Podcast: Leaning into Paradox: How We Can Block, Bridge & Build Our Democratic Future Together

Transcript

Speaker 1:
Hello, and welcome to this special episode of Who Belongs, a podcast from the Othering & Belonging 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, Leaning Into Paradox, how We Can Block, bridge and Build Our Democratic Future Together. It includes two speakers from the Horizons Project to engage the audience on these three seemingly paradoxical approaches, how to come together to block the threats to our democratic values, the need to bridge across differences to foster broad-based movements, and to build together the future we want to see. Those speakers are Julia Roig, who is the founder and Chief Network Weaver at the Horizons Project, and Jarvis Williams, who is the organization's director for race and democracy. This session was curated by Miriam Juan Torres-Gonzales, who is the head of research at OBI's Democracy and Belonging Forum. You can find more episodes from this podcast series on our website at belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs.

Jarvis Williams:
My name is Jarvis Williams and I'm with the Horizons Project, and this is our colleague, Julia Roig, and we are excited that you are with us this morning. Give yourself a hand. So listen, we're just going to dive on in. We've played, now let's think and have some fun together, all right?

Julia Roig:
Yes. So wow, we're so excited that so many of you decided to come to this session and be with us. I'm Julia, I'm the Chief Network Weaver of the Horizons Project. If you're not familiar with our organization, we're an organizing platform where we work on pro-democracy organizing to try and incorporate social justice, peace building, bridge building, and democratic institution building. And so this concept of paradox is something we live with every single day and try and kind of build into our practice, our organizing practices. And so I am going to talk at you with Jarvis for a little bit, for about 15 minutes because we want to ground a couple of concepts. What are we talking about? This might sound a little jargony, block bridge build. How many people raise your hand? Have you ever heard of this framework? Oh, see, it's kind of permeating out there into the ether, isn't it? This way of thinking about making change with some different entry points to that change.

So I am going to just share a couple of concepts and then we're going to start talking to each other. And most of the time is going to be talking to each other, so don't worry, we're not going to talk at you too much. But what are we talking about? You guys came to a session on paradoxes, and seemingly this looks like three divergent paths going in very different directions. And the reason that I love this visual as much is, I mean, it is the same horizon. The sun is over, just over our... So when we think about block bridge build, we do think about different approaches to change that are intention with each other and complimentary with each other.

And so the purpose of today's session is actually to kind of explore a little bit of the edges of these three divergent ways of thinking about how change works. And all of you, most of you, some of you are going to say, "No, no, I do all three of these." Good organizers do all three of these for sure, but we do make strategic choices when we do what, who we do it with, when we get a little bit maybe uncomfortable with those people over there doing a different thing because not what I would've done in this moment. And so we do want to acknowledge that all of us who are here at an Othering & Belonging conference are seeing the world and our work through a particular lens, a particular lived experience. Some of these frameworks are going to land on us in very different ways. And so we actually want to kind of step into the hard conversations around the edges of where block bridge build feels comfortable or doesn't.

Jarvis Williams:
This is my first time coming to a conference at the Othering & Belonging Institute. I served as a pastor for 10 years in Mississippi, and here is the paradox that I bring to this space. I was a part of an institution that used language about inclusion, but practiced exclusion. So I'm very sensitive of performing belonging and practicing othering. And this country, the paradox that it holds is that while it was performing freedom, it practiced genocide and slavery. And we've been struggling in that paradox ever since. So I'm not, and at the Horizons, we don't shy away from those hard truths, realities. We try to lean into them and ask ourselves in light of those tensions, what choices do we make? How do we put our energy to the task at hand? And so that's how I'm showing up. I'm always trying to figure out the tension between the performance and the substantive. I hope before we leave, you'll have chance in your groups to struggle with when you're doing these strategies because part of the work is not being distracted by people not doing the work. A paradox, right?

Speaker 4:
[inaudible 00:06:30].

Julia Roig:
Brother Jarvis is a wise old soul.

Jarvis Williams:
Come on brother, don't put me out there like that.

Julia Roig:
All right, so let's talk a little bit more. Now, I am going to kind of preface some of this content with the fact that a lot of you are experts. You teach this stuff, you live this stuff, you're trainers, we're all out there in the communities. You might quibble a little bit with my definitions and the semantics. So be on this journey with me today to just my piece of how I'm going to present this content and then if you want to quibble a little bit and say, "Well, I would define a little bit or I'd add emphasis here," you're going to have lots of chance to do that in your small groups. But my offering to you right now is some definitions, or at least some exploration of the edges.

So block, what do we mean by block? We at Horizons are pretty seized with the rise of authoritarianism in this country and around the world, fully recognizing that this is not a new phenomena and that it has been with our country since our founding. And yet there are strategies of... oh, it loves to go through. Well, I didn't even touch it that time. I know it's like, "Let's get to the good stuff too."

There is a strategy, there is an authoritarian playbook, which is to divide us, to distract us, to absolutely other in order for an in-group to feel that their needs are being met. And so we have been talking about othering right now, and yet there is a political project to other and divide us. And there are movements, there is people power around the world who are standing up to block the political project of a resurgence, of a way of othering essentially to maintain political power.

And so you see, what are the tactics then of a block framework is we are very clear about what we're against, what we're up against, and then people power come together. What are the strategies? We raise the heat. We're disrupting complacency, we're on the streets, but we're also organizing to disrupt the complacency of saying, "No, no, we need to stand up," as what we are saying is we want to block this political project. We want to block a system of white supremacy that is embedded in our current authoritarian system. And quite honestly... I don't know, help me, Miriam.

Miriam:
[inaudible 00:10:02].

Julia Roig:
I think it's trying to keep me going, yeah? But this is divisive when you're actually trying to raise the heat and you're trying to bring attention to an issue. And at the same time when you're in block formation, there's such solidarity, you're coming together with your people. It serves a purpose actually to be in a block formation. And we feel the power of the people that we're organizing with. So before I move on... You get to see all the visuals. Anything else to say about block?

Jarvis Williams:
I remember a story in the Civil Rights Movement where in Nashville, a mentor of mine was at-

Julia Roig:
Right up here.

Jarvis Williams:
Oh, I'm sorry. In Nashville, a mentor of mine was talking about how they were preparing to deal with the challenge of integration in this country. And what the young people in the schools did is that they decided to pick a time that they would then leave the school and go be in the middle of a march or protest. And you see the one in Birmingham, but the one in Nashville you don't see as much. And the idea was they were going to block the norm from happening. They were not stopping a particular act, but they were trying to disrupt the norm to say, "We're not going to allow this to happen." And so sometimes whether people are blocking on the streets, where they're trying to stop traffic, the idea is, don't keep going on with life like this norm is okay. And right now many of us are trying to figure out how to upset the norm, that's a blocking strategy.

Julia Roig:
And blocking strategies can be joyful, by the way. Civil resistance tactics, you've got drums that you can beat in the street. You can wear all white and sit in the plaza. This is not all angry to be in a civil resistance posture, but it's a block strategy. Okay, now let's talk bridge. We've been kind of talking a lot about bridging here, haven't we? At the Othering & Belonging Conference? So I'm not going to belabor this too much, but actually we talk about, well, where does bridging happen? Where is it most strategic? And of course there's so much bridging out in the community. There's fissures, there's divisions, there's red hats, there's blue hats, there's young people, there's old people where it costs racial lines and religious lines. And yet we also need bridging within our movement spaces.

And so we also really reflect on, well, where do the shortest bridges happen, for example, within feminist movements that are having a really hard time struggling with trans rights, that's a fissure that needs some bridging within a movement space and yet there's also a lot of the bridging work that we just do in our communities. And it's not to say that that bridging work in our communities is not needed. It's also to say in service of what? In service of what are we doing the bridging work. And we know that best practice of bridging is that people come together to dialogue, to build empathy, to understand each other, to then do something together. And so when we think about synergizing these three approaches to change, we want to make sure that it's not just talking, not that any of you do that, sometimes we do that and it has its place, but that it's also in service of an action that we're working towards.

This is just my point about the example of the feminist movement. We talk a lot about polarization. I said that more patronizingly than I meant, actually. Polarization is a framework and it's a phenomena and it's something that we're figuring out as societies are really breaking apart. And yet the framework that Horizons is really galvanized by is our fragmentation. And that we've got a lot of issue areas. It's like the whack-a-mole of all of the things that we're working on and in the face of the global kind of great turning that's happening right now and how we get and organize ourselves accordingly. When I say great turning, I just mean there's a lot of crises going on. [inaudible 00:14:56] is just one of them. Our challenge is how fragmented we are, and so that bridging can help to alleviate that fragmentation. Jarvis, anything to say about that before we move on to build?

Jarvis Williams:
Yeah, I think one of the challenges with bridging in my experience, so I was a part of a group of leaders in a community trying to bridge in Mississippi, making sure everyone had access to healthcare. At the time the state didn't recognize same gender lover. So the city I was a part of wanted to make sure that people who were living in that city could get benefits. And the church went into an uproar. So a few people of the church, myself included, and the Human Rights Campaign sat down and hashed out how we could step together to make sure plus one healthcare happened in that city.

But the fragmenting was a part of what we struggled with because sometimes to get something done, you don't have to agree about everything. And to hold enough space to get movement done without trying to convert them to all that you believe is wrong or right with the world. We lost half of the group of people we wanted because it fragmented on how much weight to give. And I don't want to trivialize it because all of you know, and we know, it's difficult work creating space for people to step together and it's slow and it's grinding, but that's the work. And sometimes we dismiss people too long because they want to talk or have too many conversations that we don't want to have because we're ready to work. And yet the work is to sit there and discipline yourself enough to keep talking.

Julia Roig:
Okay, so build. What do we mean by that? Build is obviously embedded in a block strategy and a bridging strategy. Like I just said that you can't just be against something, you have to be for something. You have to be building towards the future that you want. You need to be bridging to build the world that you want.

And a lot of the building might be within an institutional infrastructure. We need to advocate for new laws, we need to build the systemic change. We need to be working on tearing down something to build it back up. And there's a lot of futures work, imagination skills. How do we even break out of this current modality of what we're living through to see and then build towards a future? And this is beautiful work. It's absolutely beautiful work. And there's a time horizon involved in a build strategy sometimes and an urgency to a block strategy. And so that's some of the tensions that we say. We are always building, we are working, we're in dialogue with the government, we're making sure that we're building the long-term relationships.

And, we can go to the next one, we do have to move towards disruption to reinventing and re-imagining what a beautiful exercise we had this morning about painting our vision for the future. And we know we need more of that, people are losing hope. And so we are building this hopeful, joyful future together. And at the same time, there's a reality right now, right now that harms are happening. And so this is why we say, seemingly this is a paradox, isn't it? Anything else to say about-

Speaker 6:
[inaudible 00:19:24].

Julia Roig:
All right. All right, so what is my invitation to you as we go into this... We're going to stop talking at you. Is it of course these strategies probably live within each of you and/or the coalitions you're in, or not, actually. So without thinking too much, literally don't give it too much of thought right now. But if I was to say, how many of you would see yourself in block formation? Raise your hands. How many of you would see yourself in bridge formation? Imagine that we're at a bridging conference. How many of you would sort yourself as a build? How many of you raise your hand twice? That was not the exercise.

I'm actually going to ask you to pick one for this next exercise. I know people are like, "I don't want to pick one." Yes. We'll have a conversation in a second, yeah? Because it is helpful before we sort out maybe just some clarifying questions, I would definitely invite clarifying questions and this is going to be fast. We're going to not have a big debate about the terms, like I said. Yeah? I really want you guys to be talking to each other, but I'm getting, a couple of people are looking at me like, "..." Yes?

Speaker 7:
Is there a fragmentation group?

Julia Roig:
Is there a fragmentation group? I like it. Well, I would say go to the bridging part and say, "But I am interested in talking about fragmentation as a part of my bridging practice." Yes?

Speaker 8:
I feel like there's a very big difference for me between short-term and long-term.

Julia Roig:
Exactly. So guess what? You're going to have to discuss that. You're going to have to pick a place to go and then say, "What is the change that you're working towards and the goals that you have for yourself for the change that you want to see in the world?" And there are short-term and long-term implications for that, aren't there?

Speaker 9:
I think where I'm curious at is that both and part of the paradoxes and how they both are actually happening at the same time and it's not an either or. And so curious, if you see yourself in both a bridge and build, I actually think that they both are happening and being able to disrupt while you bridge as a part of build.

Julia Roig:
So guess what? We're going to get to talk about all of those things in small groups. You queued me up perfectly. Exactly, both and.

Speaker 10:
[inaudible 00:22:19].

Julia Roig:
The question was what are some of the tactics that builders, to use that, might use?

Speaker 10:
So how do you define builders?

Julia Roig:
Yeah, Jarvis thought that he defined himself as a builder this morning. So I'm going to let him answer. In paradox with all the others.

Jarvis Williams:
Right, right. I think for this conversation to build would be seen as you're employing your resources to create something in the world that you don't currently see. And it's a building thing because it's not there yet and it's leaning on you to bring something to bear. Bridge suggests that these things exist and I'm trying to bring them closer. There we go.

Julia Roig:
You guys are going to reflect on your own definitions too. It's not like we have all the answers. All right, one more clarifying question while we're going to-

Speaker 11:
I'm just curious about organizations that do a lot of teaching. Is that considered bridge because teaching something?

Julia Roig:
Well, you get to decide. Yeah. Like I said, I did say all of you will see yourselves in all three of these, but we actually just want to have a conversation with you around the edges of the strategic choices. That's timeframe, urgency, gradualism, breaking, that might be strategic breaking. We haven't really talked about that, breaking is always bad. I don't know, is it always bad? That's a question. And maybe the block group will talk about strategic breaking. That is a civil resistance tactic of strategic non-violent action. And we're not talking about that that much in this conference and how it relates to our bridging work and how it relates to our building work. All right, last comment.

Speaker 12:
And it's just a comment. I'm excited that just the block bridge and build has gave me a lens to go home and make all of the non-profits select one of these things so we can kind of craft out lanes and work together. Just those three words. We already know those things exist [inaudible 00:24:43].

Julia Roig:
And can we go back to the previous slide before... Because, thank you for bringing that up because not everybody's got to do everything. I was in a discussion last night with my friend Brian saying, "I've been thinking a lot about the jazz band metaphor, a lot. You're in coalition, organizations are doing this over here, other organizations are doing this, we're doing that, but we're in the jazz band and sometimes you go forward, sometimes you go back, but you're always listening to each other. What does that look like in practice?" When Jarvis was talking about how challenging it is to walk with people if you don't hear your issues, your harms, your priorities, which is where a lot of the bridging techniques come in, right?

Okay, we're done talking. This is going to be our invitation. We don't want to make this theoretical. Actually, let's ground this in real talk. And as we ground this in real talk, I want to remind ourselves of our commitment to being in space in this conference, that we're respectful of each other, we're taking care of each other's needs. If you're feeling like a lot of emotion around the case we're about to put forward, it is totally okay for you to opt out and be like, I don't feel like I'm having this conversation. But we want to step into the tensions. We build belonging by talking about the hardest things, I think, respectfully, and hearing each other's perspectives. So Jarvis is going to kind of set the scene and then we're going to have you split up into the three Bs.

Jarvis Williams:
So here's the case. I'm not sure how much you've been paying attention to the news while we've been out the conference, but there is something currently happening in the US on college campuses where there are people trying to strive for change they want to see. And they are employing all kinds of strategies to address the world that they are disturbed by. We see blocking happening, taking over a building, refusing to allow the norm to go on. You see bridging happening. There are campuses that bring people in rooms and let them learn about the issues and talk through the issues and put out ideas. And then you have the building space where there are people who are saying they are going to create a space where these communities can be in creative tension with each other about this issue for a certain amount of time.

Now, you've already will have decided where you feel yourself leaning, but what we want you to do is to consider how your strategy might be made manifest with that issue. The issue is students on campuses in the US university colleges attempting to ask, push, provoke, instigate change around the conflict in Gaza. We're not asking you to debate the conflict in Gaza, we're talking about how do you strategize to bring the change you want to see into the world in that context with that challenge. Are we on the same page?

Group:
[inaudible 00:28:36].

Julia Roig:
And honestly, if you had raised your hand for a generic, yeah, and then all of a sudden the case kind of switches a little bit, like, "Well, I don't know, what would be my first instinct strategically?" Because there is a lot of bridging that is needed not necessarily within the movement, but just us as fellow human beings right now.

Speaker 1:
At this point, during the breakout session, attendees followed the instructions to get into small groups and discuss the prompts presented to them before reporting back to the entire room for reasons related to audience consent we decided not to air this part of the session and instead are now cutting to the session's closing remarks from Jarvis.

Jarvis Williams:
So thank you for staying with us. We started out partying and then we're leaving back in the paradox. But I would want to leave you with this. We are a part of a story being told. Democracy is this story about people who are willing to live together without bloodshed. And I'm not suggesting that we romanticize the story, but I am saying we are a part of it and you don't get to come to the story as if it hadn't been going on before you got there. And the challenge we confront requires us to pay attention to the ebbs and flows that have happened before we showed up. And then ask ourselves in light of the story we are a part of, how can we nudge it in the direction that we want it to go?

And if and as we commit to that, I think to echo words that came out of a struggle in this country when lynching was the practice of the day, a Black writer, James Weldon Johnson penned words that said, "Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on until victory is won." I want to offer that to you as a part of the Horizons Project that we are trying to face, a rising sun, march on, until victory is won.

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.