Rev. angel Kyodo williams

"love and justice are not two. without inner change, there can be no outer change; without collective change, no change matters."

culture

revolution in review | a year of change

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akw-white150

transform., first as a monthly e-journal, and now as a full-blown blog, evolved from a simple newsletter that reported on just our little universe into the premier periodical for reflecting upon and lifting up the emerging field and movement that has become known as Transformative Social Change.

We are proud of not only our ability to draw forth the threads of connection that indicate our progressive movements are forming a fabric of something greater than the sum of its part, but also our moments of prescience, in which we named–or even called for–what was to come. Aptly, that occurred most often within this feature column, INcite. When you pronounce the name with the stress on those capital letters, you’ll see what we’d always intended to provide.

Like most pivotal elements of movement-building, the value of mirroring this “movement of movements” back to itself will be understood better, later. For our part, we hope transform. continues to be a resource and an inspiration for our grand work to continue in a way that is increasingly recognizing of both our shared intentions and our varied expressions. The Occupy movement, with all its challenges and yet-unknowns, has the tender beginnings of becoming a transformative social movement. It’s up to us to take what we know and make it so.

If you haven’t checked out the blog yet, you really should. The new content added every day is there to inspire and challenge you to see the thread of connectedness amidst the diverse expressions of deep change. In the meantime, these ten essays from the last year, including some timely reprints, tell the tale of the movement that was (and is) to come.

January | state of union: resolution for revolution
The year began with a call for a single New Year’s resolutions: that we commit to revolution. In order to do that, we called for forming a “state of union.” Union within our movement, union with each other, union with ourselves. The idea being to gear ourselves up towards “seeing beyond the crippling illusion of separation and acting from the abiding awareness of our fundamental, indisputable interconnectedness.”

February | red, white and black: standing with the people
Egypt provided our first massive glimpse into the possibilities that open when we no longer accept the weighty hand of domination and seek to return the lever of power where it rightfully belongs: to the People. We recognized early on that even though it seemed far away and under drastically different conditions, Egypt’s plight was really not so different than our own. “As movements of people calling forth transformative social change, we are further empowered when we recognize our relationship, deep connection and interdependence with the movements towards justice in the world.”

March | when the people rise: why self determination will always overcome fear
An explosion of uprisings by Arab peoples against their heavy-handed governments captured our imagination. We watched a single act of defiance become amplified across nations as people cast away false stability to regain that fundamental underpinning of justice that dominant forces most seek to control: the right to determine ones own way. “If nature abhors a vacuum, then indeed, it resists none more persistently than a vacuum of natural selfhood. When the breaking point of lack of fulfillment meets with the illuminating function of self-awareness, human beings, like nature, seek to restore balance.”

April/May | real and not real: on border and divisions
While countries scrambled to be on the right side of the revolutions, a reprint from May 2010 invites us to re-examine how we divide ourselves. With the only true race being the Human one, and all of us need to belong, this incessant separation sits at the root of our inability to co-exist, instead fostering fear. When that fear prevails, “i have found the thinking, choices, behavior and resulting consequences of our people…incomprehensible at a heart level.”

June | doing darkness: change vs. transformation
In another reprint, we revisited how to distinguish mere change from true transformation, with six tell-tale signs. The case was made for naming a movement, along with the recognition of what calls us to transform: “…it is birthright that calls. In this Way, we have to allow ourselves to hear and respond to the evolutionary and revolutionary call that pulls us inexorably forward into becoming our newly formed selves–personally, politically, organizationally, institutionally, across all society–making room for a vision yet to be seen.”

July | a more perfect union: using our wholebody
Back to thinking about union, the historic passage of the right for gays and lesbians to marry in the the good ol’ Empire State of New York reminded us to consider what an embodied movement would look like: “It will be self-determined and other-honoring. It will be systemic, endemic and talismanic. More than anything, it will, because it must, be transformative.”

August | apes will rise | rebellion for the heart
Speaking of prescient, Hollywood’s prequel of a now-classic tale mirrored the uprisings taking place in the UK. As in Planet of the Apes, our primadonna-ish, puritanical culture was less able to see beyond the destruction to recognize the very frustration that we, ourselves, share. Revolution won’t always be pretty. Those rising up were indeed the voice of the people, because “the People are the shape-shifting stewards of our humanity who rise up cyclically to counter the forces that would have us tread backwards in our evolution by vying to protect the status quo.” Even when the form they take offends.

September | the transformation code: how to make a movement
Just before the Occupy movement parked itself in Zucotti Park, we began to recognize that an uprising does not a movement make. This essay points to HOW it is that movements comes into being. The assertion is that “Movements Aren’t Stumbled Upon. They’re Generated. Here’s How.” Taking the study of excellence in individuals to a movement level, three keys to more effective movements are shared.

October | where’s your wall street?: riding the raging bull to freedom
At this early stage, no one knew how far the Occupy Wall Street actions could go. It hadn’t yet clicked for most of us that the beginnings of a movement unlike anything we could have dreamed into existence was taking root. But, we could smell it. Because “by defying definition, flattening leadership and both utilizing and transcending organization as we’ve known it, shifting from spider to starfish, OWS creates within it’s morphing boundaries the one thing so many of our uber-defined efforts at movement-building have inadvertently managed to quash: opportunity.”

November | three lessons from occupy: practicing our values in times of change
Finally, having called for a movement, been in solidarity with others, explored how to make one and encouraged making an emerging movement our own, we learn in real time from the one we find ourselves in the midst of. “…we can afford to strengthen our practice in being present. So that we are able to withstand the sometimes very uncomfortable process of hearing all the voices that need to be heard.”

As one essay muses, “Who knows? Perhaps one day, we will look back on September 17th, 2011 as the beginning of the New American Revolution in which we finally captured not just votes but the imagination of the entire US as a People. But for now, it’s sufficient to seize the opportunity of this moment…”

We, the editors, contributors, tech-geeks and mid-wives of transform. hope you will seize the opportunity to journey back through this fascinating year of change, and get ready to throw your hat in to ring of revolution for 2012. A transformative movement of the People, for all People, is the movement we’ve been waiting for.
—yours in truth, aKw



—
copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

Faceboook: Like angel on Facebook
Twitter: Follow angel on Twitter
Web: Find angel on the Web
Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
Train: Train Your Mind with angel

Three Lessons from Occupy

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Practicing Our Values in Times of Change


INcite with angel Kyodo williams

Author’s note: During the last month I’ve visited the Occupy spaces of three different cities, including NY’s Occupy Wall Street. Yes, I know the name is a problem, but that is what they were called in these places. What follows is an edited excerpt from the subsequent talk I gave about my experience: Practicing Our Values in Times of Change. You can listen to the full talk here.

I’m from New York, so i made my way to the NY Occupy Wall Street site.

Both because I was curious and I had a sense that there’s something here. I wanted to drop myself into the container to really understand “what is this about?,” “is this just more hype?”, or “is this something that’s interesting, that’s going to capture our attention a little bit on Facebook and maybe even reach CNN, but then it’s going to disappear?”

I learned some lessons there that told me that no matter what the Occupy Movement does, that there exists in those spaces—many of them, not all of them, but many of them—some things that we can learn from. It’s not that whatever is happening there is different from the rest of us, but there, it is distilled.

One of the things that is most often repeated is that they don’t have a demand. And that is one of the best things about it.

We are so often trying to figure out how to match our corporate culture and go for the marketing. So we want to get a message and be “on message”. Even those of us that know intuitively that that may not be what this is about are asking “what’s the message?”

As best I can hear, the message…is to heard. The message is to make a space in which people can be heard. The first lesson I took away , is that if we are to have a world changed in a way that is going to be equitable, and accessible and viable for all of us, each of us deserves to be heard…no matter how long it takes.

They hold these General Assemblies using what they call a human microphone—if you haven’t seen the videos of how the human mic happens , run, don’t walk, and see it. In the General Assemblies they make decisions for not only the very intentional community that is formed there, but also, in that very moment whoever is there becomes the Beloved Community. And they will stay there as long as it takes to make sure everybody gets heard.

So the second lesson I got out of being at OWS is this: it takes time. That if we want change, real change, to come about, it takes time.

With the time that it takes, must come discipline. A deep discipline to be able to stay, to be able to stay present to all of the voices that must be heard.

In 140 characters or less, we are not practicing towards the discipline of being Present. So we can afford to strengthen our practice in being present. So that we are able to withstand the sometimes very uncomfortable process of hearing all the voices that need to be heard. Voices that are often being heard in public spaces for the first time, so:

They are not neat.
They are not on point.
They are undisciplined.
They are sometimes missing the point of the conversation totally.
They are often out of bounds.

And they should be heard…they must be heard.

Therefore, we need discipline as a community and as a collective. Just as they do with the human microphone at the General Assembly in which the facilitator clarifies the process and the collective echoes, we need to strengthen our discipline in order to both make space for people to be heard and to be able to say:

That’s a great question. That’s a great question.
And it should be taken up. And it should be taken up.
But not now. But not now.
This is not the time. This is not the time.
But we will make time. But we will make time.

(I wish I could do that as well as they do.)

Some of the Occupy spaces in the country use a bullhorn. My colleague and friend, organizer Marianne Manilov and I talked about what gets missed by not having the practice of the human microphone:

In that practice, you have the possibility of a 60-year old white male holding a Ron Paul sign tucked under his suit echoing back the words of a 24-year old black transgendered person. Holding the vibration of the words in his body. Not just hearing, but holding the vibration of someone that is coming from a profoundly different place in his body. You can’t help but find the sameness when you do that. Because when you hold someone else’s word in your own body, you naturally find the resonance. You don’t necessarily find agreement, but you do find resonance.

When we can find resonance,
when we have the space in which voices can be heard, and
we have the discipline to stay and take the time necessary to hear, and
we create the resonance of community,
we can allow for possibilities that were just not there before.

We can feel things that are unknowable to our minds. You can feel things that are unknowable—and should stay that way—to our minds.

That’s the third lesson that I learned, which I knew and which was affirmed by this profoundly messy, wild, disorienting space that Occupy Wall Street is.

In progressive community, we like to take pride in our willingness to extend ourselves into difference and bring difference forth. As profoundly important as that is, we have to find spaces of shared practice. We must. We have to get over ourselves and our individualistic ways and find shared practice, a unifying thread—I don’t mean a message, I don’t mean a brand—a unifying thread that calls us to attention, and lifts us beyond what is important to Me into what’s important for We.

And we can’t talk about it to get there. You know what I’m saying?

The shared practice can’t be something that we talk our way into. It has to be something that we be. It has to be something that we do.

—your in truth,aKw

dedicated to all the people willing to listen for the resonance, take the time, and share practice as we find our way to real change.


—
copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

Faceboook: Like angel on Facebook
Twitter: Follow angel on Twitter
Web: Find angel on the Web
Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
Train: Train Your Mind with angel

the transformation code

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Over the past year, I’ve been making the sometimes painful transition from working harder to working smarter, often against the grain of long-established habits instilled by ideas about work ethics and the meaning we assign being at some work “place” doing work “things” in a work “way.” I’m all good with taking time off…what I need is not having a great divide between the two. At the moment, I take advantage of technology to build a bridge to something altogether different. I take more and more working vacations, or workations.

This workation, I read The Talent Code (Bantam Dell, 2009) in which author Daniel Coyle frames a “code” for talent. This code consists of three elements. Though he presents them in a slightly different order, I offer them chronologically:

  • “ignition,” instigating motivation fuel
  • “deep practice,” the act of installing natural broadband and,
  • “master coaching,” building the skills in others

We’re at a great place in many ways and yet, there’s something that hasn’t yet clicked—there are still energy leaks that allow momentum that we gain (think: the herculean effort of synergistic collaboration generated for Obama’s election) to peter out in such a way that it feels like we’re starting from scratch again and again.

Over the next few months, I’ll look at some of the barriers we experience—some known and acknowledged, others not so much—and by the end, we just might have something we can apply with precision to all aspects of the work we do for change to get better results, more predictably and more consistently, that build on each other and are sustained over longer periods of time. That like clockwork, in a phrase: we make more effective movements.

ITHS
The Talent Code’s catchphrase is “Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.”

Through myriad discussions that he revisits over and over again, probably the most important gift Coyle offers is to liberate the notion of talent from mysterious and amorphous ideas that leave us in a gray space of some kind of magic that only certain lucky people possess and therefore you either have it or you don’t and you go the way of the rest of the lemmings, pre-determined to live out an unsatisfactory life. He unpacks, reframes and then repackages talent and hands it back to us as what it should be rightfully understood as: skill. What’s great about that is we’re generally in agreement that skill isn’t pre-existing; it can be taught and, once taught, it can be grown. The proposition here is that we have what we need and who we need. Then what’s tripping us up? ITHS or…It’s The How, Stupid. Time to get to the how.

If this were a book, I’d make the catchphrase “Movements Aren’t Stumbled Upon. They’re Generated. Here’s How.”

The central concept The Talent Code asserts is to define skill in this way: “Skill is myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows according to certain signals.” It succinctly states that “…the story of skill and talent is story of myelin.”

Mye-what?
The short story of myelin is that for a long time we’ve focused on neurons and the firing of their circuits being key to making things happen. Which is still true, but that firing is like a light switch: it’s either on or off. If it’s off, nothing happens; if it’s on at the wrong time, it doesn’t matter. Turns out the neurons are held within an infrastructure that was long referred to as just “white matter”. Among other things, the white matter contains myelin. And because myelin is literally insulation that wraps around the neural circuits, it keeps the energy of those firing circuits from leaking. Up to 3000 times improved information processing for better results, more predictably and more consistently, that build on each other and are sustained over longer periods of time. In a word, more effective.

More than being able to do stuff, skill means stuff happens when it matters. Skill is the right stuff at the right time.

Three Keys to More Effective Movement
When I think about such a code in movement terms, I see three familiar things:

Motivation—what Coyle calls “ignition”—requires energy passion and commitment, which are most often put in play by having locked into a powerful vision of our ideal selves and future around which we organize and energize.

From master coaching, we gain the endurance we need to carry movements through temporal illusions so we can weather innumerable Tea Parties and understand the setbacks they cause as mere moments in political time. Movements may look like they suddenly “spring” out of nowhere, but it’s mentorship provided by our elders that keeps us on course. Being able to grow stables of “talent” in the form of inspiring leaders, strategic organizers and damn good people is sustainability that matters.

Vision, Practice & Endurance
In the end, there are no surprises as to what we need to make movements work. In some configuration our current movements have had all three things but haven’t had them altogether.

Much adieu has been made about the Arab Spring, but while its scale is impressive and initial impact admirable, upon reflection it has thus far been plagued with the same thing that stymies our movements here at home: (perceived) lack of coherence of the elements needed to transform an uprising into a truly sustained movement. Enough of the right stuff at the right time.

Next time we’ll look at what gets in the way of skill and what we can do about.

We need more than just a Spring, we need Summer, Fall and Winter too.

Let’s build our movement-making skill and break the code of transformation.

—your in truth,aKw

dedicated to all the people willing to listen for the resonance, take the time, and share practice as we find our way to real change.



—
copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

Faceboook: Like angel on Facebook
Twitter: Follow angel on Twitter
Web: Find angel on the Web
Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
Train: Train Your Mind with angel

apes will rise | rebellion for the heart

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Just as London was beginning to be set ablaze by Blackberries, I was bracing myself for the current Hollywood reboot of Planet of the Apes. The 2001 remake starring Mark Wahlberg left me mortally wounded, having claimed itself a “revisioning” of the original story and movie, it managed to not only leave every racist/colorist myth in place, it was elevated it to a spiritual plane by being robed in pseudo-Himalayan garb so that the apes were a cabal of ill-compassionate, slave-owning monks and priests. It was one of only two movies I’ve ever walked out on with my only regret being that, at the time, I still harbored some naive hope that it would play out differently than it appeared, such that I suffered through it for far too long. Hence my as-yet-unhealed scar to this day.

In my defense, my wariness was not solely the product of ancient wounding. The earliest trailers for the movie depicted the apes in a decidedly more ominous tone. They were clearly no different than the “copycat criminal element” that has rained mayhem down upon London. My mind conjures up images of Dean Winters, who personifies Mayhem in the ticklish Allstate commercials. Rather than one intrusive black-faced raccoon inhabiting the roof, there are thousands of carbon copy black Dean Winters with hoodies and cellphones coming out in droves to inhabit every imagined safe corner of the UK’s big cities.

It was all well and good when it was just the downtrodden Tottenham, home to a similar outbreak in 1985. Police and politicos swore it was isolated to the disenfranchised few using the death of Mark Duggan as an excuse to spruce up their wardrobes. It wasn’t conceivable that it was a spark in the tinderbox of social unrest that lines the overcoat of the world.

There’s been much commentary about how caught off guard the UK prime minister David Cameron was by the unrest. What this conveys to me is that he is sleeping through a revolution. The world as we know it is in revolution. Literally a wave of discontent is encircling the globe country by country, region by region, both dismantling and reorganizing lines of class, culture and caste.

Who “the People” are changes at every turn—indeed, in the movie, they aren’t even people, but they are the People—the People are the shape-shifting stewards of our humanity who rise up cyclically to counter the forces that would have us tread backwards in our evolution by vying to protect the status quo. They are slaves, farmers, migrants, workers the world over that see the abundance of earth’s resources hoarded by privilege so rewrite the lines of distribution to carry us one step closer to achieving humanity. It is invariably a painful process as it meets with resistance borne of fear. But it is inevitable. We are a forward propelled species. Stagnation is death.

Oscar Grant, Khaled Said, Mark Duggan:

Unjustifiable deaths are the symbolic awakenings of consciousness. The cathartic cognitive break brought on by the disruption of meaning-making. We can no longer make meaning out of the conditions we find ourselves in.

We’re prone to miss this moment as revolution because its form is markedly different than what we typically look for. There are no leaders, no central figures. And with humbling executions of grace, there is comparatively little violence. Even from Mayhem, the gangs, guerillas and gorillas.

And still…this revolution beckons and calls for our evolution. It is:

  • begging for equality
  • pining for justice
  • yearning to be returned home to the human heart

and we will not rest until we get there.

Our consumer-driven culture has wrenched the vitality out of life so that it no longer matters that—as the prescient King noted—I may not get there with you. I’m willing to take the blow and the fall if it means you’ll get there. And like Caesar, I’ll exercise compassion for the unwilling participants of a system in which the only true enemy is oppression. But someone has to get there.

So apes will rise, and we will fight our way across bridges and through blockades to return to the place where our eyes can survey the land in safety. Where our minds can rest easy and our breath can rise and fall in freedom. The place where no one has to come to save us from being lost amongst our own kind.

—yours in truth, aKw

dedicated to all the People that strive on behalf of our humanity.

 

angel Kyodo williams, the “change angel,” is Founder Emeritus of Center for Transformative Change. She now serves as a Senior Fellow and Director of Vision. A social visionary and leading voice for transformative social change, she is the author of the critically-acclaimedBeing Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace.

Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
Facebook: Like angel here
Twitter: Follow angel for tweets of wisdom on Change
Web: http://angelkyodowilliams.com

when the people rise

By

incite-freedomring

why self-determination will always overcome fear

INcite with angel Kyodo williams


Tunisia. Egypt. Yemen. Bahrain. Libya.

The last few months have borne witness to a powder keg of successive uprisings by Arab Peoples throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The desperate act of a Tunisian vendor—setting himself on fire in protest of his cart—and means of livelihood—being taken away—was a stand for self-determination that has been amplified by Arab People reclaiming their dignity one county at a time.

If nature abhors a vacuum, then indeed, it resists none more persistently than a vacuum of natural selfhood. When the breaking point of lack of fulfillment meets with the illuminating function of self-awareness, human beings, like nature, seek to restore balance.

When this happens collectively, We Are All Khaled Said…

…and the People rise.

This (r)evolutionary imperative to see manifest condition in which one can thrive is more ancient, more deeply rooted, and thus more powerful, than the inclination to oppress others for one’s own warped sense of self-gain.

In a global, media-drenched world, awareness of self is expedited by the sheer number of other self-expressions to compare one’s own expression (or lack thereof) to. Thus the cycle of being lulled to sleep by paternalistic promises–only to be rudely awakened by a nightmarish loss of freedom–is quickened. We come to terms more rapidly with the reality that as soothing as it may first appear when we are young and naive, we do not want to have everything taken care of by the Great Hero Father. Hence our empires rise and fall more swiftly than ever. Dictators, monarchs, aristocracies and elite parties beware: you are remnants of the past even before you take your corrupted seats these days. When your fabricated means of distraction falls away, the People will rise.

Beyond survival and security, self-determination is the underpinning of justice. When corrupt leaders falter on the first two, the last is the restorative penance that must be paid. Beyond simple survival, being able to determine our own path is the hallmark of self-expression, self-fulfillment, and most importantly, self-love.

In insisting upon the removal of decades-long dictators, the People reclaim their fundamental, inalienable right and responsibility to determine their own path. A right they have come to recognize has been obscured and hampered by individual men projecting an image of themselves as the sole reflection of an entire People:

  • what they will and will not have access to
  • how they are to be governed
  • what they can and cannot become

It would appear to the untrained eye that these Arab Peoples were ruled by different men, but to the eye of the astute, each dictator was a differently dated carbon copy of the other, and all of them mere proxies for fear.

But the People eventually stay the Iron Fist, lift the veil and see the cowering figure clinging to power is neither God nor Hero, just a small, desperate man. Emboldened by their commitment, empowered by their collectivity, liberated from the shackles of fear, the People rise to find liberation from the shackles of oppression.

Questions abound as to how the all-knowing US didn’t see such a wave of revolutions forthcoming: America’s deep-seated racism and perceived religious-cultural superiority conspire to make the quiet swelling of a sea of brown and black People calling for their freedom with fearlessness, grace and unwavering determination a political improbability. To see them do it in succession, leaving the realm of mere anomaly? Impossible.

Having paid so much to keep them divided, we simply lack the imagination to conceive of Arab Peoples bonding together in solidarity to restore the dignity and rightful place of their own. How else could we justify funding the suppression of their beautiful brown selves for so long? How else could we be so confused as to whether we should continue to underwrite Mass Muslim Control rather than proclaim the side of the People the only righteous side to be on?

Even as we witnessed it with our own eyes, we clung to our reductionist, divisive values: it was the youth, it was the educated, it was the middle class, it was the non-religious. No matter that many of the largest protests formed after Friday prayers. Even more un-humanizing, it was Facebook or Twitter. Make no mistake: no matter the vehicle or tool, it was the People.

The brown, red, black and yellow People of this country can learn volumes from the hopefulness and vision expressed by our Arab brothers and sisters. If invested in transformation of society beyond the policy win, past the campaign, despite the funders, our own organizers can benefit from the study of revolutionary change—rooted in the mass power of collective love for the People that unifies, coupled with the individual compulsion for self-determination—that will always eventually transcend fear.

When that happens, we the People, too, shall finally rise.

—yours in truth, aKw


dedicated to the power of the People. may they rise again and again.


—
copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

Faceboook: Like angel on Facebook
Twitter: Follow angel on Twitter
Web: Find angel on the Web
Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
Train: Train Your Mind with angel

red, white and black

By

incite-redwhiteblack

standing with the people


As the world watches—despite the Egyptian government’s best efforts to darken the light of revolution—the People of Egypt increasingly come forward to express their will for change and they will not be deterred. Just over a year ago, I had the great fortune to be in Egypt. Making my way through Cairo, up the Sinai and deep into Luxor, I left holding vivid impressions of who these crowds are made up of, who they gather for and who they risk on behalf of: the People. As movements of people calling forth transformative social change, we are further empowered when we recognize our relationship, deep connection and interdependence with the movements towards justice in the world. I hope these snapshots of with whom it is we stand in solidarity empowers each of you:

I stand with Egypt.
I too, stood in defiance of President Hosni Mubarak’s police in downtown Cairo’s Midan Tahrir, or Liberation Square. Coming from all over the world, we gathered there to link Freedom for the people of Gaza with the Liberation of the people of Egypt. Even then, Mubarak sought to keep the attention we were bringing to the plight of the People from coming to light. We were just a few hundred, but it was clear he knew even then that if the People saw us, they would stir. Now, a million—and counting—stand too.

I stand with the low-ranking and even lower-paid soldiers that are shuffled around and posted as human barricades to contain the peoples’ movements but can’t contain their support for the hopeful defiance of ordinary men and women, young and old, that may finally usher in real change.

As long as Egypt is willing to be home of the well-behaved Arabs, America has been willing to deeply fund a dictator to keep up a pretense of peace while Egyptians paid the price of their dignity. Like the Red people of America, their self-determination is systematically denied while US-made and paid for weapons are used to dissuade them from their conviction.

I stand with the other Hosny, the travel guide who rents horses and poses us in pictures with camels while solving the mystery of the Great Pyramids of Giza with an easy plausibility that confirms westerners are the only ones still questioning what the people have always known.

While we watch the legions pouring into the streets from the comfort of our living rooms or the palms of our hands, the People risk the stability that was for three decades secured at the cost of liberty. They trade complacency and comfort for an unknown future, but are determined to define that path on their own terms.

I stand with the soft-eyed captain of the Jolie, the fifth generation of his family to guide feluccas up and down the lush banks of Luxor’s Nile. He has the help of a young boy that has lost his father but would receive neither service nor support in an Egypt that leaves the poorest to fend for themselves.

Egypt’s revolution is of and by not just some of the people, but the many. There is no fringe to dismiss. Lines of class have blurred into oblivion. The haves are coming forward for the have-nots. Like the White people of our own nation that have stood in solidarity with folks red, black, brown and yellow, refusing to be divided from their values to protect their places, this revolution sees the interdependence of all. They stand in protection of their collective heritage, denying would-be thieves the opportunity to steal their treasures and steal their triumph.

I stand with the head of security at the mighty Valley of Kings. Charged to protect the final resting place of dynasties that rose and fell for thousands of years before an America was considered, he cannot comfortably care for his family. His harmless scams occasionally lighten the pockets of gullible tourists, but when it becomes clear that we are neither easy prey nor think ourselves better than he, his feigned sternness gives way to easy laughter and easier talk of his love for his land, history and people. He insists on treating us to a tour of the grandest tomb of all.

For far too long, the rest of the world has passively looked aside while the People have lived with their requests unanswered, their demands ignored and their dreams deferred, as a leader that promised democracy delivers corruption and stomps out dissent instead.

I stand with Mohammed, the Bedouin with the striking resemblance to the boy-King Tut, now selling papyrus in Talaat Harb Square. His beautiful heavy eyes a window to his heavy heart because his place in society is limited by his birth. Like our Black people, Bedouins are economically deprived and their government metes out uneven punishment against them, institutionalizing a caste system rooted in prejudice. With good luck and by good hearts, this practice will not survive.

Waving their flags of red, white and black with defiance and dignity, destiny is on the side of revolution and the government must finally yield to the eternal law of change. What I see in Egypt is all the people of the world that seek out justice when it is too long denied, insist upon equality when it too long unbalanced, and take back freedom when it is too long withheld. It is time to take our place on the right side of Egypt: the side of the people.

I stand with Egypt because Egypt is me.

—your in truth,aKw

dedicated to Ahl Masr, the people of Egypt, home of the soul of Ptah. May your freedom come swiftly that we might learn, insh’allah, that your freedom is our very own. ‐aKw


—

copyright MMXI. angel Kyodo williams

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher,
author, social visionary and Founder Emeritus of
Center for Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change.
permission granted to retweet, repost,
repaste & repeat with copyright and contact
information intact.

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living on the right

By

incite-allah

bearing witness to the bend towards justice

Istanbul, Turkey.

Five times per day, throughout this enigmatic city, the calls to prayer, or Ezan, ring out, initiating an exodus from homes, offices and even busy tourists shops and restaurants.

“Allahu Akbar” – God is most great.

It is Ramadan, the month of fasting and the mood alternates between the quiet introspection compelled by taking neither food nor water from sun-up to sun-down during some of the longest days of the year, and the burst of celebration (and relief) of breaking bread for iftar, the breaking of the fast . When the muezzin calls, Istanbullus answer by making their way to any one of nearly 3000 active mosques. Even with its secular government, established in 1923 by the real Young Turks, the Republic of Turkey boasts a 98% muslim population and more mosques per capita than anyplace in the world: 85,000 or 1 for every 350 citizens.

“Ash-hadu an la ilaha illa llah” I bear witness that there is but one God.
“Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah” – I bear witness Mohammed is a messenger of God.
“Hayya ‘ala-salat” – Make haste towards prayer.

From this vantage point, it is hard to comprehend the furor generated around the placement of just one mosque, that of the proposed Cordoba Mosque and Community Center in New York City’s lower Manhattan.

For the record, it is not on the World Trade Center site, it is near. Two blocks away. And for those of us that didn’t know, the fact of long-standing mosques, 4 and 12 blocks away, was illumined by the New York Times. Each stood peacefully in the shadow of the Twin Towers for decades. Both mosques overflow with ever-increasing numbers of believers during this holiest of months. One is conservative by Islamic standards, maintaining separate prayers spaces for men and women, the other, considered to be the most progressive in the nation, is led by a woman. It is the prayer leader of the latter, most progressive of mosques that was inspired to build the community center as a symbolic bridge of healing through mutual exchange. A better candidate couldn’t be found even abiding by our quasi-racist criteria.

Notwithstanding its overwhelming predominance of Muslims, Turkey lays claim to a history of religious tolerance that cannot be ignored. In 1492, as Columbus delivered claim over native lands to Spain, 200,000 Sephardic Jews were delivered into freedom from the Inquisition by Ottoman’s Sultan. Some 15,000 French Jews were saved during the Holocaust. Turkey still seats the Christian Orthodox Patriarch and on September 12, a referendum for a new constitution seeks to extend human rights and religious freedom while limiting the historically long arm of law in exchange for transparency and balance.

As the capital of empires for 8000 years, this city has much to teach the economic capital of America’s Empire. The main point being this: all empires fall. In their wake, what they leave behind is a legacy. It can be a legacy that glorifies the past to be regaled in rubble and ruins, or it can be a legacy that sets the course for the future. An admirable post-empiric future is one that learns from the mistakes of arrogance past and matures into a principled elder state exhibiting universally moral characters of equanimity, restraint, temperance and unequivocally just.

“Hayya ‘alal-Falah – Make haste towards success.

Critics argue that the name Cordoba represents the triumph of Islam over Christianity as that of the grand mosque of the same name built in Spain on the site of a former Christian Church. What they fail to mention is the church site was purchased, not seized, and that it was Christians who turned the 500-year old mosque into a cathedral. It is more likely the beauty the “defied any description” that inspired the name.

Perhaps they should have chosen a different name. Perhaps they should have chosen a different location. Perhaps they should have cowered into a corner waiting for elections and the ensuing political straw-grabbing to pass. Maybe then they could have quietly found themselves a place in the pitiful America expounded by the Tea Party. Or perhaps they should just join Barack Obama in that small corner of Islamophobia that has been painted–and that he ran full speed into–and retract the mosque altogether.

But that would be a shame.

A shame upon them, the politicians that would trounce on the moral foundation America seeks to claim as its underpinning, not only for political gain, but to fuel their unyielding rage that a black man with a muslim name presides in their White House.

A shame upon every single one of the 68% of Americans purported to be against the mosque who love their own freedom but would withhold it from others under the guise of everything from security to sensitivity. Sensitivity to social, racial, cultural and religious minorities has never been our strong suit. As a nation built on stolen lands by people stolen from their lands, developing true moral character is our only hope for redemption.

But most of all it is a shame on us, the rest of the Americans who have not yet stood alongside New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in his eloquent–and unshakable–defense of the right of the mosque to be built. Shame on all us for not responding with the vitriol reserved for when one’s very life and liberty depends upon it, because it does. Shame on any one of us that allows themselves to believe this is not their issue, that there are more important things, or worse, that have chosen to ignore the matter altogether.

If you take the time to divine the conscience of the moral universe, as Unitarian Theodore Parker did 160 years ago, you can bear witness to its trajectory. Time has proven there is right and wrong side of history. On wrong side were Axis and Central powers, the Nazis, the Confederates, the slaveholders, Jim Crow. Always on the wrong side are fascists, oppressionists, segregationists, fundamentalists, persecutionists, misogynists, racists and intolerants of every stripe. Time and time again, that moral arc named by Parker and memorialized by Dr. King, course corrects the petty side excursions we are witnessing today and bends, ever so powerfully, towards justice.

“Al-salatu khayru min an-nawm” – Prayer is better than sleep.

It is time for the left to learn to live firmly on the right.

How long will that take?

As King often reminded us, “Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Let us bear witness to that.

As salaam alaikum. Ramadan Kareem.

—your in truth,aKw


—


—
copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

Faceboook: Like angel on Facebook
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and justice for all

By

incite-love


[Adapted from a Public Talk recorded July 8, 2010 @ CXC.]

Today the verdict for Oscar Grant came down. It was involuntary manslaughter. It was the first time I’d come across information that Johannes Mehserle (the former BART police officer who shot Grant) sobbed when he testified about realizing that he had his gun in his hand. Right away an image came to mind of how many people would think, “Oh, he just made that up.” Or, “He put on a good act so he could get acquitted.”

A lot of people are, justifiably, very angry. It’s the first time a police officer has been tried in over 30 years; there’s a lot of frustration. And I’m sure there are a lot of people outside, and in this room, who think that involuntary manslaughter is not enough. And I’m sure there are people who believe he should be acquitted. We get very fixed ideas about how things ought to be and its really, really difficult for us to let things be as it is. I wonder if just for a moment, wherever you sit, you might just be with what it is.

That it’s not just “involuntary manslaughter,” but the loss of life. The loss of life and the pain, that even if it was Mehserle’s intention, it must be his to bear. It’s the pain that any of us must bear when we harm another. And then, the compounded pain of having to cover that up and get tight, to make ourselves believe it was justified. And then, carrying the pain and frustration of people—and peoples—burdened by a system that doesn’t see them.

Is it just for this one person to carry the burden of those thousands upon thousands of people, with their justifiable anger and resentment? Is it just to rest it on the shoulders of one man? A man who had the wherewithal to sob?

Maybe it’s an act. But whether the sobs are real or not, you can’t deny the suffering. In every direction, you can’t deny the suffering. Because if we deny the suffering of others, we deny the suffering of our own hearts. And if we deny the suffering in our own hearts, we make believe that somehow there will be justice if one person bears the burden of a system that has been flawed for hundreds of years—hundreds. Since the birth of this country, it’s been a flawed system.

It’s in the denial of our own suffering that we keep seeking
these petty expressions of justice that don’t speak to the root. That don’t get at what’s really
wrong here:

  • What is it that we’re cutting off in our own lives?
  • What is it that we’re refusing to see?
  • Who is it that we’re refusing to see, to acknowledge the
    pain and the suffering of?
  • What is it that gives rise to an entire society that can have this kind of act occur and split us into pieces? Not over how do we fix this system…but over, “Is this guy going to get sent away to prison for life, or is he going to get acquitted?”

He’ll never go free; I should say that. No matter what, he’ll never go free. Even if he walks out of the court with no time served, he’ll never really go free.

What is it that we have to see? What do we have to deconstruct? What are we holding onto that it’s time to dismantle in our own hearts so that we can create more space for real justice? This is justice that arises, not out of a sense of punishment, but out of a sense of love, justice that serves and embodies love. Not justice that is confused and mistaken for punishment.

Responsibility and Accountability
And that’s not to say that people shouldn’t be held accountable, because absolutely people should be held accountable. We have social and legal agreements that say folks under 18 can’t be held accountable until we classify them as adults. Why is that? How do we make this distinction that if you’re under
18 you can’t be held accountable for your actions? Because they don’t know enough yet.

They’re not equipped to make decisions in such a way that they’re able to be responsible, therefore they can’t be held accountable.

We have a society that doesn’t let people grow up in a way that lets them be responsible. We haven’t taught people to be responsible. So we can’t really hold people accountable until we take the responsibility as a society to teach people how to be responsible. And no one can be responsible, if they can’t love. And they can’t be responsible for loving others if they can’t be responsible for loving themselves. If you can’t love yourself, you cannot know how to love others. And if you don’t know how to love others—I’m not talking about romantic love, but agape love…Universal Love.

I’m not even talking about filial love, but the love that arises out of compassion. Compassion precedes that love. The love that arises out compassion arises out of recognition.

If you cannot recognize—if you cannot see—you cannot love. If you can’t see people, you cannot love them. If you can’t see them for who they are and what they are and where they are in all their differences, not their sameness…in all their differences. That’s where it gets ugly: when people are different and you can’t make sense of them easily. If you can’t see people for their differences, and appreciate their differences—not like them…I’m not talking about like them—who cares about that? I’m talking about love, the magnetic energy that is a vibration of your cells in relationship to other living cells. If you can’t see people’s differences, if you can’t see people for who they are, you cannot love them. And the main reason most of us cannot see others is because we can’t see ourselves…we won’t see ourselves.

It’s hard to hold the whole truth of who we are. It’s hard. But if you don’t want to hold the truth of who you for yourself, do it for us. Do it for us, because we need every single one of you. I need you to see me for who I am, and I know you can’t do that if you cannot see yourself. I need to be able to hold you accountable for how you show up. But I can’t do that if you’re not responsible for yourself, because you don’t even know who you are.

When we don’t reconcile the challenge of meeting ourselves, we look for false justice. We punish rather than hold accountable. We seek retribution rather than resolution. We try to get our broken hearts met by breaking everything around us in equal measure.

And when we find that our hearts are not met, we try to break more. It’s an unstoppable cycle of violence and trauma and pain and suffering, and it all begins with our refusal to see ourselves.

There are a lot of dark and unexamined places that our culture teaches us we can buy our way away from, that we can consume our way to the land of bliss and happiness never to meet the “me” again. If you just consume enough, you’ll eat the pain away. How’s that working for you?

The thing about our pain and our suffering is this: until it is met and seen for what it is, it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s like the dark places in your refrigerator, things hidden in little containers that you refuse to open, because you don’t quite remember when it got there. So instead of facing the smelly tempeh that might be in there, you eventually run into an infestation of things that can kill you, because you didn’t want to deal with it when it was just plain stinky. That’s really how it is. In fact, in my experience, things are never as bad as the idea you create of them.

Somehow, when we get caught in our stuck ideas about ourselves, we create better images of who we are, and we believe worse images of who we actually are. So we create fantasies and we believe fiction. Neither of these things abide in truth.

So that you don’t leave thinking that I’m all doom and gloom, I’ll give you some homework. Take it home with you, but start it right now:

Think about one person or situation that you’re not allowing yourself to see because to see that will mean that you have to see yourself. And take the first step to opening your eyes. Just one little step. Don’t try to fix it all at once, but take the first step to truly seeing.

Start the movement toward dismantling punitive justice and discovering the justice that comes from love.

—yours in truth, aKw


dedicated to everyone that loves and would have loved Oscar Grant. and to Johannes Mesherle, in the name of justice, in the name of love.


—
copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

Faceboook: Like angel on Facebook
Twitter: Follow angel on Twitter
Web: Find angel on the Web
Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
Train: Train Your Mind with angel