4.10: Outside Tues + Tim - Not allowing silence

Show Notes

  • Tim: One of the things that really struck me was that they had fundamentally different approaches. Rachel and Tatiana have really built their approach around this kind of cohort model of connecting people together from multiple different backgrounds to create sanctuaries where people who are attempting to get significant change done can come and meet and share ideas and find their courage and clarity. And then listening to Colleen and Mahmood and how deep they are in the work. You know, to hear them both talking about how the work is a day-to-day experience for them. Two very different approaches to getting change done.

  • Tues: It's really interesting… in some ways what they're doing, even though their approaches are really different… we're beginning to actually do the same thing, right? We're in day-to-day work with our clients and we’re doing a cohort. I feel a little bit at The Outside we're beginning to walk with both of those legs. I’ve been really surprised how much you and I have enjoyed this cohort and the capacity building of it and what bringing people together - disparate people - like not even working on projects together but like to bring them together as a cohort has been so joyful in the last month or so.

  • Tues: I really liked talking to Rachel and Tatiana because I could feel my own evolution as they talked. I started in feminist spaces in like really very focused on cis women but with this really feminist political analysis and I think that's what they're trying to bring to systems change which I would say is one of the things that has been up for me for years. Some of their language and theory of change I could find it really easily in myself and then see how trying to apply it to a systems lens. I just really enjoyed hearing some of their analysis and some of their thinking and how they're bringing it into spaces. I thought their attention on the relational and collaboration was, in some ways, such a discovery for me as you and I were starting to work together and I think such a discovery still for folks and they're weaving them really well and so it was just kind of fun. These are kindred folks. They are having some of the same questions and some of the same conversations.

  • Tim: I am going to try something provocative here… I actually don't believe that the cohort model is an effective standalone action towards change. Despite saying how much I enjoy it, despite saying how much it centers relationship, despite saying how much it builds connection across differing areas of action… how it may lend strength to movement building all of that kind of stuff… I think there's been a lot of emphasis on the relational side of change work and it continues to center that. What I found really compelling when talking with Colleen and Mahmood was this kind of like well it's the work, all the time, every day. It's never not the work. When we talk about change, we say networks are insufficient to get change done because ultimately they're driven by self-interest, right? They're not driven by shared work. They're not driven by an emergent, shared purpose that arises out of working together. They’re not driven by relationships that are forged in the fire of getting real shit done. You can have that effervesce in a cohort but I'm not sure it's that actual tool for systemic change. It may be an enabler. It may be an amplifier. It may be an accelerator and it may be an invaluable part of what is happening globally these kind of situations of sanctuary. It's an important part of the fabric of how change work gets done but I think earlier on in my career I actually believed it was a vehicle for change and I don't believe that anymore.

  • Tues: I would agree and I would also say that that is, for me, is a shift and I love the way you put it. It might be an enabler. What I'm learning with Bronagh and Gabe [amazing Outsiders - see HERE] around a theory of change versus a theory of transformation. A theory of transformation - I think of it as multiple efforts going in the same direction which is how we describe shared work… so I can feel cohorts as a particular part of that weave that’s helpful and great and we've been in enough work where relationship is necessary but insufficient. We do these sanctuaries to drop into and they do enable and they do make so much possible… and I think they've got to be part of a bigger braid to actually get the change done.

  • Tim: What has also really stayed with me about our conversation with Colleen and Mahmood was this reframing around truth and reconciliation. It really struck me especially coming from Canada where every week there are fresh graves discovered at the sites of residential schools. I'm not sure if I'm quoting Colleen correctly here…. but it wasn't about truth and reconciliation; it was about reckoning and redress. The focus was a lot more about seeing it clearly and then do something about it. There's something very active in what she was saying; it wasn't just about surfacing the truth.

  • Tues: One of the things that struck me from Colleen and Mahmood's interview was that there's so much in South Africa and South African exceptionalism and she kind of just said that as a throwaway like the way we view ourselves as this kind of exceptional country that is doing these things and the sense of exceptionalism actually gets in the way and I was cracking up because I'm like, “oh my gosh, I'm so North American-focused.” I mean, I hear and think about American exceptionalism all the time but I never think of South African exceptionalism, right? It's just not a concept in my head.

  • Tim: Maybe it's that truth of commonality and truth of difference tension. This idea that we are all exceptional. The historical context is unique. The culture that is born of the land you are on, or have moved into, is unique and there is exceptionalism by its nature; like we're all different. And yet underneath that there do seem to be some basic truths - and I'm no scientist - that in my gut just feels dodgy when you sidestep. When you think that a castle in Wales has more artifacts in it than the national museum in New Delhi… that’s fucked up.

  • Tim: I think European countries have become very adept at not recognizing, and building into their own narratives, the atrocities that they have been part of through their history and centering other things to avoid actually talking about their own history. You know so the prominence of the Nazi Germany genocide of 6 million jewish people is given enormous prominence in kind of European history but I wasn't shown videos of the Boer concentration camps in the Boer War, I wasn't shown videos of the millions of people who starved in famines in India as a result of decisions made by 5 people in a boardroom in London who had never been to India because it was colonized by a corporation whose only obligation was to its shareholders and to its profit.

  • Tues: We're seeing this in the Ukraine, right? We're seeing a control of the narrative around where sympathy goes, what’s being reported around Latin and Black and African people trying to also get out of the Ukraine, right? I'm not seeing that in the mainstream. So the sympathy for the Ukraine is for White Ukrainians and we're not looking at the countries in Europe who are not taking people from the Ukraine if they are people of color. So instead we're going to say, “oh look at how the surrounding countries took in Ukrainians, unless they were people of color.” You see in real time a creation of a narrative that completely disavows racism as if it doesn't exist. It puts Europe or certain countries as helpers of other white folks. Look, I'm super happy that those countries are taking in Ukrainians… it’s just the amount of silence in the news about people of color not being able to get out.

  • Tues: To go back to those two sets of guests we had, I think part of what we can say is happening in Reos South Africa with Colleen and Mahmood and Tatiana and Rachel Sinha of The Systems Sanctuary, I think part of what they're doing - with their different theories of change - is not allowing silence. Just not allowing that to happen. They are bringing people together to share stories and support and to name how they're experiencing gender depression or racial oppression and then getting to work. There was no denial about how tough things were there or that they were doing this amazing work that was just changing the world. We’re just doing what we can here in the best way we know how.

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