to give it a respectful examination right and those things that are
• 29:00 - 29:30 surviving are surviving because they learn to collaborate in some way or they surrender to collaboration and not just collaborate in the I think the funder sense of it is like we're collaborating like we both put our names on the pamphlet right but collaboration like I just had an idea and I'm gonna let you into that idea as soon as possible so that we can be I da ting together they were co-creating and that the more people who co-create something the more inclusive it actually is of all of us
• 29:30 - 30:00 yeah so if you're in a space where it's like there's no one with a wheelchair at the table then often those spaces have being like less accessible for people with no chairs right it doesn't mean there has to be someone that wheelchair the table but it really increases the likelihood that it's going be accessible if there's people they were like I know what you need to think about as a woman I know what you need to think about as a career person I know what you need to think about right so creating more possibilities means inviting more people into the creation process and then surrendering your right way you know right none of us are right
• 30:00 - 30:30 if we were right we would be free right we're figuring it out okay I've covered two of my pages they're tiny little pages so we're doing good so I just want to say when I do these talks there's some stuff that I try to always share like the basics of emergent strategy and then there's some stuff that I leave up to like what's happening in the world right now and what does this room feel like and I want I hope that y'all gonna
• 30:30 - 31:00 be willing to do some play with each other because I don't want to just talk talk talk at you I have some stuff that I'd like you to do and build with each other are you down to do that okay so I'm gonna share probably about oh that was a lot of enthusiasm back there I'm excited now I'm more excited than I was so I'm gonna share like ten more minutes of thoughts to prep for that but as you're listening I want you to be thinking like what of this is resonating with me what do this is challenging me
• 31:00 - 31:30 because that's going to come out in what you're gonna do with each other so a couple of pieces that I wrote down last night last night when I landed I was like all I have to say this and I have to say this one is letting go of hierarchy is a really it's like in order to choose all of us we have to kind of relinquish our commitment to hierarchy Octavia Butler taught us that the fatal flaw of our species is intelligence plus hierarchy that we use all the reusing
• 31:30 - 32:00 power and the intelligence that we have to create dominant structures over and over again and then if we are going to survive beyond this moment we're gonna have to learn to let go of those and so I've been thinking like I'm pretty good at that like I'm not a bunch of hierarchies but then I was like no but the hierarchy that I have had a hard time relinquishing his moral superiority I really love being on a high horse I do I horses are beautiful horses are beautiful but I also really love being like oh no I'm right I've got this I
• 32:00 - 32:30 figured this out and one of the things that's helped me start to relinquish that is building an intersectional analysis right so when I just think of myself in one of the core lines of my oppression for instance if I only think of myself as black then I can get on a very high horse right I'm like I have been victimized you are all wrong for victimizing me and here's what happens next and letting go that moral superiority for me has meant being able to say like I'm intersectional I'm black
• 32:30 - 33:00 but I'm also a woman I'm also queer I'm also amazingly thick bodied I mean this body is incredible and it's taken me a long time to know it was incredible but like I've claimed it right in length no it's it's amazing and I'm also college educated I've also traveled around the entire world I also get paid to do exactly what I love doing so there's places in which I get harmed and there's places which I cause harm and the sooner I can recognize my own complexity and my own contradictions it
• 33:00 - 33:30 allows me to step down off of that horse and be like oh we're all in this and I think everyone needs to make those little maps for themselves these are the ways that I currently benefit from the oppressions of society and these are the ways that I'm impacted by them and that no one has everything only on one side or the other side right everyone has some mixture of both and again it's like how do I see myself whole yeah it requires a lot of trust in order to do this collaborative work in order to heal
• 33:30 - 34:00 and move forward and after harm that's the number one thing that's been broken right trust in yourself you know I know as someone who is a survivor of sexual assault that like the first questions that I had for myself and even now in this meet to moment other things have been unveiling I'm like oh that was also a thing that what the you know like all this has been happening and the first thing is like how can I trust myself I let myself be in that situation even though as a child I let myself be
• 34:00 - 34:30 in that situation even though I had no idea right how can I trust myself how can I trust anyone else is everyone else trying to harm me you start to see the world this way and now I work in the black organizing spaces there's this new you no FBI has said there's a black identity extremists work and there's all these things being planted to make us not trust each other harmful things being thrown into the community harm always happens on multiple levels right so it's like how do we actually start to
• 34:30 - 35:00 regenerate and rebuild trust even though all the evidence says we probably shouldn't right that's what it means to be a human being trying to create change right now and it means we have to be willing to look past the surface actions because a lot of times when people have done harm they want to point to like here's something I can do in one day I'll apologize and I'll come out as gay if you're Kevin Spacey right or right it's just like here's the immediate and I'm like you know for me I keep looking at I'm like yeah that of course that was
• 35:00 - 35:30 not a good response obviously and I'm like there's all these people making really bad responses right now to these accusations that are coming in because they're not actually taking time to move through a transformative justice process they're not actually taking time to like sit down with the person that they harmed or the 60 people that they harmed and say what happened what did i do why did I do it let me examine thats where's the harm in me all of that process we're skipping over that we're just looking for the surface level actions in your own work in your own organizations you
• 35:30 - 36:00 have to resist this - because of the way our funding cycles work how many of you are doing like nonprofit work explicitly right so because of the way these funding cycles work it's like if a problem comes up I need to finish handling this by the next time I go to apply for a grant because this can't be like a problem right that doesn't create conditions that are conducive to healing and transformation so there's three things I wanted to offer as practices I've been using as a facilitator and practices I've been using as a human
• 36:00 - 36:30 being that I find really helped to increase the capacity for transformative justice and transformative spaces one I learned as a doula you all know what a doula is yeah so I work with people who are like having babies to come out of their bodies and I don't know if I'm ever gonna do it right the more I see it I'm like what a miracle wow that was terrifyingly awesome you know I mean I think it's the best and it's also like I don't know if I can do that but I had these moments of whenever
• 36:30 - 37:00 I'm in the doula mode where I'm like oh engage tension don't indulge drama engage tension don't indulge drama tension is great tension means things are changing new life is coming the miracle is on the way right you have to bear down you got to breathe through it but like you don't want to stop and there's almost always a moment in the birthing experience when the person who's giving birth looks at me or looks at the Midwife or the doctor whoever else is there I can't do this actually I'm gonna go home now I'm sorry
• 37:00 - 37:30 that I took everyone's time but actually this is not working for me right now and I'm not doing it right and in that moment you know being present with that person like no this is we're gonna engage this tension this is a key we're actually almost there right something impossible is about to happen and your body knows what to do and if it doesn't know what to do we got you but we're gonna we got to move forward back is not an option right so holding that principle when we're organizing people
• 37:30 - 38:00 when we're creating mediation processes for folks it's like actually want to engage the tension and not run from it but don't indulge drama right so one of my early time is being a doula I'm working with the young mother who was having the baby and her partner shows up and he is high as a kite because he is 18 and he is out of his league with all this and he's you know I don't know what to do so getting really high seemed to make sense to him in that moment but it didn't make sense to her right she was like you know like it was just like a
• 38:00 - 38:30 huge sound of rage that came out of her and I was like we got a what we're gonna do right now and I was like that's drama what he's bringing right now is a little bit of drama he didn't mean to write he was just like I'm trying to get through this experience so we took him and we're like you're gonna go sit in the waiting room and just let it come down drink some water you're gonna send your friend home your friend who you got high with them brought in like hey baby you know that's gonna we're gonna not have that and we're
• 38:30 - 39:00 gonna keep working and pushing in here and then you're gonna come back in and he totally got it together he came back in and we engaged tension together right and I think about that so often that experience because both of them were like willing to keep showing up she was like okay you can come back in are you are you good okay you come back here right she had to be willing in that moment to say okay you can come in but we all had to be about engaging tension and how many times in our organizational work and our healing work do we run away from the tension or do we turn away from the tension it's too much I don't deal
• 39:00 - 39:30 with it right now how do we instead get about engaging it you got that one engaged tension don't indulge drama a second one is engaging in principle to struggle right this is connected so I think a lot of times we love engaging in struggle keshiki others critiquing everyone right telling everyone I have talked about this that most of our college experiences are actually about training us in deconstruction right we get trained here's how you look at something and see what's wrong with it and you know the
• 39:30 - 40:00 lineage of what's wrong with it right so this is a mess as far back as I can see what we don't learn is how do we construct how do we build how do we co-create how do we generate principled struggle to me is one of the ways that we say I am in a struggle with you but I'm not in a struggle with you because I want to tear you down I'm gonna struggle with you because I want to build you up I'm gonna struggle with you because I want us to grow together I learned this from my comrade in Tonya Lee who's at left roots it does incredible work as a facilitator and as a teacher but it
• 40:00 - 40:30 talks about how do you struggle for the sake of growth rather than struggling for the sake of tearing things apart how do you recognize what are the right containers and which to do that healing I always say when I sit down to start a mediation I'm like do both of you actually want to see something change here because if you don't this is not actually that great of an idea right we can create boundaries without doing a whole mediation process mediation should be about like we want to move forward somehow we want some clarity here and I
• 40:30 - 41:00 always talk about that is this the right container to even be doing that healing in and then how do you not go off and have side conversations right principle struggle happens when it's all let's look at each other face-to-face and have the conversation not we had one conversation that was all a bunch of and then we all went out in the hallway we were like yo that's why this never works cuz so I'm so right and we love doing this right we can all see so clearly the flaws of other people we can see it so
• 41:00 - 41:30 clear I mean I'm a Virgo so I could see it like very very clearly but I think we all have this in us right this capacity to look at other people and be like you should have done this right you should be like that so principals struggle says there's a principle that I'm fighting for that I believe we are fighting for and we're gonna engage the other piece of principle struggle that feels really important is we ask questions before we issue our critique so it's now that you never get to issue a critique and if you love issue and critique it's coming don't worry all right but that we ask
• 41:30 - 42:00 these questions or I on the internet now I say read the text first because so often people like read the headline they're like this is exactly what I'm talking about I'm soaked and I'm like wait did you read you didn't even look you have to click through right as a headline that's not a sturdy piece and a lot of times the headline is even with the right like the writers often don't create the headlines for their pieces so I might click through read the text or in person ask the question it sound like you just said something really racist can we talk about that right I want to
• 42:00 - 42:30 engage you in it I want to have a conversation make sure I understand now if it is racist then I get to move into critique yeah right but sometimes it's like oh a person had no idea what they just said right they need to learn and you're gonna teach them yeah the third thing is connected to that transform yourself to transform the world I learned this from Grace Lee Boggs who I had the honour being mentored by in Detroit she was a chinese-american activist married into the Black Power movement and just did incredible work
• 42:30 - 43:00 she has books that you should read she has an autobiography called autobiography called living for change and her latest book was the next American Revolution and she passed away two years ago after reaching a hundred years and a hundred days old and she's very much a part of the lineage of this work but one of the things she taught us was transform yourself transform the world and I remember when I first heard this I was like it can't happen at an individual level like that doesn't matter but then when I understood what she was saying that each of us was carrying like
• 43:00 - 43:30 the parts of this harm inside of us I am an anti-capitalist who's walking around with a shopping problem right like when I get really sad I need to go on ASOS and buy myself a new skirt and I'm like that's not helping me be less sad what is happening here what do I need to transform to make myself feel abundance in my life without having to consume right that's one thing I could tell you 50 more things I'm so contradictory right and I'm working on all of them and
• 43:30 - 44:00 I'm trying to see all of them how do I transform myself when we're trying to think about doing this work out in the world again it's so easy to point the fingers and it's so much harder to say how do I shift this in myself and begin to embody something so compelling it's irresistible yeah so that when someone meets me I don't have to critique them I just have to embody something that's liberated and free and whole yeah what does that actually look like to practice those three things I have found in most
• 44:00 - 44:30 mediations will get us through if we can engage the tension be in principle struggle and then be willing to self transform and commit to self transforming that will get people through if people are not down to do that they're not actually wondering they're just like they want to seem to have done the right thing we have to stop seeming to do the right thing if we're gonna survive I think as a species all of our seeming to do stuff is like plastic and we need to be back to the dirt does that make sense so I'm gonna
• 44:30 - 45:00 ask you all now to be thinking about a few things and I want you to think about them with others so we're gonna do a little playing with each other so what I want to ask you to do is find the nearest stranger and I'm gonna count from five down to one and here's before you move before you get going I know you my overachievers are like I got it I see a stranger awesome right so here's what I want you to do is you're gonna move your chair and turn your chairs so that
• 45:00 - 45:30 you're sitting hard to heart face to face need okay that's what I mean by found a stranger you're not gonna say words you're gonna keep your mouth shut so that you can hear me it'll just be easier to get the instructions and when I tell you to you'll talk so I'm going to count from five to one find a stranger and set yourself up five that's gonna be hard for you Kelly for three
• 45:30 - 46:00 - raise your hand if you need a stranger find each other it could be a near stranger if you're really struggling but just keep looking find each other with your raised hands there's a few more raised hands look across the room some enchanted evening you will see a
• 46:00 - 46:30 stranger all right this is your stranger so a lot of times when we come to these conferences we're trying to sit down with someone and basically make an impression that includes like our resume our entire history as a human being everything we're smart and good at and the major questions of our lives and whether we're available for dating like all in the first two minutes or so of the interaction and I want to let all
• 46:30 - 47:00 that fall away and I'm just gonna make it awkward for a few minutes so I'm gonna ask you to give this person your attention if it's not in your cultural practice or it does not feel comfortable to make eye contact go for the forehead go for the clavicle don't look up to the ceiling and don't look at me right really tune in to this other person in whatever way you can and what you're looking for and if you can't make eye contact by all means go for it just balls out okay just go for it you can do
• 47:00 - 47:30 this and I believe in you I believe that you can do this so the first feelings you might have it just like awkward I want to laugh or I want to talk and what I want to ask you to do is see if you can drop under that keep looking at each other I see somebody looking at me I'll still be here looking fantastic afterwards I always will I promise until I'm not so tuned in to this person in front of you I contact or total attention and what I want you to do is
• 47:30 - 48:00 just this person doesn't have to prove anything to you they don't have to earn your respect they already have it just resting into the fact that out of all the things this person could be doing in the world they have chosen intentionally to try to reduce the harm that our species causes to each other they have chosen to try to increase the transformation the safety and the love that exists in the world right they're
• 48:00 - 48:30 doing this not just for themselves because they could they could just be like I'm gonna go sit on a beach somewhere and I'm just gonna feel the love for myself forever but they chose to come to a cold place right and sit in a room full of others people some of whom they don't know and just get present let's get present and be grateful for this person and understand like oh they've got this whole life behind them first of all billions of years of DNA
• 48:30 - 49:00 went into creating this perfect person this miraculous being whose heart is beating whose lungs are functioning who loves people and who is loved by people all of that is true even if they don't tell you the stories of all of it that's already true this is just this divine being and a shape changer this person has changed and changed and changed in ways you cannot imagine they were one-month old ones right
• 49:00 - 49:30 somebody had to love them past that somebody fed them somebody they were the most precious thing in the world to somebody someone help them learn to say hello to say I love you and at a certain point they started finding a path and that path led them to you right now so you can write always choose the level of
• 49:30 - 50:00 which you're going to engage this person like am I gonna be a real person right now I can or I could put on whatever my projection is and try to impress so you get a choice choose your own adventure and what I want you to try here is choosing yourself like choosing full acceptance like I am I am good as I am like I'm trying to create change but I'm also I'm really good right now and what I'm doing is important right now I'm proud of it and I want to share
• 50:00 - 50:30 it right that's the energy I want to invite you into with each other and this is going beyond the random circumstances of your birth so you guys I totally I think it's totally fine to kind of look at each other be like here's some assumptions I might be making about you right based on what I'm seeing on the external your hair is a certain way you're wearing a certain hat right you've got on functional shoes or you know you like you got on some things right but then there's also just the
• 50:30 - 51:00 random circumstances of your birth which is how I speak about right how we get gendered how our abilities get measured what race and sex constructs set us up for how have we found ourselves along the journey of that because we don't choose we don't choose which bodies we come out of but the bodies we come out of set up so much about how we gonna be and who we get to be in the world
• 51:00 - 51:30 so also seeing can you let the assumptions fall away and be like I don't actually know about this person's life yet no matter what I think and I want you to share with each other here's how I've been choosing myself and here's how I've been choosing my people here's how I've been choosing all of me and here's how I've been choosing my people I'm gonna say the person with the shortest hair is gonna go first
• 51:30 - 52:00 got it everybody got it all right I'm at a time you you're gonna get two minutes each way so I'll just go time and then I'll say switch and it'll be two minutes later in life and time and you'll have spent it sharing about yourself ready say Sun are you ready so the questions are here's how I have been choosing all of myself and here's how I've been
• 52:00 - 52:30 choosing all of my people right and that might be like here's the work I've been doing to do that that might be like I've been meditating every morning and taking long baths right the full range show how you're already choosing yourself got it all right two minutes little short hair person go ahead
• 52:30 - 53:00 [Music]
• 53:00 - 53:30 about 30 seconds left
• 53:30 - 54:00 [Music]
• 54:00 - 54:30 time switch to the long haired person long haired person two minutes begin now
• 54:30 - 55:00 how are you choosing all of you
• 55:00 - 55:30 about 30 seconds
• 55:30 - 56:00 that's time that's time so if you have
• 56:00 - 56:30 long hair just close your mouth if
• 56:30 - 57:00 you're the long-haired person just close your mouth and if you see people still talking around you just give them a little shameful like a little light shameful face like come on now Adrienne said to close your mouth yes you even you right so I I often laugh about these
• 57:00 - 57:30 things but it's one of the ways you know the the subtle small ways that we practice dominance is and how we take up space and how we share space with others like my story is more important so I need more time than anyone else here to tell it or whatever right so just like noticing that and again no harm no foul right just noticing like oh yeah I did really want to finish my story and it does need time and my thing is like make a lunch date right so here's the other piece that I'm going to ask you
• 57:30 - 58:00 all to share with each other and this one is going to be a little bit more free-ranging I'm gonna give you five minutes to just share between the two of you and here's what I'm Way too talk about what are the toxic systems that I'm trying to relinquish or eliminate in my own life and how is that going to shape how I show up for this conference right what are the toxic systems I'm trying to relinquish or eradicate in my own life and how is that going to show up in how I am at this conference got it
• 58:00 - 58:30 yeah good question no it's a hard one I was like let's struggle with it and it might so just as an example it could look like I'm trying to undo patriarchy right so when I'm facilitating spaces in the system I'm going to make sure to hold a real balance and have leadership from the the women of censure voices in the room right that might be a practice that your being it or might be something else okay
• 58:30 - 59:00 ready everyone understand the question yeah okay five minutes it goes back and forth just conversation okay
• 59:00 - 59:30 you're about halfway through the time
• 59:30 - 60:00 I've got some they gave me they took
• 60:00 - 60:30 care me thank you I've been like slowly
• 60:30 - 61:00 drinking all of it I'm gonna grab
• 61:00 - 61:30 and
• 61:30 - 62:00 you just do
• 62:00 - 62:30 exactly I'm like I'm
• 62:30 - 63:00 all right
• 63:00 - 63:30 time time and if you can hear the sound
• 63:30 - 64:00 of my voice just close your mouth take a deep breath in let it out and again a lot of times we're taught to immediately be second guessing ourselves or we give
• 64:00 - 64:30 this little backwash like I either shared too much or too little or not the right thing so I want you to both just look at each other now and just slow yes that was great what a shared I affirm it I welcome it it worked for me right and this is someone you can stay in touch with over the course of the conference right and you can keep checking back in and be like hey I said I was going to be disrupting this you know oppressive system during this conference and it's
• 64:30 - 65:00 day 2 and I did pretty good I'm liking a 70% of what I thought I was going to do right or I'm not right I'm at 30 and I just you know I think I gave you better right every moment is a moment if you can come into a realistic assessment of here's how I'm actually doing you can transform that moment you can transform how you're gonna be in that moment so good job and I think it's necessary these are the kind of conversations I want people to get more and more into more quickly in a relationship right
• 65:00 - 65:30 it's like hi my name is Adrian I'm here to heal the legacy of sexual trauma and racism in my lifetime what are you about I also like long walks on the beach shrimp and like recognizing a lifetime is a long time and you don't know how long you get I've had this has been a season of devastation so many people have died unexpectedly in the past few months and I have been grieving and
• 65:30 - 66:00 supporting the grief processes of others and also one of the things I'm noticing as I watch people fly away flock into ancestor land is it matters to me how people felt about how they were doing in their lives right like I noticed if people left and I was like they did what they came to do they were proud of what they were doing they were feeling satisfied and in the right work I can release them more easily I'm like they came and they did what they needed to do and then if I I'm like oh that person was almost there or they wanted to do this other justice
• 66:00 - 66:30 thing and they just didn't quite get over there it makes me grieve so much harder and so it's something I want to constantly an invitation to also is like don't waste any time do not waste any time justice is right this moment available all the time to you and how you personally practice and then what you personally practice generates what a community can collectively practice okay so to close us out I just want to say three things one is that we all have the right to take up space I think sometimes
• 66:30 - 67:00 as we're trying to shift the narratives of harm we start to think we need to shrink ourselves and shrink away from our wholeness in order to not cause impact and I actually think the opposite is the case we need to really impact each other a lot with the reality of who we are with how we are right so I want to invite you all to take up all the space that is yours not more than that right but definitely not less than that we need people who are committed to justice to occupy their fullness the
• 67:00 - 67:30 second thing we are tasked by an amazing writer named Toni Cade Bambara with making the revolution irresistible so I really think about this question all the time is how can we find the pleasure in our togetherness the pleasure in our connection the next book I'm working on is called pleasure activism and it's about how do we make pleasure how to make justice the most pleasurable experience we can have right and I really mean that I'm like oh how do we enjoy this instead of horrible meetings
• 67:30 - 68:00 we all sit there wishing something else was happening and we're wasting our time and it's just like exactly that was exactly it right there that right how do we avoid that how do we deepen it to like oh I'm really glad to be here I like the people I work with I like the work that were up to I believe that we're doing it the right way and I'm enjoying my days right like don't waste your entire work day for your life you're gonna be working a lot those are most your waking hours find something that actually nourishes you and has a pleasure to you and brings
• 68:00 - 68:30 justice to the world yeah and then the third thing is get to it now right get to it now go talk to your families go talk to your loved ones let everybody know this is what I'm about and I'm doing it today yeah it's not a plan that's gonna happen down the line or down the road I think a lot of people are like oh and if we just get this and then in 2020 then we'll do this right now today there's no time to waste thank you so that's my talking part don't clap
• 68:30 - 69:00 it's that's the talking part no no no because I thought we could do some Q&A but mostly like a and a or TNA which means in my context that's not what I meant but it means thoughts thoughts and answers right so you thought you're like what thoughts could also mean something okay so what it means is if you have thoughts reflections questions anything that you would like to say now in front
• 69:00 - 69:30 of the room this is the time for it and then if it's something that you have that you want me to answer I can also answer there's some microphones up here and I don't know if there's some more there's some whole process there's different right here I got mics I got mics all right so what's the best way do you want yeah Yatta you want to bring it to people okay raise
• 69:30 - 70:00 your hand if you have a reflection a thought or a question or take a bathroom break also all good but I will be here for a few moments awesome hi hi um so happy that you're here they made like maybe a little bit how are you my question / thought is so you talk an emergent strategy about flocking to the
• 70:00 - 70:30 ball what are some tips that you have for a community that maybe is small and stretched really thin and you know people are often working towards multiple causes for multiple organizations all the time what are what are your what's your vice when about determining where the ball is coming where the yeah like when we talk about you know like flocking to a point where is our Mexico yes like what what would your advice be for helping you know a group like that
• 70:30 - 71:00 determine consensus on where the point of the most you know like tension that needs to be engaged is yeah I don't necessarily think that people do right they don't always need to find one purpose or one point in a group I think sometimes people like I would ask people instead why are you coming together what do we need from this together nests because sometimes it's like oh we're all working on different things and we want to keep doing that but we need this so I just was at a group of black healers we went off to Hawaii one of them was like I live in Hawaii I want to come here and
• 71:00 - 71:30 we're all black healers who are all doing very different work you know like I do organizational healing and someone's doing bodywork and all this different stuff we're like we don't need to all get on the same path but we all do need sacred venting space right we need some space where we can come together and just release valve the things that we can't say to our clients and we can't say about our clients and most spaces and we came together we start doing that and then all these brilliant solutions and alternative actions all this stuff started flowing forward it was like oh this is what we actually needed the togetherness for so
• 71:30 - 72:00 I often asked that question it's like why is the group coming together if it's a group that's like our small group of people in a small town I think there's something about where can we have the most impact right so I often ask people and looking at a few different levels like there's legislative impact which I'm not a huge believer in right I'm like I would much rather see practice that moves up into being legislated rather than legislation that we fight for and then hope it's going to trickle down into practice I very rarely see it go that way usually it's flowing up you
• 72:00 - 72:30 know I think of gay marriage is an interesting one where it's like gay people were already being committed to each other coming out very publicly about it moving into the culture of television and other spaces where people were it was getting normalized and then finally some legislation comes through this like oh and also you know the state will acknowledge this in some places whatever but I was like by that point for me I was kind of like you don't dictate whether I love or don't love our commit or don't commit like those practices were already have growing upward yeah so I think about that in the community too is like are
• 72:30 - 73:00 there things that we want to turn up and grow upward but I think sometimes communities you know truncate what they are capable of because they try to get a singular agenda point or a singular thing too early in the process that piece in the book and I will talk about this in the facilitation workshop but moving at the speed of trust is a big part of emergent strategy and usually if a group has developed enough trust
• 73:00 - 73:30 cameraman how's it going over there usually if people are moving at the speed of trust it becomes clear where the focal point needs to be and people can make moves in a vein like oh I'm gonna sacrifice a little bit of the time I'm doing on my thing because your thing is more important and you need it but that only comes through trust and that takes time I often will tell people make a study group or something together where you're reading things and developing some shared analysis for shared sense of the world but there's a quote that I love that I keep saying all
• 73:30 - 74:00 the time I think it's in the book this Loretta Ross and it's a group of people thinking the same thing and moving in the same direction as a cult but a group of people thinking different things and moving in the same direction is a movement and I think that's the piece is like how do we first start to come together and share the different things we're thinking of and then trust let the trust be the thing that guides us in the what is the direction that can emerge out of that yeah also playing within diagrams like drawing some Venn diagrams
• 74:00 - 74:30 so will really help it's like what are the overlapping points anyway all of that thank you so much thank you so much that's a good question or thought question thought session all right anyone else yes okay it's happening so I'll tell you this as we're waiting for this next thing right after the election I took off my glasses which I actually really need and I was just like I can't I can't handle looking at
• 74:30 - 75:00 anything if I can't see it with my naked eye then I just can't deal and it's been kind of an amazing year I've just been like I can't see anything I mean I can see you you know like right here but there's a lot of blur for me and my mom I was just home with my parents and they're like no you're not one of those people like you're not with those people who can just kind of see well enough to wear glasses sometimes you really can't see I was like I know but the things this whole year has felt so much more clear for me politically clear for me
• 75:00 - 75:30 spiritually then I can even begin to explain so yesterday I was like maybe it's time with my glasses back on like now I feel like I've gotten my other ways of seeing turned up anyway so what I'm looking around like is there a question I really can't tell if anyone's raising their hand there's not so well thanks for the opportunity despite not seeing me hi hi so a bit of a shameless plug it's so I apologize but your your messaging is just resonating with me to let people know we have a Medicaid for
• 75:30 - 76:00 Idaho table out here yeah because we're not feeling as though our legislature is really hearing people so we're trying to get a ballot initiative for the November election of next year to put it to the vote so if you create sign on at this point we don't quite have the crafted the language yet but you know so much of what you're talking about is just I liked your shared sense of the world so
• 76:00 - 76:30 thank you for what you're doing thank you and visit us please and you're looking for people to come and sign up yeah sign sign up to help get tons of signatures around the state in order to get this on the ballot next November it's gonna be a lofty goal but we're gonna try that's what organizing is all about yes so thank you thank you hi thank you very much your last point
• 76:30 - 77:00 get to it now yes we live upstate and the other part of the state okay the north and when there's feels like we're overwhelmed with so much that needs to be done on so many various levels and we're it feels like in constant motion and doing it and doing it and sometimes treading water yeah how do we know how can we really assess besides coming together like this and with our own community what to get to now that's when
• 77:00 - 77:30 everything feels like it needs to be gotten that's so good this is one of my favorite things for it we're gonna I just want two things jump to mind one is learning to say no right and learning to feel no more importantly so again this piece around being polite and not wanting to cause harm to people often leads us to say yes is that are not true yeses right like I just had this experience II other day where someone called me they're like this person who's in our community is having a breakdown and we need you to help and
• 77:30 - 78:00 I had just spent the week doing grief support for someone else that I loved and I was like I really don't have it to give and I have overridden that feeling for so long that usually when I have that feeling I'm just like just push through you know this person needs you and it activates my hero tendencies it activates my I can save the world I can save this person all this stuff taps in and instead I was like you know I don't think I have it to give right I just have nothing left like I have emptied the well I need a refill the
• 78:00 - 78:30 well right but I felt the no and I actually let the know come out through my mouth and and it's awkward I still fumble with know like I'm really gonna yeah something yes yes even when I'm like you know I will say it enthusiastic yes sometimes I'm like you know inside so I think that no often says where your energy is actually flowing and I think the best work happens when your energy is flowing in a yes way towards the work that's being asked and that yes might come from I'm
• 78:30 - 79:00 capable of doing this I can see that there's a clear way I can have impact we do so much work on things where we know we're not going to have any impact but it just feels like the right thing to do and I'm not sure that it makes sense to I feel like that's wasted she wasted energy like wasting it's a wasted flow and as opposed to often I can have impact because I am impacted by this you know I think a lot of times when people doing like a lie work I'm like what actually are you impacted by
• 79:00 - 79:30 and what are you actually impacting right that moves you from a lie into solidarity realm right into like oh I actually am like I'm a part of causing this harm and let me figure out how I undo it or I'm directly impacted by this harm and I need to undo it rather than there's right and wrong and I need to do all the things that are on the side of right and stop all the things on the side of wrong so that first one is feeling you're know having a really clear sense of what makes sense based on your circumstances to get involved in and then I think making sure that
• 79:30 - 80:00 there's a sense of longevity so it's like we're in a long arc that is going to continue it started long before we came on to this planet it's going to continue hopefully long after and so letting go the ego that feeds urgency that says oh right now in my lifetime we have to do all these things it's like you know I think about again slaves in the middle of slavery when slavery was all I had known and all that there there was going to be for three or four generations still to come those people
• 80:00 - 80:30 didn't stop fighting they didn't stop slipping poison to masters food or teaching their kids to read or trying to escape right all of that was useful necessary action that they were figuring out I think of us sometimes in that where I'm like we think where we don't know where we are grace always asked us what time is it on the clock of the universe like get in touch with where we are in that larger arc and usually when you sort of look at it like oh like in Detroit there's so many things we could work work on but water has continuously been one that we
• 80:30 - 81:00 all keep kind of coming back to or organizing and centering ourselves around there's like of all the many many things water touches into all of them it's finding like what is that thing that touches into everything and is the right time for the universe of the place where you are that make sense yeah but say no can we all practice that right now just no I can't right now you know I'm too tired right no is a
• 81:00 - 81:30 complete sentence no doesn't need like a further explanation actually right it's just not a yes and learning to hear no I just want to say that too like learning to hear from other people so just all look at someone else and say no and hear it no right no yeah I'm just such a huge fan of this because if you imagine that you guys are loving it ya know makes way for yes no makes way for authenticity
• 81:30 - 82:00 yeah good it oh there's a person over there I think C Mon e glasses I think I even like your pants oh thank you I think they're looks bright awesome yeah I'm Cleo I go to sage International where the high schoolers here oh okay y'all rollin real deep right now oh yeah
• 82:00 - 82:30 all of you okay and I just wanted to say so I'm 17 and I'm a FEMINIST and trying to not change but it's hard because I'm a human and not a magic fairy with a wand okay yeah um so I'm working on speaking my mind and stuff and finding an equalizer for all humans and I've realized today just by staring into my stranger's soul yeah um that everybody is just a human and we're all gonna live and we're all gonna die and we're all
• 82:30 - 83:00 that same stage in her life where we're trying to figure out what to do next which I thought was kind of only a teenager's thing cuz I'm 17 and I've no idea what I would do with my life I'm 39 we don't figure it out yeah I realize like we're not gonna figure it out and it's gonna be fine yeah I mean the thing I often say is that humans are trash and humans are miraculous and both of those things are always true right that we are the best and worst of times for ourselves and there and my mom and I were just talking
• 83:00 - 83:30 about this she's 61 62 he's about 62 and she's like yeah I still feel like I don't I don't know I'm still figuring stuff out I was like me too I thought that by now it would be like ah and there's some stuff I definitely have figured out about like dating and and still not we were just I mean like not the good thing I'm just like I have figured out some of the things to avoid or you know being myself without apology often is awkward and bumpy and requires
• 83:30 - 84:00 like you know messiness but for the most part I'm still kind of like if I look up at the stars or if I look up at the large scale of harm in the world I get overwhelmed still and I'm like I don't know if this is gonna make a difference but fractal if I notice one other person and really tuned in I'm just like oh you're just of my species and we're just figuring this out it's gonna be a long time figuring it out and I'll say this I'm not a fan of heaven or utopias I don't want to stop figuring it out like
• 84:00 - 84:30 I don't want to be sitting on a cloud playing a lute for eternity I'm just like I like problem-solving I like getting in and figuring things out and co-creating and being messy and like I want to keep doing that so it's it's once you start to tune into like oh I'm shaping change it all gets really interesting I can say that it doesn't get clearer but it does get more fun yeah enjoy the rest of your life thank you you do awesome so we have time for like two more things from audience with
• 84:30 - 85:00 things from agen I see a hand see I told don't need glasses this is so affirming for me I can see I shouldn't drive but I can see I just have one comment to make when this morning we had a very well-known female politician being derogatory by our I guess you'd say our leader of our
• 85:00 - 85:30 country making poking a joke because of her Native American lineage and then everyone saying oh it's not racism it's nothing so no one's saying no no no one raising a voice to say hey that's wrong and just and with all the which is good the sexual harassment coming to light but yet ignoring me you know yes word names that we still want to say well that's that's our tradition yeah
• 85:30 - 86:00 and that is to me the disgust thing that promote racism ongoing yeah that's just one comment absolutely I think if we don't like it we need to say no enough is enough right like this is what I mean by that letting go of being polite in those moments you know I wrote this thing actually let me see if I can find it I brought up my phone in case I was like my brain doesn't always remember all the things are happening but I wrote this
• 86:00 - 86:30 thing heading into the holidays because I think the holidays you know are this time when like all the stuff kind of comes to the surface like my family caused me harm I love my family I don't want to participate in this colonial imperialist celebration this is the only week my family has off I have to confront them on all of their racism and sexism I'm tired this is supposed to be my break you know everything is like coming together and so I was saying to people like how - what's the holiday how - very
• 86:30 - 87:00 like how do we move through and actually disrupt the things that need to be disrupted so I came up with this little quick formula which I put on the Internet be kind speak from the heart be principled look back through time to the wound and forward to the medicine you know time as a circle right it's all there together ask curious questions when you feel an assumption coming listen to the answers
• 87:00 - 87:30 with a soft face only interrupt ignorant stay connected stay wide look for the best and invite it to be brighter be an irresistible invitation to the future and I think that peace around like interrupting ignorance is maybe the number one skill set we need to learn how to do right it's just to be like no and I think that's how we have the president we have right now is that so many people were like oh like that's a
• 87:30 - 88:00 person who got too many passes right that's the only way you get to be an adult man who behaves this way so it's like how do we intervene and I never plan to talk to him but there's a lot of men I meet that have those tendencies and I interrupt them and I started to interrupt men who stopped me on the street or try to talk to me you know where someone's like hey you look really beautiful and it's like no I think I just look like I'm trying to spend some time by myself with my headphones on
• 88:00 - 88:30 going for a walk you know and it's just interesting to be like oh how do I interrupt those things in a way that for me will often employ humor but you know keeps my safety intact but also it's like no I have the right to take up space here and your racism doesn't right I also want to make this distinction it's pulling apart behavior from person and I think I keep saying this I'm like we do trash things we do harmful things but we are not the harm ourselves we are
• 88:30 - 89:00 not the wound right we are the wounded and when people are the ones who are creating those wounds I think they can think they're not the wounded but the only reason you would do that to others is because you're wounded right so we all need medicine and I think we are each other's medicine so thank y'all so much thank you so much thank you so much
• 89:00 - 89:30 give a warm warm thank you to Adrienne Marie Brown for such a thought-provoking and very inspiring morning now we have a 15 minute break we invite you to look at the tables and sign off on the Medicaid take your time going through two workshops if you're having problems to switch out to any staff they have little
• 89:30 - 90:00 red little red ribbons I just have a couple of announcements real quick and so please make sure that you're taking care of yourself we have a wonderful space it's the restorative self care and healing room please go visit if you go straight down to the end of the hallway internal left and they have massage Reiki essential oils crystals all the things you need to take care of yourself and beautiful facilitators - Emma Rios and Kristen Harwood who are facilitating workshops start at 10:45 please let us
• 90:00 - 90:30 know if you need help and stay hydrated thank you everyone