In Search of Justice: Living the Questions
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet
Our world is calling for help. Do you hear? She is summoning all healers, artists, and truth tellers. Our communities—fatigued and burdened with struggling to create long overdue change socially and environmentally—desperately need social justice advocates and community organizers, risk takers and peace makers. Will the equity experts, mediators, and transformers of conflict, please stand up? Those of you with a history of making good trouble, please welcome the newcomers. Make room for the optimists and the cynics. All are welcome. All are needed.
There’s room for you too. Yes, you, whoever you are. I’m talking to you, the small business owner and freelance creative pro and the mom at my kids’ school and my aunt who probably reads this blog in Virginia. You. Me. All of us.
I have someone I want you to meet. Someone who can help guide us as we move into unfamiliar territory, this “new normal”. Her name is Michelle and she’s a Peace and Justice Specialist. Michelle asks the best questions (if you know me, you know I’m a sucker for questions that tilt you on end). We need to ask better questions of ourselves and each other as we navigate this world, and Michelle has been kind enough to share some of her wisdom.
Michelle
Helman
PEACE & JUSTICE SPECIALIST
[Lori Eberly] You're a peace and justice specialist. What is that, and how did you get into this work?
[Michelle Helman]: This is something I ask myself often to reflect on and adapt what my intention and impact is—what does this work look like off the page, beyond the written word, operationalized and in action? The current iteration is that I facilitate and evaluate community-driven change processes, with a focus on public health approaches to prevent violence, transform conflict, and foster healing to build peace and justice. It’s an interdisciplinary approach that engages human-centered design and recognizes that decolonization is a process, and that the process is an outcome. It involves dialogue, reflection, and collaborative design by asking open-ended questions through experiential learning, Popular Education and Liberatory praxis.
While working as a facilitator and educator designing and implementing programming at the intersection of youth and community development, education and public health, I noticed a two-fold issue and opportunity. First, people were trying to work together towards a common goal but had different understandings of what that goal was. This led to a lot of repression, conflict avoidance, tension, frustration and incongruity. Second, the focus on band-aid problem solving was a huge energy-suck away from reflection on the process to adapt programming based on community rather than funders’ goals. All of this is entwined with white supremacy culture.
So, I trained in communication and conflict resolution and became a certified mediator. I was awarded a Rotary Peace Fellowship to earn an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies which focused on participatory research methods, equitable program evaluation, and the intersection of peacebuilding, violence prevention, and public health. I worked in Colombia monitoring the 2016 Peace Accord implementation, facilitated dialogue with ex-combatants to transform conflict and heal communities. I recently collaborated with Prosper Portland and Portland Means Progress to co-design the Culture Change Roadmap, a free racial-equity journey tool for businesses, and led a remote self-care and resiliency training as well.
[LE] Wow. That’s a helluva CV. The bit about band-aid problem solving and adapting programming based on community rather than funders’ goals, really resonates with me as a social worker. Ties into all that white savior BS.
One of the tenants of white supremacy culture, which I see frequently in the Portland area, is fear of open conflict. How does this show up in the places you work?
[MH]: White supremacy culture’s focus on rational, linear, results-based processes is strengthened by repressed emotions and conflict avoidance. Repressing any emotion has a number of adverse effects on individual, community and systems health. What is repressed is going to find a way to manifest until it is recognized and addressed. It’s so common—familiar descriptors include “the elephant in the room” and “detouring”.
[LE]: Oh yes, I talk a lot about the elephant in the room in Fuckery. We’ll trip all over ourselves to avoid naming the thing right in front of us.
[MH}: Yep. It also shows up as white fragility, as attention-seeking or distracting behaviors, or violence. It shows up as asymmetrical power dynamics, decision making, competitiveness, and individualism. It is perpetuated via the female/male gender-binary as emotional vs. rational.
Oftentimes, by acknowledging the emotion and/or the conflict decreases its power and that ignites the transformation process. Conflict is necessary for change; to note conflict is not the same as suffering, although they certainly are related. It also depends on who is afraid of what. When we’re talking about white fragility and people with white culture being scared of conflict, that is likely because if the conflict is addressed things will change and they may lose power and social status. While this is necessary for change, it’s helpful to understand the underlying emotions and common needs such as belonging and community that drive the actions to keep someone safe but cause harm on folx with BIPOC culture.
The peacebuilding field is learning and acknowledging what social justice and community-based organizations have been saying, asking for, and fighting for all along: a locally-led, community-centered approach is essential to have sustainable, lasting change.
[LE] You introduced me to the concept of conflict transformation. Say more about that.
[MH]: It depends on how we define, understand, and experience conflict. Coming from a social justice and international peacebuilding background, I learned that many peacebuilding practitioners and theorists talk about positive and negative peace. For example, negative peace is the absence of conflict i.e. no guns, no police, etc. Positive peace deviates from the binary and examines peace as a non-linear process that is a cross-sector approach blending public health, business development, education, industries, etc.
The idea and process of conflict transformation builds on conflict resolution. In transformative mediation for example, two parties each affected by a conflict can engage in a facilitated dialogue process where they can share stories, explore differences, understand underlying needs, and collaboratively determine and design how they will co-create solutions. Generally, and ideally, they reach an agreement they can both commit to. This process might resolve the conflict and it transforms their relationship to each other through engaging in the process itself. This can be scaled up to different levels of society (such as the Colombian Peace Process) and aims to build infrastructure and democratic systems that allow for participatory processes.
Unsurprisingly, the peacebuilding field is recently learning and acknowledging what the social justice and community-based organizations have been saying, asking for, and fighting for all along: a locally-led, community-centered approach is essential to have sustainable, lasting change. Whether direct peacebuilding, humanitarian aid or social justice—there is a call to action and reflection of how, amidst best intentions, institutions are perpetuating white supremacy culture and doing harm against BIPOC human family and the earth. Conflict may be necessary to drive change, but not to promote injustice or suffering.
[LE]: As someone who has been active in social justice for many years, does anything feel different to you about the civil unrest since the murder of George Floyd?
[MH]: What currently feels different for me is how folx with white culture are realizing we are white and the implications that has on how we engage with our work. It’s interesting to observe and reflect on how white supremacy culture still shows up (within my own experience too), particularly regarding the urgency to act. I hear a lot of white folx asking what they should do, and they name how important it is to do the next DEI training now or by the end of the month. There is motivation but a lack of understanding of how to respond and what to do, how to be.
There is also a growing acknowledgement of racism as a public health crisis, and naming that a trauma-informed approach is necessary to heal. I’ve heard a few calls for reconciliation as well; there is nothing to reconcile as slavery and genocide were one-sided processes. Conciliation, conflict-transformation and healing are called for. I support the action of slowing down via reflection in white caucus groups as necessary to understand how we uphold and perpetuate white supremacy culture and to address the underlying emotions such as fear and in order to heal and transform. Personally it is different for me because I am more motivated to acknowledge and explore the intersectional aspects of my identity that I have suppressed due to heteronormative patriarchy and ableism, and simultaneously privileged to do so because I have white culture.
There is a growing acknowledgement of racism as a public health crisis, and naming that a trauma-informed approach is necessary to heal. I’ve heard a few calls for reconciliation as well; there is nothing to reconcile as slavery and genocide were one-sided processes.
[LE] It strikes me how nuanced it is to both slow down and take action. Becoming anti-racist requires deep relfection and self-awareness, yet we cannot become paralyzed. In a recent blog, my friend Hallie wrote about the danger of white folx freezing or staying silent. What suggestions do you have for those of us who want to embrace courage and take action?
[MH]: This really is the crux of the matter. I would invite a reflection on both courage and vulnerability. Too often when people of the dominant culture respond to urgency, calls to action, or want to do good, to be good, we have traditionally perpetuated harm. How can we strive to harmonize speaking up but not doing harm?
Neuroscience research on the mindbody’s stress and trauma-response includes flight, fight or freeze. This is a natural protective mechanism, not an excuse for inaction. Whether we see a snake or a coiled hose, we typically respond in the same way. When white supremacist culture has taught white culture and bodies to fear black or brown bodies and culture, the reaction can be similar.
We have the opportunity to slow down and learn about what your mindbody is doing whether you are preparing food or moving through your community. Understanding how trauma shows up and plays out internally and in your relationships, community, and work is part of “the work” of becoming antiracist. The call to action is to hold up the mirror to learn and reflect first, and then engage externally.
Now, this is no excuse for not speaking up for fear of making a mistake or being called out. Nor do I want to encourage calling-out policing culture rooted in perfectionism. White caucus groups or affinity spaces would be a great space to practice being vulnerable and speaking up, facilitated by a trauma-informed team of equity practitioners. Simultaneously, white folx can use their positions of power and privilege to leverage and promote BIPOC action, vote, sign petitions, etc. There are many ways to engage.
[LE]: What are the questions/reflection for ‘doing the work’ particularly relevant for folx with white culture?
[MH]: It depends on who is the ‘we’. Even the questions themselves can inform or influence the reflection process and the answers you get.
In mediation the magic question is, “What is the most important thing to you?” I enjoy exploring how power dynamics show up by asking open vs. closed-ended questions. For example, start your questions with who, what, where, when, why or how. A few other techniques I find useful are asking WHY several times—it’s a bit of a research approach that compliments the open-ended questions.
For me it is really important, as Rilke says, to live the questions. It’s critical to slow down, listen, and be curious about what is coming up is key, without pressure to answer a specific question. Alternatively, people with white culture can consider what ways we continue to perpetuate white supremacy culture and do harm. There are many BIPOC practitioners who offer questions and activities in their work. In The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture, Jones and Okun, (2001) ask the following to reflect on after reading their piece:
Which of these characteristics are at play in your life; how do they stand in the way of racial justice?
What can you and your community do to shift the belief(s) and behavior(s) to ones that support racial justice?
[LE]: There is controversy about the roles white people play in facilitating equity and inclusion. What are your thoughts on this?
[MH]: Racism and capitalism are conjoined twins, as Ibram X. Kendi writes about in How to be an Antiracist. It’s tough because there is a simultaneous liability and critical role of people with white culture, and racial inequity and oppressive structures affect us all. How can I be a white accomplice and bring the skills I have to support BIPOC colleagues in racial-equity and DEI work specifically? Or how can I ‘do the work’ because I’m doing the work regardless and also be aware of how I engage in ‘the work’ professionally?
While we’re still working within a capitalist framework, I feel that people should be recognized and compensated for their experiences and skills they bring. This is not to say any person can simply take a training and call themselves an expert. I consider what is feasible, realistic, ethical and equitable as someone who has been invited in to ‘do the work’. Discussing reparations might be a useful way to move the conversation around compensation forward as well.
[LE]: Who are your mentors and teachers?
[MH]: Ah! The people in my life who challenge me, who I disagree with or feel aversion towards are my most challenging and best teachers I am grateful for. I also constantly learn from BIPOC colleagues and friends who have been offering opportunities for awareness, growth, sharing and collaboration. I am currently learning a lot by engaging with the work of Remsaa Menakem, Sonya Renee Taylor, and adrienne maree brown. Slowing down to cultivate awareness of natural processes and change by paying attention to the earth and my connection to it has been pretty key as well.
[LE]: Thank you so much, Michelle. You’ve gifted us with several questions to live into, which is, as I see it, the task of leadership. In closing, what additional prompts drive the introspection needed to advance social justice?
Click to enlarge and save as a resource.
What or who are you leading – why?
What are you trying to change – why?
What is your role and what impact and influence do you have?
Why is your team important and essential?
What are you avoiding - why?
What are you excited about - why?
How can you slow down and build trust, vulnerability and teamwork?
Who do you go to for support - why?
What is the most important thing to you - why?
MICHELLE HELMAN designs, facilitates and evaluates community-driven change processes. She brings 20+ years of national and international experience as a Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) advisor and program specialist—leading adaptive change management processes with cross-cultural teams. Recently, Michelle co-created the Culture Change Roadmap with Prosper Portland after completing a MA of Peace and Conflict Studies as a Rotary Peace Fellow where she worked with the Kroc Institute monitoring the implementation of the 2016 Colombian Peace Accord. She brings a collaborative, trauma-informed approach supporting teams to engage in dialogue, transform conflict and operationalize strategic visions with a humanitarian approach to inclusive governance and security sector reform.
Feature image of protest by Sushil Nash