On November 9, UUSC's Economic Justice Program staff attend three trainings at the 2007 “Nonprofit Workout,” a biennial conference whose theme this year was “The Ways We Lead: Creating Adaptive, Inclusive Organizations.”

One of those workshops was called “Circles of Change,” led by Linda Stout and Pamela Freeman. If you aren't already familiar with Linda's work, she is a nationally known activist, speaker and author, founder of the Piedmont Peace Project, and leader of a movement-building organization called Spirit in Action.

• "We must create a vision of what we are trying to build. People will not join us if all they see us talk about is what we are against, not what we are for.
• "We need to learn new ways to communicate and connect with each other. We often re-create the competitive and distrustful environments that we are trying to work against. Racism, classism, and other oppressions affect how we work together, and we often look at each other with the most critical eye, rather than paying attention to each other’s best gifts.
• "The third thing folks talked about was what I call 'spirit' or heart connection – a connection to something greater than ourselves, a connection to each other, to the earth, to the ancestors, and to our deepest self. Many activists talked of being drawn to social justice work from deeply held heart-values or spiritual beliefs. Yet there is little time for paying attention to spirit in our political work, and many people feel this, especially when they need something to sustain them through difficult times. People also felt this lack kept us from connecting with each other as deeply as we should."

I was really excited to meet Linda in person, having read and given away dozens of copies of her groundbreaking book “Bridging the Class Divide” over the past decade. This little green book tells the story of the Piedmont Peace Project and emphasizes the importance of deliberately cultivating class awareness for creating democratic, inclusive, and sustainable grassroots movements.

The “Circles” workshop taught skills for working collectively in diverse groups, a process for collective visioning, how to encourage interactive learning, and ways to foster trust and openness as the basis for powerful ideas and collaboration.

The techniques were helpful and refreshing, including a practice of gathering group agreements before engaging in debate, and leading a team in a visioning process that encourages big bold “outside of the box” thinking.

One of the many jewels I brought back was a reflection by Margaret Wheatley. I recently used it to open a brainstorming session in a partner focus group, and I share it here:

Turning to One Another

There is no power greater than a community discovering what
it cares about. Ask “what’s possible?” Not, “what’s wrong?”

Keep asking.

Notice what you care about.

Assume that many others share your dreams.

Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.

Talk to people you know.

Talk to people you don’t know.

Talk to people you never talk to.

Be intrigued by the differences you hear.

Expect to be surprised.

Treasure curiosity more than certainty.

Invite in everyone who cares to work on what’s possible.

Acknowledge that everyone is an expert about something.

Know that creative solutions come from new connections.

Remember, you don’t fear people whose story you know.

Real listening always brings people closer together.

Trust that meaningful conversation can change your world.

Rely on human goodness. Stay together.

Trust that.

I'm always looking for new skills to help me better manage the Economic Justice Program and cultivate our partnerships. Recently, Ariel and I tapped into some staff development funds to help us learn about some new models for strengthening collaboration for social change.

On November 9, we attend three trainings at the 2007 “Nonprofit Workout,” a biennial conference offering dozens of workshops and attracting nonprofit leaders from across the country. This year’s theme was “The Ways We Lead: Creating Adaptive, Inclusive Organizations.”

The next few postings give an overview of the workshops we attended, and how what we learned relates to our work. Click on any of the embedded links to learn more!

Q: What do you get when five human rights activists from Pakistan travel to the tsunami-ravaged regions of Indonesia?

A: Constant comparisons between the social-cultural and legal barriers women face in each country, and a lot of laughter!

UUSC is hosting five members from its Pakistan partner organization, Bedari, for eight days in Indonesia to visit UUSC’s partner organizations there that are focusing on protecting women’s rights, particularly their inheritance rights, after disaster.

Aceh is rebuilding after the December 2004 tsunami, and Pakistan is rebuilding after the October 2005 earthquake, and both places share similar cultural and legal characteristics. Both places are also majority Muslim and Sharia (Muslim) law deeply influences customary and legal practice. And in both places, women – especially widows – encounter a variety of similar obstacles to recovering from disaster and protecting themselves and their families from becoming poorer.

So there are a lot of comparisons to be made.

But the thing that has surprised the people from Pakistan most is that so many women in Aceh drive motorbikes! Women in Pakistan don’t – it’s culturally unacceptable. But here in Aceh, the Pakistani women have ridden with some of their new-found female friends, laughing the whole way.

Another surprise has been the ease with which Acehnese women talk about their concerns and challenges. For example, domestic abuse and rape are common themes of conversation when we meet with communities here. These issues also concern the Pakistanis – but it’s much harder to talk about them in Pakistan. This can mean that it’s much harder to make changes that will decrease such violence against women. It's a grave topic, but there have been plenty of opportunities for giggles and jokes that were shared despite double and triple language barriers!

Interestingly, the Pakistani group has also noticed that human rights activism in Pakistan is stronger and better-coordinated than in Aceh. This, the Pakistanis think, can help their work on promoting and protecting women’s land-inheritance rights in post-earthquake Pakistan. Bedari is already planning to reach out to more lawyers, students, and religious and community leaders in Kashmir to reinforce Bedari’s work.

And who knows, maybe Bedari's efforts to drive change for the better in Kashmir will soon include motorbikes and women driving them!

The following post was written by Carolyn Purcell, UUSC board member and participant in our recent Election Monitoring JustJourney in Guatemala.

November 6, 2007

Polling for the national presidential elections in the rural town of Rabinal was marked by calm and a sense of hope. It was also run very efficiently. Poll workers arrived at the schools and city hall to set up their tables by 5 a.m. and began to receive voters at 7 a.m. They would be at their tables until 6 p.m. and work on the vote count until 8 p.m.

Many poll workers were public school teachers. We asked them why they volunteered for this post. They told us that it is their duty as teachers to prepare children to be full citizens and participate in the decisions of their country; facilitating voting is the necessary continuation of this duty and a statement of hope for Guatemalan democracy.

During our week in Guatemala, we were told that the changes underway in Guatemala are "creating space for democracy in Guatemala." We were moved by the courageous election observers, human right leaders, and activists who daily confront injustice and build democracy in Guatemala.

The following post was written by Linda McKim-Bell, a UUSC regional coordinator and participant in our recent Election Monitoring JustJourney in Guatemala.

I just returned from a JustJourney delegation that visited Guatemala to monitor the national elections as international observers, and to visit UUSC's human rights partners. Winds of change were blowing there. Last Sunday about six million Guatemalans went to the polls to elect Alvaro Colom as president. He ran on the slogan "Fight crime with intelligence." He ran against former general Otto Perez-Molina, a military man who was one of the masterminds of the genocides in Guatemala in the 1980s. He ran on the slogan: "A strong hand," to deal with rising crime. It was satisfying to know that Guatemalans rejected the rule of the military.

We were official election observers in the Guatemalan highlands in the farming town of Rabinal, in the region of Alta Verapaz. This region suffered greatly in the massacres of the 1980s. The army killed 400 people here in six massacres perpetrated as part of a scorched earth policy to rid Guatemala of guerrillas and sympathizers. When the villagers of Rio Negro demanded just compensation for lands flooded by the World Bank-funded Chixoy Dam project, many were murdered. The perpetrators have never been brought to justice.

We visited our human rights partners. We met with Juan de Dios, director of the Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achi (ADIVIMA). Our partners have been struggling for justice for 25 years. They are asking for fair compensation for their lands flooded by the dam, recognition of their cultural rights, economic development, and education for their children. When their land was flooded by the dam, they were relocated to slums where they had no means of making a living.

I saw the fruits of UUSC's work here when I sensed a new confidence in Juan de Dios. He was a stronger protagonist. UUSC had put him in touch with the Holland Knight law firm, which helped him prepare a case against the World Bank. This leveraged him into negotiations that will bring compensation. This case has world-wide significance. There are 500 World Bank-funded dams around the world and many people have been displaced without just compensation. It was gratifying to see big changes for ADIVIMA and the local community.

Indeed, I could feel a new spirit growing in Guatemala and the state of Alta Verapaz. Evidence of greater democracy in this region was seen in our visit to the mayor-elect of Rabinal, Jose Solano. His supporters gathered around us in the lovely courtyard of his party headquarters. The fresh paint and hanging baskets of flowers were hopeful signs of what Solano plans to do in Rabinal.

Solano's agenda includes health care, access to clean water, irrigation projects, an agricultural cooperative, development of womens' businesses through microcredit, a program for seniors, and a planning department for Rabinal. It was gratifying to see that the long-term work of UUSC and its partners in Alta Verapaz has helped create empowerment so that people would have the hope and political power to elect a leader like Solano.

A big surprise at the end of our delegation was that Rafael Espada, the vice president-elect of Guatemala, was aboard the plane to Miami. Wayne Smith of UUSC and I greeted him and congratulated him. He graciously allowed us to take a picture with him. Wayne told him that we had been international election observers and about UUSC having projects in Rabinal. Wayne added that he and UUSC President Charlie Clements might be at the inauguration. Espada said he had been an admirer of John Kennedy and that he had inspired him to go into politics. This unexpected and enjoyable meeting suggested that something new was stirring in Guatemala.

Here in Guatemala, we've arrived as a 21-person delegation sponsored by UUSC to accompany UUSC's partner, the Maya-Achi Association for Holistic Development (ADIVIMA), as well as other allies, to observe the current election process. This was the run-off presidential election of Guatemala, and the two candidates were Alvaro Colom from the National Unity for Hope and General Otto Perez-Molina from the Patriotic Party.

November 3, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz. Juan de Dios Garcia, director of ADIVIMA, receives us and proudly shares that after a year of negotiations the Guatemalan government is about to start the identification and verification process to determine reparations for the indigenous people displaced by the construction of the Chixoy Dam. The negotiations have been conducted at the highest of levels: the government, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank, with the mediation of the Organization of American States. "We don't want individual payment for those affected. What we want is to create a fund for the design and implementation of a local development plan that will benefit us all", says Juan de Dios.

Nov 4, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz. Election Day. The day was calm and although there was low turnout in the morning, by 6 p.m. when the polls closed, we were looking at a turnout of about 40 percent. No acts of violence were reported. As we watched the tallying of the vote, the difference between the amounts won by the two presidential candidates was minimal. At about nine o'clock, when the first preliminary results from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal were announced, Rabinal had voted for General Perez-Molina, of the Patriotic Party. But the country results showed Alvaro Colom, from the National Unity for Hope, had won.

Nov 5th, Antigua, Guatemala. Alvaro Pop, indigenous political analyst, shares his views: "For the first time in the history of Guatemala, the election was won with the rural vote, the indigenous vote.

"There has been a break in Guatemala with this election. I firmly believe we won't have another military regime elected. In the next two terms we will witness the emergence of indigenous leadership that will surprise us all."

This post was written by the Rev. Carlton Elliott Smith, assistant minister at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Mass. Rev. Smith is on a JustJourney Election Observance Delegation with UUSC in Guatemala.

November 1, 2007
9:00 p.m.

We are at the end of our first day here at Hotel Los Pasos in the city of Antigua, once the colonial capital of Central America. We have 21 in our delegation, and are a combination of UUSC staff members, lay leaders, ministers, students, and one congressional staff member. After breakfast, Dr. Charlie Clements, UUSC’s president and CEO, gave highlights of the history of UUSC, going back to a few years before WWII and the work of Rev. Waitstill Sharp and his wife Martha, who were instrumental in helping more than 2,000 people escape interment and extermination at the hands of the Nazis.

In the early afternoon, our presenter, Miguel Angel Albizures, spoke to us about his experience as a journalist, union organizer, and activist working on behalf of families of the displaced and the disappeared. He was in exile himself for at time, and took on leadership of one of the unions in the 1980s, when assuming such a position was to invite assassination.

Miguel Angel provided background for our understanding of the difficult choices facing the Guatemalans as they elect their next president -- both of the remaining candidates are allied with the military and/or the big businesses that have dominated the government and corrupted the possibility of democracy here for decades. He also acknowledged that Guatemala’s Left has not provided the voting public with a strong alternative to the run-off contenders. At the same time, he affirmed the importance of our presence and that of other international organizations that are deterring greater violence and fraud around the election process.

Late in the afternoon, we had a guided tour of Antigua, including many of its beautiful ruins – the Cathedral, the Franciscan Monastery, the pilas (a kind of ancient, open-air laundromat). We also passed through the town’s Central Park, which was teeming with people enjoying the national holiday of All Saints.

We walked across town to the general cemetery, where graves and family sepulchers were decorated with abundant varieties of flowers, wreaths, and greenery, as people honored their dead by renewing their final resting places. There were thousands of people and many vendors at the entrance to the cemetery, and many people inside, walking in, out, and around. Part of our contingent even had a close encounter with General Otto Perez Molina, one of the two run-off candidates, who caused quite a stir when he showed up to pay his respect at his father’s grave.

We gathered in the hotel’s “chapel” (the building was once a convent, like many of the hotels, homes, and ruins here), where we viewed an edited version of the documentary Discovering Dominga, the devastating story of a young Maya-Quiche’ woman who escaped at age 11 from the 1982 massacre of her village in Rabinal, the town where we will do our election observance this weekend. She ended up in the United States with a family and eventually returned to Guatemala to reconnect with aunts, uncles, and cousins she left behind: both her parents were slain, her mother among the 70 women and 107 children who were systematically led up a hill and shot. This important film was partially funded by UUSC and is a must-see for anyone seeking to understand the injustice visited upon the Maya.

Gracias a todos for your thoughts and prayers for our safety and health.

Looking into the school bathroom is like taking the pulse of the school itself. Is the bathroom clean and stocked with soap? Students are probably safe and learning. Filthy, smoke-filled, and graffiti-covered? Warning: students probably feel threatened and their learning environment is likely equally appalling.

It was with this first-hand experience that a group of kids began organizing for better bathrooms to be included in the rebuilding of their hurricane-ravaged New Orleans schools. And by "better," the kids mean unlocked, functioning, clean, and safe. But they didn't stop there. They want their bathrooms to be the first green public school restrooms in the country. And it looks like they may get their way.

Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools (Rethink) is a group of students in New Orleans with the simple vision of a great education for every kid in the city, regardless of race or class. Pre-Katrina, New Orleans schools ranked among the worst in the nation. Katrina destroyed most of them. Rethink sees this as an opportunity to make the schools better. And who knows more about schools than kids?

Rethink kids "dream, document, and take action" to improve their schools. Just one of the many dreams they are acting on is the dream of green bathrooms. These bathrooms will improve indoor air quality and energy and water efficiency. They will also be clean and safe.

This summer, Rethinkers worked with an architect to design a green bathroom. In July, they held a press conference about their work. School district authorities committed to using the Rethinkers' design. Now a contractor designing the district's master plan has asked the Rethinkers to help.

The UUA-UUSC Guld Coast Relief Fund is proud to be Rethink's partner in the struggle to rebuild the Gulf Coast with justice.

[Note: The friend of one of our constituents shared this information with us. The writer is currently in Burma.]

October 6, 2007

Dear Friends,

The events of the past weeks are shocking, barbaric, and unbelievable.

I was moved to tears to see the overwhelming support of the international community, especially since today, Saturday, is the Support the Monks' Protest in Burma Day. I wish the people in Burma had access to the news to know how many millions around the world are gathering in solidarity. I will most certainly relay this message of support upon my return. Information has been cut off to most of the country. Some people have been arrested for listening to the BBC and VOA.

I am aware that the news coverage of Burma has declined over the past days. This is primarily because the Internet was shut down. The BBC received 20,000 images in one day, they received but 12 the next, when the government shut down the Internet for the entire country. The violence has not stopped. So many are being taken away at night, beaten, and detained. I have eyewitness accounts from several Burmese saying that the violence is continuing in neighborhoods during the night. These incidents aren't being photographed because only the soldiers are allowed on the streets during curfew hours.

Here are a few stories that aren't making the news:

One man I know posted negative images of the regime on his blog and escaped just before the authorities came to his house. He and his family are safe, back home in Korea.

Demonstrators identified in the international news such as CNN and the BBC are being arrested at night, beaten, and taken away. One long-haired Burmese man seen on the BBC is in hiding. He came in the middle of the night to my friend's house, asking that he cut his hair to hide his identity.

The monasteries are empty. We don't know for sure where the monks are.

Many of the wounded demonstrators came to a health clinic I know about. The army demanded that they board it up within 10 minutes or they would be arrested. A friend saw several corpses, and many arrests are still being made at night in the houses of her neighborhood.

The hardest thing to deal with right now is the lack of reliable information and the complete lock down of the Internet, which has been down for over a week. Though all the major news items of the past weeks have happened within a mile or so of my house, the lack of information/news journalism is paralyzing. The paradox is that we continue with our daily life: we still go to school and to the fruit market, passing truckloads of armed soldiers.

Life, strangely, goes on, which seems, somehow, so very surreal, as if we're all dreaming.

Through it all, we have been deeply moved by the brave in heart, the demonstrators and monks who risked their lives for peace. The exuberance of the Burmese people in the streets those first few days of mass demonstrations was palpable; it was as if a weight had been lifted off of the country: everyone was happy, and smiling in the streets. The lid of oppression had been temporarily lifted. It was so inspiring to see the demonstrations and to see the people standing up in unity after all these years.

One of my friends was a teacher at the University of Rangoon during the 1988 uprising. She saw all her students taken away. Though I long for home, I want to be a witness for what is happening. Just being here matters.

I strive to be like the monks in the streets by being as peaceful as I possibly can. As truckloads of soldiers roam the streets, I look at their faces. Some of them are terrified, having been forced to join the armed forces. They are asked to "kill or be killed."

We are all assessing the risk factors and are being pushed outside of our comfort zones in these times. We are taking calculated risks. We are not discouraged by the suppression of the demonstrations; there is a deep, deep dissatisfaction among the people that still remains. Over the past two decades hundreds of thousands have died in struggles to create independence and democracy, and it is not over.

Many of you have called or e-mailed asking how you can help.

One way to help is keeping informed and spreading the word about what is happening in this country. The Internet offers much better commentary than the television media, with many support groups forming overnight to organize campaigns and peace vigils.

Please forgive the somber note of this letter. I'm usually much more upbeat and optimistic. But, I'm finding it difficult to be cheery these days, and I walk around with a deep, deep sadness for the nation of Burma and the people who I love so dearly.

Thanks for your prayers and support,

In Peace,

(Anonymous)