When It Hits Home: follow-up and the future

Last Wednesday, February 24th, 150 people attended When It Hits Home: an evening concerning intimate partner violence.  The event, sponsored by The Xenia Institute, the Center for Social Justice, and the OU Women’s and Gender Studies program, pre-screened One in Three, a film on domestic violence created by local Oklahoma filmmakers.  After the film, dialogue fellows from Xenia facilitated a public dialogue designed to create lists of ideas and topics for future discussion and action.  The various lists were assembled into a single document that was then sent to the event attendees.  It is our hope that the attendees will continue working with this issue alongside our work.  The list can be seen here:

When It Hits Home: ideas through dialogue

Additionally, three podcasts were produced leading up to the event.  One podcast was a conversation with the filmmakers of One in Three, another was a conversation with an OU law professor and former domestic violence prosecutor, and the final one was made up of highlights from the first Xenia/WGS joint event on domestic violence, held in April 2009.

Gabe and Leguiera podcast

Connie Smothermon podcast

Don’t Look Away podcast

Click here for a gallery of photos from the event:

When It Hits Home photo gallery

When It Hits Home: ideas through dialogue

Last week, after the pre-screening of the film One in Three, The Xenia Institute facilitated a public dialogue session with the screening attendees.  We asked the group leaders to report ideas that the groups came up with and topics for further discussion.  These ideas and topics are in raw form, but it is our hope that they might be considered carefully and worked with further.  After all, the idea to pair a public dialogue with a film screening came from a joint Xenia and OU Women’s and Gender Studies event almost one year ago.  Who knows what might come next…

Below are the ideas and topics in no particular order:

• A series of school assemblies with speakers and videos, maybe in conjunction with a direct service agency or a group that specializes in violence prevention.

• Training a team of youth who could make presentations at other schools on the topic of intimate partner violence and rape, in particular engaging students in role playing and engaging young men.

• Public service announcements through the local media: newspapers, radio, and the public library.

• Start in preschool/kindergarten by educating children in what it means to be authentic with one another, especially concerning gender relations.

• Training teachers to recognize the signs of abuse, neglect, and relationship issues.

• Parents beginning conversations with their children concerning appropriate and inappropriate forms of touching etc.

• People need to understand how to say “no” and how to hear “no.”

• Educating the general public on how to be a “viable and effective third party” when they are faced with a potential domestic violence situation. (Getting hotline numbers and resources into the hands of the general public.)

Pondering Dialogue…

Seeing as you, my readers, are checking out a dialogue organization website I can only guess you share my interest in this particular issue. Working from this shared interest, I want to ponder on what it means to dialogue with others in a meaningful way, and  how dialogue is being promoted and carried out, (particularly interfaith dialogue).

These last few days I have attended a serious of lectures by religious scholar Stephanie Saldana, author of the lovely book “The Bread of Angels”, and active proponent of religious dialogue.  When retelling her  experiences as a Christian woman in the Middle East and her deep appreciation of Islam, Saldana made an observation about the nature of dialogue, “Dialogue is like marriage counseling…”. That it is only after you have built a deep relationship with someone over time that you can truly engage in dialogue where you bring up issue that you deeply struggle over and disagree upon instead of sticking to your comfort zones of similarities.

I found it interesting to compare this conception of dialogue to those put forth by Xenia members in the “What is Dialogue” video series, (which can be found here). For myself,  dialogue is not dependent on time. It is possible to know someone for years without ever having had a deep exchange just as it is possible to meet someone once and have a life changing experience with them. Indeed one of my own such experiences was an evening-long conversation at a local cafe with a elderly gentleman from West Texas. While we came from very different backgrounds and belief systems, we were able to see each other as human, sit down, and struggle together over issues which often send people into screaming matches. It is this seeing each other as human which I feel lies at the very heart of dialogue. While it often takes time to see others in such a way sometimes, it is an immediate realization which shocks one to the core.

However, instead of focusing solely on what it means to be in dialogue with others, a topic which I feel has been well covered by others within the Xenia Institute,  I instead wish to turn our attention to the ways we try to promote dialogue and organize “dialogue events”.

During her visit Saldana offered a critique, which inspired this blog, on the way major dialogue events are often conducted. As she explains from her own experiences, formal dialogue events are generally structured as a panel or meetings where the speakers, who have never met before, talk about issue of unity. The problem is that the panelists often do not end up engaging over the issues, rather they attempt to answer the questions from their tradition’s official stance instead of interacting with each other. Moreover they are put into the position trying to represent an entire tradition when they are just one person. Finally, as such events generally invite an “official” representative of a religion  instead of average practitioners, it is often the case  that women and members of submovements are left out of these formal dialogue opportunities.

For the most part I would agree with this critique. From my own experiences with interfaith dialogue events (and their political equivalent: the “bi-partisan discussion”) there is often a frustrating lack of deep engagement going on. Rather people tend to talk to each other instead of with each other. Moreover, at such events I often feel as though people focus more on discussing dialogue and why it is important rather than actually engaging in it. I don’t necessarily believe this lessens the value of such events, just that they accomplish a different level of conversation, which is still  important for encouraging future discussion. If personal dialogue is like marriage counseling which takes place after deep acquaintance, than dialogue panels are like the awkward first date which might lead to more promising things.

Still I feel that we need to start considering different models for “dialogue events” and new ways of facilitating dialogue within communities, for example, during formal events trying to focus on individuals as being part of their tradition rather than as being representatives of said tradition. One might also structure dialogue events to meet over an extended time in more personal settings, (such as Xenia does with its dialogue groups). Finally, for dialogue to occur there must be respect toward the other: a seeing them as they are rather than what you assume… But this does not mean dialogue must be harmonious or even particularly friendly at times. Perhaps groups might try to go beyond the unifying aspects of dialogue often employed to keep people polite and let members emphasize their difference even if it is challenging to others.

These are issues with which I have been struggling for some time as I work with what I hope to accomplish and learn by becoming involved in the dialogue movement. I feel it is important to occasionally take a step back and look at expectations, methods, and assumptions of  “encouraging dialogue” so as to understand how we have affected the world, to see what we need to do to remain true to the spirit of dialogue rather than being caught up in its ideals.

Xenia Institute completes video series, “What is Dialogue?”

In the past three years, many people have asked us the same question: what is dialogue?  Next come questions about specific meanings for the word “dialogue” and the way we use it at Xenia.  We also get several questions a week concerning our vision for the future: transformation through dialogue.  Since these topics are constantly in our hearts and minds, we decided to produce a series of short videos on this subject.

We proudly submit these four videos for the first time in one place.  Enjoy them as you contemplate the question with us: what is dialogue?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Last video on Dialogue released today…

Today we publish our last segment of the series called, “What is Dialogue?”  This four part series was produced with help from Xenia dialogue fellows, volunteers, community leaders, and Dr. Tom Boyd, the keynote speaker at our fourth annual Sam Matthews Social Justice Award Banquet.

Please enjoy, and stay tuned as we continue to explore dialogue in various ways at The Xenia Institute.

Who Would You Let in Your Political Bed?

It was Charles Dudley Warner who said, “Politics make strange bedfellows.”  I suppose that all depends on with whom you are sleeping, politically of course.  The truth of this quotation is that politics is all about coalition building.  If you want to create or change a policy, you need support.  But, in this game there is more than one ball in the air.   At any given time, a multitude of issues are being discussed, organized around and acted upon.  Political parties help to build coalitions and cohesion.  You will usually be on the same side of the aisle as those with whom you share a political party.  However, as watching health care in the US Senate has taught us, parties often find themselves trying to play “red rover” with the other side.

However, coalition building is difficult because some issues cut so close to the bone.  Can a gay pro-life representative join forces with a homophobic pro-life representative on their shared interest against abortion?  Taking a stand with another elected official is a serious statement.  But, are there some issues that prevent you from even standing up with another person?  For me, homophobia is a huge barrier to allyship.  Gay culture and people have always been a big, positive part of my life so I take issue with people who would seek to tear down the LGBT community for whom they love.  Other complete no-go issues for me are misogyny and racism.  Are there issues so dear to you that you could not work with some one who opposed you on them?  Or, in other words, “Who would you let in to your political bed?”

I have been reading Teddy Kennedy’s memoir, True Compass over the last couple of weeks.  He was constantly faced with the challenge of finding allies to support the issues which mattered to him, such as health care and immigration.  Here is a small section of the book.

Eastland’s racial views posed a moral problem for me.  Civil rights became one of the defining causes of my career.  How could I seek guidance, or cooperate in any way, with a proponent of segregation?

My decision regarding Eastland-in fact, my abiding impulse to reach across lines of division during my career-took strength from the concluding phrase of Lincoln’s first inaugural address, on the eve of the Civil War.  I decided to put faith in ‘the better angels of our nature.’  I worked with James Eastland; in fact, the two of us became friends.  Then and always, I would work with anyone whose philosophies differed from mine as long as the issue at hand promoted the welfare of the people, and I would continue to await those better angels, and to remain confident in ultimate justice.

I would like to believe in the better angels of all of us.  In fact, I would imagine that for the issues of racism, misogyny and homophobia, both sides would benefit from some relationship with the other.  When we isolate ourselves, we stop seeking to dialogue with the rest of teh world.  But, it is through dialogue and learning from those who differ from us that we learn the most.  As I have written, diversity is the servant of dialogue. Maybe bedfellows is too intimate of an analogy.  But, we can share a handshake, a meal and a conversation with even those who differ the most from us.

Third Podcast Highlights “Don’t Look Away,” the event that started it all

Today we offer part 3 in our podcast series concerning domestic violence.  Part 3 is a collection of highlights from Don’t Look Away: violence against women and human rights in Oklahoma.  This event was held last April as a collaboration between The Xenia Institute and the OU Women’s and Gender Studies program.  This first collaboration created many friendships between the two entities and started a conversation on domestic violence issues that will continue for some time.

As we prepare for tonight’s event, When It Hits Home: an evening concerning intimate partner violence, we found we should take a look back at the event that started it all.

Don’t Look Away podcast

“What is Dialogue” video series: part 3

Today we release part 3 of our video series on dialogue.  Xenia dialogue fellows, community leaders, and friends of Xenia take up the question: what is dialogue, and how can it change the way we interact with each other?

What Bayh’s Retirement Tells Us About Ourselves

Bayh has always been shall we say a frustrating sort. Never a profile in courage.

This marks perhaps the kindest response from the liberal blogosphere to Evan Bayh’s decision to leave the Senate.  Michael Tomasky’s thoughts from across the pond (The Guardian is published in the United Kingdom) at least gives Bayh the benefit of the doubt as to his future.  Perhaps because there is talk that his hasty exit might open the way to a Republican takeover of his seat on November, the conservative blogs have been somewhat kinder.  John Stossel offers a positive view of the move based on Bayh’s remarks that he could create more jobs in private industry.  This drew a strong response from Matthew Yglesias:

The popularity of this sort of rhetoric among small-government types mostly illustrates how small-brained they are. It should be both obvious and uncontroversial to observe that the policy environment shaped by congress has an impact on the welfare of the American people that far exceeds that of most businesses. This is equally true whether or not you’re skeptical of the value of activist government.

James Fallows follows a similar argument in questioning the timing and suddenness of Bayh’s exit:

If he really cared about his Indiana constituents and their problems through that time, great! But if so, how can he walk away with this kind of careless disregard about whether, in the style of his departure, he is smashing up things that had said were important to him. If, on the other hand, these issues and people never really mattered that much, and public life had been a kind of popularity contest — well, that may be true of a lot of politicians, but they don’t like to reveal it quite this bluntly.

However, even the tone of these arguments seems civil compared to some of the other tongue lashings that have been handed out at Evan Bayh’s expense:

The Pernicious Influence Of Lefty Blogs  |  Ta-Nehisi Coates

To double down, it’s not so much that he’s “centrist,” or “moderate,” it’s that his centrism has no real policy core. I don’t know how you support the Bush tax-cuts and style yourself a deficit hawk. Policy-wise, there’s nothing “leftist” about being against the Iraq War. But politically-speaking, the anti-war folks were caricatured as a bunch of hippies who don’t understand national security.

…

But so often with “centrist” Dems, I feel like I’m just watching people take positions so that they can claim to be moderate/independent because it sounds good.

The Emptiness of Evan Bayh  |  Ross Douthat

America needs politicians who stake out interesting, politically-courageous positions on important policy questions. What it doesn’t need is politicians who occupy the safest possible ground on the great issues of the day, shift slightly left or slightly right depending on the state of public opinion, and then get congratulated by the press for being so independent-minded.

Evan Bayh  |  Matthew Yglesias

Simply put: He’s an immoral person who conducts his affairs in public life with a callous disregard for the impact of his decisions on human welfare. He’s sad he’s not going to be president? He doesn’t like liberal activists? He finds senate life annoying? Well, boo-hoo. We all shed a tear.

Bayh Low  |  Jonathon Chait

This was just a completely unremarkable man who, had he not been the handsome son of a famous politician, would never in a million years have been a Senator.

If you’ve been a regular reader of my work, you know that I’m typically not this heavy on the quotations, and if you’re one to follow the links, then you might notice that I’ve been very particular in my editing of the quotes that I have shared.  All of this is to highlight the point: dialogue on the political landscape has all but come to a standstill.

With the TEA Party movement apparently gaining momentum (or at least media coverage), this isn’t a particularly astute observation.  Yet I think that Bayh’s retirement has opened the door to understanding that this isn’t just a right-wing phenomenon.  The critiques leveled at Bayh’s centrism, whether warranted or not, still indicate a “do-nothingness” on the part of political moderates who have passed over opportunities to try and foster compromise and move government forward.  (Anyone remember Henry Clay from their U.S. history courses?)  The venom spewed in Bayh’s direction, again, whether warranted or not, has exposed the frustration on the left and its willingness to resort to verbal broadsides as well.  Frankly, we’re all failing to rise to the occasion when it comes addressing the issues we face.

I doubt that I can sum it up any better than Daniel Schorr’s commentary for All Things Considered:

That [Bayh’s decision] will have electoral consequences goes without saying. But the sullen mood of America goes beyond shifting party loyalties. Many Americans seem close to rejecting the whole machinery of government that Evan Bayh found wanting. What happens when the people turn their back on their government is a phenomenon that this democracy has yet to experience.

I can only pray that we find a way to reclaim our role as citizens who share this economic and political space that we call the United States of America.

Reflections On Help and Service.

At the Xenia Institute’s Fifth Annual Sam Matthews Social Justice Award Banquet, Commissioner Lisa Schmidt, of the Norman Human Rights Commission, gave a fascinating keynote address over the difference between help and service.

She began with a quote by Dr. Rachel Naomi Reman M.D.:

When you help you see life as weak, when you fix you see life as broken, when you serve you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego and service the work of the soul.

Commissioner Schmidt went on to discuss how the difference between helping and serving is one of intention and relation with others:

Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality, it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength.

I found this to be an amazing distinction and immediately starting reflecting on how help and service are used is realms such as the non-for-profit sector or foreign aid programs. For example, like many soon-to-be collage graduates, I hope to volunteer with the Peace Corps and serve in another country for 2 years working on development projects. Notice the term “serve”. I found interesting that Peace Corp recruitment focuses on the word “service”. Initially I thought it was an attempt to appeal to the American patriotic spirit à la military terminology, but now I see it in a different light. Perhaps someone in the Peace Corp advertising department read Dr. Remen’s work. More likely they learned it from hard experience by going into communities and realizing that the people didn’t want “help” but rather partnership.

At a discussion led by Ghanaian activist Franciska Issaka, which I was fortunate enought to attend,  she at one point said that that members of her community love when international volunteers come to work with them, but they dislike when people come to direct or guide them. Looking back on this remark I now see how it exemplifies this distinction between help and service. One is a situation of equality where all are working together while the other is a situation of an inherent inequality between those charge and those in need–take this too far and it begins to smack of  Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden“.

Please understand that no one is saying that helping others is a bad thing, simply that you must be aware of how your aid and intentions are perceived by those you aid (and by yourself). Helping someone get out of a burning car, helping someone cross the street, helping someone figure out how to use a computer. It is not bad to offer your help, indeed sometimes you might think it necessary for the safety of the other. But in doing so you are placing yourself in a position of authority, (i.e. I’m stronger, more knowledgeable, am in control, etc), which others might or might not appreciate—especially if they didn’t ask for your aid. As Commissioner Schmidt said:

People can feel this inequality and when you help you can inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them. We may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity, and wholeness.

So what does it mean to serve someone instead of help them? When you serve you are relating all that you are, (strengths, weaknesses, dreams, and doubts), to all that is the other. It is a yin-yang partnership of equality, where each person has skills which they can use to support where the other less able. When you serve you realize that you are learning as much as you teach and that no matter how “superior” you might appear in relation to another person you are equals. For example, you may have gone to university while they never completed a formal education, but at the same time they may be better able to operate in a rough economy because they were doing so while you were spending time in school. Service is realizing the cost-benefit analysis of experience and the knowledge that it all comes out in the wash (and that we’re all cleaner for it)

It seems to me that the challenge for those interested in social justice, non-for-profit work, foreign aid, etc. is to pay attention to when we’re helping as opposed to serving. What would the world look like if  the development programs of the IMF and World Bank were focused on serving those interested in shifting to an industrialized economy rather than to “help people help themselves“. How would the welfare system function if policy makers actually paid attention to the thoughts and suggestions of those using it? What would schools be like is we stopped helping at risk students and started serving them instead?

To end this discussion on intentions, respect, help and service, I will close with another quote by Dr. Reman:

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.

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