Listen

Alert Bay, 2013

“When learning to see yourself as an oppressor, the experience is by definition hidden from you, because part of the process of becoming a member of an oppressor group is to be cut off from the ability to identify with the experience of the oppressed. It is this lack of empathy, this denial that anyone is hurt (at least, anyone viewed as fully human) that makes oppression possible. When the oppression is not part of your own experience, you can only understand it through hearing others’ experience, along with a process of analysis and drawing parallels.” (from Becoming an Ally, Anne Bishop, 2002).

Girls just want to have Facebook

To be honest I haven't really spent too much time thinking about the whole #deleteFacebook issue (crisis?). My reaction to the major themes: Privacy compromised--horrors! Lack of oversight--say it isn't so! Something MUST BE DONE--yawn. But this article by Vancouver-based technology critic, Alexandra Samuel, brings some new interest to the conversation. 

Samuel says, "#DeleteFacebook feels like yet another situation in which we are shaming women for using a tool that makes our unpaid and emotional labor easier." She brings a gendered perspective to the issue, and asks us to consider the role of gender politics and female vs. male communications styles in the use of social media. Samuel is also concerned about the impact that deleting Facebook will have on connections with family and friends, which is often the responsibility of women.

Am I going to #deleteFacebook? When my girlfriends go, I'll go. 

The only constant

One of the things that impacts all development strategies and all communications plans is organizational change. In a small non-profit, the role of communications in development is critical; so, too, is its role in planning for and communicating internal strategies. 

The past several months, my organization has been experiencing significant change, and in recent weeks my thoughts on communications for development have slowed down to thoughts on communications for internal change, and then focused even further to strategic communications on individual roles and projects, and in recent days I have found myself unable to think strategically at all. At times like this, I try not to "think" my way out of the flood of information and priorities, but rather to try to be more socially intelligent, creative, and intuitive until systems and structures can be redrawn. 

Organizational change has much in common with social change, and we sometimes forget that organizational change is a social and collective process, not just a technical one. There are many parallels in the way social and organization change is managed and in the formal and informal development of new systems and networks. It has been interesting for me to carry concepts of social transformation at the individual and community level while trying to manage structural change at the organizational level. 

In the meantime, I have kept an eye on the fascinating, expanding, evolving, collective and individual actions of the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas Highschool including their takeover of the Guardian magazine, and the stunning financial impact of student David Hogg's retaliation against broadcaster Laura Ingraham's criticisim of him. 

Also, this is tells you everything you need to know about reconciliation:
Interview with Chief Dr. Robert Joseph and Karen Joseph from Philanthropist Journal on Vimeo.