Entries Tagged 'leadership' ↓

I’ve just finished Bury the Chains, an excellent history of the British abolitionist movement-I highly recommend it.

One of the themes of the book was the odd alliance between two of the movement’s leaders: William Wilberforce and John Clarkson.

John Clarkson was an organizer, and agitator, and a bit of a radical. He was inspired by the French revolution. He was not satisfied with the inequality of British society, for Clarkson the institution of slavery was the most offensive of the injustices.

Wilberforce was very different. In most ways he was conservative. As a wealthy man himself, he thought that society worked well (except for the problem of slavery), and he was repulsed by the French revolution and other examples of popular unrest.

Despite their political differences, Wilberforce and Clarkson needed each other.

Wilberforce alone would have not been able to mobilize popular pressure and galvanize the public against slavery.

Clarkson alone would not have been able to maneuver the House of Lords and actually get legislation passed to ban the slave trade.

Who are you working with who seems totally different from you? How can you find new allies for social transformation?

As we discuss the importance of focusing on transformation, we need to remember that it happens one step at a time.

I was reminded of this listening to the Fundraising is Beautiful podcast. Jeff Brook and Steven Screen remind listeners to do one thing at a time.

They point out that many fundraising efforts fail when they try to accomplish too much at once. They try to educate, inspire grassroots lobbying, show impact, fundraise, raise awareness and more all in one communication. Jeff and Steven point out that when you try to do all that at once, you usually fail at everything.

Instead, they recommend doing one thing at a time. If it’s a fundraising letter, focus the letter on raising funds. Then you can follow up with showing impact or educating in the newsletter.

A key part of their argument is that you have a relationship with your members, so over time you can work on your laundry list of goals, but it has to happen one action at a time.

So while I’m championing the importance of transformation, likewise transformation happens one step at a time.

You can’t transform someone from a passive bystander to an uber-activist in one step; and you’ll probably scare them away if you try.

So plan each action with an eye toward transformation and recognize you’ll get there one step at a time.

Here’s one more plug for why it’s important to be rigorous in pursuing social transformation.

“For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.”
-Henry David Thoreau

Jennifer Mills‘ story is a poignant example of personal transformation. Working for an interfaith organization, I also see transformation within religious communities.

Let me give you two examples from the Banners Across America anti-torture effort.

In this campaign, some congregations signed on that we knew would support it. For example, the local Quaker meeting and ministry partnership of Northside Presbyterian and St. Aidan’s Episcopal have strong histories of speaking out on social justice issues.

It was easy to convince them to put up banners.

But not every congregation was as easy.

One of our board members attends a local congregation that has a history of being more moderate. They tend to avoid social issues. So when he brought the banner idea to the Church Council, he faced a harder sell.

Is it too political? Will it alienate members?

After an hour of debate, the vote came in: a unanimous vote for hanging the banner.

It was a transformation for this church from not talking much about these issues to actively engaging with them. Furthermore, it was a transformation from discussing the issue within the church walls to visibly taking a stand in public.

The pastor has told me that he thinks that years from now the congregation will look back at this decision and see it as the turning point when the congregation decided to go “the Jesus way” of speaking out on moral issues like torture.

That’s transformation!

Another board member had a similar challenge when she brought the banner to her church. In the end, her congregation decided they didn’t have enough unity to hang a banner; but they did agree to host forums to discuss the issue within the congregation.

This too is transformation. This is engaging a congregation that hasn’t been very involved and reaching out to people who don’t yet agree with this position. It’s reaching new audiences. And I’m as satisfied by this “engaged no” as I am with the easy yes from the Quaker meeting.

I’m pushing transformation hard right now for two reasons.

First, it’s why we’re here. If we’re not going to be serious about work for social transformation, we might as well go home.

Second, transformation is possible. Here’s one example of individual transformation and helping someone grow from inactive to being an amazing organizer.

Every fall at the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice (ICPJ) we organize a delegation to the School of the Americas Watch rally and vigil in Ft. Benning, GA.

Three years ago Jennifer Mills was a first-year student at the University of Michigan. She had planned on going down to Georgia on the bus organized by the Adrian Dominican Sisters, but her test schedule didn’t allow that.

So she road with us.

I’ll be honest, we didn’t give her the most comfortable of trips; especially after other folks locked her out of the room we had booked for her.

Maybe it was because of her experience sleeping in the car that the next year she came to me and said, “we should bring our own bus.”

I was skeptical; busses are expensive. But I supported Jennifer, and I’m glad she did.

She worked hard to fill the bus. She created a partnership with the UAW to fill the seats. She found campus funding to help cover costs.

Thanks to her, for the last two years we’ve taken a bus to Ft. Benning.

Before she came down on that first trip, Jennifer was not an activist. Today, Jennifer is on the ICPJ Board, she’s received a peacemakers award from Pax Christi of Michigan, and she’s looking to follow Dr. Paul Farmer’s example of ensuring that the world’s poorest have access to quality healthcare.

Now ICPJ can’t take credit for all the hard work Jennifer has done, but by giving her a structure and support to grow as an activist ICPJ has been part of her personal growth and transformation as an activist.

Transformation is possible, and Jennifer is an excellent example of it.

I wrote earlier about the importance of seeking social transformation.

I intentionally never defined that term; it will be different for different contexts.

For me and for my context as an interfaith peace and justice organizer, here is what transformation means to me:

• Transformation of individuals: Changing the way a person relates to a concern, especially what they do about it. Maybe it transforms them from being actively proclaiming that global warming is a hoax to just being quiet about the issue. Or, it could mean that they grow from taking individual action for peace in Iraq to organizing their neighborhood to take action together.
• Transformation of congregations: Just like individual transformation, congregational transformation happens along a continuum. It can mean getting a congregation that is hostile to faith-rooted concern for the peace to give it a fair hearing; or it could mean moving discussion of social justice concerns from the social hour to the pulpit. Or, in the case of the Banners Across America anti-torture banner campaign, it could mean moving the discussion from inside to outside the congregation walls.
• Transformation of society is changing policies or structures to make a more just and peaceful world, which can be anything from increasing funding for food stamps, improving public transformation, getting peace education in the schools, or a whole lot more.

There are many ways to envision transformation, but we won’t create it unless we know what we’re trying to create.

What does transformation mean to you?

What if we only did things that we knew would contribute to social transformation?

What if we agreed to never again do a half-hearted speaking event or a ten-person rally?

Sometimes as organizers we set our goals too low. We’re content with vague ideas of “raising awareness” or “speaking out” without really seeing how it will really make a difference.

I challenge all of you in social change work to set the bar high for program you do, so that whatever you do truly promotes transformation.

Transformation can take many forms; I’m not going to dictate what it should mean for you and your organization. In another post I’ll share what it means for me.

I am going to insist, though, that you relentlessly pursue social transformation. Cut away everything that does not vigorously promote transformation.

Otherwise we’re just going through the motions.

In the famous Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, one of the key teachings is about attention:

The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy’s cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him. You must thoroughly research this.

Now of course as a peace organizer, I have no intention of cutting anybody. But I do respect Musashi’s point about the need to have fierce dedication, focus and intent with each movement.

In our organizing and activism, every movement should be focused on peacemaking. If we hold a meeting, it should be to bring us closer to peace. If we rally and protest, it should be to bring us closer to justice.

If we think only of rallying, only of meeting, only of protesting, we will be unable to bring peace. If our efforts are only because they are things we should do, then we will waste effort.

Let us bring the same focus to stopping violence that Musashi brought to prevailing through violence.

The Mackinac Policy Conference has a reputation of being a playground of the conservative business elite.

That’s not what I saw.

I went up for the Fusion young professionals track for the Conference, which is a sort of “kids table” to bring young leaders to the table and involve them in the discussion.

The conference attendees raised five issues as the top concerns for the state, including like transit, education, and green energy.

As a progressive, I can get behind these issues, and I’m excited to see the business community supporting them as well.

I admit, it’s not what I expected to see. I expected a litany of anti-tax, anti-environment, anti-labor hard-line conservative rhetoric. Instead I saw a lot of common ground and a desire to address problems that we can only address by bringing together the business, government, and nonprofit sectors.

So here’s my message to progressives: Stop running away from the conversation. We need to take our place at the table so we can build alliances and start solving some of these problems.

(And if that’s not enough of a motivation for you, here’s one more: it was an open bar every evening.)

Generally when I review an action or event, I use a simple plus/delta evaluation: what went well and what could we change (delta is the mathematical sign for change, it’s more pro-active than saying plus/minus).

In You Don’t Have to Do It Alone, the authors offer a more elaborate reflection tool. It asks:

• What did we plan for?
• What happened?
• Why did it happen?
• What were the key events?
• What assumptions did we make?
• What have we learned?

What I like about this model is that it puts more emphasis on not just learning from what happened at the event, but also learning and refining the planning that brought us to the event. It goes deeper.

The authors also point out that it is vital to include different people in this review. You will find very different answers to the question, “what happened” depending on who you ask.

Will I actually use this evaluation system?

I don’t know.

Sometimes it can be a struggle to get an all-volunteer group to do any review at all. I will copy these questions into my Palm so that I can have them ready and try them out for a future event (if I remember that they are there).