Podcast: Expressions of Belonging

 Transcript

Speaker 1:
Hello, and welcome to this special episode of Who Belongs, a podcast from the Othering & Belonging Institute Institute at UC Berkeley. This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering & Belonging conference that took place in Oakland this past April.

This session is titled Expressions of Belonging, and it offers a mix of stories, insights, and diverse approaches to advancing belonging at an array of organizations at different scales and locations. It includes panelists David Hsu, who is a Director at the Omidyar Network, Liz Baxter, who is CEO of the North Sound ACH, Cary Simmons, who is the Director of Community Strategies at Trust for Public Land, and Judith Mowry, who is the Interim Deputy Director for the Office of Equity and Human Rights in the City of Portland.

The discussion was moderated by Ashley Gallegos, who is OBI's Belonging coordinator. You can find more episodes from the series on our website at belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs.

Ashley Gallegos:
My name is Ashley Gallegos, and I lead the Places of Belonging work at the Othering & Belonging Institute. My visual description is that I am a mixed-race Latina. I have brown, curly hair that's just past my shoulders. I'm wearing brown framed glasses and a black-and-white-striped top.

I'll be throughout this breakout session also verbalizing a visual description for most of our panelists, and I'll tell you why. Because this panel we've designed as kind of a hybrid, so we are going to do a storyteller showcase where you will hear from each of our four panelists from the places they are working and advancing belonging to really invite you into their world, to their work. And then as you'll see, as we've set up on these chairs, we'll move into a more traditional panelist conversation. Without further ado.

I see a place, a place where people, animal and the earth all have their needs met; where our natural environment is seen, included, and recognized as having its own agency while still being something we are deeply connected to; where humans have recognized the interconnectedness that we all share, and move with care in actions, thoughts, and words. I see a world that moves beyond superiority, oppression, and the misuse of power, and towards respect for everyone, their rights, and their humanity.

This vision, I'll admit, is aspirational. It is far from the world we are occupying at present, but it is not out of sight nor reach. This is the power of belonging. It invites us into the vision of making a better world. It fuels our inspiration to know that what we seek is possible. Belonging doesn't just leave us though in that aspirational state. It encourages us. It in fact demands us to make movement towards achieving it.

Belonging is not something yet to be discovered. It is old. It has existed in cultures throughout the world. It exists in many shapes and forms, or as we say, expressions. We found that expressions of belonging are important to share. In many ways, they are the glimmers, the bright spots, that let us know that the vision we seek is possible, and it counters and protects us from the falsity that we must move forward only as individuals or that we must go along with the current shape or design of the world we inhabit, especially because we know it is not working for many.

So today, I'm here as a moderator to this wonderful panel, Expressions of Belonging. We've put this together as part of the Places of Belonging track, and invite belonging-builders who are new and well-experienced into viewing and hearing practical examples of how belonging is happening.

Here at OBI, we do not limit the possibility of where change can occur. We know that it will take all of us to build a world of belonging, and multiple groups or parts of society will need to engage. Within this session, you'll hear from change leaders from across the US, all representing different sectors, spaces, places, and identities who are all working to advance belonging in different ways. The goal of this session is to illuminate building for belonging in multiple forms and to invite each of us to thinking about how what we hear today might inform our work in the places we come from.

So as I shared, our flow today will start with the storyteller showcase, where each of our panelists will share a story about their work, and they'll illustrate the shape and contours of their work, and illustrate many projects for belonging that share a similar goal, but take a different form in application. Each speaker will share roughly a six-minute story of their work, and then we'll move into a more traditional panel setup.

I'll be doing introductions one by one to bring each speaker on. Our first speaker, and we'll bring forward the slides, please, thank you, is Judith Mowry. She uses she and her pronouns and serves as the Interim Deputy Director for the Office of Equity and Human Rights within the City of Portland. Please welcome Judith.

Judith Mowry:
Wow. Hello, hello, hello. I'll be sitting because I have a disability that makes standing for very long too difficult. I am so happy to see you all here. And I'll give you my physical description is I'm a big woman in my 60s with gray hair, I'm dressed in red and black, and I've been racialized as white.

I love this work. I have some notes on my phone, not at the podium because I can't stand. I was lucky enough, it was really amazing to get to go to the Othering & Belonging in Berlin, and there are a few people here that I met there, and I've met more people here. I love this work. So my work exists in creating belonging in what I would call the civic square, and I do that through working at the City of Portland, so I am in government.

And as I have been in my office for 12 years doing the work of equity, I've really learned a lot about where our barriers are to belonging. I believe that if we understand that we have belonging, when we get there, we will solve for a lot of our problems, and we will be able to imagine a new world together that is not filled with othering, and is really filled with everyone belonging.

And as the early work at OBI, I don't know if they still say this, was talking about creating a world where everyone is within the circle of human concern, and I say that a lot at work. And I don't know about you, but my heart warms up when I hear that. It's just like, "Yes, yes." So as we've thought about how do we do this, we're in a time of great change politically. The work that we do and what has been historically called DEI has been weaponized, is under attack, so we're really thinking a lot about what our narrative is.

And when I do training for folks like the firefighters and the police who have had the wedge of racism been inserted into their lives and very effective in making them feel really resistant to this work, I realized everything we want from social justice, from the outcomes we want, serves them too. It's they're blue-collar workers. They have unions, we're together, we want to educate our kids. We want to have parks, we want to have health, we want all those things. The same thing.

So what is the work we need to do to get to where they recognize that? And that some of those of us who have come through a time of frustration and cancel culture and anger, how do we then also open ourselves? And I think the work is both internal and external.

So we've been reflecting on Audre Lorde's quote of, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House". And when I'm talking about the master's tool right now, I'm talking about colonization. I'm talking about a myth of separation. I'm talking about a myth of superiority and inferiority.

So what do we do that's different? Obviously, on some levels, we have to, right? But the master's tools, let's just take law, right? My people I work with on Title IX, they're like, "I don't care about hearts and minds." I think it's about we just changed the law, well, that's the problem. The law is changeable, right? And look at where we are now. And guess who makes the laws? People with hearts and minds. So we have to work together to create the fabric of a culture that supports each other that does not harm and oppress those that we live with.

So I think we have to work on many levels. And I think at least of three levels of the internalized messaging we have, which makes us smaller sometimes, which keeps us from showing up at tables, which keeps our voice from being heard, to our interpersonal place where we struggle with not understanding each other's lived experience, with having a lot of fear come up, with a lot of stereotypes that have told us about each other. And at the systemic and legal level, at the institutional level. We got to do it all.

So one of the things we've been doing is looking at how we train, how we create dialogue at work at the city, right? So one of the things that we're doing is having conversations about building shared work culture from the very beginning. So we get together with teams and we start a conversation about what does the work culture look like where you can thrive? Where you can do your best work?

And we start that conversation by saying, "What are the values you bring into the workplace?" And we break them into small groups, and I can explain the whole process if anyone's interested in what we do, but we get people together and they start talking about the values they bring. And then we don't stop there because we have to go deeper, go to the root. Go to the root. Use what they sometimes call a Socratic method of going deeper. "Why? Where'd you get that? Where did you learn that?"

Because I think a lot of us go on assumptions that we don't even recognize have been given to us by the colonization, so we're not even aware that the things that we think are our values and our thinking are really what we have adopted to survive, right? So as we do that, we ask people to think more deeply about that.

Now, a lot of people I work with at the City of Portland are not ready to talk about how they're colonized, so I must have missed a little bit of a Trojan horse. So when we ask that, "Where did that come from? And how do you think about that really?" And so some interesting conversations happen. And then we see that, "Oh my gosh." People are like, "Wow, we share so much."

And we just worked with a group that was really, really struggling, falling apart, lots of conflict, and they were like, "I didn't know we all had this much in common." And when we'd find an outlier, like someone said a value of work for them was punctuality, we could say, "Tell us more about that." And then in the end, we could say, "So one of the values everyone adopted was the value of assuming good intention."

So to the person for whom punctuality, who also happened to be the person who was the boss, we said, "So you all recognize that this is important to him, and so I would assume that you're going to try to do that." Thank you. I'm getting the golden whistle. I'll try to hurry this up. And then saying to him, "And you're going to remember, you're going to assume good intention. And if someone's late, it's not because they're lazy." I got to tell you. I am on the path to eliminate the idea of insubordination. When anyone says that, I said, "Why do you think you have someone who should be subordinate to you? Let's start there."

So again, I have so much I could share. I hope that this is helpful. So go to the root, help people learn how to live with discomfort, recognize discomfort that we are colonized toward versus discomfort that we have just because it's new and uncomfortable. And I look to continuing the work of belonging with all of you, and thank you so much for your attention.

Ashley Gallegos:
That was wonderful. Thank you, Judith. Thank you. So next, we're going to bring to the stage, along with the PowerPoint, Liz Baxter.

Liz is a Chief Executive Officer, I'm not going to shorten that because she is a boss, of the North Sound Accountable Community of Health in the northwest corner of Washington. Liz describes herself as a short, older, mixed-race woman with salt-and-pepper hair, getting saltier by the month, with glasses, and she's wearing a rust-colored sweater and a scarf with Coast Salish art. Please welcome Liz Baxter.

Liz Baxter:
Thank you, all. And since I can barely see you, I'm just excited to be able to use my hands without triggering a thumbs up or a raised-hand emoji, so being in real life is amazing. And I've had some slides that hopefully will come up, and they're really not so much to be informative, but it's hard for me to be here and talk about the work that we're doing without bringing the people with me who are doing this work.

The North Sound Accountable Community of Health is part of a growing network across the country of ACHes that are trying to take decision-making and strategic planning further down to the regional and local level, and it's just something that seems to be growing across the country.

And so if there was a way to get that first slide up there, we started back in 2014, and it was all about health: the public's health, community health. And in December of 2020, our board changed. They actually eliminated our mission and vision statement, which could scare some of you. And the question that they were asking is, "Why does this organization exist?" And this is what they came up with. That we exist to create a just and inclusive culture and the necessary conditions required for all community members to thrive.

And since that point in time, everything that our organization has done has been towards that end. We are trying to figure out how we can actually change the conditions that either have people feeling like they're in a place where they belong or they feel excluded, they feel like they can get what they need, they feel like they can't. And it's been a really profound opportunity for us. And I know I've got some staff, we've got some board members that are here in Oakland, who are actually doing the work that I just have the honor of helping shepherd forward.

Washington is the only state in the country that has nine ACHes that actually cover the entirety of the state, so we're using this approach statewide and trying to see if we can actually change the health and equity outcomes for people who live in the state.

So if we go to the next slide, which I hope is a map, most people who don't know Washington State think that Seattle is in Northern Washington. And so I put this up here mostly because there is 100 miles between Seattle and the Canadian border, and that's the area that North Sound is working with partners across that space. In this map that you're seeing, we have got five counties, eight tribal nations, who have all come together in a variety of ways, along with public health, fire and EMS, hospital and health systems, community-based organizations, to try and meet that end that we've come up with.

But in this space, having water, and if any of you navigate across bodies of water, we have two counties that are separated from the mainland by the Salish Sea. We actually have one piece of our northernmost county that in order to get to it, you have to travel from the mainland through Canada to get to this tiny piece of land that is the northernmost part of Whatcom County. And so when we talk about things like rural and urban and what is this county made up of, that body of water is a really critical player as we think about what's happening, including everything that's happening inside of the water to help us get to that.

We have about 1.2 million people, and that's not huge by some geographies, but it's really huge for us. And trying to figure out how we can take 1.2 million people, five counties, and move a group of organizations on a tribal and equity learning journey has been really significant for us. It is what has gotten us to this conversation about belonging.

So we started with tribal sovereignty. We sit on the homelands of these eight tribal nations, and we included equity. We, in 2018, had the honor of meeting John Powell and the Othering & Belonging Institute, and so we brought in targeted universalism and belonging, and those became part of the frameworks that we used to guide our work.

And then in 2020, we included the Vital Conditions for Wellbeing, which at its core has belonging and civic muscle as its center, and then is surrounded by all of those things that impact people's health that may or may not have anything to do with a thriving medical system. And so all of those things are intertwined for us as we think about belonging in the North Sound region.

So we've been on this journey since 2018, and one of the things that has always been fascinating for us is what happens when somebody is on day one of that journey? So we'd like to think that everybody's been on the journey since 2018, so we can be right there being the most activist-kind-of-minded folks, and then somebody, a partner organization will step in, and they're still at the, "So I'm trying to understand the difference between equality and equity," and they're on day one of their journey.

So as we are building this network of organizations, we have to constantly remind ourselves that belonging means also finding a space for people who are early in their learning. That's really critical for us. You can probably go to the next slide. It's just people. I like bringing people with me.

But we could not have imagined that we would be doing this work in the middle of a global pandemic, global demands for social justice, for us having once-in-100-year climate events that unhoused people and farms and farmland. And so all of a sudden, we were like, "Okay, so this belonging piece is also forcing us to go, "Where do we prioritize our time and our energy?" And it is with people who are the furthest from equity, the furthest from justice, the furthest from access to services and care. Thank you.

And so we found ourselves saying, "How do we build this movement?" And belonging is as much of a contagion as COVID has been. And so we find ourselves in Washington with a table that's been created to actually have Washington State become a state of belonging.

In North Sound, we have about 160 organizations that are working with us, and we have 100 organizations in the queue because people are hungry to be having conversations that are about belonging, equity, and in the end of last year, leading with love. And so as you hear folks talking about love, we're operationalizing a lot of that inside of our organization in our partnerships and such, and just look forward to having more conversation with you about that. Thank you.

Ashley Gallegos:
Wonderful. Thank you, Liz. Our next speaker is named Cary Simmons. Cary's pronouns are he and him, and he's the Director of Community Strategies at Trust for Public Land. He identifies as white with almost-black hair. He's in his early 40s and is wearing a button-down plaid shirt. And also, he's wearing his grandmother's class ring from 1931, which makes him feel happy and comfortable. Please welcome Cary Simmons.

Cary Simmons:
Hi, everybody. If you can go to my first slide, please. So I'm Cary. I work at Trust for Public Land. We're a national nonprofit that creates parks and protects open space. And for TPL, I lead our work that looks at, investigates, understands parks and public spaces that deliver social impacts, like trusts, social capital, and belonging.

And it might be, but hopefully isn't surprising to have a park and rec person at a conference like this, but we know that parks aren't just physical places. They have this hidden superpower for human connection because they're neutral. There's no admission fee. And whether it's just something simple like smiling at a neighbor across the park, or something more formal, like signing up for a weekly Zumba class, designing a community mural together with your neighbors, the connections that are co-created within a park or a public space can really add up.

And TPL is working with dozens of cities and communities across the country to activate their park systems so that they bring diverse community leaders, individual residents, together through technical assistance, through funding community groups. And our projects often result in community members working with their local governments and anchor institutions for the first times. And with time and support, when communities are working together across government, across institutions, those groups are stronger because they're working together. If you can go to the next slide.

One of the places that we're working is in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I met Sherry, who's here pictured with her daughter. Along with two dozen other folks, Sherry was participating in a program called Welcome to Raleigh Parks, which is a free initiative offered by TPL in the city that helps introduce the park system to new arrivals, new Americans, as well as US-born people who are receiving financial assistance from the park system.

Sherry signed up with her kids to keep them busy over the summer break, but she also shared that this program in the end helped her navigate life in Raleigh as a single mother. And that that part really started at an unlikely place, which was a FIFA Women's World Cup soccer watch party that was one of the nine events that we hosted with the city. Sherry's daughter, pictured next to her, says that that was the day she fell in love with soccer.

Sherry herself made a new friend at that event, a woman named Ashley, who she says she doesn't think she ever would've met if it hadn't been for the program. So Ashley and Sherry at this point have grown close because they're both single moms, they live in the same neighborhood. And almost a year after the program ended, they're carpooling and supporting each other with childcare.

And this might sound like an anecdote, but this is a really good example of what social capital looks like in our park system. And when we look at park systems across the country, it's one of the outcomes that we really see developing out of the social interactions that happen in parks. And the reason that that kind of social capital is important is that it's strongly linked with so many community benefits like lower mortality, reduced depression, loneliness and isolation. And it also makes community members who are a part of a social capital network more resilient to disasters. Things like flooding or heat waves.

And Sherry and Ashley, their stories aren't unique. Across all the participants in this program in Raleigh, two thirds reported that they had gotten in the habit of interacting with people who were different from them, who came from a different neighborhood, who had a different identity. And only about a quarter of participants reported that before the program, so it's a big shift in a single summer. The next slide.

In Baton Rouge, we're supporting a different kind of project where we're working with the Parish Park system to build a first-ever compensated community member advisory council for everyday people in Baton Rouge to give advice to their park administrators about budgeting, park planning. Stuff that may sound pretty boring, but if you talk to participants, you might be surprised at what's emerged from this program.

We caught up with these two folks last week, Lavar and Stanley, and they both shared that when they met for the first time, they were very nervous. Stan told us that he looked around at the room at this first meeting and thought, "I really do not think this is going to work." Because the group had been built to ensure demographic representation of the East Baton Rouge Parish, it meant a lot of new faces, it meant people from intentionally different neighborhoods, from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, different ages, different incomes.

Lavar is a young, Black nonprofit director who grew up in Baton Rouge. He shared that if it hadn't been for the council, he definitely would never have come across Stan, who's a white retired, golfer, also from Baton Rouge. Even though they're both born and raised there, they got in this habit of working together through the advisory council, and that they, in the end, reported that even though they come from really different places, they have a lot in common. Today, they're friends, they have each other's phone numbers, and Lavar actually just invited Stan to join the board for his nonprofit. Next slide.

Like Raleigh and Baton Rouge, park leaders across the country can actually intentionally seed this kind of community connection, whether it's bringing in organizers to activate a park, hosting a cultural festival that lifts up an identity, a heritage, or a culture.

When we invest and activate our parks in this way, we're investing in social fabric that keeps communities strong, and research that Trust of Public Land is publishing next month looks across all of the 100 largest cities in the country, and we found that the cities with the best top 25 park systems actually have 28% more cross-class social connections than cities in the low-75 park systems, and 67% more community volunteers.

So we're actually demonstrating this linkage that backs up what we're seeing with Lavar and Stanley, Sherry and Ashley, that these aren't isolated events. That they're glimmers of what's possible when we invest in the park system for its capacity to build connection.

And to close, when we think about the future of this work and what it's going to take for us all to move past challenges that are big, like polarization and division and othering, our parks really do share a blueprint for what this looks like across an entire sector. And with the right tools, with the right investment and engagement and activation, with direct support for community experts like the folks you heard about today, we know our public spaces can help stitch civic life back together in this country. And it actually can be as simple as starting with a smile in the park. Thank you.

Ashley Gallegos:
Thank you, Cary. And our last storyteller, last but not least, is David Hsu. David's pronouns are he and him, and he's the director of the Building Cultures of Belonging Program at Omidyar Network. He's a Chinese American wearing a blue button-down shirt and rocking salt-and-pepper hair. Please welcome David.

David Hsu:
Hello. All right. Look, if we are going to talk about expressions of belonging, we've got to talk about disco. Next slide. So sad story, that's supposed to be a GIF. Imagine. Sparkles. Sparkles everywhere.

All right. We're going to talk about disco night at my favorite bar in LA. Do we have any disco fans in the house? Woo-hoo! Any Angelinos? Yes! Oh, yes! All right. So everyone knows what to do on a disco floor. Everyone sweats. Everyone is welcome. Everyone. I mean, everyone belongs. A disco ball, Nile Rodgers said, is a reflection of you and everyone around you. So we're going to leave the disco ball there for a moment.

And today, my part of the story is just how do we resource expressions of belonging? I'm here to talk about money. Money is one part of a vibrant ecosystem where multiple expressions of belonging can take root. And my main message today is this isn't really about investing in a single solution, a targeted intervention, formula, product, or platform. Resourcing belonging is about cultivating a pattern, contributing to a pattern. You don't have to have a portfolio called Building Cultures of Belonging to resource belonging. But if you're doing grant-making or investing in any area, any community, any sector, you belong to the most beautiful party on Earth.

So I do, next slide, lead this program called Building Cultures of Belonging at Omidyar Network. We're a social change venture founded by Pam and Pierre Omidyar committed to building more inclusive and equitable societies through three program areas on responsible technology, re-imagining capitalism, and belonging.

And the reason we have a belonging program is because in that story where we bend the moral arc toward justice, we know people are the protagonists. Technology isn't the protagonist. Technology isn't bending the moral arc in the direction we want. Markets certainly aren't the protagonists. Markets are not bending the moral arc in the direction we want, but it so often feels that we have no choice but to be tossed around by markets and technology, and that's not by accident, right? Isolated from each other, we forget who we are and what we owe one another.

So we structure our work of building cultures of belonging as a cycle. The more we build belonging for all, the softer the soil for repair to take root. Repair for the ruptures of colonial domination, slavery, and their modern legacies, which affect all of us and not equally. And as repair takes root, more and more of us belong. We know in our bones that that is quite the journey.

So on my team, we say that it takes three types of investment to resource belonging. Please come find me if you want to dig into this because there's not enough time. Belonging requires investment and imagination because there isn't a map for where we're going. Belonging requires investment in innovation because the old playbook isn't working. And it also requires investment in infrastructure because we need all of our individual efforts to ladder up.

But I want to pause on the soul of what we do because you're probably saying, "That all sounds nice. Imagination, innovation, infrastructure. Three Is!" So we're going to just do a little bit of an icebreaker. I know. We love icebreakers. So the icebreaker is where's home for you? Where do you call home? It's one of the most basic questions that we want to know of each other, and it's one also where I think sometimes we chronically lie.

So I can ask you, where's home for you? Let out a big exhale. Some of you will want to close your eyes. You don't have to. Home might be somewhere. Home is a place I can point to on a map that is a familiar place that holds my roots, where my people are, where I have stories, tender stories, awkward stories, accumulated over time. Home might be somewhere.

Home might be anywhere. Don't ask me to put a finger on a map. Home is wherever I can find hot coffee, plug my phone in, and watch old reruns of the Twilight Zone. Home is wherever there's an AA meeting, a prayer meeting, a Barry's Bootcamp meeting. Home could be anywhere.

Home might be virtual. When I'm gaming, playing and chatting with people around the world free to be exactly who I want to be, to wear someone else's skin, to change skins. Free to fight the zombies all night long. Home might be virtual.

Home might be nowhere. I've heard of this idea of home, but I can't say I know how it feels. All I know is that home is a place I was left, or a place I left, or a place I was forced to leave. It's a place that can slip between my fingers or burn them. Home might be nowhere yet.

So home is all of that. Home's not a monolith, and that's the soul of why the work to build belonging in the 21st century can't be reduced to a culturally dominant expression of belonging, and we can't resource belonging as if there were just one dominant form. So here are just a few examples of what this could look like. So next slide.

Imagine hundreds of cities and counties sharing the journey to create a welcoming place. Shout out, Welcoming America. Next slide. Imagine students serving on school boards everywhere. Shout out, National Student Board Member Association. Next slide. Imagine all high schoolers going on domestic exchanges within the United States as a sacred rite of passage. Shout out, American Exchange Project. Next slide.

Imagine communities around the world reaving old and new rituals of ecological belonging to the earth, to each other, and our own selves. Shout out, The Wellbeing Project. Imagine thousands of musicians paired across cultures, traveling from hamlet to hamlet, helping communities discover new solidarity. Shout out, Popular Music Project and Crossfade LABs. Almost done. Imagine a culture of repair, next slide, becoming a normal part. Let's see. Are we on the right? The next slide.

Imagine a culture of repair becoming a normal part of American life in which all of us take part in healing multi-generational wounds. Shout out, Liberation Ventures. And next slide. Imagine a historic renaissance, a groundswell of local connection and community co-creation in small towns, public lands, and rural places. Shout out, Trust for Civic Life. Each is an expression of what it looks like to journey home in one's own skin, in one's relations, in a project bigger than any one of us in some place on this lonely planet. Next slide.

And so it all comes back to this. Final slide. A disco ball, Nile Rodgers said, is a reflection of you and everyone around you. There are as many expressions of belonging as there are mirrors on a disco ball. Each mirror is beautiful, but the mirrors together begins to feel like home. So as I said, belonging is a disco night at my favorite bar in LA. See you there.

Ashley Gallegos:
Wonderful. Thank you, David. Thank you, everyone. We're going to transition to the panel format now. That was really beautiful. I had a hunch that what you would share would be striking, not just to the mind but to the heart and also to the body, and I hope it translated for each of you.

I wanted to just start with a opportunity. Since you all are belonging, building in various places and spaces and fields, and you heard each other's stories and reflections of your work in advancing belonging, is there anything you might want to take a moment to ask one another before we jump in?

Liz Baxter:
Besides where's the address of the place in LA?

Ashley Gallegos:
Well, yes. I mean, we can have that address for sure. Anything else? Okay. Let's dig in. So as I shared at the top, belonging is something that is both old and new, ancient and the future. It's well-known, and it continues to develop.

In your work for advancing belonging, what is at the core for belonging for you? And I'll just invite the movement. If you are moved to answer, please be the first to jump in.

Liz Baxter:
I'll jump first. I think there was something that was said yesterday about practice making us different, and belonging means always knowing we haven't gone far enough. That every time we think we have created a space of belonging, we might have blind spots to another community, another perspective, and being open to the notion that we can always open the door more and wider in order to create that community.

And I have a couple of folks that are just top of mind right now, of young people who are on the brink of homelessness. We've got asylum-seeking families who've been put on a bus at that border wall, bus to Boston, make their way across Canada, end up crossing the border back into our region. Just all of the different ways that we think we're doing good things, it's like going to sleep every night knowing there's something I'm going to learn tomorrow to try and open our doors more.

Ashley Gallegos:
Beautiful. Thank you, Liz.

Judith Mowry:
I think for me, the core of belonging is safety and freedom. I think when we feel safe to be who we are, and it gives us a freedom to create an amazing amount, there is so much possibility around us. And when we are free of our fear, of our insecurity, of those things, I think that then our imagination can be lit up, and we can creatively co-create a beautiful world together.

Ashley Gallegos:
Thank you.

Cary Simmons:
Do you want to keep-

Ashley Gallegos:
Thank you.

Cary Simmons:
... just going down the line?

Ashley Gallegos:
You're welcome to. Yes.

Cary Simmons:
I think when I think about the core of belonging for me, so much of it crosses my personal life and my professional life. And I think there's an element of neutrality, of finding neutral, non-controversial stuff, and attaching belonging to that when you can.

And I think about going home to rural Arkansas where I grew up and always sort of mentally preparing to be at a holiday dinner table, and the existential dread of am I going to need to bring up this thing that I know my family's going to disagree with, or my loved ones or friends that I grew up with? It's going to be hard, but it's important for me to show up and be there.

And when I think about how that works best, it's never, "Hi, loved ones. I'm planning to bring up these topics about politics and justice and how we can all treat each other more equitably," because I mean, I have tried that before, but it doesn't really work, it turns out. And I think the times that I've had the most fruitful and generative conversations with my loved ones are when I go fishing with my brother or when I bring home 100 tulip bulbs and I will plant bulbs with my mom.

And those things where we're doing something we both care about and we can attach our identities to are the moments where these little glimmers of mutual understanding and empathy have happened for me. And I think in the park sector, the sort of thinking of something like planting a tree as being a radical activity for belonging is something I really believe in.

Ashley Gallegos:
Thank you. Okay. All right. So we're going to move on to the next question. Thank you, all. Thank you all for that. And I just want to build off of, I mean, maybe what you just shared, Cary, because it's top of mind.

But often, when we at the institute are talking about bridging, we say the best point to start the conversation is not directly at the crux of a controversial issue. That sometimes, it takes building relationship, building connection outside of that immediate conflict point first to have a foundation to build from so that you can work towards connecting across difference for more difficult, more, I don't know, I would say varied opinions, varied perspectives on tough topics. Thank you.

Okay. So our second question is we refer to belonging as a movement, and I'm often talking about belonging as a at-the-edge type of practice. It is something I think that you also shared, David, that needs to be built, that we're working towards it every day. And some of what we need to build has yet to be built.

So this is a question for each of you. What is something that you're finding in your practice at present that feels really new or perhaps different from how you previously moved forward change work?

David Hsu:
So one of the questions that I've been asking a lot myself that I don't have a quite solid answer to, and I'm really interested in what you all think, is what actually do we think will cut through or break through in a moment like this? And I'm a social scientist by training. I used to turn to public policy, I used to bring a white paper to a knife fight as they say. Data and all that.

And now, the things that I feel in my bones break through are artists, spiritual messengers, the good prophets amongst us in every community, and so the people who can see and really speak to the deepest parts of who we are. So it's not a new thing, but it's sort of new in me, I guess.

Ashley Gallegos:
Thank you.

Judith Mowry:
I guess I would have to say that something feels new to me is being in the work from this vantage point as someone who, as my friend says, is in the fourth quarter of the game.

There's something about reflecting on having been around. I've done work around racial justice for 35 years of my life, and my parents were involved of it, so sort of all my life. And I think there's a reflection and a understanding of a thread sort of that has given me a new perspective on the work that I'm doing.

Ashley Gallegos:
Yes. Yes. Very good.

Liz Baxter:
The piece I would add is something about what's happening with us internally as an organization. So we're on our fourth year of not having a physical office, so our team is remote, and there's so many wonderful things that have happened in doing that.

But one of the things that belonging and a focus on equity forced us to do was to be intentional about how we were adding people to our team. And so prioritizing people who brought a second language to our team, prioritizing people with lived experience on our team.

And we think that those, or I shouldn't say we think because we don't, but it's easy for organizations to go, "Oh. Now, I've checked the box. Look, my numbers and my spread of demographics are really different." But it has forced us as an organization to change our internal practices for how do you work with a workforce with lived experience?

And in order for them to feel like they're now a part of an organization where their lived experience is welcomed, treasured, honored, we had to change our practices. We had to change our EAP program, we had to change how we do supervision. Because we ask people to bring their whole selves to their workplace, and most workplaces are not actually prepared to see Liz's whole self.

And so how we actually build a place while we're asking people to bring that, and we build a place that's a good receptor site for that, so that even at work people feel like they belong, it's been a fascinating journey for us because we don't feel like we have very good models to call upon, so we do a lot of experimenting ourselves.

Cary Simmons:
Just to build off of what you were sharing a little bit around sort of infrastructure and system-building. I think in the park sector, something that is happening now and feels new and is sort of at the edge is all about measurement.

And in our sector, people really define their success historically based on how many acres of land were added to a system, or how many trees were planted, or how many basketball courts per capita. Those are the normal ways that people say a park system's working or it's not working, it's meeting the needs of the community or it's not. And at the end of every one of those annual reports, there's a story from a community member with a quote about maybe similar stories to what I shared, and that's the sort of anecdotal social impact.

And today, we're figuring out that there are ways to actually build in measurement, learning, and understanding of what's the percent increase of belonging in this park system? How many social connections were built as part of the summer program? And once you can count that kind of civic-social infrastructure that's existing within the sector, it's a lot easier to advocate for it and to hold people accountable.

Judith Mowry:
Can I double-dip? Sorry.

Ashley Gallegos:
Go for it. Yeah.

Judith Mowry:
Because I realized the other thing that feels really new to me is our journey out of the binary on so many levels. Our ideas about the binary of who we are as human beings. Whether we're talking about neurobiology or gender identity, that is a whole new world that is just ripe with possibility, and I just feel like I'm in wonder and curiosity and awe all the time around that. Thank you.

Ashley Gallegos:
Yes, and thank you for double-dipping in this circumstance. They're all great additions, but just the responses to, I think, starting with what you shared, Liz, about belonging inviting us to bring our full selves into, in this example or in your example, a place of work. And then I think you said that the receptor site, that place, that entity also has to be ready, flexible, pliable enough and safe, if you will. Trusting to allow people to bring more of their full selves into that is definitely at the edge work of belonging.

And particularly OBI's conception of belonging, it's multi-part, but it's relational and it's structural. If the structure is not supporting a solid place for the relationships to be held, well, it just sounds like kind of like this space. A constant construction site, if you will, of working towards belonging, and yes.

And I will also say, Cary, the point about measurement. So something that's exciting, when Cary even mentioned this on the call, I couldn't help but smile so big. There's a group that's called Project Over Zero, and they have put forth a survey, an instrument tool, it's called the Belonging Barometer, and it is a way of looking at measuring for belonging and/or seeing where othering is living, whether geographically or spatially and/or how it's taking shape. And I just want to flag that that is one of many survey instruments that are really alive and ripe right now. I think that in itself could have probably three breakouts associated to it.

And then just closing with that point that you brought forth, Judith, about the binary, reminds me also so much of belonging. One of my favorite components of it is its fluidity, its flexibility. And in so many ways, the way structures are built have this rigidity of it's either this or that, and it's very binary, but that fluidity invites structures to start to be flexible.

We're in California. It feels like it's almost like earthquake-proofing the building, making it have flexibility for when movements come, because they're sure to come. Not here. Not today. No. Okay. So thank you for just letting me reflect on what I heard from you and tease out these wonderful gems, and thank you for offering those gems.

So this question is directed to you, Liz and Judith. One thing that I have valued hearing from you in our prep calls is that belonging is ever-evolving, and because the work of belonging invites us to be more inclusive. As you might've heard John reference on stage today or in the book is that it's really our work right now is identifying also how we even as belonging-builders, other people along our mission, or our systems do the work of othering.

And so what I'm wondering is how has your work towards belonging expanded? Where have you as a belonging-builder worked to extend who belongs within your program for belonging or its structure?

Judith Mowry:
Well, this is for me where a lot of the internal work comes in, because I have to deal with my own reaction to people that I think are othering other people in harmful ways, and sometimes it's me, sometimes it's other people. And I struggled with that with some of the folks.

And I work in a bureaucracy, and I work in a bureaucracy that is married to the idea of being a bureaucracy. It's like, "This is how it works." And so seeing the belonging, to extend it to the folks who I don't think have a clue, and that's a judgment, I get it, but that they also can come on the journey.

I think, Liz, what you've said about everyone has a day one, I'm just taking that with me forever, because for me, that's where I think maybe it keeps expanding is remembering everyone I meet. They could be on day one, they could be 20 years ahead of me, and just recognizing it as a journey and not also putting rigidity into where people are in that moment. We all only exist in that moment, in that way together, with that atomic structure, one moment, right? So it's always changing and evolving.

Liz Baxter:
Thank you. I want to share an example. I think as I said earlier, our organization started in 2014. There were 30 organizations that came together to found it. And periodically, we have just pots of money that come through our ACH. And two years ago, we decided to ask our partners if they wanted to actually come and be a part of making decisions about how those funds got used.

And they thought they were coming in to be advisors to us, and they were really surprised when we said, "Nope. If you tell us this thing should be funded, Liz is going to write a contract and we're moving money out the door." And so last year, that review committee probably distributed close to $4 million to other community organizations. And it was such a great learning experience for us as well as for them that they recommended we do it again. So we have kind of a version two of that review committee, and this year, they have $3.5 million.

And the notion that they get to own decisions that are made by the ACH, including how funds are distributed, puts them in a position. They're going, "Holy crap, who knew that reviewing proposals was that much work?" But that their instincts, their desire, we often describe it as where do we spend the next dollar? And to have our community of organizations having that much of an influence and decision-making power over where we spend the next dollar has been a wild experience and experiment in belonging.

And so it isn't like Liz in a back room with a green hoodie thing on says, "Here's where we're going to do this." They're doing that. I'm just doing the paperwork at the other end of that decision. And it has been an amazing experience. I hope we get to do it every year.

Ashley Gallegos:
That's beautiful. Yes. Clap it up, snap it up. All those things. That's good. I love what I'm hearing, and that is decision-making being shared, which is a powerful part of co-governance and reshaping structures and how they work towards belonging.

Yes. Last question for you, David and Cary. What is a practice that you use that has led you to success when advancing belonging?

David Hsu:
I think my favorite practice is actually a very small practice, so I encourage you to try it in all kinds of settings. All it is, is at the top of any kind of gathering, you ask people to introduce themselves in the chat or by voice with any three identities that feel top of mind for them at that time.

In that tiny exercise, you will see how it disrupts binaries. You will see how it helps people to feel seen, to bring their full selves, how it manifests this really sort of new cutting-edge idea and culture of social identity, which is not only that we're many things and we each hold multitudes, but whatever identities at the fore changes depending on the room.

And it's a very important concept for building belonging in a diverse society. That small practice prepares rooms for co-governance, because co-governance works when we see a relatedness.

Cary Simmons:
I think for me, the practice that I have to remind myself to do the most is just to breathe and be patient and to remain hopeful when this work can be so messy and it takes so long to get to where we're seeing relationships that are durable and are overcoming some big obstacles. We had a community member and a park project that I was leading in central Washington State that called weekly to complain about a new farm worker-led Latino music event that was happening in the park by his house.

And I was in charge of responding to the calls, and I remember just being angry when I would hear this feedback when it was my job to respond to it, to try to diffuse the situation. And over years, community members who were producing these events also started building a relationship, also fielded some of these calls.

And over maybe four or six years, this individual who we met through calling the sort of park complaint hotline started showing up at these events and would clean up the trash after the events without being asked. And then two more years, there was a nonprofit that was formed by farm worker leaders in this community called Parque Padrinos, and now that community member who's a retired white guy is the only non-Latino board member of that organization.

And I think back to that story so often because you're at a decision point when you get a call like that. And I had so many times where I haven't made the right decision, and I've thought, "Screw this person. I'm not going to talk to you if you're going to use that language or do this thing or do that thing." And I hold onto that story so much that it's possible. It takes time. It's messy. We can all get there.

Ashley Gallegos:
Mm-hmm. Thank you, both. I think you've illustrated, at least for me, a couple of the key components. I'm sure you all have heard that the way OBI is defining belonging is inclusive. Well, inclusion, connection, recognition, and agency. And through each of your answers, I heard definitely inclusion, and a focus on connection, and a recognition of seeing one another.

And another thing that just comes to my mind is belonging is not something that is only received, it is also extended. It is an offering. It is something you give, and it takes a little bit a willingness to extend that. And so that's what I heard too from you, Cary, is as belonging builders, there's this need to extend to offer. So thank you for that.

So as promised, we're going to turn to you, our lovely audience members, for your questions. And I'm looking for Charlotte. Oh, I see. I see you're in the back. Oh, several questions. Okay. We will form a line, but Charlotte will start where she chooses first.

Charlotte:
I'm curious what advice would you give to board members of foundations about the difference resourcing belonging makes?

Ashley Gallegos:
Thank you for the question. It feels directed to you, David.

David Hsu:
It is what a robust investment strategy looks like. Without belonging, investments that can be a quick win get wiped away, because belonging is grounded in science. There are causes and effects, there's rules of the game. Pushback always comes.

Belonging folks I think are increasingly getting good at understanding what pushback to anticipate, and I hope we're getting better through this gathering. But building belonging is an investment-protecting strategy. It is a strategy that takes a hard look at changing demographics and changing conditions, and it is something that I feel is as basic as any kind of due diligence. It's like, "Is your investment strategy, is your grant-making strategy, your change strategy going to just fall apart and fizzle?"

Because the way that you're thinking is about election cycles, economics, these kinds of things that just flip like that, and you can lose. I often hear people on foundation boards being like, "We spent half a billion dollars on this one thing, but we didn't think about how this group would relate to this other group," so.

Ashley Gallegos:
Thank you. And I don't want to limit to David, is there anyone else who would offer any other thoughts?

Liz Baxter:
Yeah. Just to I guess double down, it's about do you actually want to build in the capacity of your community? Do you want the community to get stronger? Do you want the community to actually be able to take on more and more?

And belonging, for me, it just kind of bleeds through the strategies. But thinking about this as capacity-building and what the strengths are as a community gets stronger, it will impact everyone. Not just that person or organization that you're funding, but building capacity makes your entire community just have greater wealth.

And I don't mean wealth in terms of dollars, but wealth in terms of knowledge and connection, which is so much of what we've been hearing yesterday and today. And there's nothing more valuable than building your community to be stronger.

Jason:
This is a question for each of you. Maybe Liz, you probably already know your response, but if you want to respond too, you can. But your bodies of work, how are you all in your particular areas of focus, especially in the parks and government, advancing belonging for our unhoused community members who utilize the parks and for the government sectors that have to interact with the unhoused community members?

And love your analogy about the disco ball, but how is that advancing? How are you advancing or your body of work or your community advancing that model or that framework or that belief to our unhoused members? In particular, young people as well?

Cary Simmons:
I can share a couple things that Trust Republic Land has been doing. We have a program called Park listeners that was started in our Honolulu office that now has been replicated in a few different communities that trains community members with trauma-informed care best practices. Also equips them with connections to social service providers that typically aren't offering programs in parks and specifically goes out to public spaces where people are making their home. And both can organize and sort of activate sort of systems or mechanisms for actual care or service delivery, so bringing a bathroom to a park if it doesn't have one, hosting resource fairs.

And in some cases, for a couple of our projects, actually getting feedback on how is this park designed? Is it meeting your needs as someone who's living in the park? And I think that oftentimes, park and rec practitioners are not trained to have those conversations.

And seeking out organizations and partners who are, or developing programs like Park Listeners that can actually serve as an intermediary is actually showing a lot of promise and something that we're trying to advocate more park systems adopt, because it can really stall when the conversation starts with, "Park system, what is your position on housing and unhoused people?" And you put someone on the spot to give a position before they've had the opportunity to actually build a relationship with people who are living in their parks.

Ashley Gallegos:
That's wonderful. Thank you. Anyone else want to add anything more for that question?

Liz Baxter:
I feel like I should give you all time, because I know Jason, he's a love warrior, and he's like an amazing human being doing great things. I was going to ask, can I ask a follow-up on Jason's question?

Parks also seem like a place where we want people who are nice and compliant and will take good care of parks. And so how do you envision parks becoming places where folks who are not fully clean with the picnic basket and the table and the blanket, but might be at risk, who just looking for a safe space to be, how can the parks be that kind of a space? And Jason, I apologize if I took your question in a totally different direction.

Judith Mowry:
I like to envision parks and public spaces having helpers available in them. I have a particular love for Mr. Rogers, and when we look for the helpers, and so making sure the helpers are there. We have park rangers in our park system, and many of them are exactly those people.

So if you are someone, if your behavior or your stuff is problematic for other people, having someone who lovingly and safely helps you sort of figure out what you need to do to be enjoying the park as others are, sometimes that means asking other people to stretch their patience a little bit. But I think we need helpers everywhere.

Ashley Gallegos:
That's wonderful. Anything lingering on that, that feels untended to?

David Hsu:
I'll just say really quickly that the leverage point that we invest the most in that affects who gets housing, who belongs, and how those two questions connect, is primarily through investments in co-governance happening across United States.

So this is some people will talk about it as newer forms of civic infrastructure, older forms of civic infrastructure, but it's how do we get communities, advocacy groups, people most affected, and often government and resourcing ecosystems to be in the same room and to co-create solutions? So we invest in both specific experiments of co-governance across the country as well as the Trust for Civic Life that is doing so particularly in under-resourced rural places.

Ashley Gallegos:
Thank you. And I want to acknowledge that we just have two minutes remaining in this breakout, so I do not think it's time or that we have time for another question, but I do. I will say again, please remember these shining faces. They will be amongst the sea of wonderful participants for the next couple of days, so please stop and ask them any question you'd like to go a little bit deeper with them on.

And to close out this panel, looking for a one-word answer you might leave us with to this question. Oh. We are at a very important time for belonging-building. What do you see as a key to its future success? And maybe we'll start down with Liz and make our way towards me.

Liz Baxter:
I'm really bad at the one-word questions, so I'm going to just not. I'm going to say we can't get to a world of belonging until we believe that everyone is worthy of love.

Ashley Gallegos:
[inaudible 01:16:57].

Judith Mowry:
Us.

Ashley Gallegos:
Thank you, Judith. Yes?

Cary Simmons:
Want to guess at what my word is? Parks.

David Hsu:
I'm going to say artists.

Ashley Gallegos:
Beautiful. So thank you, panelists. Thank you, audience. We hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
And that concludes this episode of our special series of Who Belongs, a podcast from the Othering & Belonging Institute. For more episodes from this series featuring discussions from our Othering & Belonging conference in April, visit our website at belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs. Thank you for listening.