In this episode we speak with Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw. Ashlin is the Chief Formation Officer at PICO California, the largest multi-racial faith-based community-organizing network in the state. PICO is leading The Belong Movement, which aims to address the polarization and racial anxiety across California by bridging across race, faith and status through facilitated Belong Circles. Ashlin shares the intention and design behind the Belong Circles, and how anyone, including our listeners can implement them in their own community. To learn more about Belong Circles go to picocalifornia.org.
This episode of Who Belongs? is part of a new series of podcasts focused on telling bridging stories. Throughout the series we’ll talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. This project is led by OBI’s Blueprint for Belonging project (B4B), and hosted by program researcher Miriam Magaña Lopez. This project is funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inc.
Transcript:
Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
To me, the gift of bridging is that you'll get across one bridge and you're like, oh, there's another bridge. And another bridge. It's the lifelong work.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Welcome to today's episode of a new sub-series of the podcast Who Belongs. The Othering and Belonging Institute with financial support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation is developing a series of podcasts to capture examples of bridging to belonging.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
We want a world where everyone belongs. So how do we get there? The answer, bridging. Throughout the series, we will talk to leaders implementing, bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. My name is Miriam Magaña Lopez, and I will be hosting today's episode today. I will be speaking with Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw. Ashlin is the Chief Formation Officer at PICO California. The largest multiracial, faith-based community organizing network in the state.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Ashlin will speak to us about PICO's belong movement. The belong movement aims to address the polarization and racial anxiety across California by bridging across race, faith and status through facilitated belong circles. Ashlin will share more about the belong circles and how anyone, including our listeners, can implement them in their own community. Ashlin, thank you so much for joining this conversation today. To begin, can you give us a brief background of PICO's organizing agenda and structure?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Sure. I'd love to. Thank you for having me today. PICO California is a statewide organization that brings together its 11 member organizations across the state to set shared priorities, to do public actions together, to do trainings together. And the way that we set our agenda is really determined by leaders. So it can change from year to year. This year, our priorities have been around police reform, housing and extending the moratorium on rent and also immigration reform.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you so much. In our conversation today, we'll mainly be focusing on your belong circle initiative. To start off can you tell us what a belong circle is and what could listeners expect or experience if they came to a belong circle?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Sure. I'd love to. So a belong circle is really an intentional conversation between around 10 people. In 2016, obviously with the election of Trump experiencing greater and greater polarization, othering, really demoning of people that are different than you. And we wanted to do something that could change that dominant narrative, and do it at scale. So have lots of people engaged in that, but also do it through genuine relationship.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
So we believe the difference between solidarity and belonging is, solidarity is 'I support you from the sidelines', and belonging is 'I'm in such deep relationship with you that no matter what space I step into, I hold your story. I hold your experience, who you are has become a part of me.' And so that's what belong circles really strive to do is to get people in relationship, sharing stories, learning some concepts together, across difference. So that difference could be race, age, language, number of different things.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Who's your target audience for these belong circles?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
So who we primarily work with is people of faith, primarily in congregations across the state. We also work with schools and community organizations, but the target for the belong circles is genuinely whoever wants to be a part of this work. Again, it was to get to scale. So belong circles are not for people who you are trying to convince. Belong circles are for people who want to see the world less polarized, who want to be in relationship with people who are different than them. And just don't necessarily know how or have the space to do that.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
I like that you differentiate the intention of you have to come in with willingness to change or to see the world differently or to see other people in general differently.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Absolutely.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
And to really listen. You've been leading the belong movement at PICO since 2019. Can you talk a little bit about your reach?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Sure. So we've trained over a thousand facilitators to lead circles. And so thousands of people across the state have participated in belong circles. What's really exciting is it's really spanned the whole reach of the state also. So everywhere from Coachella Valley, San Diego, LA, Merced, Sacramento, all the way up to Humboldt and Del Norte counties. And then in this network, this grouping of people who have gone through belong circles, they're then able to connect about their experience.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
So you may have a tribal elder from the tribal adjacent lands up in Del Norte county talking with an undocumented person from San Bernardino about the experience of belonging. And so thousands of people have participated and that network has become in relationship with each other, to continue the deepening of the bridging and the learning about each other.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
I'm curious, creating belong circles or other programs that focus on bridging usually a breaking dynamic is identified. Something that you notice that needs to be changed. What were you seeing in California communities that prompted PICO to start this statewide movement?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Yeah. In our network and I would also say in the movement, the organizing movement, seeing a lot of competition, I would say for lack of a better word, around whose issues would get addressed first. So Trump comes into office, we immediately have the Muslim ban. We immediately have the undocumented community under attack. Obviously Black lives were under attack.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And so what we were experiencing were leaders in the community, kind of subconsciously buying into this narrative that it is either us or them. That if we work on the issue of immigration, then we are not working on Black lives mattering. If we are working on the issue of education, then we are not working on the issue of housing. And often those issues are really racialized. People assume the whole LatinX community only cares about immigration. The whole Black community only cares about police accountability.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
So what we were striving to do was get people into really talking about the issues that they are directly facing and be able to see that the system is causing these issues for everyone. That when you address one part of the system, you actually are going to alleviate the pain. And the other ways people are impacted. So for example, if we look at mass incarceration, really it's the same issue for citizens being incarcerated as the undocumented community being incarcerated.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Both are to make money off of dark skinned bodies, but we had to get people in a space to get that shared analysis and to build enough trust that if I show up for you at the border, are you going to show up for me at a protest? So that was the breaking that we saw happening was across issue and really a zero sum game mentality that only one person, only one group can win.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you. Earlier in the conversation, you also mentioned the idea of polarization and some racial anxiety that might manifest in the network or in California in general. Can you talk about this a little bit more in relation to the breaking dynamic?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Absolutely. So if communities didn't hear certain buzzword from other racial groups, then the assumption was you don't care about me. So I'm an Arab American and I'm not Muslim, I'm Bahai, but very much identified with the issue around the Muslim ban. If I was talking about that from the front of the room and not explicitly saying Black lives matter, path to citizenship, affordable housing for all. Then it was assumed that I only care about Arab people. I only care about Middle Eastern people. So therefore I am a threat to the issues that other people are trying to move.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
I know that PICO California has been part of the Othering and Belonging Institute's blueprint for belonging project for the last five years. Can you talk about how that collaboration led to the belong movement at PICO?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Yeah, I'd love to, because it's been... The blueprint for belonging has been incredibly important for us having language to articulate something that we knew intuitively. So again, PICO is faith based. All the sacred traditions tell us that every life is sacred, that every life is entitled to a dignified experience. And yet we were struggling to find the language that the blueprint for belonging has given us.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
So these ideas of Othering and Belonging, of bridging and breaking, of the circle of human concern. So that we could all rally around shared language and everyone understanding what it means. It has allowed us to offer a collective story to people versus kind of siloed chapters in a book. So I would say that's been the greatest contribution for us. And actually the blueprint for belonging has a number of short videos, kind of popular education videos. And we used those in all of our belong circles so that people could get this shared language. And we really felt like no one said it better than the blueprint for belonging videos. So yeah, it's been really key to us developing this.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Yes. That idea of naming is so important, because I do think that listeners and other people just in general, who have been in the movement or have been in different spaces, you sort of intuitively know that there's something, a dynamic that's happening, but when you can't name it, you can't address it. And it's always good to be able to put a name to it, be able to describe it. So then you can come up with a solution.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Because it is so easy to be like, "There's something off." It's just really hard to figure out what it is. And when you have a framework that you can work from, you can solve it. Or start to work to tackle it. Because we do know that also doing bridging and belonging work is sort of a lifelong journey. And it's not going to be solved with one thing and with one circle, but it's this commitment that you make that you're naming, that you want to change and you want to build on. You've explained what a belong circle is and you've identified the problem that they're trying to solve. I'd like for you to break down the intention of the belong circle, you structure it into four separate meetings. Can you talk about the intention behind each of them and the sequencing as a whole?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Sure. So I will go into what the four different sessions focus on. But what I want to name first is that the sequencing of the circles is really meant to move people from a perspective of me and mine to a perspective of we and us. So from my personal story of self to what is the story of us. So that's really what the sequencing in the circles is seeking to accomplish.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
The first one bridging to belonging is really about building trust. Relationships, sharing some personal stories and just understanding the concept. What do we mean by bridging? What do we mean by belonging? Let's get clear about that. The first circle also is really key to developing agreements that the group is going to operate by. So often facilitators will ask, "Oh, I need conflict resolution training. What if there's some big blow up around race or there's something like that."Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And what we share every time is the solution is always in the agreements. So one agreement that groups often use is when in doubt, turn to curiosity or wonder. So often when we doubt something, someone is saying we move to suspicion. So to try to change that instinct to, "Huh, that is interesting to me. I'm not sure I agree with it, but I want to get curious about it. And I want to learn more about why that person said that."Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
The second circle is about what divides us and really moving from these stories of often private shame to what is the public pain. Moving from a story of individualism. I should be able to take care of everything that I need. If I haven't, I'm a failure, to understanding that actually there's a pretty intentional system and structure at play that ensures that some people benefit and some people lose. So we want people to have an internal disruption about, "Huh, maybe the way I've been experiencing the world isn't totally true." I guess in some ways we're asking people to take the blue pill and go into the matrix.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
The third circle then is really about visioning, imagining who we need to become. If we are living in a mutualistic society, what are the values of that? What do we want the system to look like? How do we want it to operate? Because when we can imagine it, we can take action and move into it. But without the imagination, it's very difficult to do that. And we end up just actually becoming reactive. And we may have some incremental wins, but we're not actually changing the system.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And then the fourth one is about moving to action. So how we create a state of belonging. At the time that the belong circles were launching, there was a lot of need to do public witness, to do protests, to accompany people and make sure they were safe when an ICE raid was happening at their workplace or coming to their home. And two years later was really key, was making sure that people voted. So how to take action was making sure people were registered to vote, et cetera. So that's really the sequencing of the four circles.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you so much. I also understand that the people who are facilitating these circles, aren't just handed curriculum and are told to figure it out. PICO is actively providing support. You organize facilitator trainings, you've published curriculum guides. And it seems like you also are open to people reaching out to you if they have any questions. Can you talk about more of these components and sort of the role that you and the rest PICO is playing at, making sure that people feel supported in this process?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Absolutely. So as you said, the curriculum guides are available. They're public, they're in both English and Spanish. It includes all the materials that you need, the videos that you need. We also have a person designated on the PICO California staff, Pauline Hassan Burkey who really does the side by side accompaniment with the facilitators.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
So for example, there's a group of about 15 black clergy in Sacramento, part of the Sacramento Black Clergy Fellowship that want to bring belong circles to their congregations. So Pauline reached out to them, explained what that means. Then did a facilitator training for the congregants who wanted to lead the belong circles. If they wanted she would sit in on the belong circles with them, be available to answer questions afterwards, provide feedback.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And then when the belong circle concludes at the fourth circle to then also think together about what comes next, what would be the best next step for this group of people or this congregation. And then we're big believers in swag. We want people to have t-shirts and journals and water bottles and all of it, to spread the message of belonging. I was in a Sprouts one day and I was wearing my belong t-shirt and a guy comes out to me and he says "You belong." And I was like, "And so do you." But it was because of my t-shirt. So we also, everybody who participates also gets swag at every circle.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you so much for doing such a great job of identifying the issue that these circles are meant to address and then sort of outlining what the process is and how anyone can really replicate this work. I'm now curious to hear some of the reactions from people who are part of the belong circles. What do these reactions tell you about whether this work fosters an authentic sense of belonging among participants?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Sure. So we're really blessed actually that Vanderbilt University is studying the belong circles over the course of three years, to see if participation in belong circles does result in long term kind of lower case D democratic participation. Does it really create long term agency within people? And so as part of the research, they do a lot of focus groups, interviews, et cetera.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
So I have a couple quotes for you. And then I could also share a story if that would be helpful. So one quote is from a woman in LA and she says "My voice, I never really heard my voice, be able to speak up or defend myself, to hear my voice it's different. Who is that voice? Where do I hear it? So I'm learning and this has helped with the LA voice and the committee to learn, to use my voice, to hear my voice, to express myself. I would just always be quiet before. Like, okay, let him talk, let my husband talk, let him talk for us, just let him, you know." And to me that speaks so much to the first revolution really be and internal. When we find our voice, our agency and what we believe is everyone's inherent power.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
This next one is from the perspective of a white gentleman. "There definitely was some vulnerability around people's firsthand experience with individual racism. Their stories of being profiled. Like the black woman who was saying they were pulled over by the police. So there were individual stories, but then there were also instances of frustrations or misunderstandings towards each other and racial groups. Some of the women, they've had Asian friends in the past, but these are some of the first times they've spoken candidly about some of these things and vice versa with my wife and I, towards them as well. And so it's like, oh, I can't really identify with that. Even though I empathize, and I understand where you're coming from, that's never happened to me. I could share openly about certain ways that I might be privileged because I don't have to fear for my children's lives when they're walking down the street. My son can carry a water gun outside and he's not going to be targeted by the police. So I don't have those same fears. And my wife and I were able to honestly share some of those things and the women understood."Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
So to me, this speaks to the ability for people to become active allies. Understanding someone's whiteness and its privilege in the world in an intellectual way is very different than sitting across the table from someone and hearing about how they are directly targeted and be able to hold, yes, I have privilege. I do not have that experience. And I'm going to use my privilege to show up and change the system.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Another example is in Dolores Mission in LA, largely Latino Catholic parish, but in many ways divided between monolingual Spanish speakers, and then third, fourth generation Latinos who identify much more as Hispanic, attend the English mass, et cetera. There'd been an organizing committee there for years. There had never been English speakers who came to the committee. It had always been recently arrived, monolingual Spanish speakers, and the belong circles were the first time that those two groups came together in any form in that parish.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And it resulted in not only that organizing committee, the makeup of it changing, but it also resulted in the English speakers being able to take to their mass. We need to work to change things. And so they led a commitment card drive during the services, and they collected over 400 letters of support for a housing policy that was coming up. And then after that, they went, "Wow bridging has been so powerful for us. We want to bridge with another congregation and one that is not Catholic." And so then they started doing belong circles with another faith community, not like their own. So to me, the gift of bridging is that it'll you get across one bridge and you're like, "Oh, there's another bridge. And another bridge." Like, you said earlier, it's the lifelong work.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Yeah. Thank you for sharing those three examples. And I really appreciate also how unique the experiences are because in some instances, the belong circles allow people to find their own voice and their own place and make sure that they're included in whatever's happening. And in other spaces, it's really about learning about their neighbor and other people and understanding that there's different experiences that they need to put on the forefront as well.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
And your last example to me is also really cool to see that the multiple opportunities for bridging within one congregation, people who attend same space, but at different times in different languages are coming together and realizing that before this intentional bridging, they were just existing in the same space at different times, but without coming in contact with one another. But really like their lives are so interconnected with this faith and with this space.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
And then now wanting to experience that with another group who is different, I think also speaks to the beauty and the feeling that you get when bridging happens, because it does, like you said, it's not just like an intellectual thing, but you also feel it in your heart. And it's amazing that your belong circles have done that. So thank you so much for illustrating that with these personal quotes.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Thank you.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
I've been having conversations with others who are also doing bridging to belonging work. And most admit that it's tough work. It requires a lot of effort from the organizers and from participants. And sometimes things don't go as planned. I wonder if you come up with a few lessons as you continue to move forward with the belong circle movement.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Absolutely. There's learning around every corner. And so that's the first thing I would say is to have a learning or a growth orientation, not one of perfectionism. To me, the work of bridging is really emergent. You cannot predict what's going to happen. You can't predict how someone's heart is going to be softened or changed or perhaps resistant.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And so trust yourself. Trust yourself if you show up and you show up in the right spirit, you will know what to do in the moment, trust your instincts. I would also say, in organizing, we say, meet people where they're at, not where you want them to be and don't leave them there. So when I was leading a circle, I definitely experienced, "Oh, I thought this person would be farther along." Or, "I thought this person would react this way."Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And they didn't, and that's perfect. And meet them there. And again, be curious about where they're at. So an example of this is I was leading a belong circle with a primarily black members. And one person said, "Race doesn't matter. The goal is to be color blind." And I thought, wow, I was not expecting that. I was not expecting that to be said, I was expecting, yes, let's celebrate difference. Let's see difference. So really need to pause, meet someone where they're at and get curious about it.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Relationship is key. This is relational work, which means it's messy. It's beautiful. It's not linear. And so to be patient with that and expect that, and actually ideally to be enlivened by it. To be enlivened by the kind of creativity of it. I already talked about grounding agreements. They matter. Culture needs to be created by the people in the group doing the work. And people need to define what they need in order to feel safe. And then the last thing I would say is having time for fellowship. Time that's unstructured time, that's about music and laughing and being together. Even though this is serious work and let's not always take ourselves so seriously is the last thing that I would offer.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
I'm really curious to hear a little bit more about how PICO landed on the belong circle as an approach to bridging. I imagine that you've workshopped through different ideas, because you said you acknowledged that this was something that needed to happen. You wanted to address polarization and increased divisions in communities. And I imagine that you made sort of a laundry list of ways that you could do that. Can you talk to me about your own process of thinking through different strategies and how you landed on this one to move forward with?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Absolutely. I remember it very clearly. There were five of us brainstorming in a room. We were getting ready to have our belong symposium or our large belong event. We knew around 400, 500 people were going to be coming. And we were really clear about the why. We're in a moment, we have to bridge, we can't be polarized. We're good on the vision. We felt pretty clear about the goal. We need people to be able to have conversations across difference, et cetera. But we were really struggling with the how.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
How do you move from something being this big grandiose idea to actually being a practical on the ground tool? And the reason that we landed on belong circles is because it's very much in keeping with the culture of faith institutions in houses of worship. Small circle gatherings, small circle study groups, house meetings to study. It was already within the culture and the DNA. And so we felt like this is something that people would naturally be able to do. We wanted it to be as easy as possible to say yes.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
For listeners who may be interested in implementing this framework I know you mentioned that they can contact you so they can get help moving it forward. What are things that someone who's interested in doing this would have to do? For example, if I'm interested in starting a belong circle and it's mainly out of my own curiosity, maybe I don't know if I want to do it with my neighbors or if I want to do it with my congregation or if I want to do it with my colleagues. What are things that I need to start reflecting on before starting this process?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
The first one is being really clear about your why. Why do you want to do it? Because no matter who it is that you end up inviting people are compelled by your why. So for me, I've actually thought about doing a belong circle in my neighborhood. And the reason is within the last couple years, almost all of us have been putting up yard signs about different political things. The signs like in my America, we believe science is real, love is love, et cetera, those kinds of signs. But we're not having intentional conversations with each other, which means we're not working together to change it. We're passive. And I want us to be activated.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And so my why is we're in a community of privilege, we need to be taking action. We can do a lot more than put up yard signs. And I want us to be fierce in our imagination and in how we take action. Now, that's what I would want to share then in my invitation. And some people are going to be like, "Wow, Ashlin, that's really intense." It's like yeah, it is. But that's my why. So you got to lead with what's true to you, not what you think people want to hear. The second is create a list of all the people that you think would be open to this. And then when you talk with Pauline to think more about how to implement it, she can really help you think through how to make those choices, around who are the 10 people. You need to be clear about time.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
So each circle's 60 to 90 minutes, we really recommend maybe four weeks in a row. At most, every two weeks you're meeting, but that's a long lag time. And then we also recommend that you're checking in with people between the circles. Maybe you notice that somebody has really become a pretty quiet or silent. You want to give them a call and say, check in, I'm observing this. Just want to chat. So also making sure you have time for that.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And then the last thing I would say is just being really ready to make the commitment to be vulnerable, to grow, which means make mistakes and to be okay with that. That is guaranteed in this process. So those are the things I would say. Be clear about your why, write down your list of people, be willing to grow, be willing to make mistakes and be willing to be vulnerable and share who you are.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
I'm curious to see if you have a piece of advice for someone who is interested. Because even thinking about it myself ,who would I reach out to? And there's always also this fear of rejection. Why do you want to do that? What's your intention behind this? Or like, that seems, like you said, too intense. And maybe some people will reject your invitation. So what advice would you give to someone having those concerns and fear of you are intentionally wanting to create bridges, but then people are not wanting to create them with you.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Yeah. In organizing, we say, how good is your yes if you can't say no. So nos are good. Nos are good. That means somebody has enough trust with you to say this isn't for me. And praise God, because the last thing you want is somebody saying yes, just to make you feel good. And then they show up to the circle and they actually can't get down with it because they weren't ready for it. So nos are good. What I would say is when somebody says no, I would want to say one, "Thank you so much for just being honest about that. And is it okay if I get curious with you about why? Why is it a no?" Because sometimes we think it's because people don't want to do it. Sometimes it's because you're asking a parent of three young who cannot commit to 90 minutes a week for four weeks. And then you have the opportunity to say, "Oh, well, if that's the issue, are there any ways we could problem solve that? Could I bring a babysitter? Could we do it at the park so the kids can play on the playground?"Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Or they may say "I am just feeling like really overwhelmed by what's happening in the world. And I can't have a conversation about that right now." And then it's, "I totally understand. I totally understand. Please take the time to recharge." So a no, isn't a rejection of you. And no matter how many times you say that it still feels like a rejection of us. And that's part of the growing. That's part of it. But if everyone's saying yes, that's also a little suspect.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Yeah. No, thank you so much for outlining that. And other people that I've also interviewed for this podcast, everyone acknowledges it's not easy work. It's hard. You're putting your heart on the line and it can sometimes feel like a personal rejection. And that's okay. Because it is part of the process. But then the outcome and the positives that come with it are just so great that it's worth engaging in this process. Thank you so much for outlining that. My last question to you is what is the future that you envision for this work in general, but then also what is the future that you envision for the belong circles beyond the four weeks?Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
Absolutely. We're actually doing a lot of work right now as PICO California to determine what our next 10 years needs to look like. What is our unique contribution to the movement over the next 10 years? What we're finding is that some of that work is going to stay the same. One, we are deeply committed to the formation of people. We don't invite people into organizing just to take political action. We invite people into the work of organizing, which belong circles are a part of, to become deeply acquainted with their own personal power and value and dignity. So that stays the same. It's also going to stay the same as we want to move people to public action. We want to change the system. We want to change the world. We want people to feel good and be in relationship. All of that is wonderful.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And if we don't change the system, then we become kind of passive contributors to the status quo. That's not okay for us. One thing that's really emerging as something different is for us to become a spiritual home for people. What would it look like to gather everybody who's been involved in belong circles on an organizing team and a congregation, individuals and neighborhoods who have been participating to come together once a week to share music, to share vision, maybe to hear different faith leaders preach and teach. To all make a commitment to take action together. So we really become a state-wide body, not lots of people doing activities out there, but we're really a body that is a home to people to become recharged, to lament when necessary. To be fueled back up with hope that I'm not alone and let's go keep doing the work.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And so I know that's a long and somewhat convoluted way of answering your question, but I think I just want to be honest about where we are with it. The belong circles are a great element. They're not the whole solution. And so I think what we need to get better at also, and what I think the future needs to include is becoming much more creative about reaching people who don't want to attend a meeting, who don't want to attend a belong circle, who actually are getting their information on their screen.Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw:
And instead of judging that, let's get down with that. And so what does really popular education for that audience look like? How do we talk about the system in a way that activates people versus people hear, it's just like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh yeah. That's like the civics I heard about in high school, blah, blah, blah." And actually really naming it in a way that inspires that, activates, that as resonates and encourages people who may never take action. But their world view is changing. And so when they talk to their friends, they're talking about these different things. When they show up to vote and they look at the ballot, they're looking at it through a different lens.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
That was Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw, thank you for your time. And to our listeners. Please check out our other podcasts, where we discussed belonging and bridging in more detail. For more resources and curriculums on belonging and bridging please go to belonging.berkeley.edu/B4B. That is /-B-4-B. Until next time.