Dear all,
What a time we’ve been through! What an uncertain future we face together! I hope everybody is breathing deeply, finding ways to cherish connections, and taking joy in small pleasures.
I wasn’t sure what I had to offer this month till this came to me as I was waking up. It will be available to be shared on my blog site: http://pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com/2020/11/fear-love-and-leadership.htm
And if you’re looking to pay attention to something else entirely, here’s an opportunity to learn about and contribute to the urban farm that I have been working with for many years, Mill Creek Farm. If anybody would like to contribute to this fundraiser in my name, I would be honored!
Love,
Pamela
Fear, love and leadership
In the wake of this stormy election, and as the waters continue to swirl, what I can’t stop thinking about is how scared we all are. In a bitterly divided country millions of us have been scared that the other side would win. We are so separated, and the more separated we are, the easier it is to demonize. Our deepest fears get projected on the “other”.
I know this is an issue that has caused bitter conflict and divided families. So it was enormously heartening to hear from two people I know with family members who are solidly in the category of “other”. But these two women simply refuse to be divided. They decided that love could win over fear. They dug deep to stay grounded in their love, to stay confident that we are all good, to hold to a belief that ultimately we all want the same things. They decided not to try to convince their family members about the rightness or logic of certain beliefs or points of view, but to tend deeply to the relationships.
This is what I want for all of us. It requires a lot. When we’re scared, it’s easy to feel like victims, to feel jerked around by others who have more power, or are led by people who have more power. And when we feel jerked around, it’s not easy to stay grounded in love. It’s certainly not easy to practice new forms of leadership—to lead in places where we’re not used to leading, or to follow leadership that we’re not used to following. Yet our times are calling out for the courage to try.
In this process, we’ll have to give up some assumptions about “the other”. To lead well, we have to like people. We have to hold out a vision that includes them. We have to have some compassionate and respectful understanding of the ground on which their beliefs have grown. We have to cultivate the humility to be open to learning from them, even as we may continue to hold out a different perspective.
To be led may be even harder. What would it take to listen for truth in someone we’ve never considered as an equal, or have learned to despise? Can we face the possibility of being changed? What would it mean to be genuinely curious to learn how someone ticks—either from a position of trying to lead, or trying to follow? Can we imagine finding a heart connection with somebody we had thought was outside the fold and lost to us forever?
I have to believe that whatever we might be required to give up in this process is something that we would be better off without. No matter how closely we have clung to it, no matter how central it has seemed to our definition of who we are, if we approach this project of “de-othering” with integrity. nothing of enduring value will be lost and we will emerge more fully human.
This doesn’t mean everything else has to stop. We get to continue to mobilize around policies we care about. We get to share our thinking as clearly and compellingly as we know how. We get to strategize about how to win. But ultimately, this deeper work of the heart may be what saves us as a people.
Election Day evening
After that great storm of effort
comes a lull. Nerves are jangled
nothing left now but to wait.
The color of the sky calls out.
Another storm? I step outside
into a sunset so intense
it takes my breath away.
A man around the corner stands and looks.
I had to come outside, he says.
All around the block
beauty greets me every way I turn.
Heading west into its glowing fire
a stranger stops me, calls a blessing.
Touched, I take it in
and then continue, drawn on by the light.
Another block, another greeting
What goodness has this night called out?
The color slowly fades.
Back in the dark to neighbors on their porches
all amazed, connected, moved
by such a gift from earth and sun.
I breathe, then go inside and settle in to wait.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
A citizen’s right to food
Belo Horizonte, a city of 2.5 million in southeastern Brazil, has pioneered a food security system that has effectively eliminated hunger in the city. In 1993 Belo Horizonte enacted a municipal law that established a citizen’s right to food. Today, twenty interconnected programs connect food-producers directly to consumers; offer healthy, fresh food at fixed, low costs at public restaurants; provide food directly to schools, childcare centers, clinics and nursing homes, shelters, and charitable organizations; establish farmers’ markets and stands to allow farmers to sell directly to residents; regulate food prices for 25 specific items, which must be sold at 20-50% below market price; create food banks to distribute unused produce from those markets; and establish community and school gardens, in addition to providing nutrition education. The entire program requires less than 2% of the city’s annual budget.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2020/11/09/covid-brazil-food-security/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The overwhelming vote in San Francisco to tax companies whose CEOs make a hundred more than their lowest paid workers—or more.
https://inequality.org/great-divide/san-francisco-ceo-pay-tax/
How co-ops are showing resilience and community spirit as the pandemic goes on.
https://blog.equalexchange.coop/pandemic-resilience/
The world’s largest seagrass restoration project, where 600 acres planted in waters off Virginia have grown to 9,000.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/largest-seagrass-meadow-restoration-in-the-world-in-virginia/
After months of organizing that included the establishment of two protest encampments, Philadelphia’s unhoused people successfully pushed the city to agree to provide housing through a community land trust.
https://truthout.org/articles/philadelphia-agrees-to-provide-community-housing-amid-unhoused-activist-push/
Resources
Finding Steady Ground
If you need reminding of some simple ways to stay grounded in challenging times, I recommend this website, which I helped a friend develop following the last presidential election.
www.findingsteadyground.com
Other resources from my friend Daniel Hunter
Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Climate Resistance Handbook, or I was part of a climate action. Now what? https://commonslibrary.org/climate-resistance-handbook-or-i-was-part-of-a-climate-action-now-what/
Leading Groups On-Line. https://www.trainingforchange.org/training_tools/leading-groups-online-book/
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: New link: https://www.peaceworkersus.org/docs/muscle_building_for_peace_and_justice.pdf (or just google the title)
Fear, love and leadership
In the wake of this stormy election, and as the waters continue to swirl, what I can’t stop thinking about is how scared we all are. In a bitterly divided country millions of us have been scared that the other side would win. We are so separated, and the more separated we are, the easier it is to demonize. Our deepest fears get projected on the “other”.
I know this is an issue that has caused bitter conflict and divided families. So it was enormously heartening to hear from two people I know with family members who are solidly in the category of “other”. But these two women simply refuse to be divided. They decided that love could win over fear. They dug deep to stay grounded in their love, to stay confident that we are all good, to hold to a belief that ultimately we all want the same things. They decided not to try to convince their family members about the rightness or logic of certain beliefs or points of view, but to tend deeply to the relationships.
This is what I want for all of us. It requires a lot. When we’re scared, it’s easy to feel like victims, to feel jerked around by others who have more power, or are led by people who have more power. And when we feel jerked around, it’s not easy to stay grounded in love. It’s certainly not easy to practice new forms of leadership—to lead in places where we’re not used to leading, or to follow leadership that we’re not used to following. Yet our times are calling out for the courage to try.
In this process, we’ll have to give up some assumptions about “the other”. To lead well, we have to like people. We have to hold out a vision that includes them. We have to have some compassionate and respectful understanding of the ground on which their beliefs have grown. We have to cultivate the humility to be open to learning from them, even as we may continue to hold out a different perspective.
To be led may be even harder. What would it take to listen for truth in someone we’ve never considered as an equal, or have learned to despise? Can we face the possibility of being changed? What would it mean to be genuinely curious to learn how someone ticks—either from a position of trying to lead, or trying to follow? Can we imagine finding a heart connection with somebody we had thought was outside the fold and lost to us forever?
I have to believe that whatever we might be required to give up in this process is something that we would be better off without. No matter how closely we have clung to it, no matter how central it has seemed to our definition of who we are, if we approach this project of “de-othering” with integrity. nothing of enduring value will be lost and we will emerge more fully human.
This doesn’t mean everything else has to stop. We get to continue to mobilize around policies we care about. We get to share our thinking as clearly and compellingly as we know how. We get to strategize about how to win. But ultimately, this deeper work of the heart may be what saves us as a people.
Election Day evening
After that great storm of effort
comes a lull. Nerves are jangled
nothing left now but to wait.
The color of the sky calls out.
Another storm? I step outside
into a sunset so intense
it takes my breath away.
A man around the corner stands and looks.
I had to come outside, he says.
All around the block
beauty greets me every way I turn.
Heading west into its glowing fire
a stranger stops me, calls a blessing.
Touched, I take it in
and then continue, drawn on by the light.
Another block, another greeting
What goodness has this night called out?
The color slowly fades.
Back in the dark to neighbors on their porches
all amazed, connected, moved
by such a gift from earth and sun.
I breathe, then go inside and settle in to wait.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
A citizen’s right to food
Belo Horizonte, a city of 2.5 million in southeastern Brazil, has pioneered a food security system that has effectively eliminated hunger in the city. In 1993 Belo Horizonte enacted a municipal law that established a citizen’s right to food. Today, twenty interconnected programs connect food-producers directly to consumers; offer healthy, fresh food at fixed, low costs at public restaurants; provide food directly to schools, childcare centers, clinics and nursing homes, shelters, and charitable organizations; establish farmers’ markets and stands to allow farmers to sell directly to residents; regulate food prices for 25 specific items, which must be sold at 20-50% below market price; create food banks to distribute unused produce from those markets; and establish community and school gardens, in addition to providing nutrition education. The entire program requires less than 2% of the city’s annual budget.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2020/11/09/covid-brazil-food-security/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The overwhelming vote in San Francisco to tax companies whose CEOs make a hundred more than their lowest paid workers—or more.
https://inequality.org/great-divide/san-francisco-ceo-pay-tax/
How co-ops are showing resilience and community spirit as the pandemic goes on.
https://blog.equalexchange.coop/pandemic-resilience/
The world’s largest seagrass restoration project, where 600 acres planted in waters off Virginia have grown to 9,000.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/largest-seagrass-meadow-restoration-in-the-world-in-virginia/
After months of organizing that included the establishment of two protest encampments, Philadelphia’s unhoused people successfully pushed the city to agree to provide housing through a community land trust.
https://truthout.org/articles/philadelphia-agrees-to-provide-community-housing-amid-unhoused-activist-push/
Resources
Finding Steady Ground
If you need reminding of some simple ways to stay grounded in challenging times, I recommend this website, which I helped a friend develop following the last presidential election.
www.findingsteadyground.com
Other resources from my friend Daniel Hunter
Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Climate Resistance Handbook, or I was part of a climate action. Now what? https://commonslibrary.org/climate-resistance-handbook-or-i-was-part-of-a-climate-action-now-what/
Leading Groups On-Line. https://www.trainingforchange.org/training_tools/leading-groups-online-book/
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: New link: https://www.peaceworkersus.org/docs/muscle_building_for_peace_and_justice.pdf (or just google the title)
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