Polarization

Typically in polarized issues we think of it as sort of either or.  It is a or b, black or white, good or bad.   We do not as often think of the polls as falling on a spectrum, and we definitely don’t think of a spectrum as curving the point where the far ends might meet up (An example of this being if you put American politics on a circle the far left anarchist and the far right libertarians begin to meet up.)

It is painfully apparent that the US is extremely polarized right now on almost every issue and politics have become so divisive again (I say again because it is actually not the first time – remember families divided by the civil war? or not speaking to each other in the 70’s over hot button issues?) that once again there are families that cannot sit down to a civil Thanksgiving and where people I know are disowning family members.   I hear much despair both about how these gulfs will be bridged in families but also about how our country will be governable again.

Ironically, at the same time my Meeting has also become very polarized – but over a very different issue.   A registered Sex Offender has come to our Meeting and there was been far-ranging response to his presence in Meeting as well as far ranging interpretations of his behavior while in Meeting.  The Meeting initially came up with a policy regarding sex offenders and then after an incident where it became very clear that vagueness in the policy resulted in widely varying interpretation of whether the policy was violated or not, the Meeting has set out to rewrite the policy.  Sadly, the Meeting has also become very polarized in the process.

One Friend has helpfully asked us to think of this polarization as not whether x did Y or whether Z has unfairly accused x of something, but rather as that all of us in Meeting fall at different places on a spectrum that at one end values welcoming people, anyone, especially those who maybe underdogs in our society into the Meeting, and the other end of the spectrum those valuing safety for all the members of our Meeting and holding up the Meeting Community as of supreme importance.   This same member has then invited us in a series of conversations to notice the things we actually believe in common – which winds up being that:

* we would all like to feel safe

*that we believe in the redemptability of our fellow human

*we all want to be welcoming to other humans

*the world holds no guarantees anywhere about safety

*we believe in taking sensible precautions to reduce risk when we can, etc.  

By finding these initial values we agree upon we are slowly inching our way forward.

Like most Friends in the Meeting I was so dismayed that we were having this conflict and also that it was having the destructive power that it was having in the Meeting. I wondered how this could possibly come out right?   But also being new to the Meeting it was very clear to me that the conflict like some sort of bull dozer was pushing up to the light of day all the dark places, all the dysfunctioning and broken places in the Meeting.   And it becomes increasingly clear that there is no way through this conflict without fixing all the broken places….which if we fail will leave us shattered and if we succeed will make us stronger and vastly better as a community.

Recently George Lakey came to town giving a workshop on his new book: How We Win.  One of the very encouraging things George shared was how in his research for his previous book Viking Economics he discovered that the Scandinavian countries, now amazing models for the world in so many arenas, were a “mess” before they transformed into democratic socialist countries.  He discovered that they were at their most polarized point right before that change in governments.  Out of the polarization the common people kicked the 1% out of rulership.  He then looked at our own US history and realized that out of the polarization and class divide of the Great Depression came all of the reforms of the New Deal and out of the polarization of the 60’s and 70’s came the civil rights movement, the Clean Water and Clean air act, etc.   In listening to a friend of his who did beautiful metal work he heard his friend talking about having to heat up the metal to make it pliable and George realized that this is what polarization does – it heats things up till they become changeable. George asks us to see the polarization of our time as an amazing set of possibilities about to unfold.

I have believed about the Meeting conflict that if we succeed that we may find some answers that our society has yet to find about how we allow people who have committed crimes against society to be welcomed back into society and integrated back in.   But this week I had the even more radical thought that the nations polarity on immigration goes on the same poll between those who want to be welcoming to all and those that want our country tot be a “safe place” that provides for those already here.  I realized that if the Meeting succeeds maybe we will find some answers on how the heat of conflict and the longing to be community allows for the transformation of our broken US society.   Maybe it will equip some of us with some ways to approach the yawning US political divide which I think begins with finding where we hold common values even when our rhetoric and preferred policies are worlds apart. 

It is also very helpful to remember that God exists at all points of our poll.  The Creator is not just hanging out on one side of that poll.  So if God is in all part of the poll, the Divine is able to hold the tension of those conflicting points of views and to keep seeing as loveable all members of the conflict.

NonViolence Applied

On May 8th I was arrested...on purpose, committing civil disobedience. At least 4 years ago I had, along eventually with 100,000 Americans signed the Pledge of Resistance, stating we could commit civil disobedience to send a forceful message to then President Obama to not approve the XL pipeline.  As we all know it was a very bumpy road with Obama, at times he looked on the verge of approving it and we would be all geared up, and then another delay would happen.  Eventually he did refuse to approve it, and we celebrated and the Pledge was laid down.   But of course Trump has tried to undo almost everything good Obama did, and to turn the hands of time back on things like coal that are beyond reviving.  So a call went out again for the Pledge to be revived.

The XL pipeline would move such a massive amount of oil, and the Tar Sands are the dirties oil with a much worse GHG load, that Jim Hansen has called it "Game Over for the Planet".  It is for this reason that 350.org and a coalition of national climate groups made it a target of their opposition and the focus on it ignited a movement to oppose fossil fuel projects, and Bill McKibben's famous "Do the Math" tour which brought powerfully to America's attention that not only do we have to stay below 350 parts per million to have a liveable planet (currently breaking 420...yikes) but that we have a "carbon budget" ....an amount we cannot burn, or we will never be able to keep the planet cool enough to support life.   Scientists say that at our current rate of burning it we have 4 years left before we pass that point.   So climate activists are pretty intense right now about trying to stop things like the pipeline.   To the uniformed Trumps attempt to "approve it" would seem like he has just ended the game for all of us.   However, the pipeline does not have project level funding.   And this is where the civil disobedience comes in.  The movement has targeted the banks with the hope of putting enough pressure on them to stop them from making these loans.   It is a good strategy because if they don't loan the money the pipeline will again be dead.

In Feb and April of this year, Bernard Lafayette of Civil Rights era fame, has been in Seattle and lead two trainings on non-violence (which I have previously written about.)   Hearing Bernard talk about the difference between non-violence with a hypen and nonviolence without a hype, as the difference between "not violent" and something far more complex and spirit based, really helped me put words onto something I have been struggling to articulate to the local movement for a long time.

Our Faith Action Climate Team, here is Seattle, planned how we wanted to go about our action. Mindful of the 6 points of nonviolence (listed again in that previous post) we committed to conduct ourselves from a peaceful spirit so our actions aligned with that spirit.  We met up on the day of our action and sang and prayed to ground ourselves.  We went over to the Chase bank (largest potential funder of the XL pipeline) and spent an hour sharing prayers, silence and song.

I was able to talk to the bank manager at length trying consciously to speak to that of God in  him. Our conversation was respectful.  I did not make him the enemy, I treated him as the person who would carry the message to higher levels of the bank that the people where rising up and would remove their accounts and hound the bank if they continued this plan to fund.  He told me he was sympathetic and agreed to communicate that message.  I was able to communicate to him that 4 of our group had accounts at Chase and would return another day to close them and that if Chase persisted they would just lose more and more public support.  He acknowledged that they already had lost accounts for this reason, and they knew that. He also told me that if we did not leave he would be forced to call the police.  I told him I understood that but that we were staying as long as spirit told us too. Outside the bank other supporters fliered the passers by and sang and prayed for the success of those inside.   Throughout our two hours there the customers came in and did their business and left. They were not interfered with by us nor felt threatened by our energy, they were not our target. But they were curious about our message, and they each left clear why we were there.

The police liaison, a Mennonite, also spoke to that of God in the police.  By the time the police arrived the bank manager was telling the police liaison that most of the bank employees agreed with us.  The police from the minute they walked in and found people sitting in a circle on the floor in the bank praying, did not want to arrest us.  They repeatedly tried to encourage us to go outside and protest outside saying they did not want to arrest us.  Eventually the Lieutenant in charge stated repeatedly that he was "begging us" to go outside and kept going away and leaving us to "think about it" in the hopes we would leave.  Eventually, I looked at him and said:  "I know you don't want to arrest us, and we have decided to stay, so I am sorry for you."  At that point he knew that he really would have to arrest us, and they did proceed to do so.  However, they also wound up releasing us without booking or ticketing us.

My co-defendant said in the holding cell that she felt sort of badly about making him have to arrest us.   I said: "No, there is nothing to feel bad about.  Everyone of us will have to face the ways in which we are complicit with climate change, and if he had to face how he is sometimes enforcing laws that keep the oppressive system in place and support climate change, and if that is what the bank manager has to face, his role in a bank that is making it happen...then that is actually the power of nonviolence to bring moral pressure to bear for social change."  This is important since people sometime ask me what good getting arrested actually does.

Friend George Lakey, author of Strategy for a Living Revolution, a classic work on nonviolence who was here speaking in Nov and then also in April, urges the movement over and over again to be strategic.  He says that he does not see much point in random marches or one off actions.  He wants to build campaigns that have clear goals.  Nonviolence researcher Erica Chenoweth also points out that successful movements use a variety of techniques.  They don't just do one thing over and over again.   For the most part American's response to Trump has been a lot of marching and lobbying. Marching has it's place as a beginning movement building stage.  So for example a lot of people came out for the first time ever to march in women's march and to the degree that their names got captured and they got hooked up to Communities Rising (the off shoot of the women's march) then the march served a purpose.  In a normal politician it would have also created some fear and the desire to pivot to protect popularity.  But on a narcissist this is completely lost.   So when we do marches we have to ask: Who is the target?  Is it to build coalition? Is to pressure certain key people? It needs to not be because we are mad and want to stomp around.  Because frankly that is not much different than small children tantruming.

The expression of anger by protesters is a seductive thing indeed.  We are mad about the injustices that are happening, and we have good reason to be mad!  However, who are we targetting and who are we effecting and to what outcome?   So for example, over decades various movements have felt moved to sit down in street intersections or to walk onto highways and shut down traffic.   There are times were what is happening in our whole society is so well known and outrageous (an escalation of the Vietnam war, or the shooting of a black man in the back by police) that this sort of "no business as usual" response is clear and powerful.   But too often it is actually an expression of the protesters sense of power that they can stop traffic.  It is a sort of waving a fist at the sky.  It leaves many people in buses and cars with schedules messed up and lives inconvenienced and leaves them angry and feeling disrespected.  (One must consider - someone is going to pick up a child from daycare, someone is going to a surgery, someone is going to an airport, or a job interview.  Is the fact that the President is doing something horrible or that climate change threatens them too, really a reason to cause them these problems?)  When we piss them off do we build a movement?  Is it strategic to have this effect on them?  Contrast this to when completely nonviolent protesters were maced by the police at Occupy or Black Lives matter.  In these cases the nonviolent behavior met with oppressive violence garnered public sympathy because if made more clear the oppression that is at work to keep our system in place.

When we say that we are targeting Chase bank as the primary funders of the XL pipeline that is a goal, but then the question has to be: how will we move them?  Is it again a feel powerful thing to "shut them down"?   What will actually move the bank management to decide that funding the XL pipeline is a bad idea.  I am not so naive to think that people calmly explaining it to them will accomplish this because those at the highest levels are so profit driven that it seems clear that they have not been considering human welfare for a long time.   But given that they are profit driven then things which threaten their brand and their profit do speak to them.  So protests of all kinds (not just those that shut them down) threaten their good reputation.  Do they lose business or profit from being shut down?   No not really.   This is the case if you block an oil or coal train, but with a bank people just deposit in a machine or the next day.  (And are again angry about being inconvenienced.)  People closing their accounts and telling them clearly why is what impacts their business.  Negative media attention affects their brand.  A wide spread event, closing many branches certainly creates a media event.  But unless their is a long term campaign plan, unless Chase has to worry that disruptions and negative attention will continue - they can easily weather one bad day.

Let us consider for a moment the psychology of stakeholder power holders like bank executive or politicians.  Like most humans when told they are bad or challenged in their actions the first reaction is to dig in and to justify to self and other, ones own actions.  When someone is identified as a villain they respond to this sort of polarization by seeing the other as the enemy.  What Martin Luther King showed us so powerfully is that when you treat an opponent with respect but with a firm demand it both confuses them and troubles their conscience, it leads them to self reflection and self questioning (with the few exceptions of those without conscience - who still must be supported by many other people to stay in power and those folks do have consciences.)  So they start by defending themselves, if things stay polarized they stay defended.  However, if they are challenged but on vilified there is room for them to start reexamining their position.  There is room for them to consider compromises or shifts.   There is also room as public opinion shifts against them and change becomes inevitable for them to find face saving ways to embrace the change they have to rather than to go to more violence or keep behaving in more and more morally repugnant ways to protect their position.   Like Aikido their energy is met and redirected in the direction of a more peaceful outcome.

Erica Chenoweth in her studies of non-violence tells us that when violence occurs within a nonviolent movement that movement can succeed despite, but not because of the violence.   In other words they must work to recover from the damage to their image that the violence creates.   Thus another indicator of how important pure nonviolence is.   Historically, it is also true that some movement followers impatient that success has not already been won begin to advocate property damage and or outright violence.   Movements have split over such disagreements.  So it is important as a movement that we know the history of nonviolent movements and that we carefully prepare the ground works in our movement for a spirit that supports nonviolence over simply non-violence.  Erica has also identified that movements succeed by using a variety of strategies and techniques, not by relying to heavily on one method which will lead to loss of momentum over time.  Additionally she tells us campaigns take about 5 to 7 years to succeed, so we have to have the faith, patience and determination to persevere.

So as a nonviolent movement to stop climate change, we must teach nonviolence which is not well understood in the American population. We must teach how to be non-violent not just in our actions but in our spirits.
We must choose our targets strategically and learn how to identify power holders and to make detailed strategies for how our pressure will work (Not simply say we will apply pressure).  We must be able to articulate a plan that uses different techniques and escalates pressure over time and how we think the tactics will be effective. We must think about how we interface with the public and do so in ways that engage them and bring them with us rather than alienate them.   We must learn how to activate our own centers of hope, love, courage, creativity and fun as we create these actions.  And we must with our eyes on a clear vision of where we are going dig in for the long haul!

Holding a Vision

Most people I know are very glum about the multitude of terrible things that Donald Trump is doing to our country.   With good reason!  And I have heard many activists sort of trying to figure out how to even sort out priorities in a time this dark with so many things going wrong at once.  It is quite critical that as People of Faith that we listen for leadings and inner promptings of the Spirit and be faithful to those.   As my favorite quote from Thomas Kelly says we are not called to die on every cross but called to our particular task.   This is even more important to be clear about in times of crisis or we become scattered and unfocused and thus also unfaithful.

"I dare not urge you to your Cross, but God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs.  By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizing God's burdens in us.  God gives us the royal blindness of faith, and the seeing eye of the sensitized soul, and the grace of unflinching obedience.  Then we see that nothing matters, and that everything matters, aand this my task matters for me and for my fellow human and for Eternity. ....

In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, our night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It may or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security.....Little groups of such utterly dedicated souls, knowing one another in Divine Fellowship, must take an irrevocable vow to live in this world yet not of this world...kindle again the embers of faith in the midst of a secular world."
Thomas Kelly The Testament of Devotion 1941

So I urge you to be clear about what the Divine Author has tenderized your heart to and be faithful to acting on that now because the threat the Trump Administration places upon American Democracy and the world as a whole is indeed grave.

If you have read my previous posts about the research on the 14 signs of fascism, then by logical extension the types of activities that will protect democracy from fascism are ones that: protect freedom of press, speech, and assembly.  Activities that lesson fear (deglorify the military and patriotism) , and promote feelings of tolerance, the embrace of differences and diversity and the inter-connectedness of all peoples - especially calling out sexism, homophobia, anti-semeticism or xenophobia when it is promoted .  Actions that call corporations and big money interests to accountability and challenge corruption and cronyism and other unethical behaviors at they appear. The protection of intellectual rigor, education, labor, and science as they come under attack. Strenuous objection, challenging, and resistance to police violence, state violence (like torture or assassinations), or the invasion of privacy and the increase of surveillance of the general population. And the protection of voting rights and fair elections and other civil liberties.  These are the actions which are protective of democracy.

I would also hold out to you that while keeping a careful eye on the incursions against our freedoms and the destruction of various departments of the US government that it is also important to keep a vision of what we want.  It can become too easy to become so focused on the destruction that one can no longer remember what you want.   I would also say as a silver lining that some of what we had was "good enough" but not actually what we want.  The ACA is a good example.   It insured many more  people than before and yet fell far short of universal coverage and by keeping the insurance companies enshrined in the heart of it, it kept it really expensive.   Maybe the attempts to destroy it could actually lead, if we keep a vision of single-payer health care, to just that.  Bernie Sanders is holding up that vision by offering a bill to that affect.

What are the other things we really want?  George Lakey recently reminded me that William Penn founded PA as part of the "holy experiment"...that this holding of vision for God's kingdom is in the DNA of Quakers.  All through the bible the prophets are people who give voice to vision and call others forward.  George also points out that the left has not done a very good job of promoting vision for decades.   He is reading at each bookstore he talks at on his book tour the Black Lives Matters recently released vision statement.   What is your Vision?  We won't get there folks without one.

Now we are in the Soup

Recently a friend told me the following significant truth about butterflies.  She said:  We tend to think that caterpillars crawl in their cocoons and then their little caterpillar eye’s turn into butterfly eyes and their little caterpillar necks turn into butterfly necks and they sprout some wings and then they are ready to go.  But that is not actually what happens.   What actually happens is that some butterfly DNA, called imaginal cells begin to emerge.  As they begin to emerge the caterpillars immune system kills them.   However, that is not enough to deter the butterfly to be.   The imaginal cells keep emerging at a rate that they cannot all be killed and they begin to recognize each other, and to bond together, and finally when there is still not that many the immune system is overwhelmed and gives up trying to kill them.   At that point he caterpillar body dissolves into a “nutrient soup”, a sort of gooey substance that is used as the raw material for building the new butterfly following the DNA map of the imaginal cells.

I suspect most of you know where I am going with this but for those of you who wonder why my Quaker Blog is suddenly talking about butterflies: I think the current situation in our country is the chrysalis for a new society  (either that are we have simply dissolved into a terrible mess!)   I think Donald is attempting to transform our previous country and I think our previous country was already dissolving in so many ways from so many problems.   I think that some of us have been holding a vision for a long time of a new society, one based in justice, equity and love.   Those of us carrying that vision are the imaginal cells.   As it appears to some that the country is descending into chaos or anarchy with record size demonstrations, and spontaneous airport demonstrations supported by spontaneous taxi strikes, and when government officials are resigning, disobeying and opening covert twitter accounts to still communicate the truth to the public…we are in the nutrient soup.   There are some days that simply seem like everything is being attacked and coming apart, and other days when there is feignt glimmer of what might be emerging.  But we can see the different movements rising up, noticing each other, sometimes banding together, sometimes simply gaining inspiration or encouragement from each other.

We are far from the end of this.  Some “cells” will be killed by the defending system of the old paradigm.  People have already been fired, black people have already been shot in the streets for a long time now, a woman at Standing Rock has lost most of her arm, and a man the sight in one eye, I pray none will die there, but it is possible.  The abrupt unplanned demolition of the Affordable Care Act may in fact lead to people’s death without health care, even as I write this activists are on trial for turning off the flow of tar Sands oil from Canada to the US, etc, etc.  But it is very, very important that we not become confused in the darkness and the struggle that it is the end rather than holding the vision of a butterfly becoming.

Which that would mean that first as a Society of Friends that has long held up its testimonies as the Truth as we currently know it, that it is really important that we give voice and witness to that future that we believe possible.   It is important that we continue to voice crazy ideas like “Ok if you are going to do away with ACA and you want everyone to have health care…then time for a single payer system.”   Or “Ok you want the greatest country on earth, then time for alternative energy so we can have cheap energy for business”.   Etc, etc.    it is also really important that we are able to articulate to our fellow activists, often full of despair from Trumps attempted roll backs, what non-violent revolution or social change really looks like.  (I highly recommend the reading of Towards a Living Revolution by George Lakey, or any of the things that Gene Sharp wrote.)  If you don't like the nutrient soup and are scared it is a failed butterfly, I encourage you to work harder for the New Society coming.  It is important that even as things appear to be desinigrating that we have Faith in the emergence of a butterfly.  In many ways this is like the Faith in resurrection at a moment that looked like the Savior God sent was dead.

I also think that part of what it means to be the imaginal cells is that as members of the Society of Friends we hold memories of struggles past that the general public has little or no memory or understanding of: for the vote for women, the civil rights struggle, the Anti-Vietnam War struggle, the anti-nuclear struggle, etc .  We must hold up the Light that explains how the struggle for change works, how it proceeds and how it succeeds!    It is not enough to simply say NO we don’t want a caterpillar, or NO we don’t want this goopy mess at our feet.   That cry NO does not create a butterfly.  Our jobs as imaginal cells is to be able to describe a sustainable earth, and a just society.   Not only to describe them but to do so in a way that is compelling and helps organize all available life forms towards that end!  And interestingly for me (see previous posts) butterfly's have always been a sign of the presence of God.  So maybe as we create this New Society we can also move closer to God.