The city is rushing around this lovely fall morning... and im sitting here in starbucks pondering some amazing conversations i had with folks in the abolitionist movement and the fight for justice this week! Its exciting to be part of a team with so many incredible people! its a common bond of wanting to end slavery - its not an official network, or "membership" but rather, a group of friends. many of them don't know each other yet... but im hoping to fix that soon! :)
One of the themes we all were agreeing with yesterday was that we need to be more connected, and that it is about the movement, not any one organization or official title! When we start to loose sight of the bigger picture, we render ourselves ineffective! And, we can actually cause more harm.
One of these friends was told "if you are not a professional in this game, you won't be effective." That is just not true. Yes, we need to be informed and smart, but we don't need to have official titles to our name to dig into the systems, learn and listen and begin to see where the gaps are, and where the systems are broken. It actually can work far better to have someone who is not "officially" part of one particular organization helping to network, because there isn't that inevitable sense of competition over money or resources, or distrust that one group is trying to use another. Sadly, that's what is currently happening in the non-proffit world, and then when you mix law enforcement in, there is just a lot of miscommunication and distrust! Leaders of organizations often begin to lose sight of the larger vision of why their NGO was founded, and get caught up in the goals and objectives and funding to just keep themselves running.
The truth is, with most of these non-profits and social services, if we were actually carrying out our goals in the whole movement, we would be working ourselves out of a job! That should be our end goal, right? That slavery is stamped out, that hardly anyone is homeless anymore, that everyone has access to good food - the goal is that Civil Society and the systems and structures in place will be generating these positive results, and we don't need organizations to "raise awareness and money to "fix these problems" that the systems are creating".
But no one really wants to work themselves out of a job! That's when it gets scary- social services just do what they do, to keep clients coming to them, so they can apply for grants, to get funding, to pay their employees... what about the clients actually moving out of the system and into a healthy place of independence?! What about prevention so people don't even need to become "clients" at all? That would be dumb, they might lose funding! hmm.
So, obviously this world is broken, and there's a very small chance we will fully fix these systems. But perhaps, my point is, that yes, the systems need to be redone, but the bigger vision is- its about PEOPLE = its about building healthy relationships! its about loving people, and loving them to Jesus - to One who IS redeeming and restoring in and through and so far beyond the brokenness! Its about seeing people as beautiful, with dreams and visions of their own and strengths to offer, not just as "Deadweights" sucking up handouts.
So we, here on the ground, dreaming about better options and possibilities - YES! continue to dream, and share ideas, and build relationships with each other. love and support and pray for one another. Love our neighbors, and invest in our communities, and put feet to the ideas we dream about- even in little ways.
If you are working for an organization, be careful not to find your identity in that. Sadly things can happen, people and organization can fail, and you find yourself "on your own"- stand strong! God can use you just as you are. The movement is so much bigger than any one group! You, as a "rouge abolitionist", can change the wold- in community - in just following God's leading one step at a time. You can be amazingly effective as part of an organization as well - just keep the perspective of why we are doing what we do! be open to out-of-the-box thinkers in your networks.
If you find yourself working as a "rouge abolitionist", and you're getting a hard time of it - keep pressing forward! you have the flexibility to think and act "outside the box" - be sure to have a community of friends around you, to keep sharing ideas and resources. And as we plug in our collective crazy dreams in to the systems and networks things will in fact start changing! it already is happening.
Have courage. Stand strong. Dream big.
want to meet up for coffee? Let's talk! I want to hear your thoughts, and get to know you as a person.
(thanks for the conversations this came from, Dave, Viju, Arwyn, PW, Pat, Annery and Erika!)
One of the themes we all were agreeing with yesterday was that we need to be more connected, and that it is about the movement, not any one organization or official title! When we start to loose sight of the bigger picture, we render ourselves ineffective! And, we can actually cause more harm.
One of these friends was told "if you are not a professional in this game, you won't be effective." That is just not true. Yes, we need to be informed and smart, but we don't need to have official titles to our name to dig into the systems, learn and listen and begin to see where the gaps are, and where the systems are broken. It actually can work far better to have someone who is not "officially" part of one particular organization helping to network, because there isn't that inevitable sense of competition over money or resources, or distrust that one group is trying to use another. Sadly, that's what is currently happening in the non-proffit world, and then when you mix law enforcement in, there is just a lot of miscommunication and distrust! Leaders of organizations often begin to lose sight of the larger vision of why their NGO was founded, and get caught up in the goals and objectives and funding to just keep themselves running.
The truth is, with most of these non-profits and social services, if we were actually carrying out our goals in the whole movement, we would be working ourselves out of a job! That should be our end goal, right? That slavery is stamped out, that hardly anyone is homeless anymore, that everyone has access to good food - the goal is that Civil Society and the systems and structures in place will be generating these positive results, and we don't need organizations to "raise awareness and money to "fix these problems" that the systems are creating".
But no one really wants to work themselves out of a job! That's when it gets scary- social services just do what they do, to keep clients coming to them, so they can apply for grants, to get funding, to pay their employees... what about the clients actually moving out of the system and into a healthy place of independence?! What about prevention so people don't even need to become "clients" at all? That would be dumb, they might lose funding! hmm.
So, obviously this world is broken, and there's a very small chance we will fully fix these systems. But perhaps, my point is, that yes, the systems need to be redone, but the bigger vision is- its about PEOPLE = its about building healthy relationships! its about loving people, and loving them to Jesus - to One who IS redeeming and restoring in and through and so far beyond the brokenness! Its about seeing people as beautiful, with dreams and visions of their own and strengths to offer, not just as "Deadweights" sucking up handouts.
So we, here on the ground, dreaming about better options and possibilities - YES! continue to dream, and share ideas, and build relationships with each other. love and support and pray for one another. Love our neighbors, and invest in our communities, and put feet to the ideas we dream about- even in little ways.
 |
| (picture from Clair's fb page. thanks! :) |
If you find yourself working as a "rouge abolitionist", and you're getting a hard time of it - keep pressing forward! you have the flexibility to think and act "outside the box" - be sure to have a community of friends around you, to keep sharing ideas and resources. And as we plug in our collective crazy dreams in to the systems and networks things will in fact start changing! it already is happening.
Have courage. Stand strong. Dream big.
want to meet up for coffee? Let's talk! I want to hear your thoughts, and get to know you as a person.
(thanks for the conversations this came from, Dave, Viju, Arwyn, PW, Pat, Annery and Erika!)
Awesome thanks :) You rock.
ReplyDeleteOne caveat - would say it's very much an official network. Specifically, a scale-free network, as opposed to a hierarchal network (the kind with differentiated node types, titles and printer paper rules), which are often viewed as threats to hierarchal networks, as they disrupt monopolies on access and power. And I would argue that that's probably the optimal structure for disrupting a market, which is also a scale-free network.
Pax ad victoriam. Dave
//
Scale-free ideal network (from Wiki)
In the context of network theory a scale-free ideal network is a random network with a degree distribution following the scale-free ideal gas density distribution. These networks have the special property of reproducing the city-size distribution and electoral results unravelling the size distribution of social groups with information theory on complex networks,[10] when a competitive cluster growth process[11] is applied to the network. In models of scale-free ideal networks it is possible to demonstrate that Dunbar's number is the cause of the phenomenon known as the 'six degrees of separation' .