Powerful Community

Something out there must enjoy drenching my life in irony.

I was asked to give a presentation this week on creating a powerful community and this also happened to be a week were I had a lot of hurt feelings concerning community.

 

It’s hard to know how to hold communities accountable to the individual. The excluding or “owning” of ideas, basically choosing individual power over collective power-sharing, makes resentment and hurt alive and vivid in any community. Especially when community building spans a continent, it can be a hot mess in a minute. While I struggle with my emotions, I know my heart needs to choose what to be “for” something instead of being angry, petty, or seeking to “get them back”.

Choosing to be “for” something often feels like the harder choice for me. I am good at fighting for what I believe in, but in my experience, choosing to be against something can get people impassioned for a while, but it doesn’t sustain a movement or an individual (or me).

As I contemplate an action that speaks to my truth, I’ll share the points I made for creating a powerful community.

  I’ve found that there are 3 techniques when woven together create a strong and powerful group.

Always, always, always start where you are. If you don’t have the perfect Board of Directors or group of volunteers – start anyway. If things fall apart – start where you are.

Ask questions of the group – Do people understand the cultural context that we do our work in? (For example, Do they understand how disability fits in with their own identity and culture?)

In order to create social change for others, people have to understand themselves and understand how their experience relates with other people’s experiences. This happens best when people learn and grow together.

The second strand or technique is that once people understand themselves, they can shift to owning collective power. Collective power is all about helping people understand not just what they have a right to, but what they are responsible for.

Ask the group – How do we be responsible for being allies to others? Do we know enough about gender issues or racism? Would learning about how social privilege works or other issues be helpful?

Could we show up in support of another groups action? When people feel responsible to others after having a chance to connect and grow – they become a powerful entity.

The third strand, which I think is the most important, is to make sure there are lots of ways to have fun together!! Acknowledging that people in this work need time to reflect and relax will help a group trust you, themselves and each other.

When woven together people become ready to frame the work they want to do and powerful enough to do it.

  

Creative Fun

A little creativity can go a long way! As a disability activist, I’ve spent a lot of time and energy figuring out how to be creative to deal with barriers and even people’s attitudes. This kind of creativity can drain my energy fast. That’s why it’s also important to find creative ways that give me energy too.  

One of my favorite things about living more simply is getting creative to have fun or express gratitude or love.

For Christmas we saved glass bottles for months and bought a can of backboard spray-paint. We then tapped off a section on the glass, sprayed it the section and the lid. We then filled the jar with homemade, vegan granola. Then when people had enjoyed the granola they could then re-use the jar for left-overs or other items and label it.  If they used it for leftovers, they could label it with the date it was made.

 Then, what to do with the left over spray-paint you might ask? We have an outdoor plastic table we found at a local thrift store. We decided to paint the top with spray-paint. My niece almost exploded with excitement to spend time drawing all over the table!

My grown-up friends loved it too. I mean, who doesn’t like to doodle and make their mark. My partner and I have enjoyed leaving each other messages, both sweet and funny. Who knew one can of spray-paint could provide hundreds of hours of fun!    

The transition to living simply

Living simply is a commitment. It is a commitment to yourself and the world. And while I love lofty ideals, I’ve found that “living simply” on a day to day level is also about the less glamorous reality of commitment to patience, perseverance and creativity.

YES Magazine recently did a whole issue on the new “Do-It-Yourself” economy. As I read through it, I realized that without knowing it, my partner and I had joined a movement. We had decided to try and commit to a new way of living. I had recently quit my job as a Project Director of a National youth project to write a book on self-care for people doing social change work. My partner agreed to hold down a job (and healthcare), while I did year or two of unpaid work on writing the book.

Before we knew it, we were off on a new adventure. Being Disabled activists, we both deeply believed in living interdependently, and asking for help didn’t scare either of us. However, we were totally unprepared for the reactions of friends and family to the level of understanding we were now asking of them. My partner and I come from very different economic backgrounds. Choosing to live on the bare minimum seemed to puzzle everyone we loved, but for different reasons.  It was an adjustment for some family and acquaintances to understand our choosing heart over security. Presents to family and friends were fewer, or handmade. We needed to plan ahead to eat out and weren’t able to just go out on a whim. Travel and big expenditures became almost extinct. It has been an adjustment, but we are committed to getting creative.

My partner and I also had a hard time adjusting to what we now expected of each other. I, feminist to the heart, reacted in a big way to some of our family’s assumptions that I was supposed to be spending my time cooking and cleaning and “providing for my man”. Some family members just couldn’t understand why the house was still messy or certain tasks weren’t completed in time. It really drove home for me how much doing work that was unpaid, like writing a book, was almost unseen or was hard for folks to relate to. Despite other people’s assumptions and my own reactions, my partner and I really did want to commit to living more sustainably. We signed up for the local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), splitting a share with extended family and all of a sudden we had to really think about how to cook and make a week’s worth of meals out of 6 different kinds of greens. We came to the conclusion that we really did need to readjust some of our roles. Because my schedule was more flexible, I could research what to cook or plan out, for example, homemade gifts. We still split most household responsibilities, yet I needed to emotionally get over my stuff about taking on the more traditionally female household chores.    

The thing I was most left with after reading that issue of YES, was, “I want to hear more!” I wanted to hear about and share day to day experiences about living a more simple life. How others are choosing to do what feels right to their heart and for the environment. What it is like for all of us making this choice to let ingrained ideas of success and security go…. Hopefully this blog can become one of the many community spaces to do so.