• Safer space in organizations.

• Safer space in organizations.
I’ve worked in several public and non-profit enterprises. In addition to my ever-present fear of rocking the boat, two “safety” issues that I’ve experienced are a) a culture of defensiveness, and b) sheer fatigue.


# Cultivate critical solidarity.
One of the reasons it’s so hard for us to question each other is that our institutions make it seem such a big deal. When our need for explanations or accounting is taken as a personal insult, we can know that something is rotten, and here I’m not speaking only of banks or oil corps, but of a good many liberalish non-profits as well. In one place I worked we talked about our effectiveness or lack thereof in hushed tones, almost whispers, as if dealing with incredibly sensitive personal secrets instead of just doing our jobs. Rather than making us feel safer, the whispering raised the stakes and the tension. Another place I provoked an emergency meeting because I'd used a text about the history of Halloween in a reading class; my superiors were afraid I'd start a religious uprising among the students.

We can discourage this culture of defensiveness. What I use the word "critical" I don't mean criticizing, but probing and questioning as an ongoing responsibility for all members. Accountability and democracy go hand in hand, and refusing the one sabotages the other. It's a core job of democratic organizations to foster questioning about the full range of organizational issues, including goals, strategies, and performance. We've got to build that in as part of our ongoing planning structures and routines. Organizations that do not encourage questioning as a routine, low-key, mundane but crucial housekeeping task are just fostering the wider climate of silence and intimidation.

. . . I also learned that, unless a method or a time for criticism is structured into a gathering, I am on my own responsibility to comment or interrupt something that I feel is insulting [e.g. racist or sexist remarks]; when and how to do so is usually confusing, and I've learned speaking-up is often seen as 'inappropriate' or 'disruptive' or threatening to the unity of the group, even when I felt that the insulting comment or act is what has been disruptive; and that criticism of style, timing and appropriateness' can be an avoidance of the questionable act or comment" (Pratt 52).

At the same time, we respect each other's responsibilities and intentions. We expect that, in a truly democratic situation, sooner or later everyone is going to be on the losing end of an argument. That must not jeopardize the commitment of any members or staffers to the larger goals and to each other.

What I just wrote applies to groups with some pretensions to being democratic. As we know, whatever their proclamations, organizations vary a great deal in how democratic they are in practice. It’s very common for groups to have terrific mission statements that they mostly ignore in day to day operations; at best leaving the foundational work of building democratic people’s power to a few specialists, which is a massive contradiction to say the least. Staff are under the gun to produce short-term results, and get little reward for fostering greater participation in decisions. Sometimes members and educators can help restructure the incentives.

In other cases, people in official positions have gotten so used to their titles and perqs that they defend privilege reflexively, automatically. I’ve heard of situations where environmental group staffers defend the good intentions of corporations, and business agents for trade unions defend HMOs against their members’ criticism. To the extent they benefit by class, gender and race discrimination, they are likely to protect that as well, even folks who think of themselves as progressives.

These are not good candidates to midwife honest discussions. With people like that in charge, I don’t think that educators and activists can foster greater internal participation and accountability except as a long-term organizing / power-building project. Sometimes we can get authorization to encourage discussion on particular issues related to the organization’s goals-- say, how to cultivate alliances within the community. Even at that, it helps to keep the honchos out of the room, lest their presence stifle the conversation and change its direction. Perhaps there are situations where people can usefully strategize about democratizing their communities while they are forbidden to apply the same understanding to their own organizations; but I haven’t heard of any.


# Make room for new ideas. Honest talk is hard work! How can we find the time and energy?

The point of our democratic discussions is to prepare for political action. That could mean building up our organizations, developing other resources, taking care of constituents and colleagues, any of a hundred tasks. Talk moves us forward.

Probably my biggest fear, though, is taking on more responsibility when I feel swamped already. It feels important to keep unraveling racist practice and making sure everyone has a voice in decisions and defending co-workers jerked around by the boss and a dozen other system-maintenance tasks, but I don’t want to do more than I’m doing now. I figure one or another of my bosses is scheming at this very moment to invent new assignments for me, so I’m afraid to commit to anything more. I reach a balance where I feel I’m doing something useful but don’t want to budge out of my comfort zone. What’s in it for me, anyhow?

One way I'm tempted to manage my workload is to discourage open discussion. More voices threaten more demands, and more work for me. Keep your worries and bright ideas to yourself!

So let's make the trade-offs as clear as we can from the git-go. When we take on a new job, including exploring new directions, we authorize ourselves to work less on other assignments, or drop them altogether. New tasks, when we adopt them, become the job of the organization as a whole, not just the person who proposed them. We don't punish colleagues for questions or ideas. And more voices --more people making demands and suggestions--- should mean more people ready to share responsibility.

Sometimes we’re exhausted, too, because we don’t manage disagreements very well within our organizations. We may snipe at each other for months or years without achieving clarity or resolution. The more we can clarify goals, assumptions, and measures of progress, the closer we’ll come to solving disagreements or at least refining them. It’s not easy to assess social change, but we can get better at comparing our assumptions and goals with real-world conditions and trends. That way we know what we’re arguing about and which models and methods produce results.

Discussion and stock-taking are indispensable within a democratizing organization, but are not the goal. Too often we end up enfeebled and demoralized from internal struggles over the most basic organizational goals and issues. I’ve heard the plaintive cry, “Why do we have to rehash every fundamental issue before we can take one step forward? We need partners we can trust to have our backs.” Part of the answer is that our organizations reflect our society and all the conflicts in it. But it makes sense that we should be able to count on a solid foundation of team support as we undertake this frustrating, risky work in the community. It takes practice, but we have to resolve disagreements, clarify them, or table them --without distrust and rancor-- until we can do something more productive. The main work is out in the community.


• Explain what we mean.
It doesn’t help us to talk down to each other, assuming the other person can’t grasp our own so very sophisticated ideas. Nor do we need to be lobbing specialized language around without explaining it. Freire had a point when he said that the work of liberation is important enough for us to bend our minds around the complex ideas of class, patriarchy, neoliberalism, cultural hegemony, and so on. If that’s true, though, it must be just as important for political workers to make room for explaining and evaluating these ideas instead of, as sometimes happens, just flinging them out like pretty baubles to awe the lower orders. When I see these specialized terms on signs at demonstrations, I wonder what the demonstrators think they are trying to communicate, to whom. That’s no way to have a conversation.

We do want to share any special knowledge or insights we have. It’s not our business to be excluding people by using language not everyone can share. So, when they are relevant, let's take the time to explain the underlying ideas. We may find we don’t need the long words-- or the sometimes half-baked ideas they ornament.