To the extent we are concerned about ushering in a future that looks different than today, we must not only understand how power operates, but seek to shift and democratize it. (I’m using this handout from powercube.net to ground my understanding of power.)
Network mapping inherently illuminates power.
Network mapping and/or analysis inherently seeks to bring to light several kinds of power. Here are several ways it can include power:
Demonstrates where capacity and resources exist in a group of entities
Visualizes previously invisible patterns, structures, and dynamics that existed but of which we were unaware
Elucidates relationships and pathways for exchange; help understand how things flow through a set of entities (and where they don’t flow)
Surfaces gaps like who’s not being represented by providing an overview of a set of entities
Supports an understanding of these things as they change over time so we can reflect transparently (rather than anecdotally) on improvements or regression
Network mapping is different and broader than power mapping.
My understanding of network mapping differs from power mapping (for example, see MoveOn’s Community Power Map Guide) in a few ways:
MoveOn’s power grid
It’s not necessarily about a campaign victory; network mapping can address power over the long-term in heterogeneous communities
Doesn’t have one/few explicit target(s); rather, takes a broad approach to understanding power dynamics within a larger group of entities
Network mapping is broader than only looking at power. Taking an example of clustering for power mapping from MoveOn’s page, we can think of several other useful ways of understanding a network, and view those side by side.
“Decolonization, which we assert is a distinct project from other civil and human rights-based social justice projects, is far too often subsumed into the directives of these projects, with no regard for how decolonization wants something different than those forms of justice.” (pg. 2)
Reading this article shifted my perspective in 3 ways:
Really? Beginning to think about how decolonization is different and not overlapping with other social justice frameworks.
Beginning to think of how I and we want to alleviate our guilt – or “move to innocence” – around the violent issues that come with being a settler, benefiting from it, and continuing to perpetuate settler colonialism.
Learning to hold incommensurability, unsettling as it is.
cactus flowers in arizona, hopi land
First: Understanding our “moves to innocence” is part of interrogating our privilege
“Directly and indirectly benefiting from the erasure and assimilation of Indigenous peoples is a difficult reality for settlers to accept. The weight of this reality is uncomfortable; the misery of guilt makes one hurry toward any reprieve.” (9)
Understanding our own privileges often brings up a lot of guilt associated with our part in oppression. As part of human nature, we want to alleviate this guilt – to get to a state of cognitive consonance – we want to feel better! Things like developing a critical consciousness (ahem) of privilege/oppression, donating money to a cause, dedicating your career to it, claiming a distant (perhaps not real) native ancestor, are actually “diversions, distractions, which relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility, and conceal the need to give up land or power or privilege.” (21)
These are what Tuck & Yang call “moves to innocence,” ways we can rid ourselves of this pesky thing called guilt.
“Settler moves to innocence are those strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege.” (10)
However, these strategies don’t actually remedy the thing we’re feeling bad about.
In particular, we can see our moves to innocence, engage with them, and transform them:
“We provide this framework so that we can be more impatient with each other, less likely to accept gestures and half-steps, and more willing to press for acts which unsettle innocence…” (10)
In other words, our guilt carries potential. Guilt is actually good in that it tells us that we know something’s wrong! However, most of our strategies to alleviate guilt claim to be finite — I donated, I’ve done my part, now I can resume whatever I was doing — and don’t really address the wrong we feel. On the other hand, the uncomfortable position of guilt is home to rich discussions, new ideas, and hopefully, transformation. It reminds me of a quote I just read:
“Our job is not to make young women grateful. It is to make them ungrateful so they keep going. Gratitude never radicalized anybody.” – Susan B. Anthony
Learning to embrace these very real feelings that come with privilege is important and necessary in moving toward decolonization.
redwoods in california, miwok land
Second: Decolonization is not a subset of social justice: “incommensurability is unsettling”
“The promise of integration and civil rights is predicated on securing a share of settler-appropriated wealth (as well as expropriated ‘third-world’ wealth.)” (7)
Tuck & Yang point out that much of social justice is based on the existence of a settler colonial state. Often, remediating the wrongs done to many people of color, rely on colonialism.
In particular they point to three movements that neglect decolonization or turn it into a metaphor. Here are simple summaries:
Third world decolonizations we often forget about what is happening and has happened here (where ever that is) in order to focus on imperialism/colonialism globally or abroad, elsewhere.
Abolition of slavery and deconstructing the prison industrial complex rely on taking land from natives to give to previously enslaved peoples.
Critical pedagogies like place-based knowledge situate our experiences upon land but do not move to include land itself as active, only as receiver/passive.
For each, Tuck & Yang provide the start of a “bibliography of incommensurability.”
Further, they suggest that real solidarity and collaboration arise from acknowledging our differences rather than smearing them together in order to construct makeshift coalitions:
“We argue that the opportunities for solidarity lie in what is incommensurable rather than what is common across these efforts.” (28)
“We offer these perspectives on unsettling innocence because they are examples of what we might call an ethic of incommensurability, which recognizes what is distinct, what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects.“ (28)
prairie in illinois, winnebago land
Third: Now what? Holding incommensurability, guilt, and other unsettling feelings
“An ethic of incommensurability, which guides moves that unsettle innocence, stands in contrast to aims of reconciliation, which motivate settler moves to innocence. Reconciliation is about rescuing settler normalcy, about rescuing a settler future. Reconciliation is concerned with questions of what will decolonization look like? What will happen after abolition? What will be the consequences of decolonization for the settler? Incommensurability acknowledges that these questions need not, and perhaps cannot, be answered in order for decolonization to exist as a framework.
We want to say, first, that decolonization is not obliged to answer those questions – decolonization is not accountable to settlers, or settler futurity. Decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity. […] The answers will not emerge from friendly understanding, and indeed require a dangerous understanding of uncommonality that un-coalesces coalition politics – moves that may feel very unfriendly.”
So:
How can we start and hold spaces within ourselves for this unsettling feeling without moving straight to a way to alleviate our guilt?
How can we hold spaces that are problematic at a group level that create discussion and do not end with something that claims to be a solution? In other words, how can we create spaces that also hold unsettling discussions, and even the “dangerous understanding” that comes with it?
This document was created to serve as an introduction to the ideas of colonization and provide a glimpse into what decolonization means. In particular, it is useful in broadening our thinking about classism beyond Marxism to also include indigenous people and their struggles. It’s not exhaustive. Please (please!) share your thoughts, questions and suggestions!
A little by way of background
Generally, in social justice circles, I hear Marx’s ideas as one of the primary and fundamental ways of understanding class-based oppression. To put it simply: classism exists because certain people take advantage of others by exploiting their labor. That profit is only possible when labor is under- or not paid.
However, this perspective continues to invisiblize native struggles: it ignores how nature and land get turned into natural resources and commodities to be traded. These are huge parts of how profit gets generated within capitalism! Furthermore, the violent transition from nature to natural resource isn’t a quick and easy shift, but rather often requires dispossessing native people, severing connections with land that have (in many cases) existed for several thousand years, and constructing histories that do not include these struggles. For example, in thinking about any natural resource, is it part of our consciousness to include just where it comes from? Where did the tree live that became a piece of paper?
For work around undoing classism to be successful – to move to a more just, equitable society – we must not only think about how people are turned into workers to be exploited, but also how trees must be turned into natural resources to be exploited and how natives must be erased to control land. What follows are a few entry points into further understanding about these dynamics.
First steps
1) Learn about which people lived where you do before you did. What are they called now? What name(s) do/did they have for themselves? What were their crafts, social structure, homes, types of food? Are there any descendants still around your area?
Chapter in the book Colors of Violence: Three Pillars of White Supremacy (and a quick video intro) Spoiler Alert! They are: Slavery/Capitalism, Genocide/Colonization, Orientalism/War
Tambien la lluvia / Even the rain: A movie of stories woven together connecting colonization by Columbus and water privatization protests in Bolivia
I’m sure you’ve heard of these three words, but what do they mean if they’re used interchangeably? Read on to learn the key differences between collaborations, coalitions, and networks.
At its most basic, collaboration just means working together. In non-profit lingo, collaborations generally include things like information sharing, program coordination, and joint planning (source 1). Two or more organizations get together and have a limited interaction, achieve a mutually beneficial goal like jointly planning an event or learning from each other. Key characteristics of collaborations:
a few organizations
limited in time
not necessarily formalized in any way
may be around a shared, specified goal
Can you think of any collaborations you’ve recently been part of or heard of?
Usually formed for a specific, common goal, a coalition involves a group of organizations that get together, share responsibilities, and may disband after achieving their goal. Coalitions exist to bring broader attention and action to a large goal that affects many stakeholders. For example, if a coalition formed to pass or prevent legislation, it would have more leverage than an individual organization, because it can reach more people, access greater resources, and bring different perspectives to the strategy. Often, coalitions are short-lived and end after successfully accomplishing its goal. Key characteristics of coalitions and alliances:
multiple organizations
usually limited in time
usually have a specific goal
varying levels of formalization
may have a specified convener or facilitator
What goal, larger than your organization’s mission statement, would be best achieved by a coalition?
A network is a set of organizations with diverse relationships, strengths of relationships and trust between them. One way to think about it is like an ecosystem – there are different types of actors, but they work together – some more closely than others. Collaborations and coalitions happen within larger networks. As June Holley writes, in her Network Weaver Handbook: “networks are different than organizations: there is no boss who can fire members if they don’t do their job, there are no weekly staff meetings to ensure that communication and learning are taking place, and there are no teams or departments to organize the work and distribute funds.” Key network characteristics:
multiple organizations,
no necessary convener,
evolve over time and persist beyond goal,
not necessarily formal or intentional, but can be,
may exist for specific goal, or for broader support function
Armed with the knowledge of the differences between collaborations, coalitions, and networks, what is a good next step for your organization to strengthen its relationships? Will you choose a time-bound partnership, facilitate a group toward a common goal, or get to meeting and greeting new peers?
