Nonviolent Social Change - RTTC Jul Aug

Social Change - Victor Lewis

Liberation

• elimination of causes + undoing of effects of any form of oppression
• viable & regenerative presence to the generations going forward
• change of all levels

I'm not in the business of social justice for my own sake. A joyful, meaningful, relative safe life would not require me to do anything. But proactive, regenerative presence for our species requires every waking & dreaming moment.

Point of entry into social change

field medics for the souls of activists & leaders

I offer mentorship, guidance, respite, inspiration to frontline warriors

No amount of confronting oppression, philosophy, etc. relieved me from PTSD

liberation of body, mind, soul

Now I'm here because with each breath I have something to contribute.

Holding the question as we wander into the world

Ikigai - vocation - expression of our life energy, which we love

Serve where you have love & strength + where the world needs

Support by market place / community supports you financially

I'll give you everything I've got, with respect, generosity, honoring your dreams & goals. You give me what you can afford.

"sufficient economic feedback"

wait until I have enough to start living in the gift

commodify generosity

Educate people: what I'm offering is not cheap

Our embedded trauma is amplified when we have authority

Place judgment on an alter in service to the highest good for life community

We're not on the same deck, our destiny is the same: last century of Anthropocene & patriarchy, radical & integral interdependence.

We're fighting for everyone, including those who're lost in the belief that they're better, those who're injured in body & soul

Multiple paradigms contending within us

Something like COVID will happen again, more painful, to cue us.

Retrain our reflexes so that they serve the whole

Untapped wisdom: from those who haven't lead, from unknown places

=That which gives you an "ahhh", follow that. Activate our head-heart-gut brain.

Ferociously attend to and curate my joy.

Togetherness that's beyond we & them. We need to reach the soul for that oneness.

We're all contributing to the growth of who we are as a species, even those who "harm" others.

Not product of our prior experiences, culture, trauma, but experiences that emerge from the now, not come from, but come into that past.

Bring our deepest power of our presence to bear.

Moment of sweetness, whimsy of play - soft & potent medicine for the harsh reality that we're watching die away

Enough contribution: Appreciate & be a feather on earth. VS. Wish to sacrifice & serve more.

=How is that arising in your most personal experience, where do you feel that in your body?

by themselves, without driver of the aspiring personality

Need for honoring voting rights, for women to have control over their wombs, for children to be safe from shooters, etc.

It's only a matter of time, brown people suffered first in mortgage bubble, they were the twin of you.

"The Sum of Us" - critical race theory

Gift Economy

Excitement in the gap: trajectory & the pull towards the promised land of collective life

vs. weight in the heart/ deep sorrow

Heart & capacity to be in close

Don't keep books

Collaborative - share risk

Take a risk and see what the results are

Affordability - how much courage do I have to give without strings attached

Nobody is EVER earning our keep, LIFE is always supporting us.

If my gifts don't match money then I'll die, starve, be homeless.

=What are you noticing on the inside?

"How are you not living your values, how can you give people what is truly life serving, if you're not living in the gift" --- maybe from superego

Sum of our existence, important about us being human

Security is an illusion. Life is either a daring adventure is nothing.

How can make this a daring adventure?

Justice, Wisdom, Courage, Temperance

• Discern what is good
• Courageously leaning into what is good
• Live justly with others
• Enoughness in our consumption - nothing that can be bought & sold to enrich our live
• The world will support you when you lean in.

Every human-being is immediate family.

Our loving is immediate. Whoever comes, is my immediate family.

Any child is a Manhattan Project

Sacrifice and place on the altar 2 things: Low self-esteem & Powerlessness

• Powerlessness is hubris. We don't know that we're too small to do something. it's arrogance to declare definitively that you're too small and too powerless and to have too low regard to make all the difference for any or all of us. We can't know the depth of our gifts.
• Self-pity goes on the altar too.

Excitement is a doorway to softness rather than mourning. It's not THE state, or the only state, that is appropriate to the situation. The journey is pulled by the end state, final cause (Aristotle télos). 

You don't need anything that you don't already have, to start being in great in service today. I want you to do it with as much comfort & ease as would allow you to be your absolute best.

The point is not to preserve our life but to live it well.

Jesus had only 3 years in ministry and was over when he was 31. 

Whether I "deserve" the resource that I need --> turn into mutual aid project

Nature flows resources to needs, and seeks to close the loop so that everything serves everything else. Life itself is a perpetual motion machine 

OVER MOBILIZATION - Aug 6

break the format of professionalism

destabilize the conversational infrastructure that sustains the status quo.

The idea of a professional sustains the status quo. I aspire NOT to be a professional.

Untethering myself

Basta! (Spanish) - Enough! No more!

Functional & Dysfunctional Patterns

1. Dysfunctional pattern: when it unfolds through me, it has unwanted impact on others (secrecy, passive-aggressive, reactivity, ...) --> feedback from others gives us motivation to change, celebrate when changed
2. Functional patterns: where we compromise ourselves, not our full self (have to, should, nice ppl suffer a great deal...) When we're nice, it lubricates social interactions.

=Is there something something important that hasn't been said?

From niceness to kindness: Do you do enough truth-telling? Have you lost people?

What do you gain? Authentic relationships, intimacy that you've never experienced before

“Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. … And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” – Audre Lorde

"balance telling impact on me with caring for their experience hearing that truth"

--> INTEGRATING rather than balancing

"I give them Miki's or indigenous websites, stop requesting, just ask: read this, take what you like, leave the rest"

TINY CONNECTION REQUESTS: something small, in the moment, they can answer without being threatened, normalizes truth-telling, brings a little more authenticity & intimacy to relationship

• Is there even 1% of what I said that was meaningful for you to hear?
• Could you tell me how much of what I said was more than you wanted to hear? The last 5%? 95%? 100%

Structural power: give people the ability to do power-over. Power-over is something we do, that reinforces the badness of power. 

“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.” ― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Tombs of Atuan

The more visionary we are, the more we're targeted. We need to create pathways of solidarity for those who dare to step into leadership, not pointing out the things they do wrong.

Over-mobilization 

(high care, high capacity): being general manager of the universe

• Shuffle your bums if ... (an attribute, more fun if unseen) : always one chair less than total number

We're fundamentally a low-capacity species. Patriarchy compensates for that by incentives, punishments, shame, coercion, which result in people doing things without capacity.

• In school, we learn nothing about ourselves, but submit our attention to the changes done by the authority.
• In alternative places, the systems of coercion, rewards become weaker. The low capacity is revealed. The high-capacity folks rush in to fill the void and prop up the system with our extra capacity.
• Civil Rights & Indian movements collapsed when MLK & Gandhi were assassinated.
• Black Panthers: did a huge amount of distribution of leadership --> entire leadership was eliminated in COINTELPRO program (FBI).
• I start a project, walked away too soon, people couldn't hold up and it flopped.
• It takes me huge energy to demobilize, to go against the habitual impulse to do something instead of letting ppl flail, watching it not done.
• When I leave the void open long enough, other ppl will grow a bit in capacity. This gives me tiny bits of energy.

@M keeps doing things by herself, faster to do it, then she got really tired, nobody helps. I fill in.

@I encountered several leaders (P) who is like a train engine pulling everyone forwards.

How do we work with ppl NOT wanting to be empowered?

Is there something within you saying that you're straining yourself to give them something they want but you don't want. Every time you shift what you want, you fill the void, the person is deprived of being empowered. 

=Are you feeling within you the capacity to embody the person wanting to be told what to do, not play-act, but BE it.

=First I want to say what I hear, then I say what's going on for me, I want us to find a way forward that work for both, I imagine you want it too.

=Are you open to hearing how I work, so we can actually see if it works for us to continue this journey?

=I totally unds waht you do, it violates my integrity, I believe healing doesn't happen when you 

=Does it make sense what I'm saying about me? Can you say what you're getting from it?

=Do you trust that I care for you?

=Let's lean on that trust. In my belief system, we need to work together and you need to find some place within you that has the power to work with me.

=I want you to be making decision. I'll tailor the information I give. I realized I gave 4 times as much in my enthusiasm, without checking with you whether you're open to hearing.

=Invite them to co-hold with me the situation

I was willing to lose the person, they walk away, rather than doing things beyond my capacity.

"They need attention, not your help." You're making sense, I'm not subscribing for that view.

It is wrenching for a parent to say "Here's a need that my loved child so need, but I don't have the capacity to do it." Instead we punish to make the needs go away.

Cemeteries are full of INDISPENSABLE people.

Just because you can die doesn't mean it's enough.

What is the most acutely necessity for the work to outlive me? Only think about what is next, track the rest, but not trying to hold the rest.

The organization will keep being dependent on your energy for as long as you give more than you have. 

=Do you have willingness to experiment, at least once a day, when you feel it, STOP, collect data on what is the impact on you and others? Just investigate, research, don't try to change, see what happens when you over-mobilize and when you don't.

Leave the void, truly. Don't evaluate & judge, they will know it, the

"They don't want choice." vs. "They don't know how to walk towards choice, have no capacity."

I don't know what they want or not want, I don't want to occupy myself with that. I want to lean on my faith in human. If people have capacity, they would naturally care for everyone's needs.

I want to ask the question when I'm open to whatever the answer is.

@Can you stop saying, I cannot hear, you're too long-winded. --> M do you want to hear more from me, should I stop?

@If mom pulls out, this family collapses. Less judgment, more empathy. What if this family really collapses? I cannot say mom stop straining, you're making me tired. I want to tell her before I'm tired. @I'm angry that you're exhausted and you expect ME to do MORE. I'm going to stop.

@My ANGER, you keep over-mobilizing to keep a nice family going. Should I burst? Should I say it in a calm way, before it explodes?

@Easier for me to say HERS. What about saying that feel annoyed. I don't want YOU to return to me the room. Do you have it in me to hear the stories? Are you willing to keep the spirit of it? That spirit is SO important to me, that I can die tomorrow and it remains. Would be nice if you join in, if not I'll probably incarnate in other ways.

@Were you annoyed when I had meetings? I was keenly aware of your presence. What is honesty & meanness.

@Easier for me to say M you keep doing things FOR them. Where's that extra energy to engage the kids?

@I'm told I'm selfish when I stopped giving. What is my priority? To be awake, observe, be useless. @Celebrate mom when she stopped giving, not just when she gives.

@I have judgments when ppl don't get what I'm excited about.

Roleplay regarding mom getting angry about a third person

All I want is to stop. Can you just do what mom wants?

I want both of them to talk to each other, see that they care for each other. That makes my life easier.

When they're tired, they can be very harsh. I don't have energy for it.

I want to be more neutral about it. They can have their conflict, they can work it out themselves. I don't need to solve it. They can get angry. A can move out, whatever.

For my part, I don't stretch for A or M. Speak the truth for myself with as much self-responsibility & care as possible.

Facilitate

Offer & Request

Intellectual - emotional - life integration

Question: 

Coaching - 13 Aug

Why can't you just call Compassionate Communication & teach whatever you want, what's the grump?

"I want to engage the marginalized, without calling CC coz it's sugarcoating" --> Negative Framing

Positive Framing: What I Want

When we have a gap, if we can present a compelling, passionate vision to pull them towards, then we don't have to fight or argue.

Spiritual challenges that NVC can help us with:

- Choosing freely when we hear something as a demand

UNCOUPLE relational from content: relational (I feel painful when ppl tell me change what I call my work), content (what is NVC)?

"You're arguing with me, how about giving me some empathy instead?" She gave me a Mindfulness Bill. She told me, in her unskillful way, what I would like to do already.

"Communication": this lens is so much bigger than that

"Compassionate": we can talk about violence & systemic forces with compassion. 

"Nonviolent": Courage & Truth are missing when we talk about "Compassionate".

- Energetically I'm not talking them to stand up for their needs, walk towards difficult conversations to speak & hear what is true. liberating aspect of choosing truth over care

Gandhian Principles for Daily Living

When we don't show impact, we reinforce the idea that leadership is at cost to the human being, making people less wanting to step into it.

=I hear a softening in your voice. I want a place where things matter to you not just politically & socially but emotionally.

Nonviolent living

Organizational Change

Vision: Creating time & space for empathic understanding in this org 

1. How you relate to others in org around this?
2. What is the actual vision, the actual systemic change?

• Not only healing relationships, but anything that happens to a person in a system, if that's informed by knowing their needs, it's better attuned.
• Palliative Care: Conversations to together decide Goals of Care
• If you keep things at relationship level, not all your needs are cared for.
• Questions: 
• At this time in your life, why does your health matter to you? What does health mean to you?  (too generic, but context-based) --> a system intending to be nice without intending to change anything
• Simple: Is there anything that's important to you that we haven't already covered? --> Open convo to what's alive beyond the roles we're locked in.
• Simple: Is there anything that would be important for us to know about how to talk with you? Is there anything that is important to you in terms of how well you are touched, how your body is handled, etc.?
• Take ppl out off being cogs, back into human.

Motivational Interviewing. Follow water as a principle.

Highest predictor of a successful doctor-patient encounter depends on how much the patient feels heard. - Malcolm Gladwell

=How's your sense when ppl raise concern? Not specific ones, but the energetics of ppl raising concern?

=When you're in this stance, what do you actually do? (Thank, ask, take notes, go think.)

This moment, do you see any pathway for integrating your concern into my thinking, that I may not see? --> Empowered to collaborate with you.

@Celebrate myself for asking people about hope!

Vision Empathy: wisp of vision, every moment pulling towards vision

What I guess that is really important to you, that you cannot see in this proposal right now, is ..., is that right?

And here's a light tweak in the proposal that can take care of that. Take NVC from feel-good convo to actual mutual creative decision-making. 

I just applied the principles at the heart of this proposal in this conversation, how are you feeling now?

- How predictably different outcomes are based on race & gender.

- Treatments & provisions differ even when individual practitioners vehemently deny discrimination.

- How ppl step into healthy, being asked to be vulnerable & give up control. Here you're asking practitioner to step into vulnerability & give up total control too (what's important to you?).

- WoMPs - Well-Meaning People. How much we absorb mis-attuned things that people say to us when we're in misfortune.

Are you saying no because you're concerned about what'll happen to you? Or because you actually are not feeling aligned with my proposal?

Easy for ppl to hide behind "I can't bring it to authorities". 

Experience you as co-held, doing us for all of us, not just you, for all of us not just here but on this planet.

Dear Honey, there's zero guarantee about your sustainability. There never was.

80% of small businesses close in 1st year. 

Mourn & Release.

In order to function within the gift economy, you need to SOLIDLY STAND WITHIN YOUR NEEDS. To present them, make them compelling, directing people to your needs. Move away from market value

If there is enough connection, they can overcome scarcity.

$120k worth of debt at BayNVC. --> Fundraise, make it known to NVC community. People say: "NO! You have to raise $ for a visionary project." The key is truth. We asked for help, and closed the debt.

"We address ourselves not to their humanity, but to their self love, and never talk to them of our necessities, but of their advantage."

Prevalence of non-privilege, non-capacity to escape the horrors of the sytsem

The magic that happens when I live on gift

Nonviolence is the Courage to speak Truth with Love.

We don't have money but plenty of resources. Adversity is a context in which we know to come together.

Nonviolence in response to hostility - Aug 20

willingness to appear to escalate the conflict by exposing it

willingness to speak truth with love, when doing so exposes a conflict that nobody wants to look at

Private property: one of the most sacrosanct values & priorities.

• Difference between nomads & vagabonds: 
• - Nomads: culturally move as their normal living
• - Vagabonds: a choice to move in a world that doesn't. Edges into the word "vagrant". If you move places, you'll have to supplement yourself from the landed & the hold.
• Law and order are ways of legitimizing the extraction from the many for the superficial benefit of the few. In reality, no one benefits except on superficial level. 
• Large resource disparity: no glorifying, no looking away. Below a threshold of income, it's very difficult to do something.
• Max Weber defines the state as the single entity that can legitimately uses violence. People studying compassion are studying a truncated version of violence.
• Michel Foucault - people with Gadsen flag believes the state should represent them. If they lose 

=such gentleness, such flowing into my rhythm, 

Gadsen flag

"Let's agree to disagree" is separating.

I'm disrupting the conversational structure that sustains the status quo. I'm looking for accomplices.

=If I have any suspicion, "are they with me?", veil lifting within & between us

Story: 2 friends tried to appease, apologize, adopt Jackal judgment framework, seemed to work. Within 30 mins, landlord called wanting us to leave.

• Respond in full humanity
• It's haunting. to not be able to come up with a narrative of what goes on for other people. It's easy to empathize/ guess feelings & needs. “Most people don't think in terms of feelings & needs. If I guess their feelings & needs, that gives me MY compassionate picture of them, that does NOT give me *them*.”
• Empathizing doesn't erase or mitigate actual impact.
• Commitment to wellbeing of all: cross the gap, see things from their perspectives. 
• [Wanting to harm] vs [Not put enough priority/ energy into not harming]
• Even when they want to harm, there's a reason for it.

=Take that off your worry-plate

• Belief? That we should have more power than them. Since we are powerful/ wealthy?
• By empathizing with them, we understand our rent is not as unreasonably high as we thought.
• We sent a letter to share our sense of impact. (My friend said it's groundbreaking, should be shared with all landlords & tenants.) Key: Let's find a way with minimal impact.
• "We bought our own stove. Tomorrow 5pm, no one came, we'll fix our own shower." - Zero request. Share what we plan to do, not asking her to do anything.
• This is escalation and it is escalation based on needs not protest. Not for a show of power.
• Escalation is NEVER about doing something to the other person. It's only about what WE will do, what trouble we're willing to bring on ourselves. 
• This increases the chances that she'll be more likely to respond.
• I want this to work for them, no less than for us. Not more than us, or instead of us.
• The function of a resister is to provoke response. Purpose: get dialogue. Moving towards addressing to a situation that we have no power to address. Dialogue can only happen when people come together. This levels the playing field.
• “Leveling the field feels to people that you're doing something to them.”
• In a divorce research, the women gained some power in relation to the men. From 100-50 to 90-70. Men still have more power, yet felt disempowered because they lose some of the power. 
• Planning ahead of time, what is the next step?
• Private conversation - X work
• Open letter - X work
• Take our needs into our own hands
• Her reply: We don't appreciate threat. If this is the situation and if you don't like it, you can find other accommodations.
• My reply: maybe given your perspective, anything short of agreeing to leave or at least accepting your terms would feel like a threat or demand even though it isn't.
• Tell her: my next action is to seek support from the community (FB group) through which we found each other
• Draft a letter to the Facebook group: assistance for them & for us, we cannot work out on our own
• The design of the system DOES NOT allow people to be seen in their humanity.
• REFUSE to comply: at the material level, and at the way of relating
• No subservience, here's the impact on me, surely you want things to differ as well. Guards couldn't beat Nelson Mandela because he held his and their humanity high.
• Even within this struggle, where there hasn't been any understanding offered to us and they still hold so much power over the resources, I still genuinely care. 
• Not naturally, it's fully integrated into me. It's now spontaneous.
• Understanding the Waltons. Billions of dollars and their full-time Walmart workers need gov assistance to feed themselves.
• No guarantee in the field of nonviolence. No guarantee in whatever you do anyway. But when you walk towards nonviolence, you're also reminding yourself that there's no guarantee.
• If you have to use the State, use the least adversarial process, and mourn it, and mourn it to them.
•  this is the situation and if you don't like it, you can find other accommodations,

1. What are the lessons, principles, questions, etc. you're taking from this?

• Have a plan.
• Suffer in transparency. Not to demonize or demand. But to take charge of my situation. 
• Get enough support to move there, to advocate
• Go towards togetherness without losing myself.
• They may not be aware that their actions have impact --> 
• Moving towards conflict is caring. 
• This is terrible, but it IS FUN. Changed my perspective today.
• https://anandbhatt.skyrock.com/3289760168-The-Most-Misunderstood-Buddhist-Story-The-Tiger-and-the-Strawberry.html

2. Any situation in your life in which you can move towards in love, courage and truth?

• My sister to share her truth about the impact she experiences. OR I share.
• Why is May not sharing her impact?
• Where do I have impact? With mom? It's hard living with you, not exactly? Siobhan?
• Life energy from coming together in aggression?

Express care & stating a limit

A hand that moves forward NO, I will do what it takes to protect and say no as necessary.

A hand that goes around, I'll embrace you. I care about you, and going to surround you with love.

=I'm not managing pain, only choosing where to put my attention, moment by moment.

Thank you leyn so much for lifting up Miki's vulnerability, and for sharing about what you got from today, trying to hold the other when it's adversarial, with no guarantee.

gặp May 11h

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