There were a variety of pictures I could have used to illustrate this posting, just from Charlottesville alone.
But this is not specifically about Charlottesville, although what happened there in 2017 is the actual impetus for the occasion of my first posting in quite some time.
I just spent from Wednesday evening through Friday morning in St Louis, at Washington University, at an invitation only event titled Communities Overcoming Extremism: The After Charlottesville Project. This was the first event in an initiative that will continue with another gathering (in San Francisco,sometime in the Spring).
If I can quote from the goal of this project:
To build a national network of leaders and organizations that can empower our communities by providing the tools to overcome extremism, promote reconciliation and advance community respect and healing.
This immediate event was to
Address today’s extremism, intolerance and violence through law, public policy, social services and civic engagement.
The event planned in the Spring is to
Develop solutions for dangerous new trends that enable hate online, through service apps and in corporate environments.
There will be a Summer Policy Report in 2019:
Final report sharing insights to combat exremism and promote hope.
as well as a Year long Podcast Channel, to be launched this Winter:
Leaders across the country, in government, business, the academic and the activist communities, share how to counter extremism, intolerance, and political violence while promoting reconciliation.
this last will include taping of the sessions from this past weekend.
Please continue reading as I explain how I came to be involved (I certainly don’t consider myself a leader in the same category as many of the participants), who was participating, what it was like, and why I consider it important.
Certainly the events in Charlottesville in August 2017 shook many people. And yet they did not occur in isolation, or spring from nothing. We have over the last decade seen a rise in open extremism leading to events with tragic consequences — think of the slaughter at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin for example, where in 2012 a White Nationalist shot and killed 6 people and wounded four others. There has been extremist violence and disturbances in places like Portland Oregon, Chattanooga TN, and Berkeley CA in recent years (all of the places I have just mentioned had people from those communities present). There has been a resurgence of open White Nationalism, racism, Islamophobia, intolerance towards Sikhs, antiSemitism. We have clearly seen a resurgence of rhetoric and worse against the LGBT community.
Mike Signer was the Mayor of Charlottesville when the Unite the Right rally occurred. In C’ville the city council elects the mayor from among its members, but the city is largely run by a city manager. Mike had moved to Charlottesville because he was teaching several course at the University of Virginia, from whose law school he had graduated (he did his undergraduate at Princeton and a doctorate in Political Science at Cal Berkeley (where he worked with George Lakoff). As you can see by his Wikipedia bio, Mike has a long history of social and political activism, of working on policy and community issues.
I have known Mike for about a decade, starting when he was originally running for the Democratic nomination for Lt. Gov. of Virginia in the 2009 cycle. He is a native of Arlington VA, where I have lived since 1982. We have stayed in contact over the years. I had before this event occasionally run into him at various events, for example for the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at UVa (I am a graduate of the 2008 cohort of their Political Leaders Program, which brings together people from across both the geography of the Commonwealth and the breadth of political opinion to build groups of people who can work across divides on behalf of the Commonwealth — trust me, this is relevant). I had last seen Mike when he did a book event at the Library of Congress for his 2015 opus Becoming Madison: The Extraordinary Origins of the Least Likely Founding Father .
This initiative is an attempt to address a critical issue in our country.
It has garnered the support of a broad range of non-profit groups and foundations. These included the Fetzer Institute, The Anti-Defamation League, the Center for American Progress, the Ford Foundation, and the Charles Koch Institute (that is NOT a complete list, but is offered to be illustrative). It was deliberately non-partisan: our final public speaker was former US Senator Jack Danforth, a Republican. We were inspired by remarks of the likes of Khizr Khan, but also of Samar Ali, who has worked for both a Democratic Presidential administration (Obama) and Republican state administration (that of Gov. Haslam in her home state of TN). Samar has experienced having extremist attacks on her — including from her state legislature — in part because of her religious background, even though she had returned to TN to work in and make a difference for the state in which she grew up.
We had the US Attorney in St Louis, Jeff Jensen, who is also a former FBI agent. We also heard from Tom Brzozowski, Domestic Terrorism Counsel for the US Department of Justice. We had multiple mayors, including Steve Benjamin of Columbia SC, current President of the US Council of Mayors. We had people from all kinds of non-profits.
I told you the shooting at the Wisconsin Sikh Temple was very relevant. The President of the Temple was killed. His son, Pardeep Singh Koleka, only missed being there because he had gone home to get a notebook his daughter had forgotten. Pardeep had been a policeman, a school teacher, and for some of the years after the shooting a trauma therapist. You can read about Pardeep in this article in Atlantic . After the shooting, Pardeep reached out to a man named Arno Michaelis, a man who had been a key figure in the White Power movement. Together they now work in a non-profit called Serve2Unite, which works on
establishing a healthy sense of identity, purpose, and belonging that diverts young people from violent extremist ideologies, gun violence, school shootings, bullying, and substance abuse, along with other forms of self-harm.
I have given you a small taste of the breadth and depth of talent that was at this event. There were people who have been dealing with combating extremism for years. There were creative efforts about which even many activists did not know, for example, former Arlington VA school teacher and DC School Board member Marty Swaim, who founded an organization called Challenging Racism, which uses stories and conversations because
Through reading, stories, activities and conversations, participants learn to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. We encourage a basic understanding of racism, white privilege, the roots of racism and its more recent modern manifestations in our society. The skills developed here can be applied by anyone to many different topics and situations.
Mary’s work focuses on Arlington VA. She herself learned about an organization in St Louis founded after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson called WeStories, which offers the following on its Welcome page:
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF WHITE FAMILIES* FROM ALL ACROSS ST. LOUIS DECIDED TO START TALKING TO OUR YOUNG CHILDREN ABOUT RACE AND RACISM?
WOULD IT CHANGE HOW WE SEE OURSELVES?
HOW WE SEE OUR CITY AND ITS PEOPLE?
WOULD IT UNLOCK OUR ABILITY TO CONTRIBUTE TO A MORE HOPEFUL FUTURE?
It is clear that even as there has been an increase in extremism clearly starting BEFORE the Trump administration, but one the seriousness and dangers of which has increased in the past 2 years, there has been a simultaneous push-back, often organized from the grass roots, to try to address the issue that lead to extremism,
I have not touched on all the issues addressed, nor even mentioned some of the key figures, for example, Mary McCord, who led the National Security Division of the US Department of Justice (where she actually oversaw the investigations into Russian meddling in the2016 election and related), leaving to teach at Georgetown Law and to serve as principal litigator for the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (headed by Neal Katyal, former acting Solicitor General) whose purpose is to to use the power of the courts to defend American constitutional rights and values, primarily through litigation. It was Mary’s work that led to consent decrees signed by all the organizers of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville that effectively prevents another such event from happening in that city. Mary and her coworkers have found things in state constitutions and militia regulations that give some control especially over armed demonstrations, despite the extreme 1st Amendment protections provided for various kinds of demonstrations, including restrictions on the so-called hecklers’ veto.
Okay, you’ve read a lot of words.
I found myself increasingly drawn in as the conference went forward. I have been a teacher because I wanted to make a difference — I wanted to empower my students,and encourage them to believe that by participating in the political and social life of this nation they could make difference.
Teaching is always a long-term endeavor. That is, we may not see the results of the seeds we plant in our classrooms for more than a decade.
I am now 72.
I see our society in crisis because of extremism. Heck, I see the world in such crisis.
I wonder what I can do to help address it.
At this point I am not sure, but I am now seriously considering how I can best contribute to this kind of effort.
Clearly there are things in personal behavior that are relevant. For example, it is totally correct to challenge racist words, but it may not be effective in making change to call the person offering those words a racist. Such labeling can immediately set up barriers to any kind of further dialog.
If this world is going to be healthier and less divisive, we must seek to find common ground where we can. That includes examining our own biases, and seeking to understand the fears that may drive the biases of others.
Here it can be helpful to talk in ways that connect with their lives.
That is one purpose of stories, of narratives, especially personal narratives. I was impressed with the work in that regard of Narrative 4, and consider myself fortunate to have had several interchanges with Lisa Consiglio, the organization’s CEO and co-founder, an organization that includes among its key participants Reza Aslan and Terry Tempest Williams. A key to the work of Narrative 4 is building empathy. And to overcome extremism, empathy also fuels what Pardeep and Arno do, as it also underlays the work of Marty Swaim and also the folks at WeStories.
So one question I need to ask myself is am I in my own writing, speaking, teaching, acting for greater empathy or do my words and actions serve as roadblocks to achieving it, either in myself or to my audience.
The even started at 5:30 on Wednesday evening. By 1 PM on Thursday I was examining myself to see what it was I brought to this conference. Yes, I am a well known blogger, although I have done far less of that recently. But there was something beyond that. A vague idea starting forming in my brain.
I have never really belonged in any particular role. Occupationally I have been a salesman, a consultant, a manager, a computer programmer and systems analyst, a teacher. I have lead non-profit organizations and meetings, although I recognize I can be a very effective facilitator only when I am not also being directive (I need to minimize my own speaking to issues to allow space for others). I can serve as a sounding board.
I bring to the table a wide range of disparate experiences. Part of it has been my own wandering through a variety of religions and studying quite a few more — that often gives me a vocabulary and background information that enables me to help make connections across religious divides. It has also been living in diverse communities even as my own background was upper middle class white who attended elite schools. I have taught in elite schools and in wealthy communities and also in struggling schools in impoverished communities.
I have some skills as a speaker, and perhaps some as a writer.
I can summarize and synthesize ideas.
I have an understanding of political processes, both electorally but also in the functioning of organizations, internally and in their interactions with outside forces.
I have gotten to know a wide variety of people whose professional and occupational interests intersect with the issues that will have to be addressed.
In a sense, it is almost as if my life to this point has been to prepare me for the situation in which we now find ourselves.
That does not mean I know what to do with it. I’m not sure I could define a paying job that would enable me to leave teaching, although I don’t rule out that possibility.
What it does mean is that I may need to measure ALL that I do through a lens of how I can, with the skill set that I may have, contribute to making this world a better place in a time when extremism of various kinds hold the real possibility of ripping apart the world, our country, our individual communities.
I will continue to ponder what I experienced the past few days.
I will continue to learn more, to dialog with those already working on making a difference, to listen to their narratives, to learn from their experiences, and thereby perhaps determine what it is I can and should be doing.
Stay tuned.
Peace.