The Workshop: for Activist Organisations

Welcome to episode two of the workshop. Okay, so today's episode is part one of a two part series titled The Master's Tools. Part of what inspired this podcast was the sheer plethora of approaches, conversations, recipes, frameworks, spells, books, politics, and other expressions of feminist knowledge that lend so much insight into building and sustaining organizations as sites of liberation. Right? There are just so many resources around that together. I kind of think of as a bit of a constellation, similar to patterns of stars that voyages would perhaps read to interpret their positioning in relation to where they want to go. In the same way, we can and must tap into and learn to interpret systems of our collective knowledge to orientate ourselves, give cardinal points to our positioning, and map our way forward.But hold up, before we catapault ourselves into liberatory reimaginings and insights within our political lineages. Part of why I want to host this series is because I feel there is something really important we first need to unpack when we talk about liberation. What exactly is it that we are trying to liberate ourselves from? And are there systems that constrain activist organizations from pursuing liberation as something tangible, experienced, and sustainable? Now, as a footnote, when we talk about activists in the NGO sector and activist organizations on this podcast, I want to quickly take a moment to distinguish this podcast's audience from the majority of players within the NGO sector. Here, we're talking about actors that are doing the hard work of consistently reckoning with their power in relation to their contexts of organizing. We're talking about folks and collectives who care less about the flashy lights they mount around their newsletters and social media posts and care infinitely more about the purposefulness and sustainability of their relationships with allies. Even when, and especially when, those allies don't hold the kind of social capital that give us visibility. We're talking about organizations whose leadership are intent on hiring people whose sense of purpose align with the most rebellious and liberatory visions of the organization. About organizations whose staff insist on designing programs in community with others. We're talking about activists who step into organizations with lived experience that resonates with the desires and knowledges expressed in the communities their organizations serve. If any of those descriptions resonate with how you understand your work and your place of work, this is for you. Okay, so back to our question. Attempting to liberate ourselves implies that we're not free, right? What is constraining us? The organizations in which we locate ourselves, hold people and orientations of work that are close to our hearts at the same time. There is a reality that for as long as we remain oblivious to, it prevents us from stepping into radical imaginations of alternative realities. This will perhaps not be the first time you have heard in these or other words, that if we situate the NGO sector within its historical context, it is an instrument of capitalist white supremacist patriarchy. Hear me out for a second, because as activists, it is important that we notice the water we are swimming in. This system, sometimes referred to as the NGO Industrial complex in its collusion with governments, development agencies and philanthropy is just another way in which colonization has reinvented itself in what some folks might refer to as the post-colonial era. This is what we need to liberate ourselves from. Over this and a follow up episode, I want to shed some light on the history. The power frameworks, and also some patterns of lived experience I've witnessed among. Activists working in organizations that expose age old colonial tactics for inventing and perpetuating logics of oppression. While the existence of the NGO sector is intrinsically tied to our world's colonial history, the narratives plural of that history are expansive and complex. The purpose of this series is by no means to provide a comprehensive history or expand on the complexity of these narratives. It is simply to offer a starting point for further conversation. As such, in part two of this series, The Master's Tools, we will explore just five strategies tried and tested over five hundred plus years of European expansion into the rest of the world that were used to erase, pillage, and oppress whole peoples that characterize the structures and experiences of a non-governmental and non-profit organizational work today. But before we dive in, I want to use this episode to frame this discussion with the radical intervention made by Audre Lorde in her speech at an academic conference organized by the New York Institute for the Humanities in nineteen eighty four. It is a speech turned essay titled The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. At this point, I really want to give credit to a friend of mine, Tigist, for bringing me back to Audrey Lord's work in recent months. Tigers. Thank you. It has been a gift re-immersing my politics in Audre Lorde's critique and vision. At the conference, Audre Lorde was speaking from the position of a black lesbian woman in academia that had been invited to speak on a series of papers dealing with the role of difference within the lives of American women. differences of race, sexuality, class and age. She pointed out the irony of the request made for a conference designed for a professional community whose values and practices only serve to exacerbate those differences through the lens of a white feminist racism. If it is okay with you, the listener, I would like to quote two brief excerpts of her speech that must be listened to with a cognizance of the time and place in which it was given. These excerpts are relevant for our purposes here, because the context from which Lord gave this speech offers an anecdote of the oppressive systems in which activist organizations find themselves working within today. They also offer a meticulously articulated perspective on what liberating ourselves from those same systems requires. My voice cannot ever do justice to the embodied knowledge from which Audre Lorde spoke these words. And so I thank you for your generosity in advance in allowing me to quote them here in the context of this episode. Audre Lorde states, and I quote, "It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, black and third world women and lesbians. And yet I stand here as a black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of black feminists and lesbians is represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is sad. In a country where racism, sexism and homophobia are inseparable. To read this program is to assume that lesbian and black women have nothing to say about existentialism, the erotic women's culture and silence. Developing feminist theory, all heterosexuality and power. And what does it mean in personal and political terms? When even the two black women who did present here were literally found at the last hour. What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow parameters of change are possible and allowable." End quote. She later continues, and I quote again, "Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women, those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference, those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older, know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change." End quote. Now, if you don't mind me saying, these two excerpts are bursting at the seams with feminist juice, what Audre Lorde speaks to sits at the heart of intersectional feminist critique of how activist movements are built. But for the purposes of this episode, I want to lift just two delectable threads of argument that speak directly to our purposes as organizational actors working towards any interpretation of social justice and change. For one, Lorde exposes how this community of professional, white heterosexual women assimilates practices of racism and patriarchy, even within the context of a collective outward intention to drive change. The organizers of the conference had made minimal efforts to include black women's perspectives at the conference. These efforts that some might even refer to as performative in and of themselves revealed two things. They revealed the degree to which the organisers did not consider black women as being able to contribute to multiple spheres of conference discussions. They also revealed the organisers perspective that the discussions taking place outside of that panel benefited from the absence of, and perhaps would even have been threatened by, black women's contributions. As I say this, is anyone getting flashbacks to the latest rollout of your organisation's diversity, equity and inclusion policy? Ugh. Secondly, Mama Lord thrusts the fate of our survival and our capacity to recognise our interdependencies and harness our differences as strengths. Lord eloquently points to the severe limitations, if not mere illusion, of change that is possible when we do not embrace difference and dismantle power monopolies within our communities of practice change built using the master's tools, which...

Welcome to the very first episode of The Workshop - an ideation hub for activating our collective intelligence around what it means for organisations working for change, healing and liberation to embody those very experiences within themselves as a first location of impact.The point at which our activist work meets our contexts is constantly shapeshifting. Each inform the other. If we are to bring our visions for liberation into our everyday lived experiences of our work, it requires creative interventions that resist, hack and confront the patterns of current systems and ways of being that perpetually reinforce oppression.In this episode, you will get to hear a short story about my own experience stepping into my very first job at a feminist organisation in South Africa. You will also learn about the kind of content you'll get to tune into when listening to future episodes.If you are looking for a toolshed laden with knowledges, frameworks, recipes, spells, kits, gadgets and materials that feminists are making and using to invoke liberation as a shared experience for their organisations and constituencies, you've come to the right place.Follow this podcast and watch this space!