Working with groups is not easy. This is Ian McGeechan, manager of the British and Irish Lions before a dead rubber test. My friend Kathy Jourdain was quoted yesterday as saying “our power comes from our vulnerability.” This video reminds me of how that feels some days.
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A little reflection today about social change and Occupy coming out of a conversation yesterday. When I was a young man we talk about “movements” like we were on the go. From whatever place we were in we will move to another. And we marked this action with marches and demos, dancing and action. The feeling of action was powerful and palpable. Once in a while we occupied a place and sat there for a while. But in general we were all about the movement. We made ourselves different from those we were working against and we moved. Occupy did …
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Heard a great story today. I’m at a conference of union activists who are working to build their activist muscles up and do work in communities. One of the presenters here is Jason Sidener, who I’ve enjoyed spending a couple of hours with. Jason is the Member Mobilization Coordinator for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). he is abased in Madison, Wisconsin and played a key organizing role in the upheavals there in 2011 when public sector unions successfully stood up to Governer Scott Walker’s anti union agenda. Jason told a story today about some of …
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My friend Bob Stilger writes today from the radiation fields of Fukushima where he has been joining people for the past year in the work of remaking lives after the tsunami and the meltdown. It’s worth heading over to his blog to follow his ongoing discoveries there, but here are some good bits from today’s posting: People are learning how to co-exist, and more, with the radiation. One story I heard was about a town that wanted to have a festival with an outside play area for their children. Playing on the ground has become prohibited. …
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I was listening to a brilliant interview with the theologian and scholar Walter Bruggeman this morning. He was talking about “the prophetic imagination” and using the poetry of the Old Testament prophets to make a point about a key capacity that is missing in the world right now: the ability to deal with disruption. SImply, disruption is what happens when the plans we thought we had have suddenly changed. It could be a major economic collapse – a black swan event – or something so small as your bus left early. How we respond to disruption is a key …