As part of its Seattle Fast Future program area, Sustainable Seattle hosted a meeting to address a statement overheard recently at a meeting on sustainability "There is no Sustainability without Social Justice and there is no Sustainability without Social Justice."
This is part of an ongoing effort to ask and find solutions for the hard questions in sustainability. The meeting was attended by Leah, Viki, Burr and Laura. Meeting notes are here, and anyone interested in attending the next meeting is invited to email us at info@sustainableseattle.org
Meeting notes with Viki Sonntag, Leah Werner, Burr Stewart and Laura Musikanski
How do we bring about change? How do we change the conditional responses that lead to social injustice? How do we achieve a way to bring about Cultural Justice ? Are we facilitating seekers or planners?
One Issue: social justice is a blind spot of many, with most preferring the comfort of control rather than the discomfort of structured violence i.e. racism, prejudice, bigotry…
Imagine a grid with (Dis)agreement on the Y axis, Uncertainty on the X axis. Where there is agreement and certainty, things are simple where there is medium amounts of disagreement and uncertainty, things are complex. Further out, things are complex. Where there is a large degree of uncertainty and disagreement, there is chaos. To bring about change in the area of complex and chaos, one needs leadership.
Leadership:
• Bring everyone in
• Model the way
• Create a shared vision
• Do your homework
• Encourage the heart
SOLID-LIQUID-GAS: Life occurs at the edge, in chaos.
Burr’s dream:
Less structure, more connection, can happen through the internet, with the globalization of self and of work.
• Standardized resume,
• Standardized project description
• Money origins labeled,
• Indicators with data readily available.
People are taking action, but essentially blind. We need to build capacity, allow people to see the structure, organize self in a way that
Action items:
• Building capacity to share information so a to facilitate self organizing – local experimentation creates need to share
o Burr is looking to create visuals to share with the community to facilitate understanding
• Bring light to Blindspot
o S2 is working with Tiachang to put in place Race- the power of illusion based training open to all in the Vance building.
• Bring each other to each others table – relationship building across boundaries.
o S2 will bring in social justice coordinator(s) to help build relationships and foster bringing each other to the each others table.
o Leah will help EcoPraxis to more deeply network.
• EcoPraxis will bring in resources to ensure social justice on B-Sustainable’s steering committee
• S2 plans to convene PALS. We will look to create PALS for Funders and NGOs on the issue and help bring about shared funding
• We all have a commitment to dialogue we started to change the way the world is.
• Bring global consciousness into what we are doing:
o S2 will make a blog entry about this meeting to be in real time globally in real time
Items to be addressed:
• Changing the images that brainwash us and create the blindspots
Resources:
The Alphabet and the Goddess
White Man’s Burden
It may be hard to remember now in the Age of Al Gore and Obama, but once upon a time, everyone in America was not “going Green.” EARTH DAYS looks back to the dawn of the modern environmental movement, from its post-war rustlings in the 1950s and the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's bestseller Silent Spring, to the first wildly successful 1970 Earth Day celebration, President Nixon’s unlikely creation of the EPA, and beyond. In personal testimony, the era's pioneers – including Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich, Apollo Nine astronaut Rusty Schweickart and renewable energy pioneer Hunter Lovins – reveal what originally motivated them to act, the political and social changes that have taken place over the years, and how they are moving forward now to forge positive change.
