Diary of an Encuentro

Friday - Day 1
Partnership building

I have just arrived in Bogota, Colombia, to join colleagues from North, South and Central America and the Caribbean for an "Encuentro" - a time of fellowship, shared learning and partnership building.

 
"From the heart of the Americas: weaving a community of Change" is the theme of this gathering. Over the past several months I have been part of a planning team with friends in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and Canada, linked by email and Skype calls. It has been a great experience, overcoming barriers of distance, language and culture.

Traveling with me is Tanya Gonzalez, who manages the office of multicultural affairs for the city of Richmond. We are the US representatives in what I know will be a fascinating few days.
 
It will be an opportunity for some humility. When I Googled "US interventions in Latin America" I was shocked to read about the number of occasions our corporations and our government actively participated in "regime change," even supporting the overthrow of democratically elected leaders.
 
Colombian hospitality began as soon as we landed. Due to the fierce winter storms on the US east coast our original flight was cancelled and we missed the group transport from Bogota to the retreat center. But we were met at the airport by three charming young people, two of them alumni of the Gente que Avanza program that has been training young Latin American leaders for more than three decades. One of them took us to his home for the night and even gave me his room.

Saturday - Day 2

Forgiveness and honest conversation

Bogota is a huge, vibrant city of about eight million. The traffic is so bad that there are restrictions based on license plate digits during peak hours. The population increased greatly in recent decades as people fled the violence in other parts of the country.

We arrived at the beautiful and peaceful Casa de Encuentrosde La Salle this morning after a two hour drive south into the hills. Participants in the Encuentro were already busy introducing themselves and sharing their expectations. When asked to speak I said, "I expect to learn a  lot about listening, something Americans are not always very good at." Afterwards a representative of Canada's First Nations told me he had never heard someone from the U.S. say this. 

Highlight of the day has been the stories shared by the Colombian IofC team on the theme of honest conversation and forgiveness. "I hated a person in my group, and then I realized that she was just like my mother!" one woman said. "A friend showed me I needed to heal this relationship. In our group we see ourselves in the light of standards of honesty, purity, detachment from self, and love. A conference in Brazil in 2008 changed my life. I was no longer the bitter person hating the world....I learned that my aggressiveness triggered aggressiveness in the other person." 

A student said, "Honesty gave my conscience back to me. It was a big surprise to find my own self. Purity is a real gift. Now I can recognize what is normal and what is not. I was part of a group of 10 girlfriends. By the time we graduated from high school the only ones who did not get pregnant were my sister and me."

Later in the afternoon Tanya Gonzalez and I facilitated an exercise where we asked everyone to think of a disagreement that they had, or still had, with someone and to write the outline of that conflict from both sides.Then in pairs they shared the story as if from the perspective of the person with whom they were in conflict. Many people said they found this to be a very revealing and helpful tool, and some even discovered some new steps towards healing the division. 

Tonight we have been hearing about the IofC programs in different countries, sharing challenges as well as successes. Skills development in areas of project management, fundraising, and facilitation, as well as engaging and training a new generation of leaders, all surfaced as needs to be addressed.

Moving from the safe space

I am honored to include as a guest blog this message sent a few days ago by Lena Kashkarova a young leader of Initiatives of Change in Ukraine who interned with Hope in the Cities last fall. Lena leads the House in Baranivka project. She and her colleagues are building a meeting place and establishing a community of people who are working to improve society.

Here it gets more and more scary to see how far the situation will go. I started volunteering for a hot line of “Euromaidan SOS" (Euromaidan, literally “Eurosquare,” the movement of Ukraine’s ongoing street demonstrations) which provides legal help to those detained and helps to find those missing. It's painful to hear how many people were kidnapped and detained by police (or kidnapped and then delivered to detention centers) and what they went through. There have already been cases of murders, maiming and torturing of protesters.

It's completely surreal to see what my country has turned into in just a few months. I was in Baranivka when the killings started and the feeling of being completely helpless was just unbearable. And at the same time it's always scary to make a first step and leave the safe place. However, as soon as I make the choice and start doing something the fear goes away. I'm learning tips about how it works.

A few weeks ago I went to a national forum of regional Euromaidans in Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, to run a dialogue. There I observed and experienced some of the realities of Ukraine at their extremes for the first time. There was no place in the whole city that would agree to rent out a space for the forum. The only place where we got accepted was a church that got attacked just in few minutes after the start of the forum by supporters of the authorities.  

The next day the same church received a message that there was a bomb inside. Luckily, it turned out to be disinformation. We moved around the city only in big groups with volunteer security guards, or by taxi. One of the working groups that gathered in the bookstore got attacked and two guards were badly injured. It all felt like being in a stupid movie. For the first time in my life I realized that I'm in a country with no laws whatsoever and the choice I will be facing is between keeping completely silent and passive, leaving the country, or living every day in danger of being imprisoned, beaten or whatever else. It took the whole way back to Baranivka for me to get used to this thought...

In all of this nightmare, what makes me really proud and often makes me want to cry is seeing so many people who overcame their fear and are ready to risk their lives, not to be silent observers of oppression and injustice. The more the authorities become cruel, the more people become fearless. There are lots of questions about the most radical forces of the protests; there’s a lack of plan and positive vision of what exactly the protesters want to achieve; there's deep mistrust of all politicians – including those from the opposition; there are difficulties in hearing people with another point of view – it’s all here.

The protest movement is not perfect at all. But there is an unprecedented courage, a sense of responsibility and solidarity that I see. In the US I was wondering what made those people who fought against segregation ready to risk their lives. I didn't know then that I would witness the same in my own country very soon....

Much love and appreciation for your moral support. The more insane it becomes, the more I start appreciating my friends all around the world!

Lena

Reflections on the war on America’s poor

I was deeply moved by a visit to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, TX, which shows the stunning legislative accomplishments of this remarkable president. Today, on the 50th anniversary of Johnson’s declaration of a War on Poverty, I am re-posting excerpts from a commentary I wrote two years ago:
 
In his first State of the Union speech in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a 'War on Poverty' and launched an extraordinary range of welfare programs. He had the moral foresight to challenge the country to be its best.  Read the Speech 
 
Today America seems to have declared war on the poor. The US is now the most unequal society among developed countries.
 
In 2012, more than 46 million Americans live in poverty. Twenty-two percent are children. The gap in test scores between affluent and low-income school students has grown by 40 percent since the 1960s and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites. The minimum wage is half the amount considered necessary to cover basic living expenses and save for retirement and emergencies.
 
Americans are extraordinarily hardworking and some of the lowest paid give the most gracious service. Yet those at or below the poverty line are often depicted by politicians and others as undeserving shirkers. Welfare programs are depicted as benefiting minorities. But Lyndon Johnson’s major focus initially was to alleviate poverty among poor whites in Appalachia. Nation-wide, there are far more poor whites than poor blacks…

Even critics of the so-called “safety net” increasingly depend on it. In fact, poor households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. Middle class Americans, many of whom decry government overspending and “'handouts,” count on Social Security, Medicare, student grants, as well as numerous other benefits.
 
Why does America have such difficulty in getting to grips with poverty? In Jeffrey Sach’s 2008 book, Common Wealth, Economics for a Crowded Planet, he cites Alberto Alesina and other economists whose work shows that social spending trends tend to be highest where social and racial cleavages are the smallest. Alesina writes: “Racial discord plays a critical role in determining beliefs about the poor… Across countries, racial fragmentation is a powerful predictor of redistribution. With the US, race is the single most important predictor of support for welfare.”
 
Sachs adds: “In the end, the social-welfare model relies on a form of trust. It seems that people are more willing to withstand high rates of taxation if they know that their taxes are paying for programs that help people like them.” It is important, he says, that citizens identify with beneficiaries of government programs. “They are less likely to do so if socioeconomic divisions coincide with racial or ethnic divisions. This is the central point. The costs of racism are great.”
 
Another factor is that the US has developed an increasingly low-wage economy. One commentator writes that “our whole economic system depends on paying people less than what they are worth.” Consumer demand for inexpensive products, the obsession with short-term profits by corporations, and the predatory behavior of the financial community has devastated America’s manufacturing sector, once the source of solid blue collar jobs. The relentless pressure caused by outsourcing means that the median male American worker earns less today, adjusting for inflation, than he did thirty years ago.
 
Yet, even with the current high level of unemployment, many companies are having difficulty finding skilled labor. America urgently needs to restructure education to teach technical skills needed in the 21st century…
 
Each of us must do our part. Are we willing to pay a few cents more for our hamburger so that the person who serves us can earn a living wage? Are those of us (like me) nearing retirement age ready to contribute more for our benefits so that future generations can enjoy them? Will affluent suburbanites welcome mixed-income housing and support public transportation so that inner city residents can reach the new jobs? Will all of us, including the wealthiest, support the needed investment in our schools and vital national infrastructure?
 
I firmly believe that our political leaders underestimate Americans’ capacity for unselfish choices. Pandering to the baser instincts of fear or resentment does an injustice to the generosity and good sense of this country.
 
In Fresno, California, a city with extremes of wealth and poverty and where schools face painful budget choices, the school superintendent reduced his annual salary from $250,000 to $31,000. He said, “My wife and I thought, what can we do that might help change the dynamic in my particular area?”
 
Initiatives of Change has a long history of inspiring people of all backgrounds to live selflessly. “If everyone cares enough and everyone shares enough, everyone will have enough,” has been its philosophy. In 1935, my dad, who experienced poverty and unemployment, was inspired by an industrialist who chose to downsize his home rather than downsize his workforce during the Depression…

America moved towards racial desegregation in part because it was seen as a national security issue. We could not offer credible leadership to a world moving out of colonialism while continuing to discriminate at home. Today, America’s greatest security threat is not terrorism. It is the growing economic inequality and the mistrust caused by the collapse of the social contract of a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage, along with a sense of shared sacrifice for our national community. Initiatives of Change must work to encourage a new sense of shared responsibility and to restore this trust.

The mystery and wonder of life

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced,” said Søren Kierkegaard. Personally, I have reached the point in life where I don’t feel the need to understand everything, particularly in the area of faith.
 
The mystery and wonder of life is at the heart of this season when we celebrate the birth of Jesus. But religion often focuses on doctrine, creeds and even the divinity of Jesus to such an extent that we miss the reality of his humanness.
 
My friend Rev. Ben Campbell in his wonderful lecture series Who is Jesus?, says: “The Son of God can mean a lot of things. But the one thing it most  assuredly cannot mean is that Jesus was not human, that he was not a man, that he did not come from the womb of Mary, that he did not function in a  normal human  way… God may be a lot more like the Jesus we see as human than the miracle-working Jesus we see as divine… The more we sense the reality of Jesus as a human person, the more likely we are to be infected by the holiness of his being.”

Watching our two granddaughters (18 months and 6 months), I marvel constantly at the gift of life, a true miracle each time. I imagine Jesus as a baby and a toddler who, like our grandchildren, had to be fed, washed, and educated and – no doubt – scolded from time to time. The values that he lived he learned from his mother and father. One of the things that fascinates and humanizes Jesus for me is that he appears to have been learning all his life. He was open to new insights and even challenges – sometimes from women. 
   
Jesus did not come to found a church or a religion. He came to demonstrate a way of life that above all emphasized love of our neighbors, particularly those of different economic, cultural and racial backgrounds. Yet his name has been used as justification to exclude, persecute, imprison and kill countless innocents. Other religions are equally culpable. In Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Brian McLaren recalls a mentor telling him: “Remember, Brian: in a pluralistic world, a religion is judged by the benefits it brings to its nonmembers.”

A demand for certitude and discomfort with ambiguity misses the wonder of the season. Ben Campbell remarks on the frequent descriptions of amazement in the Gospels. “The good news will call you to a stature of astonishment rather than certitude; of appreciation rather than control; of heart knowing rather than head certainty.”

Mandela’s spirit in Ukrainians’ stand for democracy

While the world celebrates and mourns Nelson Mandela, another great drama is playing out in Ukraine, Europe’s largest country. While South Africans throng the streets of Soweto to honor the man whose moral courage overcame the brutality of apartheid, thousands of young (as well as not-so-young) men and women brave winter weather and the security forces to stand for democracy in the streets of Kiev. 

This fall our office was privileged to host as an intern a leader of the young Initiatives of Change team in Ukraine. Lena Kashkarova is among the many young professionals in Eastern Europe who have been trained by the IofC program Foundations for Freedom. Based in Kiev it fosters the values of honesty and personal responsibility that are essential for free, democratic and just societies.

Lena leads the House in Baranivka project. With their own hands she and her colleagues are building a meeting place and establishing a community of people who are working to improve society. Few countries suffered more than Ukraine in the last century. Millions of Ukranians died under Stalin and under Nazi occupation. Lena is a facilitator for an important project called Healing the Past. 
 
In November, Initiatives of Change and Open Ukraine Foundation jointly led a forum for 51 young professionals from 13 countries of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region. Held in association with Chatham House, Britain’s Institute of International Affairs, it drew people working in government, academia and civil society on the topic Towards the European Union through Good Governance. Participants were selected through a competition for the best policy papers on good governance.
 
Last week, as the protest movement in Ukraine grew, Lena cut short her internship in Richmond to fly home to be with her colleagues. Before leaving she shared with us her feelings about the growing demand for change in her country: “It is about dignity, being treated with respect and feeling responsible for what happens in your country… This is not about economics and trade agreements. It’s about honesty, accountability, rule of law and democracy. Young people are not scared. They don’t have the experience of the Soviet Union and they feel they can really change something.”

South Africa had the good fortune of transitioning to democracy after the collapse of Soviet communism. But as Chrystia Freeland writes in the New York Times “The struggle that seemed to be over in 1989 is still going on...Russia and the former Central Asian republics developed a new, post-communist form of authoritarianism; China never dropped the original, communist version, though it finally figured out, at least for now, how to combine it with robust economic growth.
 
“Meanwhile, back at home, free-market capitalism is feeling tired. Europe is economically sclerotic, politically fragile and flirting with xenophobia. The United States is still struggling to recover from the 2007-9 recession. The neo-authoritarians in Beijing and Moscow are, by contrast, increasingly confident… What is important about the demonstrators [in Kiev] is their certainty that democracy matters, and that it can be made to work.”
 
When I first visited South African in 1977 it was hard to imagine how the country could transition from the grip of apartheid to a non-racial democracy or how horrific bloodshed could be avoided. Yet South Africans surprised the world. Paying tribute to the man who made this possible, President Obama said, “We will never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. But let me say to the young people of Africa and the young people around the world -- you, too, can make his life’s work your own.”
 
People like Lena and others in the Foundations for Freedom network embody Mandela’s spirit. They are the best hope for Ukraine. Maybe they will also inspire Western Europeans and those of us in the USA to take our democratic responsibilities more seriously.