Legacy to Dialogue

by Vincenza Spiteri Debonis
Every Friday morning we met, the seven of us. We were the circle. Our power was in our vulnerability with each other. We meditated, we read, we were present in dialogue. We were the circle. Illness took one of us away. Then there were six.

Every Friday morning we met, the six of us. We were the circle. The questions were asked by the others, “What do you talk about? How is it that you can get away for a whole hour and just talk about nothing?” Always our response, “We meet every Friday, come join our circle.” They did. They felt uncomfortable, irritated, bewildered, they bristled at the vulnerability that was required to honour each in the circle, to give power to each in the circle. They let us continue offering paternalistic platitudes of what tremendous work we were doing. They sanctioned the dialogue circle as a professional development strategy to humanize the workplace. Hoping against all hope that the small room would contain the small circle. Retirement took one of us away. Then there were five of us.

Every Friday we met, the five of us. We were the circle. The questions were asked again, and again we invited them. This time though they could no longer stomach the incongruence of power within the circle, talk could not produce results. Take away the small room, take away the small circle.

Every Friday we do not meet, the five of us. We are the circle. We are in dialogue everyday where there is conflict. We are in dialogue everyday where there is pain. We are in dialogue everyday where there is joy. “Intention, listening, inquiry, advocacy, silence” these were the lights we lit the small room with; these are the lights we light the institution with. We are now five times five, times five, times five, times five, times five.

Everyday we meet, the multitude of us. We are the circle.

(Vincenza was a participant in the Popular Education for Social Change class this past season and she shared this piece in class. I was very moved by it and saw in it something poignant and important for popular educators to keep in mind. Vincenza was kind enough to let me publish this piece here - thanks - c)

Ethics for Activists - 17

As i re-design the Popular Education for Social Change class that i teach at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, i've been re-reading Pedagogy of Freedom (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) by Paulo Freire. Paulo's work has guided me my whole adult life and i'm always surprised and delighted to learn new things from words i've read and assumed i'd understood. Once again i'm impressed with Paulo's thinking and am reading and re-reading Chapter Four of this book: Teaching is a Human Act. It is providing me with some answers (and, perhaps more importantly, questions) about something i find particularly difficult to theorize as well as put into practice: how to train popular educators - not only in the necessary skills and so-called competencies of the work, but also in the dispositions that i believe are necessary. Not that one can teach such things as humility or compassion. But i do believe there are ways to support the growth of such things in people. For the next several weeks i am diving into these questions as i concentrate on finishing a manuscript about trickster pedagogy. So here are some words from Paulo that inspire me and that i hope might do something similar for you:

Is my curiosity able to express itself? Is it growing? In my opinion, one of the essential qualities that an authoritative, democratic teaching practice ought to reveal in its relationship with the freedom of students is a sense of its own self-confidence. It’s a self-confidence that expresses itself in a firmness of action or of decision in regard to its respect for the freedom and autonomy of students, its ability to discuss its own positions, and its openness to reviewing both itself and its previously held positions.

If the teacher is imbued with self-confident authority, there will be no need for a speech about it at every available instant. If there is self-confidence regarding its legitimacy, there will be no need to ask anyone: ‘Do you know to whom you are speaking?’ (pp. 85)

What is Art?

Much, much more than a guide about Workplace Safety

This manual is on-line and well worth checking out. Even if you think workplace safety and health is incidental to your work (and you shouldn't think that, since the "workplace" is where a helluva lot of us spend a lot of time), this manual includes some great material on group process, self-study and more. For example, it includes "committee basics" such as "ground rules" and "effective chairing"; "Communication skills" including "active listening" and "asking open questions. This manual outlines a five step process to This 372 page document details a five-step process for researching and identifying workplace safety issues, and coming up with and implementing solutions including organizing and mobilizing when necessary. You'll also find a 67-page "Committee Process Toolbox" that includes such things "Ground rules for Healthy Conflict" and the "Triangle Model (to analyze racism and discrimination)". And, of course, there's a 150-page "Health and Safety Toolbox" which, i'm very excited to see, includes workplace and body mapping processes to identify sites of injury. Jump straight to page 299 to see "Mapping Tools to See the Workplace with "New Eyes". I know these as processes developed by Dorothy Wigmore, an educator and trade unionist of long-standing. I've used the body mapping process in popular education workshops and i am always startled, if pleasantly, to see how much we can learn about our bodies and our history of injury that, sadly, we often take for granted, thus missing the opportunity to make connections with others who have suffered similar injury. Without making these connections there is little opportunity to do the necessary organizing to change things for the better. So, do yourself a favour and download this manual for your work.

Kudos to the WCB's Community Initiatives and Research Program (CIRP), the Manitoba Government Employees Union , the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP), and the consultants that wrote this guide: Joyce Rankin, Laurie Todd and Dorothy Wigmore. Terrific work!

Oliver Schroer On a Grander Tour

I just learned that Oliver passed away yesterday. I've been listening to his music daily for several months and am sad that he will no longer be among us. When i moved to Toronto almost 20 years ago one of the things i recall most vividly from the early 90s was going to see a play called The Storyteller At Fault - a storytelling and fiddle show. Dan Yashinsky performed a collection of his tales (re-worked from traditional sources) and Oliver scored the show and performed fiddle accompaniment that was so different from anything i'd heard done before that i can still hear those ethereal strains now. Oliver has a great website that's worth checking out: http://www.oliverschroer.com/index.htm and he also wrote a blog about his experience with leukemia. It is a brave and bittersweet document. And Oliver reminds me of my friend dian marino who died in 1992 after having lived with cancer for many years. dian was very critical and defiant of the common discourse around cancer, i.e. fighting cancer. She used to say that if one insisted on the frame of "fighting cancer" and, especially if the cancer was terminal, then not only was it inevitable that you would lose, you had already lost in a way. dian rejected this frame and embraced life more fully than anyone i've ever known up until her body could take no more. In an essay about living with cancer called White Flowers and a Grizzly Bear, dian wrote:

We do need a language of resistance in our struggles with chronic illness, but it needs to be a language free of militarism. I found it wonderfully healing to spend quiet time in nature - a form of resistance perhaps, but hardly a battle. (in Wild Garden: art, education and the culture of resistance, Toronto: Between the Lines)

Oliver reminded me of dian. They were kindred spirits. I know from interviews i heard on CBC that Oliver met his death with courage and equanimity. He used the word "acceptance" in one interview. And i heard that he never stopped playing or composing - up until the end.

There's a T-shirt i'm fond of (if also careful about) wearing that says, "You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime." There is a face of a pretty goth girl with thick make-up and an udjat design around her eye and, as some of you who share my passion for comics know, this is the figure of the Sandman's older sister who is Death. It is a benign and compassionate vision of death (she's pretty hot, too) and it is one that i reflect on a great deal. It is not a sentiment i would share with someone who has just lost someone, but it is one that i think we would all do well to ponder from time to time. Our world puts such great store by the length of a life. And we neglect the depths that can be lived in mere days or hours. I know that Oliver understood something of this. And i am moved, saddened and comforted in this moment of loss.

There' s some lovely YouTube footage of Oliver that you can check out. This piece is from his last concert a month ago. He called the concert his "Last Concert on his Tour of this Planet."

And you simply MUST check out this CBC Concert on Demand: Oliver Schroer Tribute Concert.

J'net on the TV about the Government's apology

It was a moving day, though the emotions are complex. The government's apology was long in coming and did not come until it had been pushed and pushed. But the content of the apology was impressive. And if the emotion and sincerity was lacking at times, i would say that that that non-aboriginal Canadians simply have the greater obligation to open our hearts and imaginations to learn more and act with more courage and justice for the creation of a Canada in which can live the dynamic, if heartbreaking, histories of all the people who now call this land home.

This CTV clip includes a brief bit with J'net that you can see 6 minutes ad 8 seconds in.

Buttons

At this year's inaugural Toronto Community Development Institute, some community artists with ArtsAccess set up a button-making station for Institute participants to make their own buttons. It was a wonderful activity and you can see pictures of many of the buttons made on the Collection X website. The button above is titled "Spring Into Action" by Vincenza Spiteri DeBonis and seems a fitting one to share after these past several days of cold, clammy spring. The warmth is coming. Yay!

New Ending Poverty Popular Education Curriculum

You can find this curriculum on-line and freely available on the Income Security Advocacy Centre's website. The 120-manual is available as one not-so-large PDF (980K) and as separate MSWord files. The curriculum supports a basic three-hour workshop that ISAC and Campaign 2000 are delivering across Ontario (in 7 different communities). The objective of this workshop is to involve low income people in a critical dialogue about poverty and a process to support the voices of low-income people on what will end poverty. Then curriculum contains over a dozen popular education activity descriptions as well as detailed model workshop designs for the basic three-hour version as well as one and two hour versions and one day-long version. I developed this curriculum with Dana Milne of ISAC and Jacquie Maund of Campaign 2000. If you find this curriculum useful in any way i invite you to post a comment here to let me know what you did.

Catalyst reaches its fundraising goals in record time

Well, we were both surprised and deeply moved to see how fast our friends and community responded to our appeal. We'd hoped to raise $2000 by May 6th and we had hit that target by May 1st - only two days after launching our appeal. By May 6th we had raised $3000 and as of this past week we have raised over $5000. The cheques and on-line donations continue to arrive. And we hope that we continue to raise funds for the collection. It looks like we've found a new home for the collection as well and we will be making the move the week of May 26th. You can read updates on the Catalyst Centre website. Thanks to all those who gave so generously and so quickly!

Catalyst Centre Needs Your Help

Yup, we're hurting.

It all started with an idea: could we create a popular education organization that practiced the very ethics, pedagogy and politics that we presumed we could teach (facilitate, develop, support, etc.) to others? Matt and i shared a history of conversations about social change, Gramsci, popular education, ethics and so on and, while working to support a North American coalition of popular and adult education groups, we concocted an idea we called the "Catalyst Project." the project didn't go anywhere but we had this idea in the back of our heads that was ready-made for an opportunity to start a new popular education group round about 1998. We approached two friends, Clare and Darashani and thus became the co-founders of the Catalyst Centre. We had a handful of vigorous years though funding, from the get-go, was tough. Over and over again we encountered enthusiasm for the democratic process we represented but reluctance to fund processes that did not have clearly defined, measureable outcomes. Along the way, our modest resource collection grew from a few hundred books and manuals to thousands, as we acquired the collection of the International Council for Adult Education. Which brings us to our present crisis. We need to save our collection. So we're doing a BIG push on fundraising and hope to raise enough to buy us some time and capacity to continue to care for a unique resource. Below is our appeal (which you can also download as a PDF here) and we urge any and all who value popular education work to consider donating and/or passing on this appeal to others who might wish to contribute. Thanks in advance.

Monday, April 28, 2008

The Catalyst Centre needs your help. Urgently!

This is an emergency appeal for support to keep the Catalyst library intact. Our collection of thousands of books and journals (mostly in storage these past couple of years while we've looked for a new home) is in jeopardy. We have to move it (or renew our storage arrangement) by May 8. We need to raise at least $2,000 by May 6^th to move the collection and that may still mean giving away a lot of stuff.

Can you support us with a tax-deductible donation to support the library? Your donation can help us keep this collection alive. You can donate right now through our account with Canada Helps, a charitable on-line donation portal (please note that our incorporated name is "Popular Education and Research Catalyst Centre, Inc."). You can help out now by visiting:

http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=d50680

Cheques can be made to the "Catalyst Centre Foundation" and mailed to:

Catalyst Centre

720 Bathurst Street

Toronto ON M5S 2R4

Our long-term goal is to raise over $20,000 to preserve what is one of the best adult and popular education collections in the country.

This need for urgent funds came upon us due to a change in management where the library is being stored. Catalyst, as organization in hibernation, has zero funds to support the library and storage costs have come out of one individual donor and significant financial contributions from Catalyst staff, a model that cannot be maintained past May 8. We are working to find a permanent home for the library in the next few weeks, but we need funds in order to make this happen.

The Catalyst Centre is almost ten years old. Hard to believe. When Matt and chris first began discussing the idea of founding a popular education group to continue the tradition of the Doris Marshall Institute for Education and Action and the Naming the Moment Project, we certainly didn't know where we'd be ten years later. The Catalyst Centre is respected both locally and internationally and, if people overestimate our capacity (which has always been modest), this is, nonetheless, a measure of the importance of the work that we do (along with numerous allies). And, while we are now in a phase of making new plans, circumstances have caught up with us.

We are currently expanding and renewing the membership of Catalyst. And we're looking into developing new programming that will include courses and workshops, support for the Indigenous Environmental Network's Alberta tarsands campaign, continued management and development of the collection and more.

Our immediate need is the collection. It is likely the single best collection of popular education materials in Canada. It contains extensive adult and popular education information, as well as archives from the Doris Marshall Institute and the Moment Project. It is a collection that is still an excellent support to community educators, community development practitioners, students, social workers and more.

Your donation can make the difference between preserving this collection and having to give it away in pieces, if not actually having to discard much of it.

Whatever you can contribute will be put to good use. Every little bit helps. You will get a charitable receipt for any donation and we ask you to consider giving anything between $25 and $1000. All donations are tax deductible. If you can help, please do so now.

Thank-you for considering this appeal and please feel free to share it with anyone you think might appreciate being a part of saving this collection and supporting the work of the Catalyst Centre.

Sincerely,

chris cavanagh, Matthew Adams, Corvin Russell

Simple Gifts

Jennifer was working as a waitress when, one night, a group of nuns came in. Jennifer served them and was also curious about these women who had devoted their lives to god. Their exchange was lively and the nuns’ joviality infected Jennifer who joked and teased along with the Sisters. The Sisters were themselves curious about Jennifer. The nuns were on their way to see a play called Nunsense.

The Sisters returned to the restaurant after the play and sat in a section that Jennifer was not working. Nonetheless, the Sister’s called Jennifer over and told her of the play, blushing as they reported on some of the more scandalous scenes. Their good cheer was undiminished and, as they were about to leave, they approached Jennifer, told her how much they enjoyed meeting her, and gave her a five dollar bill. Jennifer protested that they hadn’t even been in her section but the Sisters were insistent, saying that they wanted to support Jennifer in whatever she chose to do.

Jennifer was moved by this humble gift and vowed to use the five dollars for something worthy: perhaps donate it to a shelter or some other charity. However, that night Jennifer went out drinking with friends and ran out of money. She debated using the $5 she had just received and went ahead and spent it. The next morning she awoke mortified at what she’d done. It was the beginning of a soul-searching during which she stopped drinking. She reflected on her life and eventually chose to get involved in literacy work as a volunteer tutor.

Some months after meeting the Sisters Jennifer was serving a young couple in the restaurant when something moved her to tell them the story of the nuns and the five dollar bill. She enjoyed serving the young couple and was surprised when, after the couple left, the man approached her and said his wife wanted to talk to her. Jennifer thought that the service had been appreciated but now prepared herself for some unexpected complaint.

The woman handed Jennifer a five dollar bill saying that she had been so moved by the story that they wanted to give her back the $5 the Sisters had given her.

Light in my life

The one on the right is J'net in a dress of her own making and which is part of an exhibit that starts in a couple of weeks at Six Nations Reserve south of Toronto.

Oy, but life gets busy sometimes

Well, i've just come through a rather crazy-busy stretch that included moving house, living outta boxes, watching my partner's belly expand with new life, volunteering with the Toronto Community Development Institute which just ended (rather successfully, if i don't say so myself), a number of contracts including an "ending poverty" popular education curriculum (that you'll be able to download from this website later this week) and numerous other activities. So, once again, blogging has been difficult to keep up with. So here's a wee tale i penned some time ago about something that happened almost 25 years ago. I still can't tell this story without crying - it still feels like it happened yesterday:

The Potato

While in the mountains of Nicaragua, surrounded by war, I chose to make a rather treacherous journey to the nearest city. We were bringing the harvested and washed coffee beans to the central location for further processing. And we were also picking up food for the community of refugees that we were working with. We were camped on top of a mountain with many of the campesinos from the surrounding valleys. The mountain top was defensible and safe. We made the 50 kilometer journey to Condega, traded our coffee beans for sacks of potatoes and journeyed back. We came upon one patrol of contras who took aim at us and fired as we sped away. This raised the value of the potatoes for me in a unique way. So later that night when a young girl of a family I’d befriended came to my tent with a hot potato, my first thought was that she was trying to unload the undesirable nightshade on the unsuspecting gringo. I saw those potatoes as an all-too-precious source of nutrition and one that I had risked my life for. There was no way I was going to let this five-year-old neglect her health. I accepted the potato graciously but took her and the potato back to the family. I tried to explain politely that their daughter was trying to avoid eating her potato but I was told quickly that I had misunderstood. They had sent the potato to me as thanks for having made the risky journey that day. Touched and a little broken-hearted (though in a good way) I thanked them for the precious gift and returned to my tent to enjoy, very deeply, the best potato I ever ate.

Culture Jamming Compared to Invisible Theatre

i just learned about this "frozen crowd" event that took place in February at Grand Central Station in New York City. Pretty impressive. Here's the backstory. It's a pretty compelling performance art piece. Makes me think about Invisible Theatre invented and developed by Augusto Boal. The difference is that Invisible Theatre is aimed at provoking dialogue on issues of power, oppression and social change while the types of public performance art like the one above (and also culture jamming events like flash mobs and public pillow fights) aim to be politically "neutral". And, of course, nothing is politically neutral. My concern with these public performance art things is how vulnerable they are to commercial (i.e. advertising industry) co-optation.

The Pinky Show - okay, so, like, i'm an instant total fan

I've just learned about The Pinky Show and i'm pretty impressed. The matter-of-factness of the little girl voice coming from the always-bewildered-looking Pinky gives wonderful life to facts (about resistance to immigration in the US) and quotes (as with Ivan Illich in this piece featured here). As much as racism, homophobia, mysogyny and all the other ways in which we do violence to each other deserve rage and anger, there's something to be said for a disposition of bewildered dismay, like "isn't racism just stupid?" Racism is, of course, many things and that includes "just stupid". This disposition carries truths in a peculiar way. I've always felt that we have to be careful with our anger - that it represents an enormous amount of energy and that it should be called forth only when violence is in action and dignity and life need immediate defense. Most other times, i feel, that humour is the best defense. To allow our anger to carry on beyond the moment of defense is to risk being drawn into the dance of violence and to give our energy away. I compare this to what i've learned about aikido - to stay centered, to keep the movement and energy flowing, to resist being drawn into your opponent's dance, to realize that there is no opponent, only movement. Humour can keep us centered, balanced. And The Pinky Show is doing a good job of that.

New Paper on Popular Education

Claudia de Simone is a friend, a journalist, a drummer and a former student at the Faculty of Environmental Studies (including having been a participant in the popular education course that i've been teaching and co-teaching these past several years). Claudia has recently graduated and her studies included an excellent case study of popular education used in the context of watershed issues in a neighbourhood of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her paper has just been published on the FES website under the outstanding major paper series and you can download it by clicking on the following:

‘Toward Popular Environmental Education in Marginalized Watershed Communities: The Case Study of São Paulo.’
Abstract: It is rare to find a critical discussion of race in literature about Brazilian urban environmental degradation and water pollution. Most of the literature discusses what to do with the “problem” of the periphery neighbourhoods – called favelas – whose residents are often represented as polluters of the rivers near to which they live and as occupiers of ‘environmentally risky’ territory. In Brazil, it is common to encounter environmental education projects that incorporate a debate on economic inequalities and environment, but without mention of colonialism or race subjection. Using the case study of São Paulo, this paper shows how racism has been historically spatialized through the material production of the favela, as well as through its discursive production in mainstream media and literature. That environmental injustices taking place in racialized communities are officially accepted makes it crucial to problematize this hegemonic violence in educational spaces. The author argues for the discussion of race, interconnected with class and gender, in environmental education. Paulo Freire’s principles of a pedagogy of the oppressed are critical to a discussion about the meaning of an anti-colonial pedagogy and thus, of the practice of anti-colonial environmental education.

Mark Your Calendars (if you're in Toronto or near enough)

I've been part of organizing a community development institute here in Toronto and if you're in the area i recommend checking it out. We'll have a program to share soon. It includes over 70 sessions on topics ranging from community engagement to community arts, anti-poverty to health and more; and much of it featuring popular education. If you want to distribute the poster you can download it here.

A Wee Book Exhibit

I have a small exhibit of handmade books mounted at the Spadina Branch of the Toronto Public Library for the next week or so. If you're in the neighbourhood, you should drop by and have a peek. It includes 'zines, stab-bound commonplace books, an annual solstice book project and and advent calendar (made from cigar boxes).

Ancient Advice

I plucked the Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu translated by Brian Walker off my bookshelf last week and re-read its 81 passages. Less well-known than Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, the Hua Hu Ching are Lao Tzu's oral teachings that have been passed down the centuries and generations. Yet again i am struck by how relevant ancient wisdom is to our world, and how often we are so foolish as to think we have invented something new. I was struck by many passages on this re-reading and one, in particular, struck a chord for me.

Fifty-Two

Do you think you can clear your mind by sitting constantly in silent meditation?
This makes your mind narrow, not clear.

Integral awareness is fluid and adaptable, present in all places and at all times.
That is true meditation.

Who can attain clarity and simplicity by avoiding the world?
The Tao is clear and simple, and it doesn’t avoid the world.

Why not simply honor your parents,
love your children,
help your brothers and sisters,
be faithful to your friends,
care for your mate with devotion,
complete your work cooperatively and joyfully,
practice virtue without first demanding it of others,
understand the highest truths yet retain and ordinary manner?

That would be true clarity, true simplicity, true mastery.

Trickster Pedagogy Notes -01

Alas, but the workshop on Trickster Pedagogy i would have done in Nova Scotia at the Tatamagouche Centre has been cancelled. Leaving me with workshop plans and notes that could fill a book (or tow or three...). Trickster Pedagogy remains something i am developing as both theory and practice or, in a word, praxis. I'll have more to share about this in future posts. Meanwhile, here's a few tidbits that guide me.

Be passionately aware that you could be completely wrong. dian marino, friend, artist, educator

None learned the art of archery from me who, in the end, did not make me the target. Saadi of Shiraz, Sufi poet 13th C.

The highest truth cannot be put into words.
Therefore the greatest teacher has nothing to say.
He simply gives himself in service, and never worries.
Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu (Brian Walker, tr.). NY: HarperCollins, 1992.

Teachers are people who help you solve problems you wouldn't have without them. Anon.