Guiding Questions:

  • What is unimaginable one day becomes imaginable the next, and mandatory the next. These last many months have proved that change is not only possible, but can be swift and unrelenting, including in our movements for liberation. We have demonstrated that when there is a mass will or need, major shifts are possible. We have witnessed this in recent months, with huge victories in the Movement for Black Lives, and in Indigenous organizing. It is within the realm of possibility to stop all evictions, to shut down the factories that are directly causing polluted cities. Whose will and whose imagination will be enacted?
  • What forces are shaping our imaginations right now? What are our notions of “normal” as this global pandemic continues to evolve? What does it mean to “get back” to a “normal” that has already been disastrous? What do we want to be our future “normal”?
  • How are we relating to this movement moment? As we imagine ourselves as elders looking back at this particular moment, what do we want to remember? What are the ways we want to show up powerfully that can sustain this momentum for the long haul?
  • What narratives are emerging around whiteness and gender oppression in this political moment? More than ever, we invite reflection on the parallels between internal and external conditions that demand transformation. In your various identities and communities, how are you working to transform within yourself for the sake of collective liberation?

Resources:

Shared resources from dialogue participants:

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

Check-in: what feels alive for you in this large topic?

  • Doing a lot of reflection on how continuous and amazing and heightened movement work is now – noticing shifts at the same time with folks not being 110%, feeling fear that folks will drop off, noting my own stamina and capacity – as the uprising gaining so much force, a simultaneous fear that we would not be able to do as much as possible with it. We have had some major wins. Thinking about how much having organizing infrastructure, relationships, clarity, matter so much to draw from in this time. Also thinking about fire season in northern California, which is also opportunity for what we are pushing for, like the campaign against PG & E, how we are tying together all the pieces. 
  • Fire season is scary on top of all the scary things right now. I like this idea of how are you transforming yourself for collective liberation, and the question of how am i relating to this moment? For me, one of the big intersectional reality is caring for young people & elders in a pandemic, which gives a different perspective, lookin through other generations’ eyes at this rebellion, sometimes forgetting my own eyes – wondering how they are perceiving, what are their fears.
  • Enlightening, and compounding worry and anxiety – how to transform into enthusiasm, the excitement and energy that drives my racial justice work – i want to be a light to model others dealing with anxiety, and ways to stay in this work. 
  • Sitting with some disillusionment lately, when we looked some months ago at what was imaginable it felt wider than now – curiosity and doubt about how we sustain for the long haul, also how i sustain the powerful pressure that pushes systemic change. Here in Oakland Ohlone land, the rollercoaster of defunding the police, and the city council not feeling as much pressure as they could, our mayor trying to twist actions against us, like being out in the streets justify intervention. Glad to sit in some questions.
  • Happy to be here. Lot of back and forth, feeling lots of people who were complacent are waking up and really getting into it, learning, a significant shift in white older community, and hearing people say they are going to do something. At the same time working with unsheltered people and food, and the people i work with see no movement anywhere, and that they will be forgotten about and die. Not much is happening to take care of people who are doing without so much. With kids at a school in east oakland, tough to see their longing for teachers they are connected with, retreating into phones and games. Happy to be in both places, all of it is very real. Want to stick with it and see where it goes.
  • Feeling tired, and glad to be in this space that makes me feel nourished. And it feels like a lot after 8-9 hours on computer. I work largely with white community addressing issues of racism, to see how our work is essential, much wider acceptance and openness where there was once resistance, feeling the fear, concern and curiosity about the long-term commitments of those openings. Worried people will feel the uprising is over, and not continue daily practice. Ways that COVID played role in creating this opening. Feel self-conscious to say that at first felt like i had done quite a bit of work, feeling trepidation, noticing my gender training to make sure other people feel comfortable – ways it interacts with my commitments to advancing anti-racism.
  • Here to continue to hold myself accountable, to be present in dialogue, while offering space for reflection. What’s present in everyday life, this is lifelong work for me, how to incorporate learning and engagement in a way that feels like i am expanding and not collapsing under everything. Learning how to not center myself in whiteness, honoring my humanity. It comes up every single day, my privilege and entitlement, my fear for the safety of those around me while not centering my fear, but what is best for them. Finding ways where i can divvy up my life towards this, daily dialogues and self-education, petitions and donations, finding balance with reflection and action. 
  • Has the wave subsided in this particular moment of uprising? Felt very connected to Minneapolis being from there, not so possible for me to be on the street here. Heard Maria Poblet speak about who we are when our politics become an identity rather than moving through the world and building relationship. Feeling my own longing about how much i can trust in my own contributions. Just started work as a therapist just as things were exponentially going down in June. Noticed these moments of existential hopelessness alongside incredible victories of this time. Generational struggle that has allowed this – who is out there is so different than what i am used to. Interested in what adrienne maree brown talked about in terms of what does aspirational white identity look like and building culture, where there is more conversation happening across a large swath of folks, curiosity about what that looks like for me, working particularly with POC in community mental health field. Daily peaks and valleys, curious how that is part of work of collective transformation. The degree is intense and overwhelming.
  • Been living with what i would call chronic disability, also grateful for this injury for what it has taught me about slowing down in movement work and beyond. With the first question about what is unimaginable becoming imaginable – read interview with Tia Tolentino, replied that pandemic has decreased desire to work for change within institutions, and wonder at the speed of transformation. I have to believe that change is still possible even when not happening at same rapid rate, perhaps in ways that are destructive rather than instructive. Feeling climate grief, moving out of Oakland. At beginning of shelter in place, felt myself contracting because of a personal crisis, only wanting to be in a place of known relationships, now in a new place forming relationships, there is an apple tree that got pruned for the first time in many years, and this grief came over me. Landlords doing land restoration, asked them about work with indigenous people and they had no idea about that, realizing i need to pull back on my judgement, and how to connect with who is doing the work here, i want all this work to be indigenous led. While i don’t think whiteness can go unchecked, i can trust white noise collective to be in the confusion, and reaching for community right now, where there has already been work done, that can hold the nuance of where racial justice meets climate anxiety, melts pandemic, meets urgency of slowing down. Resisting urge to capitalist drive to be productive constantly working, and a lot of grief is surfacing in the slowness, lots of discussions about race with my family and losing my grandmother. Most people in my life are Black and Indigenous, trying to navigate what relationship is with white people.
  • As someone working night shift, used to forms of isolation, which take different tone with pandemic, working with personal relationships and collective liberation with family, especially because i can’t see them in person so it feels safer somehow, and i am losing relationships due to my stance on BLM, navigating that. I want to celebrate also a turning inwards and doing much more spiritual work, one aspect of collective liberation, to nurture in myself and others.
  • Relating to current moment, trusting in the long-term and in my own capacity with racial justice work, have been in and out and up and down with it and my own mental health and this moment has heightened tension in me between urgency and collapse or lack of capacity. Wanting to know what is my role, rather than trusting what is internal. Working on transforming myself and thinking a lot about individualism and how that has been so destructive to me, trying to practice feeling to grow capacity to feel connection, noticing what feels individualism and self-centered. Trying to find embodied ways to remember interconnectedness and belonging.
  • Appreciate everything that’s been shared so far. Been holding way to use spirituality to be with discomfort and unsettledness related to anti-racism work and to my own ancestral lineage, in ways that i wave run from previously. As a white person, how to de-center myself and not shrink myself – i have often shrunk, how to find balance in the work.
  • Chewing on a personal theory of change, and what is my function within that understanding, continue to fall back on theory of change centered in relationship, which is difficult to do in zoom-life. Organizer with police resistance, and so much of our work is task-oriented and going through check-lists and feels like something is getting lost in how we relate. I am a new student to social change, observing pattern of mobilizing rather than organizing – showing up getting out, not necessarily building relationships and coalitions. And zoom may be our primary way of relating for the longer term. Prefigurative politics during a pandemic is a trip – not so much opportunity for spontaneity. A lot of white folks are reading books, and that is great – but how to move from project of white self-improvement to Black liberation. How to push on that, and in myself? How to engage abolition frameworks within myself, ways i have been raised to blame and shame and internalization of carceral mentality? Trying to transform this. 
  • What does abolition praxis look like for white-bodied folks? Present for me, in this cultural somatics work. How i can relate to other white-bodied folks to create and build relational culture? Relational uprising. Looking like how this plays into callout culture, cancel culture, punitive ways particularly online especially lateral violence. Mariame Kaba asking us to look at how to disrupt carceral culture into transformative justice. How to build into this, to build white radical identity culturally, build culture that is not white supremacy, what does this look like? Resmaa Menakem and somatic abolition. Strategy of mobilizing and organizing cultural soma that is white supremacy, from that nervous system. The long-term and the urgency. Working with folks around harm i have caused, ways i have internalized patriarchy, cissexism. Idea of marathon more than sprint, how can we slow to stay in our bodies. Totality of historical as well as present. 
  • Mixed ancestry, here to work on my own whiteness, called to do relational organizing in the communities i’m a part of, in social work school and developing white affinity group which is making me realize how much work i have to do and learn, how to support white folks in love and accountability, and how i intersect with that. Been appreciating Menakem’s work, thinking about what somatic abolitionism looks like and what building culture looks like, dialogue spaces look like one concrete way. As i shift from being movement adjacent and become more involved, see these reflective spaces as important corollary and prerequisite for action work. Grateful to learn from everyone. Listened to Menkem’s skepticism about this movement moment and co-optation of BLM by corporate America, and performativity of “i’m not racist”, and the longterm need to do this work when it is not sexy
  • Here to work on shyness, easier for me to read about things than talk about them. Everyone has had their own COVID experience, for me at beginning of March my mom was diagnosed with cancer and now in remission, feeling the very different space and time in my life, feels like things are getting better, while there is so much horror going on. My world really focused on family, sometimes surprised by who is willing to talk about race – and on social media, and in my workplace – finding connections of care. Work with immigration law, in dialogue with my firm about racism and patriarchy, and my own fear today things wrong, and how much i do want to speak up more, especially with other white people, to push that edge. In group of friends to support accountability – work against the “everyone cares now!” moment. 
  • This question is continually more complicated in the journey of seeing myself more and more and the poison that lives inside me that i have been socialized to perpetuate. Thinking a lot about land, background in farming, dreaming about how land care is going to be part of my life again, really swimming in the complexity of that question as a white body on occupied land. 
  • Question of culture & aspirational white identity, and collective process and relationship. I’m always not clear on what is culture – would love to hear what this looks like, feels like, in this time? As we notice some slowing down and reaching some apex, thinking over this year, what does building the work of culture look like, as someone white-socialized, white-bodied? What does this look like for you?
    • Align with how does we make the movement where people want to be? 
    • Culture of liberation? How does it live in our bodies? 
    • How are we interacting? Conversations? 
    • What does it mean to be shaping this culture? 
    • Abolition space – we don’t have to have all the answers. What is not working and then take steps along the way. Social experiment. Social innovation and fail and then learn. 
  • Movement call to defund the police. See from white folks thinking about how to go into difficult convo, need to have the right answers and analysis. But instead going into the deep questions to what public safety look like? 
  • Culture – value that we hold in common. 
  • How do these systems live inside of me? 
  • Normalizing these practices. This is what feels good an humanizing in our stance towards life. Woven into our life instead of something other. 
  •  So much of culture, its not just what we are doing but how we are doing it and what we are doing it with. 
  • Need to talk about the culture we are already in – super capitalist. 
  • The hustle culture, there has been this momentum and sense of urgency to make the movement happen. 
  • What is happening to the person who is trying to create culture? Are their bodies getting extracted from.
  • Applying abolitionist framework to life, in relationships, not disposability culture, trusting our bodies in what feels dehumanizing and asking question through that – what are the steps you are taking, or the steps people are taking who you live and admire? Folks who embody deep commitment in relational aspect to how they do movement work? Such a difference in status quo
  • Been using a question to guide myself, “what is the nature of harm here”, how can i have an expansive sense of harm, not just focused on who did what, what does this look like, and what is my role in that?
  •   Particular focus on interracial relationships within movement spaces. 
  • Moving away from shame and blame. Narrow understanding in restorative justice. People are harmed, people cause harm, the point of connection is the moment of harm. Hard to understand the full scope of the structure forces, so useful to focus on harm in that defined way. 
  • The moment when the people connect between the harmed and the harm. Abandonment principle, gap between what people need and people get. 400 year gap in that white people never understanding that harm. Desensitization of people in power
  • Sensitization is transformational work – can imagine in a situation of harm, being outside the scope of a person and still needing to be a process there, process of sensitization in white culture, beautiful to know that development happens and is possible 
  • Hard to imagine what it would look like. 
  • Balance and grapple with self love and the need to uproot white supremacy that is intertwined with every part of me is so challenging to know what to do with 
  • Move from shame to accountability. Shaming is not a necessary part of liberation. Accountability doesn’t go away. 
  • Socialization as white folks tells us that accountability is equal to shaming. So my body may feel that every time I’m being accountable I am shame. 
  • In COVID, new sense of urgency. Notice when I am turning away from people. Noticing in my body when I am doing that and judging people. What if I just recent and listen to this person right now. My only job is to be present and hear them and then I can figure out how I want to respond. 
  • What does accountability look like without shame? I rack myself over the coals and then I want to do that to other people. Totally related to each other. 
  • Relationship with other people is about healing harm and accountability. 
  • Whenever judgement arises, its an opportunity to think deeper. 
  • Even here now, the level of intellectualization makes this whole thing inaccessible to be who don’t get down like this. And I’ve been doing this work for many years, and I am struggling with this. Amazing that the new generation is so conscious, and also concerned with the folks that might get left behind. Judgement is coming up. People are terrified about not being enough. How to bridge, to be accessible. How we can create a culture of othering. 
  • What happened to you when you moved back to excitement? 
  • The practice of the years. Need a novice approach. 
  • What part of the practice? 
  • Listening and then reacting, I am aware that I am in judgement. Drop into thinking deeper about what is going on for me. Ask the questions. What is blocking you from doing that? 
  • Struggle with audio retention and processing, when certain ways are spoken it can be hard to follow. Visual is easier. 
  • Shaping of culture in action. 
    • Act of naming where you are coming from
    • What do you need
    • All showing up with shapes and experiences and conditioning. How do we meet each other. 
  • Appreciate rooting in a tactile interaction. Being able to have something to hold on to. Appreciating that shift. Feel like I could enter more. 
  • i like the 2 meanings of “rooting” together, both like rooting down into the ground and cheering for others/wanting the best for them