If all my data were laid out on the floor around me in some fashion, I could never escape its breadth, not even peripherally while honing in on some specific code or case. But when it is tightly nested away from me in folders, I am more likely to pay attention to what is on top, so I have to make sure I'm digging into the backs of those drawers regularly if I'm going to keep my data at the front of my brain.
Read MoreIn every community I've worked in for capacity building, some kind of important community organizing (formal or informal) could be identified prior to my entrance. This work is foundational not only to the when we come to develop programs, but in terms of the information we need to conduct an authentic evaluation of what we think of as "our intervention." What's more, this work is likely to keep happening at some pace and to some scale, whether we are investing from the outside or not.
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 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 MoreI could tell he thought I was a little nuts. "No," he insisted. "Separate diseases, separate expertise."
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