Moving Past “Cancel Culture”

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: What’s up everybody. Welcome to Block and Build a podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host in the publisher of Convergence, Cayden Mak. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that is working to block the impacts of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

[00:00:27] This week on the show, we’ve got a very special episode. Over the past month, we’ve been co-publishing a series with our colleagues at The Forge Examining Cancel Culture. The four-part series entitled Because We Need Each Other is now available for free on both of our websites. Today I’m joined by the four co-authors of that series, Erica Sasson, Celia Coz, Shilpa Jain, and Kazu Haga, to talk about that series, where it came from, what they’ve learned, and also ask her your questions about their efforts to address this phenomenon specifically in the context of our organization’s, coalitions and communities.

[00:01:00] So let me welcome these four authors of this series and my guests today to the show. Celia Ktz is a facilitator and trainer who’s worked with the organization Training for Change for 16 years. Celia, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s great to be here. Thanks, Caden. Eric Assassin is an attorney and restorative justice practitioner based in New York.

[00:01:21] Erica, it’s good to see you today. Hi, every. Kazu Haga is a trainer and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice, who has over 25 years of experience in a variety of organizations, as well as an author of multiple books on mindful approaches to nonviolent political action and restorative justice.

[00:01:38] Kazu, it is very good to see you today. 

[00:01:40] Kazu Haga: Yeah. Thanks so much for having us. 

[00:01:42] Cayden Mak: And Shilpa Jane served as the executive director of the organization Yes. And continues to work in service of community building, healing and transformative approaches to conflict and more Shilpa. Thank you for joining us. Thanks, Caden.

[00:01:54] It’s great to be here. To start us off, let’s talk a little bit about the origins of this series. I think that, I’m assuming that there are some of our listeners who have not read it or have only seen bits and pieces. How did this series come to be? I know that you all brought it to us as a project.

[00:02:12] And why do you think it’s so important to take on now? Shilpa, why don’t we start with you. 

[00:02:16] Shilpa Jain: The series really started with a gathering that Kazu and Celia helped to organize called, because We Need Each Other. That happened in upstate New York in 2023. Maybe they could say more about the origin of that.

[00:02:27] I’ll pass it over to Celia to start. I, 

[00:02:31] Erika Sasson: hi. Yeah. The short version, so a bunch of us have been doing movement facilitation work or conflict work in groups in the left and had really been experiencing the impact of public cancellations things happening within organizations, which were bringing things to a halt and kazu.

[00:02:53] And I actually just put our heads together and said it’d be really helpful for us to get together a group of practitioners, not only movement facilitators, but also restorative justice practitioners and other folks who are in that, change world in that world of helping organizations become more healthy.

[00:03:11] And so we invited 15 to 20 folks along with Sonya Shah, who was another convener of this gathering because we need each other and really with the motivation to be curious about it, we had never been in a space where we had talked about it together. So publicly is something that would happen on breaks or between trusted friends.

[00:03:31] And we wanted a more public forum and we decided to pull the funds together and the resources together to make this happen, to unpack it. And I dunno, Kazu, if you wanna say a little bit more from your perspective. 

[00:03:45] Kazu Haga: Yeah. It was a really beautiful gathering of 20, 25 movement leaders. And one of the things that I thought was really said a lot is that every single person in the room had.

[00:03:55] Either directly or been indirectly been impacted by these dynamics, and yet none of us in the room had ever been in a space where that was the topic of conversation. And I think, as movement activists and facilitators and leaders, we all understand the deep impact that these dynamics are already happening in our movement spaces.

[00:04:14] But the fact that we’ve never actually come together to talk about it was a real issue. And the gathering was both like part strategy and analysis and part like actual just somatic healing work for a lot of the experiences that many of us had in the room. And so I think there was a lot of momentum coming out of that gathering that we wanted to continue.

[00:04:33] And I think this series is one of the threads that came out of that gathering to invite more and more people into these conversations.

[00:04:43] Cayden Mak: And it’s great. I think maybe also we should talk a little bit about what we mean also when we’re talking about cancel culture in the context of movement organizations. ’cause I think that there’s obviously a version of it that I think is when I think about initially about cancel culture, I think about specifically the like very public teardowns that happen on the internet between people who maybe don’t know each other in real life.

[00:05:05] Not that the internet’s not real life ’cause it definitely is unfortunately. Yeah, but like how did you scope that conversation in terms of what are the things that you wanted to be dealing with? What are the things that were like outside the scope of the conversations and that you were all having at this gathering?

[00:05:21] Like what is or is not cancel culture for the purposes of our conversation today. I don’t know, Eric, if you wanna start, 

[00:05:28] Celia Kutz: I can start us off. It’s really like a conversation that we would build with each other. But I think just to, to start that, we did this kind of big timeline as part of one of the exercises that we were doing where we talked about, the big public not even cancellations, but maybe more you’d call them take downs or, the Harvey Weinstein, the Bill Cosby kind of questions from things that were more between movements or conversations that couldn’t be had.

[00:05:55] So we there was like a really wide gamut of stuff that is touched by cancel culture. 

[00:06:00] And I think that one of the things at least if I skip ahead to the writing of this, one of the things we wanted to write about was not stuff that rises to the level of what you would otherwise call criminal behavior or something that you would report on in that way if you were inclined to, but.

[00:06:16] We wanted to talk about in this writing series, what are the conversations we can have? What are the ways that we’re freezing up? And not talking about things. Certainly, I think Kazu was describing there was like a range of people there. And just speaking from the kind of background of my work, which is a lot about having difficult conversations, a lot of the ways that we wanted to approach cancel culture was the way in which this idea of cancel culture, which again, is like such a blurry thing.

[00:06:42] Slippery, yeah, very slippery. Exactly. But what is it when it freezes conversations when it doesn’t let you unpack something because you’re free to be associated with something bad or something that could then spiral and be considered bad. And just have that punitive edge. So we were talking a lot about things that, that do happen online.

[00:07:01] We’re talking about things that somebody may, somebody’s accused of something, some kind of behavior that again, is not in the Bill Cosby. Framework, but is something in which it is hurting people. But there is a pile on, there is a maligning, there’s a loss of reputation, and then there’s no path forward.

[00:07:19] And then for the people in the community, either in the direct community or in the kind of online community, people are choosing sides. And you’re either, with or without. But I wanna pass it to some. And I also wanna see you all to see what you think of what we’re talking about. It would who would like to take that from there?

[00:07:37] Shilpa, can I pass to you? 

[00:07:40] Shilpa Jain: Sure I can add that. In addition to what Erica said, we are also looking at kind of the quiet cancellations that happen, right? So there’s the really public ones and Erica mentioned some of that even with movement leaders who’ve been misaligned or also said this is what happened.

[00:07:54] And evidences presented in one direction, but there isn’t really any scope of conversation. So we are considering that. But then also the quiet things that happen in organizations or movements where leaders are informed, oh, okay, this is leaders or organizations are informed, Hey, this is not this was not okay.

[00:08:10] We are now not gonna be in relationship with you anymore. We’re not gonna do this. We’re gonna do, so there’s like both elements and maybe the whole spectrum in between is what we were curious about. And I think when we were looking at this also, one of the things in the gathering that came through was that maybe there are some more things that we can understand about how this, how we get there.

[00:08:29] Like what is actually going on in movements in organizations that is leading us. To this point where cancellation feels like the only option, or, cutting off ties, cutting off relationship feels like the only option. And so that sort of, we were like, okay, as we started to explore, is this becoming a monocultural approach?

[00:08:47] Like the one way we can do things if we’re having discomfort, disagreement, feeling harmed, feeling hurt, like this is the only option. That’s kind of part of the problem too. So we wanted to start to dive into that more like what happened to our other options? What happened to the possibility of building relationship, working through bridging, working through conflict, a restorative model, anything else that could exist.

[00:09:11] And just starting to feel like those options disappearing was also part of what was in cancel culture. 

[00:09:18] Erika Sasson: Can I add one thing? 

[00:09:19] Cayden Mak: Yeah, go for it. 

[00:09:20] Erika Sasson: Join that. I really appreciate it. Hil, you’re going the same place as we spent this, we had this like differentiation of harm, conflict, discomfort.

[00:09:28] Let’s, can we slow those down? And I think another thing that came out so clear for me at the gathering was all the bystanders, all the people who are just adjacent, who are in the impact, who are don’t know, are frozen, are confused. And I think one of my motivations for this gathering was seeing a cancellation occur and then being in relationship with all of the friends comrades who had a real impact.

[00:10:01] But that, where does that get seen or acknowledged? And so I think that’s the effort of can we talk about this? This is not an isolated incident. This is really fracturing, the belonging that we can feel in movement spaces. 

[00:10:16] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the things that I found really interesting about the series is the way in which you set this dynamic up intentionally talking about what is, like, where does this come from also, right?

[00:10:29] This is not something that I think emerged overnight. And it’s also something that is like very common across a lot of our experiences. And I think that we’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past couple of years about this question of belonging in movement organizations and like this like weird tension I think between so many of our movement organizations, also being some people’s employer.

[00:10:50] And then also like having to figure out ways to build political home at a moment when we are under immense threat. 

[00:10:57] And I found that to be like, very compelling and interesting and like a worthwhile conversation to have because, yeah there’s dynamics of power. I think fundamentally one of the things I learned from reading it was about the ways in which people are struggling to surface power dynamics.

[00:11:16] And that one of the things about cancel culture in our movements is about, in some ways our failure to surface some of these power dynamics. 

[00:11:24] I’m curious also if there’s any, if there are any sort of like case studies or stories that you could tell about specific experiences of intervening on cancel culture in organizations in your work.

[00:11:36] How this, these dynamics have shown up and what the impacts have been in your personal experiences that also animated some of this. Yeah. KAA, do you wanna start us off? 

[00:11:47] Kazu Haga: Sure. Yeah. And like you said, this. Kind of dynamic has been building for a long time. It’s nothing new. I know as facilitators, we’ve been talking about it for the last 10, 15 years, that there was a period like maybe about 10 years ago, where it seemed like all of my friends that I was talking to around the country who are facilitators, trainers, it felt like we couldn’t even get through one workshop without some conflict.

[00:12:09] Kind of like blowing up the workshop and not being able to get through the agenda. And so it’s been building for a long time and then, you add on layers of social media and things like that, but I have the, I’m not, I actually don’t feel like I can share specific names of individuals and organizations Sure.

[00:12:23] And things like that. But over the last 10 years, I’ve definitely experienced that multiple times when I’ve seen people getting publicly called out. And so I reached out to them, like personally offline, and have witnessed people because of harms that they committed or harms that they’re accused of just lose their entire communities overnight.

[00:12:45] And it has been really scary to watch. Like even if a lot of the harms that they’re being accused of are things that they did I also do a lot of restorative justice work and work pretty regularly with incarcerated people who have committed some of the greatest harms you can imagine committing on another human being.

[00:13:01] And even in that context, I believe that these people deserve dignity and that they deserve community and that they deserve healing. And so that’s the worldview that I’m coming from. And to see these dynamics and movement spaces where people are accused sometimes of things that aren’t nearly that severe and losing not only their work and their career and their reputation, but their entire community.

[00:13:23] And like you said, the sense of belonging. And I feel one of the greatest things that we can do as movements right now is to create a movement culture where people would never even think to question their sense of belonging. I think that’s so important and it’s really scared to see how quickly we are to try to take that from somebody.

[00:13:41] Shilpa Jain: Can I add to what you’re saying, Kazu with that? ’cause I think the impact is really profound, actually. And sometimes I think what you were saying Caden, about we’re trying to talk about power dynamics, we’re trying to talk about those in our movements in organizations and we don’t have the language or the tools, we just feel some frustration, we feel maybe powerless at some moment.

[00:13:59] Maybe it’s around our identities, racial, gender, et cetera. We’re like, okay, I don’t know what to do and so I wanna express something, and I wanna honor the need for the expression, there’s something that wants to be expressed. There’s something that wants to come through that is around like, how do I grapple with these?

[00:14:16] Institutional, cultural, systemic abuses of power and oppression. That’s real. The challenge is that sometimes it gets channeled into these big things get channeled into one person or one dyna or ones, and it’s so much weight on one individual and it doesn’t quite match up, right? And so how do we respond to actually we want to talk about those really complex things we’ve built or also organizations often based on hierarchies and things that sometimes are valuable and sometimes actually have a role to play in terms of distributing work and making decisions and how do we talk about that and make sure that we have more understanding around that.

[00:14:52] And sometimes we don’t have that much experience with any other kind of model. So all we know is this one, and we haven’t actually developed other kind of maybe more flatter models or more opportunity for distribution of power in different ways. So there’s a lot there. There’s a lot of there, but we don’t get to those conversations because someone has a transgression based on also.

[00:15:12] And usually what they’ve learned and acculturated, right? It’s not like it’s coming out of nowhere. It’s coming out of what’s been taught and acculturated also to all of us in different ways. And then there’s a blow up, right? And then that blow up has so much impact both on the individuals involved as well as the bystanders or the people in the community.

[00:15:29] So I think there’s something around like supporting ourselves to have those slower conversations, those more complex conversations that feels hard to do in the urgency of movements and the time. Okay, we gotta just get to the action. And if you’re not down with the action, we’ll get out of the way.

[00:15:47] And so how do we, but then in the process of disposing of people, we end up losing a lot of energy, a lot of life force, a lot of creativity, a lot of ability to take risks and experiment and make mistakes and learn from them and try again. And so I just wanna come around to connect what.

[00:16:04] What Kazu is saying and what you were asking about Caden there is a need there. Just gotta get we need support maybe to get into the depth of that need, to really understand what’s going on underneath the surface and not just stop at the surface and then move from there.

[00:16:21] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Celia or Erica, do either of you have thoughts about like specific experiences case studies, things like that, that have shown up in, in your work that really have animated this for you? Yeah.

[00:16:32] Celia Kutz: Go ahead. 

[00:16:33] Cayden Mak: No, go ahead. 

[00:16:34] Erika Sasson: All right. I shared for a brief one. Yeah, I was able to accompany somebody who had experienced, not this public cancellation as much, but as an internal pile on.

[00:16:44] And so an accusation was made by a participant of their program, and then a whole bunch of other people colluded with that in an email chain and very impersonal. And so this, and this person is at a leadership level that they’re in a founder or founder adjacent. And the founders that they had been in relationship with really couldn’t handle the feedback or figure out how to back their co-founder, co-person and turned on them or didn’t.

[00:17:17] It didn’t slow it down. They were like spooked by this huge accusation from a younger generation. Also, I think often these things are happening around generational differences, which are really, it’s very fascinating to me. And the of generation founders were like, you must be right. We have to figure out how to, and this person was moved through an accountability process, but in the way that the decision had already been formed or calcified.

[00:17:47] So it’s performative process. And I think one of the underpinnings of the entire sort of tension is that this organization was founded by friends who had a vision in a minute. In a couple years and they didn’t spend the time to think about how will we as a team work through conflict? How will we grow when we aren’t just three or four friends trying to do this thing together?

[00:18:14] Shilpa Jain: And there is that 

[00:18:15] Erika Sasson: intentionality of the more you are moving forward in your purpose, the more you will attract things and the more you will need to be responsible to those things and therefore have to negotiate accomplishing your purpose with caring about who’s following you and that kind of pace and scale.

[00:18:36] I think question, especially for movement groups get really crunchy of we have to scale so fast and we just leave our relationships behind in this way, but our relationships are what brought us to this in the first place. So it’s a big tension. Yeah. 

[00:18:51] Cayden Mak: I also feel like I’ve seen a lot of that sort of like co-founder colleagues getting spooked around accusations thing dynamic play out a lot too.

[00:19:00] Yeah. That like when you said that, I was like, Ooh, I like felt that in my body where I was like, I both have been a person who like has, somebody has said something to me about a colleague or a comrade and I’ve been like, oh, is that true? What is that? And that’s such a. I don’t know, like it tickles something like in our like, like primal brain.

[00:19:17] It must be 

[00:19:18] Erika Sasson: a little like archaic in us, right? Yeah, totally. We had to take down the leaders, but wait a second. Which one? What if we’re the leaders? Yeah. 

[00:19:29] Celia Kutz: So an honor, yeah. Just add something to that, to what you’re just saying, Caden. In a way, our series is, it was written for the people who get that feeling when it happens.

[00:19:40] So it’s not to say, and it’s interesting, we were talking about the framing of this podcast called Moving Beyond Cancel Culture, and none of us feel a thousand percent about that framing because it’s not, what we don’t wanna do is undermine the call for change, right? Call for change is real. The call for transformation is real.

[00:19:56] The call against oppression is real. There’s a lot that we wanna validate and honor. The question is. When you do it in this way, and then the people around it let’s say you have someone who is really causing harm. Let’s just be real. This person is really causing harm and we really need to do something about it that is somewhat urgent or extreme or something like that, right?

[00:20:15] Let’s just say, take that at face value. But if we make that change in a way that everyone around them tenses up says, it’s me next, or, I don’t know, or, like you get a really frightened environment. And that is to some of the things that Shilpa was talking about around creativity and risk taking.

[00:20:34] Like all of that goes out the window. And one of the motivators I think for, and not to speak for all of us, but ’cause we all have different ways into this question, as does everybody probably who’s listening, but one of the things that motivates at least me, is, if we’re freezing all of that, when we have this giant authoritarianism on.

[00:20:52] Coming for us and we can’t work together because we’re ’cause we are getting into that free zone or fight or flight or however you wanna think about it. Because the response is so blunt to people in our movements causing harm, then we’re gonna, we have a problem. So we are thinking about you, Caden, when you hear something and then you tense up and wonder, did I enable that?

[00:21:14] Was I part of that? Am I in trouble? Did I do it too? All those questions, am I gonna get right? We don’t want people to be working with that kind of mindset. We want a deeper sense of belonging. We want more grace, more forgiveness, and then to really make a movement for change when it’s like.

[00:21:32] There’s nothing else we can do. We’ve tried everything else. And maybe for some people canceling is that try because they have tried other things and so we also don’t wanna invalidate those. Those kind of like paths that people have been on and been like, Hey, I tried everything else and then canceling was the only thing that worked.

[00:21:47] So okay, maybe that’s true, but for the, all the times that’s not actually true and there was other things that we could have tried. Let’s try those. That’s a bit what we’re offering here. 

[00:21:58] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. I, it strikes me that that sort of like one of the pieces of the puzzle is about what is or not, is not like escalatory when there’s conflict, when there’s like rupture even between people.

[00:22:12] And that I don’t know those there’s a choice that we make in a moment of rupture and that so much of it is about what are we. What are we actually like willing to show up for in that moment of rupture, which I think is it’s hard. It’s a, it is a day-to-day sort of decision that a lot of times we’re maybe making in ways that are not super conscientious.

[00:22:31] And actually before, before when we were prepping for this, Josh and I were also talking, Josh, our producer and I were also talking about how, these things don’t also just show up in our movement spaces. They also show up in our personal communities. And it does raise a really good question about what are we willing, like what are we willing to ride through with the people in our lives more generally?

[00:22:51] Especially I think in this, in a time when it does feel like everything’s really dangerous. 

[00:22:57] So for the folks that are listening live if you want to drop questions for our panel in the YouTube comments, feel free to do we also collected some questions from readers. When we were asking for RSVPs, we sent around a form.

[00:23:12] So we have a couple of like reader questions that I think are really rich. And in, in fact, I think that one of the things that is a piece of this puzzle about this sort of like escalatory thing, the F1 of the first questions we got, which I was like, this is really juicy, is from Clover in Brooklyn who asks, how can we discern what is and is not in our control when it seems like attempts to be accountable are making things worse?

[00:23:36] And I think that I have seen this in both sort of like movement and interpersonal attempts to do restorative transformative justice where. The person who is, has made a transgression or is like people decided that they’re responsible for the rupture. That like they, they’re like, yes, I wanna be accountable, but then like their attempts to do so actually maybe are perceived to be like like ingenuine or something like that and seem to be like inflaming the situation.

[00:24:08] Kazu, I don’t know. Maybe we can start with you thinking about this question. 

[00:24:12] Kazu Haga: No I’ve definitely seen that happen time and time again too. And one of the things I think we need to acknowledge is that you have control or, if I’m if I’m in the situation, like I have control over how I, what I give to the process of repair and once I give it, I have zero control over how any of that is received.

[00:24:31] I, I, so I think we need to give up this delusion that we have control over any of this kind of thing anyways but I do have a couple of thoughts. One is that. Oftentimes these harms happen at an interpersonal level. They happen relationally, but the calls for accountability happens publicly, oftentimes on social media.

[00:24:50] And because the calls for accountability happens in a public space, I think people feel called to go through their accountability process in public as well. 

[00:24:59] And I feel social media is just not a place that will allow for nuance to happen. It is not a place that will allow for the healing of relationships to happen.

[00:25:09] And so I think to the extent possible, moving the conversation to a personal level where you can actually sit across from people, see them eye to eye and try to make connections. And then the other thing to acknowledge too is, oftentimes what Choppa was naming earlier. The harm that people are, like, the place that they’re responding from is actually oftentimes gets conflated with whatever harm happened between the two people that are in this dynamic and a 500 year legacy of colonization and white supremacy and state violence.

[00:25:43] That all gets conflated. And so if there isn’t clear discernment about what it is that is trying to be healed in that moment, and you are responding to okay, I apologize for this one thing that I did, but they’re wanting healing from a much larger legacy of pain. There’s very little you can do in that moment.

[00:26:02] And at the same time to acknowledge that if I caused harm, me going through a process of accountability isn’t just for the person that I harmed, it’s actually a process of healing from me. So even if my accountability isn’t being received. To know that there’s still value for me in being accountable for whatever impact that I had, that it’s not just for healing a relationship or to support the person that’s being harmed, but there’s still value in me going through my accountability process.

[00:26:32] And if it’s not being received in that moment, just to grieve the fact that it can’t lead to deeper connection but to not stop going through that process for your own healing and your own growth. 

[00:26:42] Cayden Mak: Yeah, that’s that, that seems big to me too, that I think that, there’s another question that we’ll get to later on about this question of impact and like the people who are being impacted.

[00:26:51] Celia, do you have a, do you have a thought about this discernment question?

[00:26:55] Erika Sasson: I think the only thing I wanted to add as I was listening to Kazu was like. There’s a both. And also of there is that moment of interpersonal harm, which is between me and this person. And there is a 500 legacy, your legacy of both of our identities and in different ways because of systemic oppression and power differences.

[00:27:16] And we can acknowledge that and still be responsible for the part that we’re responsible for, but also be acknowledging it. And I think those two things are not, those things happening together are the healing that is needed right now For sure. And people being able to be in the both and in the multiplicities of like I am, I initiate a harm that is me and not and my legacy and I wanna be responsible for both.

[00:27:44] But how I’m responsible to my legacy is also my healing work that I am on a journey in that you may not also necessarily be in that healing journey with beyond. So it gets. Powerful, I’ll say. 

[00:27:59] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. No I also really wanna lift up this comment that I just saw from the chat from my friend in comrade, Judith Leblanc, who says, it seems like a starting point to address crisis points also has to be empathy and humanness.

[00:28:11] I often start my reflection on a messy situation with what did I contribute to this gumbo? Yeah. I have 

[00:28:17] Celia Kutz: A good food analogy to the gumbo one. 

[00:28:19] Cayden Mak: Oh, yeah. 

[00:28:21] Celia Kutz: I love a food analogy. I think with accountability sometimes we take like the whole pizza pie, like a hot, flaming pizza. It’s a gross, it’s worse than your gumbo, and you just throw the whole thing at somebody and say, you be responsible for this whole pizza pie.

[00:28:34] And one of the things that at least I try to do when I’m working with people who’ve caused harm is be really like, let’s narrow down to your slice of that pie. Yeah, that’s what you’ve gotta be accountable for. And I think we throw the whole pizza on someone, it burns them. It’s like a hard, terrible experience.

[00:28:49] And then we say, why aren’t you taking responsibility for your piece of the pie? And they’re like, ’cause I’m like injured and covered in all this. I can’t. And so I’m like, okay, let’s put that down and let’s try to figure out, you actually aren’t responsible for this whole thing, but you are responsible for a piece of it.

[00:29:04] And we’re gonna really through. And it’s gonna take work and it’s gonna be, as Judith said, there’s gonna be empathy and definitely like a sense of somebody’s humanity and the individualness with which they come to this, and the collectiveness, which what they come to this, and we’re gonna talk about both to fi to really narrow down, to get to right size the amount of accountability that we think is meaningful.

[00:29:24] And that’s, that’s a, that’s also a human process that, if I’m facilitating in that space, my biases are gonna come up. We’re gonna bring other people into the conversation. So it’s not just me and my, in my framework and my thinking. It’ll be some other people too. Like this is something that you’re working.

[00:29:38] Back in the kitchen we’re cooking together, we’re gonna cook this thing together to really find the right size of accountability that does do that interplay between the individual and the collective. And it doesn’t always play out perfectly. It’s not there’s a lot of how would we say, like different collective experiences at play.

[00:29:55] And it doesn’t always line up that the person who’s feeling harmed has one kind of legacy and the person who’s causing harm is a different legacy. Sometimes these things are all turned around and upside down. So it really is I like this gumbo, just like that slowing down that shilpa talked about right up front, slowing down so that we can make the right we can get to the right place and it’s the right size.

[00:30:14] And it feels, also, feels like you can actually hold it and it isn’t like impossible to hold.

[00:30:19] Cayden Mak: Yeah, we each gotta do our piece well and I think to that I think my experience also as somebody who became a leader of an organization pretty young and like honestly felt a huge amount of responsibility for being both.

[00:30:33] I need to be fighting white supremacy. I need to be like centering like women and femmes. I need to be like doing all of this stuff that like I still believe and is very important to me. But that I think there’s a way in which sometimes as leaders we can also feel pressured to take on our eyes are bigger than our stomach to extend the food metaphor, right?

[00:30:52] That maybe not all of this is mine to hold that. Sometimes I’ve been too willing to take half of pizza when really I should have taken a couple of slices. 

[00:31:01] Shilpa Jain: Just to add to that, Caden, what you’re saying too, I think, go back to that original question, like how can I, what do I have control over if my attempts at accountability aren’t being met?

[00:31:10] Part of it, I feel like there’s so much to do with timing and how slow we’re willing to go. And this is where I think impact and intention get collapsed, right? So someone’s felt impacted, let’s say, by my actions. And my desire is to explain my intentions really quickly and make it okay.

[00:31:29] And then okay, let’s just fix that, and solve it. But what the person really wants is can you just slow down and just see that I’m impacted? Because it’s so uncomfortable for me. And in my faith tradition, we accept that we cause harm. We are going to do that as part of our living, living a human life.

[00:31:45] I’m gonna hurt people consciously, unconsciously, intentionally, unintentionally, knowingly and unknowingly. That’s part of my faith. So I accept that I will do that, and it’s still so uncomfortable to know that I did something that really bothered somebody, really hurt, somebody really brought up 500 years of systemic oppression.

[00:32:01] That’s not what I want to be doing. So I might rush to try to fix it, to solve it. And sometimes I’m trying to solve it by saying that I have an intention here that you missed my intention. That wasn’t what I meant to do, and this isn’t the impact, but actually in the moment, and I think this is what our movements also struggle with, is slowing down enough to say that there can be an impact, a huge impact.

[00:32:22] And we can listen to that, we can receive it, and we can also make space to hear the intentions. And we don’t have to put them in conflict with you. That one doesn’t cancel the other out. That there can be more space for the both and there as well. And that is also really hard. That takes nuance, that takes slowing down.

[00:32:39] That takes okay, I’m willing to really hear the impact this had on you and reflect that and acknowledge it and sit with it and sit with the pain of that. Sit with the pain of causing pain. As that process unfolds with a little bit of space and time, maybe there’s also gonna be a space a little bit down the road where you can also hear that wasn’t where I was coming from.

[00:32:58] I was trying to do this, I was really trying to support in this way, and I get that it didn’t work. But I want you to also, and you could be like, I see you too. I see you too. I see that you’re not like this person seeking to cause harm and destroy things and be a horrible person in the world.

[00:33:14] No, I see that you’re and you have space and we can have grace and we can have more space for each other. So I think that also gets collapsed a lot. And so when we’re trying to do this work of like offering more alternatives, more possibilities, we’re partly what we’re trying to do is say can we make more space for the coexistence of impact and intention and not put them in a conflict or a zero sum game with each other that they can, only one can win and the other one has to lose.

[00:33:40] Because that’s where I think we end up feeling more and more separated. Rather than yeah, working together. And then we started to see actually maybe what Erica was saying. Hey, you know what, the thing that I was trying to do, I was trying to support you and you didn’t feel supported and you felt unsupported, but here we are.

[00:33:54] Our conflicts are actually mirrors of each other. The very thing we’re longing for, I’ve done so much work over the years and conflict mediation, and almost every single time the person will say, who’s felt hurt? I just didn’t feel seen. And the person who felt, was supposedly the person or accused of being the person who caused arm, they’re like, I was really trying to see you.

[00:34:12] I really thought I was showing up for you. Or just some other mirror of each other. So just to add that into the mix. 

[00:34:18] Celia Kutz: Can I just add one more point onto this, which is I think the, one of the really important questions here, and this is, this goes to the, because we need each other and the kind of meta of what we’re trying to do here is create these stronger movements.

[00:34:30] Shva setting up this piece where you’re really putting the both and of understanding impact and intention. And let’s say you get to this place where you’re like, Hey, what I was trying to do is X, Y, Z, but what you did was A, B, C, and if you wanna learn how to do X, y, z, you have to have this conversation.

[00:34:48] So the ultimate point that we’re trying to get to here is for you to stop doing the, whatever the behavior is that you were not trying to do, but you did do it. But how are you supposed to learn how to do it a different way if we don’t have that conversation? The angle here is to prevent harm from happening again, so that we can stay in community and get stronger.

[00:35:06] But what happens with the, with cancel culture, with punitive culture, with incarceration, with all kinds of things, is we freeze people into the past and we don’t make a roadmap for being together in the future. And so we let go of people that we don’t need to let go of, we send them away, and then we’re less, and we’re, we’re not that strong and we haven’t also taught each other how to prevent harm, how to do it the way that is going to make that person feel, seen.

[00:35:30] All of those things, we’re giving up those opportunities and a lot of this work, especially around accountability like harm is, I, sometimes I wanna say this too, like we talk a little bit about re like, or a lot about repairing harm. It’s actually quite difficult to repair harm. It’s. Real harm is a lot to come back from.

[00:35:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:35:47] Celia Kutz: What I really wanna do with accountability is prevent future harm. Like I’m looking towards the future and saying, we can’t, you can’t do this again. Like, how are we gonna stop it? So it’s like a real orientation towards future and prevention instead of getting locked into what’s happened in the past.

[00:36:04] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Like it, it also just strikes me so much like having read the series and everything too, is that this is very much about getting into practice that like, this is a practice, this is something that we do together. And it’s also something that we can do about things that are like smaller ruptures that like, this doesn’t have to be like, oh god, so potentially career ending stuff like screw ups that people do. But it can also just be about like, how do we, and I think the art the part that was about like identifying the sort of warning signs was really like, that felt like a gift to me to be like, oh, yeah, I can see that sort of like snowball that happens for sure.

[00:36:44] I’ve seen it in like direct action affinity groups. I’ve seen it in like professional space. I’ve seen it in friend groups. Like it’s it’s definitely a, there’s a pattern that you can follow and that getting into practice to get out of that is actually just something that like will serve us as just humans who love other humans in this life.

[00:37:02] Kazu Haga: Yeah. I 

[00:37:03] Cayden Mak: always, yeah, go ahead. Kasu. 

[00:37:05] Kazu Haga: No, I just always say that there’s never a shortage of opportunities to practice non-violence. And non-violence, I always says is not waiting until somebody gets shot and then trying to figure out what to do with it. But identifying all these warning signs that something is escalating.

[00:37:17] Yeah. And the sooner you intervene in something, the easier it is to deal with and the easier it is to manage. And one of the things that one of my favorite quotes is from this ancient Greek soldier and poet who says, we don’t rise to the level of expectations, we fall to the level of our training.

[00:37:32] And so we have in our movement spaces, like all these wonderful expectations about how we want to build community and how we want to build belonging. But because most of us grow up in this carceral worldview, the only training we’ve received and the only ways we’re used to practicing conflict is through these punitive measures.

[00:37:50] So we can have all these wonderful value statements up on our organization’s website, but then when we get triggered. We kinda go back to our default ways that we’ve been conditioned by dominant society. And so if we are not practicing in our movement spaces in our own lives and our families just consistently practicing in those small moments of rupture where we have a little bit more access to the parts of ourselves that can be relational, if we’re not practicing a different way of being, then when we go out into the world and a harm happens and we get triggered, we’re gonna go back to the ways that we’ve been conditioned, which is oftentimes not aligned with the ways that we wanna build community.

[00:38:27] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. That seems really important. And the next question I wanna bring in I see somebody also asking about this in the video chat, and then somebody wrote in with a similar question, which is about the relationship between. Like white supremacy as the sort of like primary organizing principle of our society and like how is cancel culture related to that?

[00:38:47] And then also what are maybe differences you’ve seen in also then working both with communities of color, so black, indigenous, Latin, Asian-American communities, and then also like multiracial communities. ’cause I feel like, I do feel like the dynamics around race and gender in particular feel like a lot of the fault lines that we run into.

[00:39:09] Celia, I don’t know if you wanna start us off on this one. 

[00:39:12] Erika Sasson: Yeah, I can start us off. I think one of the things that we talked about as we even were in the gathering and then the series is how the behavior of cancellation, for lack of a better word gets. It happens. How it plays out is very culturally relevant, is very in relationship to your own family.

[00:39:34] Circle your own culture back home. And different cultures have different spectrums of how they express, how they take people down, how they give feedback, how they are conflict avoidant, and are so conflict avoidant that they’re ignoring all these little things until a moment when it bursts open. And so I think there’s no one answer to this question.

[00:39:57] One of the ways we thought about it was it is very culturally relative and there is something happening cross-culturally in which the permission to dispose of, or the assumption that if we, if somebody is left, if we push somebody out, they will be gone, which is its own kind of worldview. And when we cancel somebody, they don’t disappear.

[00:40:24] They go somewhere else, they go into a different community, or they go into depression, or they go into all sorts of other self-harming behaviors, which still exist in our ecosystem, even if we aren’t in direct relationship with them. So there’s also, I think a, like white supremacy is a worldview. We’re calling it a different kind of worldview of like interdependence on a very, both like tangible level and a spiritual level of we need to be an enticing place for people to come.

[00:41:00] How do we believe that? There may not be a role for everyone out front or doing the kind of leadership things they were doing before, but we aren’t trying to assume that them not being here anymore means that they aren’t a part of us or that what happened there isn’t a part of us. That was one way we thought about answering it.

[00:41:18] And I guess one other thing I’ll say is, and it bridges from your previous conversation of like, how do we incentivize forgiveness? How do we incentivize, like repair, how do we be in the reality of the current conditions in which us being in the, our own healing bodies as we’re with people who have created harm, is the way through what we’re trying to get through.

[00:41:43] And it takes a while and it takes skill and it takes community and it takes taking a break and it takes taking space. But how many other options do we have on the table regardless of our cultural conditioning that we can have and practice for the sake of belonging, for the sake of a bigger we for the sake of liberation, for more of us.

[00:42:08] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Other thoughts from folks? I don’t know. Erica Kazu. Shilpa. You just unmuted so.

[00:42:17] Shilpa Jain: I think I was just gonna add Thank you, Celia, for that. I think I was just gonna add that yeah, that for me, when I look at this also, I’m like, okay we have all this diversity in our movements. We are also affected by supremacist thinkings. And I, having done a lot of global work, I see it show up in many places, not just in the us.

[00:42:38] I have a lot of, you’ve done a lot of work in South Asia and in the Middle East as well and so how it shows up is different, but the truth of our fight and flight instincts that runs through every human heart and every human. Experience. And so when I feel threatened or when I feel hurt or when I feel upset, I do have an instinct to maybe wanna cancel or get rid of or escape from, or, punish the person who did that to me.

[00:43:00] That I think is a shared experience wherever we have. And then it’s, it’s institutionalized. And so I’m looking at some of my other cultural homes and I’m like, wow, we have a lot of that sort of cancellation too, of groups of people that are not really, we know ah, they’re not around our shared understanding of the majority, which is also a form of this, right?

[00:43:20] So what I look at in that is like there, if we don’t start to practice other ways of engaging with each other in this interdependent. Form. And a lot of that has to do with our own practice of self-awareness. Am I aware, Hey, I’m feeling triggered, I’m feeling upset. And maybe underneath that there’s some grief, there’s some expectation I had that wasn’t met.

[00:43:41] There’s some disappointment there. If I’m not becoming more aware of that internally in our movements and our organizations don’t say, let’s practice some more self-awareness. Let’s practice some more acknowledgement of ourselves and each other and see that we have different truths that might be operating in the same moment, then we’re gonna continue to like just tear ourselves apart.

[00:43:58] It just seems very, it’s what we’re seeing right now in our systems, right? That there isn’t seem to be a scope to come together because, hey I don’t have to take accountability for me and I don’t even need to understand where you’re coming from anymore. I just have to know you’re not my person and that’s it.

[00:44:14] And I think that’s, that sort of just plays out on a large scale. So I think in all of these situations with where we’re working with supremacist thinking, dominant culture, dominator culture. I think there is this opportunity to just slow down and be like, what do I wanna choose? What do I wanna build?

[00:44:29] What do I wanna co build? What is the kind of inner work and self-awareness work that has to be a part of it if we’re gonna actually continue to offer other options? And lately I’ve been introducing like space this way. I am like, we wanna create a safer space for each other where each can show up and be ourselves.

[00:44:45] We wanna create a braver space with each other where we can take risks, make mistakes, and we wanna take us create a grace space also with each other. That is gives more allowance to incentivize forgiveness to allow each other to, to be human and to be messy, and then be able to build together from there.

[00:45:03] So yeah, I think that’s how we’re trying to work towards it because there is so much that’s already programmed from like millennia in our own amygdalas and then institutionalized in various ways through these systems that take power and use it and abuse it. 

[00:45:19] Cayden Mak: Right on. Another question that we got from Kavana in Eugene is what do you see as the next steps to really shift culture away from attacking, blaming and scapegoating? So speaking of this way that like there is something in our, like animal brain in our biology that is like reacting to something.

[00:45:39] How do we move towards a culture of accountability that focuses on maintaining relationship and a sense of belonging? Yeah. I’m gonna kick it back to you Shilpa, actually. 

[00:45:49] Shilpa Jain: There’s so much to say and Kazu just wrote an amazing book called Fierce Vulnerability, which I think is at the heart of it.

[00:45:56] Pause. So I’m gonna kick it to Kasi after this. But I’ll just say that the real, the steps for me really start to involve a lot more space for that inner work, A lot more space for slowing down. And it’s, BIO said it’s very well quoted, right? Times are urgent, we must slow down, right? This is it’s so hard to actually shift away from that attack blame scapegoat if we don’t slow down, because then we’re just operating from our amygdalas from our fight or flight reactions.

[00:46:25] So the first big step for me is the slowing down enough and engaging with the body and engaging with our vulnerability because there is something vulnerable that’s triggered. Another big piece of that I think is working with our grief, which is also something that I think our movements struggle with, like we feel where it’s easy to feel anger and want to go after the people who are causing harm. But part of also what we’re working with is the grief underneath it. And when we leave the grief behind and only stick with the anger, then it’s hard to practice shifting away from it. So I think part of the next steps are also slowing down enough to feel our vulnerability and our grief, and to do that in community, which can maybe open up a lot more possibility.

[00:47:06] I’ll turn it over to Kazu though, ’cause he just wrote a whole book about this. 

[00:47:10] Kazu Haga: No, I appreciate the plug. One I think it’s to acknowledge that it’s already shifting, right? Like just even this conversation that we’re having right now, we could not have had this conversation five, 10 years ago. So to acknowledge that we are already beginning to heal and we are already beginning to build stronger and stronger communities.

[00:47:27] I think, if you watch the news and social media it’s easy to just focus on all the breakdowns of systems and communities. Yeah. But if you keep your ears close to the ground, I think people in grassroots communities know that there has been such a huge immersion of so many amazing, beautiful, powerful communities throughout the country, throughout the world.

[00:47:46] So just to acknowledge that. And for me, as we learn to slow down and to take a breath. As we learn to stay connected to the prefrontal cortex, right? The part of our brain that is capable of deep breathing, that is capable of deep connection, that is capable of understanding different perspectives and taking in new information.

[00:48:07] It’s also the part of our brain that is capable of pondering concepts like interdependence. And, I’ve really come to believe that interdependence is just the nature of how the universe is structured. And I think the more we can live into that worldview, like it’s amazing how I think every human being that I know, I feel has some experience of feeling like they don’t belong.

[00:48:30] But I feel like this idea that we don’t belong is one of the biggest delusions that we all live with, because in an interdependent world, there is nothing outside of belonging, right? Like we can’t help but belong to each other. And I think the more we can remember that and the more we can build our work from that as the foundation, the stronger we will be moving forward.

[00:48:52] So I really want to yeah, encourage us to, to take deep breaths and to spend time in nature, to spend time with loved ones, to spend time in, in spaces that remind you that you really belong. Because if we feel like, if I feel like I belong, if I can know that, then maybe I won’t feel so much of a need to threaten someone else’s belonging.

[00:49:12] Shilpa Jain: Yeah. 

[00:49:13] Celia Kutz: Yeah. I wanna, can I add something to this? Not that I want to actually, I just want everyone to stop and just take that in. Yeah. No, but I was thinking when you asked the question, Caden, that, I don’t know that it’s all I think sometimes we see so much of the not belonging and the punitive nature, and we we give that a lot of our attention.

[00:49:34] And I just love what Kazu just said because. It’s still the exception even though it’s huge. It’s still the exceptional way of doing things. And so to just notice all of the ways that it’s not how we are and it’s not what we want and it’s not how we do get through ruptures. We do get through conflicts.

[00:49:52] You can’t, I live in New York City, there’s a conflict every, five seconds of my so there’s, and we’re, you move through it and you get through it and it’s it’s okay also. And so just I wish we paid a lot more attention to all the things we were. I think some of the beauty and the third piece, which Shilpa really launched for us to start this series was some of the Hey, just start paying attention.

[00:50:12] You don’t need to go all the way down that road ’cause you’ve gotta look at all the good things that are going on and you just gotta slow down the things that are not as good. But I do think even in how we ask the question is gonna be really important and if we wanna be able to surface the interdependence, and then just the last thing around.

[00:50:30] We, and actually I’ll just leave it there and especially if Celia wants to add anything to this piece of it, 

[00:50:37] Erika Sasson: Yeah, I think I’m appreciating what’s been said and I think I’m, we’re in the both end of that experience of it’s not gonna happen overnight. It is happening and there’s a shadow to it.

[00:50:46] And so how do we care about the, like more that we can feel and then we get scared of losing that or it gets Yeah. Did I really actually, I’m not sure the doubt and just, I just feel like a lot more grace and patience and like this is the human experience and we’re human at a very hard time, huge.

[00:51:08] Trying to do something beautiful and I’m not trying to oversimplify things, but I think there is a way in which I. Connecting to that quality of awareness and purpose is use, is really helpful for a group, for an individual when you find yourself in these situations. 

[00:51:26] Cayden Mak: The other thing I’m hearing from all four of you is about how this is also a thing that is like non-linear, right?

[00:51:34] That there is a give and take. There is a way that like we are, because this is so in a lot of ways a process of learning a different way to be than the way that we’re conditioned to under capitalism. That it’s like we are going to sometimes fall down. It’s just the nature of being a human.

[00:51:51] But that like a commitment to being willing to get back on that cycle and like hopefully be spiraling ever upwards is like. I what it means to be alive. Not to be dramatic, but it’s, it is what it means to be a living thing that is like learning and growing and whatever.

[00:52:12] I, it also, I, Erica, when you were talking too, I was thinking about how there was a point in my life that I intentionally was like, I am going to start more frequently and intentionally, verbally appreciating the people in my life. And that’s like coworkers, that’s friends, that’s whatever.

[00:52:26] And at first I was like, oh my God, Caden, this is so cringe. But I think we need to be a little cringe about it. I don’t know. But why do we think it’s cringe? And the, I think the reason that we sometimes think it’s cringe is because it’s not a practice that we’re in that like a lot of the things that we think are cringe now are become natural to us later where it’s just Hey, now I don’t feel weird stopping a meeting to be like, Hey, I really appreciated that thing you said.

[00:52:48] And people are like, whoa, weird. But there’s I think something to that culture shift that’s it doesn’t have to be a big thing. It can just be like, I really like how you dealt with that question, or you moved through that challenge in a certain way. Yeah. Or appreciating somebody for the presence.

[00:53:05] I don’t know. There’s something about the need to be cringe in this time that I think it’s very important. Anyway I have one more question from a reader that I also think is related to this the cyclical nature of some of this stuff. And that is how can we reframe or put some nuance on the value of believing survivors or people who’ve been impacted by harm in practice so that it’s less all or nothing for me or against me in the way that we talk about incidence of rupture.

[00:53:39] And we’ll start with you, Erica. 

[00:53:41] Celia Kutz: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think so much of this has to do with, again, like the history of I’ve been working the last four years with domestic violence shelter that serves primarily women from Latinx communities here in New York City. And on the one hand I feel more angry than ever to be honest about how often they are dismissed and just asked to take, there, there is such a real piece to, the anger that with that, I think some, I think Kazu or Shilpa was talking about earlier.

[00:54:12] The anger that we feel at oppression is extremely real and can get worse the closer you are to it. And so the desire to say believe everyone, all or nothing like, again, that comes from a really important place. But I think, one of the things that we’re trying to show in this series is to say that I can list, so if somebody comes to me with a story of harm, lemme just make it really concrete.

[00:54:35] My first job or my first, the role that I would have is just to listen to their whole story and really hear it out. And you don’t have to believe it or not believe it. Like that kind of binary is not helpful to anyone. I’m just gonna listen and pay attention and ask what that person needs.

[00:54:52] And they may need a lot of things, by the way, and that those needs may change over time. I’ve worked with a lot of survivors. Those needs change from day one to day 300, and it’s a life lifelong heal healing journey when people have been truly harmed. But I’m gonna walk with you. We talk a lot about walking with someone, accompanying them on the journey of their healing.

[00:55:10] But to go back to this question about the binary, that may mean sometimes that I may disagree with the way that they’ve put things or not even disagree, but just maybe listen to how they’re saying it and ask questions about how they’re seeing it or how they, that may have changed from today to the next day.

[00:55:28] And how I respond to them doesn’t mean that I co-sign with everything they want to happen to the person who harmed them. If you are harmed and you want that person hung from the rooftop by their toenails, I do not judge you. I think that makes No, I, and I really and truly don’t judge that that’s real. That desire is real. That’s not something that I can help you enact. But one of the things that I bring is say I get it. You are, it is so fair for you to feel that way. The conversation about what should happen with that person, that’s, we’ll talk about that next time. That’s gonna have to take some time.

[00:56:02] It’s gonna be beyond just me and the person who is harmed. There’s gonna be other impacted people. And like giving it the space to say that how you feel about someone who harmed you is different than how the community is going respond, or how you are gonna respond. Or, someone hurts.

[00:56:16] Someone who loves me who I love rather. Or, God forbid, some, you, anything like that. I, I have punitive, terrible instincts in what I want to happen to that person. I do. And I honor those. They’re real and they come from my love and my desire to protect those that I love.

[00:56:32] But our soci, our network can’t enact my desires for a vengeance or for however I feel. So I really think like we have to listen to people who are harmed, give their story, wait, work with them on it, offer them all of the resources they need for the healing journey, and then what happens the other person, that’s just a longer question.

[00:56:53] We gotta give that the space that it needs to unravel as it should stop there. 

[00:57:01] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Celia, do you have anything that you wanna add to this or 

[00:57:05] Erika Sasson: this question? 

[00:57:07] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:57:10] Erika Sasson: Yeah, I’m trying to think about my context. ’cause Eric and I have different contexts and so it’s just been helpful for me to be in this world with other people who their main purpose is moving, a specific incident through a process.

[00:57:22] And I think in the groups that I’ve worked with, it’s a little bit, there’s just a lot of other levels of power that are happening and being impacted and pressure points of employment or not employment and reputation in social culture in the movement. So there’s just like a, minefield is thick and I feel like we’re figuring it out. I feel like there are so many good experiments happening right now, and I think there’s a lot more of those bystanders that are feeling, that are recovering from the most, the moments when they have been close to a cancellation and didn’t know what to do and are like doubting a little bit or wondering was that, did I like what I did back then?

[00:58:04] What I’ve made different choices with the distance I have from it now. And I just think there’s never, you’re never need to be done. Like it doesn’t just because it’s been a year or been a time or you’re not connected to those people. There is something about just us all collectively noticing where we’re disconnected from each other and caring about that, and whether that’s like a letter you write and burn in a ritual or a phone call that you pick up five years later.

[00:58:34] I think there’s a timelessness to the repair that can happen around these moments that I think matches the context that I’m in a lot because things can happen quickly and then people are like, oh, that’s over. And I’m like, that am in relationship. Is it? Yeah. I’m like, I just saw, I’ll see you at a march.

[00:58:52] I’ll see you at a training, and all of a sudden we’re right back there and I’m like, whoa, I’m a different, I like I’ve changed and I want that to be able to be in relationship with the past self of the harm also. 

[00:59:07] Cayden Mak: No, I love that. It’s like I’ve changed and I also, as I also assume that the other person has changed too, right?

[00:59:11] Because 

[00:59:11] Erika Sasson: yeah. I wanna meet you today. Who are you today?

[00:59:14] Cayden Mak: Totally. Yeah. I don’t know. I was recently reflecting on how there are people I have been in movements with now who are like, I am working with, again, who I met 15 right? At this point, almost 20 years ago. And like, how, yeah, I don’t know.

[00:59:32] The course of life is long, full of twists and turns and you never know who’s gonna come back into your life. 

[00:59:38] Erika Sasson: You never know. 

[00:59:41] Cayden Mak: Ka shilpa. Do you, do either of you have thoughts you wanna add here? 

[00:59:45] Kazu Haga: I know we’re wrapping up on time, so I just wanna share one of my as a way to close.

[00:59:49] One of my favorite quotes is a paraphrase of the work of Fu Somme, who once said conflict is the spirit of the relationship asking itself to deepen. And I just want us to imagine what a beautiful world, what a beautiful movement we could create if we viewed every conflict as an opportunity, not for fracture, but an opportunity to actually deepen in relationship with each other.

[01:00:10] So I just wanna leave us with that that vision, that thought. 

[01:00:14] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Ooh, yeah. That’s a real rich one. And like definitely a huge invitation. Shilpa, do you have any, do you have a closing thought for us at all? No. My 

[01:00:21] Shilpa Jain: closing thought is to call the series because we need each other rather than thoughts on cancel culture or, it’s really what are we growing towards.

[01:00:31] And I think if we ask ourselves that question when we’re in these moments of rupture or feeling harmed or feeling like we’re causing harm, but like just slowing down, what does it mean to actually need each other? And I feel like in these times, if we could get into that question more, needing each other, being interdependent.

[01:00:49] What does that look like? How do we grow more solidarity even with the people that we thought were our enemies? Are we really, or is it just a such a huge gap that we haven’t had any opportunity to build relationship to see each other more multi-dimensionally rather than in the flat flatness of an opinion or an idea?

[01:01:06] Because there’s so much deeper than our opinions and our ideas. There’s stories and yeah, the more we talk through our stories and the more we see each other in our wholeness, I think we see that we need each other and that, that to me is the huge opportunity, especially in this time, to, to build bridges across difference and to build fresh and exciting bridges.

[01:01:25] It could be really fun actually. 

[01:01:27] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. And I, it seems like this is like such a, to me, it’s such a crucial building block of building actually majoritarian strategies to transform the society that we live in. And that’s ultimately the goal here, right? I don’t know. I’m playing to win. Celia, Erica, Kazu, Shilpa, thank you so much for taking the time to talk today.

[01:01:46] This has been such a rich conversation. And also, thanks to our listeners for all of your questions and really bringing some curiosity and your insights to this conversation. So it’s, yeah. It’s been a pleasure talking with all of you. Thanks, Kayden. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[01:02:03] And for our listeners, you can check out the whole, because we need each other’s series on convergence mag.com. The link is, as always in the show notes. We’re also interested in extending the series with reflections, learnings, case studies from other folks who have been in processes, who have learned things from their practice.

[01:02:21] So you can send pitches our way at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you about. The things that you’ve been working on, the things that you’ve been learning that are in line with our conversation today. This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for Radical insights.

[01:02:37] I’m Kaden Mock. Our producer is Josh Stro. Kimmy David designed our cover art and special thanks this week to our colleagues at The Forge. In particular, a Ola a who’s the contributing editor over there for working with our editorial team, including our print editor, Marcy Ryan, on this wonderful series.

[01:02:53] And if you’ve got something to say, you can always drop me a line. You can send me an email that will consider running in an upcoming episode at [email protected]. And finally, if you would like to support that we, the work that we do here at Convergence, bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a [email protected] slash donate.

[01:03:14] Even a few bucks a month goes a really long way to making sure our independent small team can continue to build this map for our movements. I hope this helps.