During the heady days of post World War II science, German researchers noticed that thalidomide diminished morning sickness. It became so popular among pregnant women that pharmacies distributed it over the counter. But when children began dying prematurely or being born with limb and organ deformities, the government had to restrict the drug. A solution designed to resolve a problem […]
4 stages for sustainable change
In his book, Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (And A Way To Get Here From There), Bruce Lipton highlights a four-phase process for transforming situations and conditions that’s worth considering. The stages: (1) inform, (2) conform, (3) un-form, or deform, and (4) reform. Inform Telling the truth is the first step toward responsibility.” —Leonard Laskow […]
Organizers threaten everything.
Organizers threaten everything. Organizers should threaten everything. This is what we need our organizers to do: challenge organizational habits, disrupt our inertia, and remind us of the communities we’re accountable to. Unless organizers function cleanly and constructively, and organizations allow their critiques to make change, no one can do their best. Organizing is a way to creatively destabilize the […]
Revolution’s Invisible Costs
“If violence is wrong in America, it is wrong abroad.” —Malcolm X In November 1963, Malcolm X gave one of his last public speeches to a mostly Black audience in Detroit, MI. In one segment of “the Message to the Grassroots,” he highlights the hypocrisy of advocating nonviolent action within the US but promoting violent […]
Blessed are the Mistaken: Unlearning the Fear of Error
This post is part of the #RIPGC Synchroblog for Great Disappointment Day, 2015. “From error to error one discovers the entire truth.” —Sigmund Freud One of my favorite TED presentations comes from journalist and researcher Kathryn Schulz. Her talk, “On Being Wrong,” starts with uncomfortable, knowing grimaces and chuckles from audience members remembering—or so they think—how […]
The Movement Moment: Change, Denial, and the Fall of Empire
A director at one of the organizations I support recently asked me what I thought “the movement moment” was. What’s the spirit of this time? What’s rising up? The movement, I said, is life. The system demands we assimilate, and teaches us resistance is futile. The movement is not about the right to assimilate. The system calls […]