I’ve been thinking a lot more about disability movements and policies lately, and about how we can use our resources and knowledge at Cities & People to support and advance those movements and policies. It’s not new territory for me, personally or professionally. But I’ve come across some new works that have redirected my thinking, and I’d like to share them with you.
Read MoreAnd this brings us to here, to me, 54 years later, in the time of COVID and a dying planet, in the time of a bellowing monster of white supremacy who has taken a few arrows but isn't going down easy. In the time of festering patriarchy and unchecked capitalism, and surrounded on all sides by two dozen California wildfires, and to this attempt to lay it bare.
Read MoreBy designing programs that required tens and perhaps even hundreds of people to fly, I was racking up metric tons without even flying the miles myself. I was designing learning communities, for instance, that were dispersing 185 metric tons or more of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere of our vulnerable planet! I want to take my work to scale, but not like this.
Read MoreIn some situations, for some people, typical versions of community agreements are more than merely bogus (or even benign): they can be a tool of oppression and a means by which to protect abusers.
Read MoreThe whole point of learning about the system of oppression was so that we could see how it organizes us. When you see how you and others are being organized by the logic of white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, and capitalism, then you are in a better position to develop an intervention – to fight back strategically rather than to merely react to what is loudest or most appalling.
Read MoreBlogging from the American Evaluation Association's Evaluation 2017 conference in Washington, DC.
Read MoreOn the night of the panel, we had a good turnout, with the crowd including resident-advocates, nonprofit professionals, and several grassroots leaders from our own Commissions Training Program cohort. The panel discussion was going well and picking up steam when an older African American man in the back raised his hand and was given the microphone. "I have a question," he started. "Why are there no men on this panel?"
Read MoreThe need to engage verstehen (or empathic neutrality) is equally important whether my "subject" is someone with whom I'm already inclined to empathize (like the young woman in the park) or someone with whom it is very difficult for me to empathize. And so it was verstehen that I called upon later in the week when I found myself in the backseat of a cab being driven by an outspoken white nationalist.
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