from: http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090425/NEWS/904250312
Resident plans gathering to counter neo-Nazis
Peaceful protest is planned for Sunday starting at 11 a.m. in central Phoenix
Shocked by the news that a state branch of a neo-Nazi group had set up headquarters in Phoenix, Medford resident Nicole Strykowski decided to act.
She's inviting the community to take a stand with her on the sidewalks in the center of Phoenix between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. Sunday to "make the presence of love felt" and peacefully counter the ideology represented by the National Socialist Movement.
"I want to show that most people in Oregon — contrary to popular belief — aren't bigots or racists," said Strykowski, a Southern Oregon University theater graduate who has appeared on stage at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Camelot Theatre and ArtAttack, as well as in San Francisco-area productions.
She wants people to gather along the sidewalks at the intersection of Fern Valley Road and Main Street, in front of Ray's Food Place, with heart signs, music, cookies, or whatever expression of love they want to share.
"We want to counter hate with love and let people know the residents here stand for love, not hatred," Strykowski said. "We are so much bigger than bigotry, hatred and fear."
Strykowski said that when she first read about the National Socialist Movement in Oregon and its members' criminal pasts and recruiting efforts, she wanted to ignore the news.
"I didn't want to give them any of my energy or even the time of day," she said of the group led by 29-year-old Andrew Lee Patterson, who was convicted of racially motivated assaults in 2003 and recently released from prison.
He and other members of the National Socialist Movement have become increasingly active in Southern Oregon, handing out white pride fliers.
As Strykowski reflected on her own family heritage — which includes Polish and Cherokee — she decided she couldn't ignore the issue.
Wanting to avoid political rallies or angry demonstrations, she decided that banding together to show an outpouring of love, peace and respect seemed like the best response.
"More hatred is counterproductive," she said. "You can't fight hate with hatred."
Strykowski's gathering is one of many expected responses.
Organizers of the annual Take Back the Night vigil Friday at Southern Oregon University's Women's Resource Center noted that the event's message of respect and safety for all was especially timely and important in light of the news about the neo-Nazis.
Jonathan Eldridge, SOU's vice president of student affairs, sent a campuswide message Thursday to reaffirm that the university is a supportive and inclusive place that rejects bias and hate.
Eldridge said that the SOU community has started brainstorming responses such as forums or panel discussions about racism and hate groups. Plans will be announced later.
The Community Response Team, a group organized last year to speak out against hate after a KKK symbol was burned into the lawn of an interracial couple, will meet Monday to plan a response to the emergence of the local National Socialist Movement.
Co-facilitator Lori Warfield said the group is a coalition of about 20 social justice and service groups that work together to prevent and respond to bias and hate crimes. She expects the group, funded in part by the McKenzie River Gathering Foundation, to plan a vigil or rally.
"That's a nice way to continue a display of action," Warfield said.
Randy Blazak, a sociologist at Portland State University who studies hate groups — especially skinheads, said a public "not-in-our-town" response in which people come together and align themselves with victims of bias can be an effective message to stop hate.
Blazak also leads the Coalition Against Hate Crimes, a Portland-based, statewide organization that supports non-violent solutions to the problem of hate and hate crimes. The group has disseminated information about the National Socialist Movement unit here and wants to reach out to Southern Oregon and serve as a resource.
Patterson said he is already feeling a response against the National Socialist Movement office he heads from his family, landlord, employers and the community.
He reported that he was evicted from his Phoenix home this week after speaking publicly about the group, and his parole and probation officer has scheduled a meeting in the coming week to talk about his activity. Even family members who disagree with his beliefs have distanced themselves from him, he said.
His most recent employer, Patricia Joyner, owner of the Phoenix 7-Eleven store, reported that she fired him weeks ago for handing out National Socialist Movement fliers while he worked the night shift.
"I tried to give someone a second chance and was just disgusted when I found him doing this," she said. "I don't want people to think that I feel that way."
She said her store and the entire Phoenix community is friendly and welcoming to all.
Reach reporter Anita Burke at 776-4485, or e-mail aburke@mailtribune.com.
Labels: kin
| posted by Unknown @ 4/25/2009 03:54:00 PM
- practicing group facilitation in order to build sustainable communities wherever there is an opportunity (neighbors, non-profits, service clubs, intentional communities, religious groups, businesses, etc.). Professionally, I use variations of the phrase "doing conflict well" in consulting gigs, and aikido is one of my favorite somatic metaphors for learning that process. I use various names for the methods I teach, most of which are clarified at bdwc.net under "Big Ideas."
- proposing to other facilitators that we identify as a field of study and community of practice so we may have a collective impact, of which consequent generations may be proud, on peace-making worldwide.
- treating the larger culture as a community in the making, as though a global, communitarian mythology were being constructed that is psychologically mature and designed to opt out of fundamentalisms.
Labels: bdwc, bio, processarts, professional
| posted by Unknown @ 4/22/2009 09:00:00 AM
The Dad and I had a lovely Skype call with my not-at-all-Evil Step-mother, Julie, and the grandkids - Eva and Jake Pareti. Wonderfully bright lights.
Labels: kin
| posted by Unknown @ 4/10/2009 05:49:00 PM
Here are the three parts of the question I asked of David Isaacs during the World Cafe webinar today:
- Do you see our field (by which I mean change facilitation methods, or process arts) as being at least as wide as The Change Handbook suggests, crossing the development of organizations, psychology, complexity theory, and so much more?
- If so, how may we frame the field so we may work together to deepen ourunderstanding, clarify individual strengths and weaknesses of methods, and design in a bit of humility - becoming better able to work and grow together?
- How should we help process arts practitioners identify as colleagues and grow the field as a whole in order to impact the making of cultures of peace and collaboration around the world?
I notice fairly frequently that there seems to be a tension between being a method founder/owner and being a colleague, and that this dilemma negatively impacts our field in a way that often prevents us from growing as a discipline and having a broad impact on the world as a whole.
What if we were to define collaboratively and speak publicly of the field as the "process arts" in order to to identify as a discipline and co-create a shared ethics and development community? This phrase/name for the field aligns us with the liberal arts, implies the process arts should be taught to children and adults, and could impact the impact our field was on peace-making and community building.
For further clarification about my proposal, please go to http://bdwc.net and click on "Process Arts" in the left menu.
Please leave feedback and responses/reacions here and on related blogs and websites.
Gratitude,
B
Labels: processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 4/09/2009 02:37:00 PM
Process Arts are not a method
On Facebook, DeAnna Martin, of Dynamic Facilitation fame (see below for links), asked
how is promulgating a term like "process arts" different than promulgating an approach or method? it sounds like you are experiencing what a lot of method founders experience when they try and articulate their method to others who want to ignore the truth behind it, or want to wrap it into their box of knowing so they can feel comfortable with it's... Read More "place" in their world... just wondering how you'd respond to that? i love the term, by the way...
there are so many ways to organize "processes" and so many layers/lenses through which we apply them... have you been involved with Tree's pattern language work? She's still working on a name for it...
http://www.wisedemocracy.org
http://www.dynamicfacilitation.com
http://blog.tobe.net
I replied:
The best response I have at this point is to suggest levels of practice and a few tentative (personal and limited) definitions:
In my mind, someone in a difficult situation might want a specific and applicable response - a practice that seems likely to work, perhaps based in a larger method. If they learn that specific practice and others to it, they become a practitioner of a method. If they notice there are others working to facilitate the same method, they have colleagues.
Any of these individuals may notice that there are others working with other practices and other methods with different strengths and applications, which also facilitate behavior based on an increased consciousness of how we do what we do, and develop and deploy tools for changing systems.
When a practitioner discovers these core principles in the hands of other practitioners various best practices suggest themselves. This community awareness suggests the need for a co-created ethics (applicable in noticing what kind of culture is being created by a given advertising campaign, for example), which can apply to the entire field of approaches and practices and open a conversation about responsibility, innovation, and behavior. This is where the process arts apply.
The Process Arts idea is methodical, in that it suggests a way, i.e. creating a community of practice. It is a method of organizing by way of a non-proprietary name that aligns this work with the liberal arts and puts the the process arts naturally into education. It is a method of organizing a specific group of facilitators and not an approach to group facilitation, as such, and is thereby able to exist without increasing competition between practitioners. I am a method founder, but not in the case of the process arts, which have a much longer history than can be measured by my lifetime. I just conceived and prosposed the name for the field based on my practice in it with many others.
When I articulate the parts of my particular methods to others, and sometimes feel they may be missing a truth behind it, I usually find, in retrospect, that I have listened insufficiently to their needs or am feeling especially vulnerable on a given day. As far as tidily boxing my methods for consumption, I find that those situations and clients well suited to work in the way I suggest find my basic assumptions credible very quickly. That is how I learned that no method I have ever seen can meet all group and situational needs, and then committed to our field as a whole. My most arduous sales jobs have resulted in the funkiest mismatches in my history.
I'm glad you love the term. I got a bit of that during our conversation at the first Nexus conference. Want to help me/us grow the field beyond the method you know and practice with such expertise?
I have been in Tree Bressen's (http://delicious.com/tag/treebressen) pattern language loop since it began but unable to appear yet in the group as a whole. I'd love that project to consider the pattern language a part of the process arts field, but hope I have learned when to simply make a clear request and not push too hard.
Labels: processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 4/06/2009 12:08:00 PM
On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 2:29 PM, I wrote:
Brandon here, requesting an assist.
My Dad has been working from Dallas as my dissertation editor, using online tech, and we have been having marvelous success working toward my Fall 2009 drop-deadline. He has volunteered to fly to Berkeley for much of April in order that we might create a writing retreat to complete as much as is possible in a month. Even though he is an amazing jazz musician with psychological savvy and good social skills, this will be even more spiffy if he doesn't have to sleep on the couch in our tiny apartment all month.
He will be arriving April 7th and leaving the 29th. Being able to put him up somewhere in the East Bay for any portion of that time would be a huge help, even if only for one or two nights. Please don't hesitate to let me know, even if the possibility of a spot is uncertain.
Come hell or high water, this dissertation will be done this year.
Many people receiving this email have been wonderfully helpful and for that I am profoundly grateful.
Warmly,
B
----------------------------------------------
Today I wrote:
Brandon here with an amazing report I thought you might want to hear.
At the end of March I sent out a request for help finding David Williams a place to stay through April (no small amount of time) while he is in Berkeley with us.
In case you ever wonder what kind of resources are available to people who intentionally
participate in building community, like yourself, my request activated positive responses by at least (and with as few overlaps as possible) two intentional communities, including Crescent Sangha House community and Berkeley Cohousing; 14 families and 10 individuals in 7 cites from Association Building Community, Aikido of Berkeley, Epworth United Methodist Church, and a fantasy gaming group; the local Green Party; individual undergraduate and graduate students at UC; local clergy unrelated to any of the groups mentioned above; denizens of the worlds first dog park; and a veterinary office, not to mention people too far away to really count but who sent supportive suggestions (via Facebook, Twitter, Skype, freenode, text messages, blog comments, etc.) nonetheless.My Dad now has a lovely bedroom in a friendly house less than three miles away, for his entire stay. And huge thanks to you all, including the 27 people who have continued to follow-up, requesting updates even after their original positive response.
And, to those critics who say building community on purpose will never become an adequate response to the alienation of an industrialized human imagination, I throw my arms wide and grin!
B
Labels: ABC, community, family, kin
| posted by Unknown @ 4/03/2009 01:41:00 PM
