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Silence = Violence. What can we accomplish together?

AR+ is committed to being in solidarity with all Black Americans experiencing oppression, injustice, and prejudice. We aim to be a community opposed to racism everywhere, including in our own midst. We can – and will – do more. 

The primary contribution that AR+ can offer toward healing racism is our emphasis on developmental reflexivity, i.e., our practices of self inquiry aligned with community engagement. Properly done these practices open up awareness of our own biases to become bridges to creative experiments in the spirit of self and community transformation.  We’re therefore asking how to be changed by current events so that we may be strengthened as agents of positive transformation. Not just “out there,” but also “in here.”

A next generation of action researchers should not have to struggle with racism that is passed on from our generation. AR+ will be part of the effort to end racism. Immediate ways include increasing awareness of what articles we are developing for publication, how we design and curate our coLABs. Going forward we will uncover avenues for tangible coCreation in conversation with key stakeholders – among board members, stewards, PerMems, journal editors, friends, coLABs etc… We regret that we have not done more to counter the tide of rising racism. It is time.

We are turning between two worlds. One dying and one still on its way to being born. Our great civilizational turning includes multi-ethnic, multi-generational demonstrators filling streets all over the USA. And all over the world. These come as a demand to reckon with police brutality born of white supremacy.

The politics of the possible, the speed of change are breathtaking. Black Lives Matter. White Lives Care.

In Portland, home to AR+, and coming as a direct result of demonstrations, we have a new police chief  – an African American particularly well suited to the moment. All over the USA, new leaders and new procedures are coming into place to address the police brutality that has been pervasive, cruel and harrowing for Black people, for…centuries. 

White supremacy is not only about people “over there” draped in white sheets or with shaved heads carrying symbols of hatred and horrors of long ago. Though too many of them continue with that. White supremacy is also about “here and now.” You and me.

I share a poem but first 1) a link to a page that is updated all the time and which I turn to for good ideas, and recommend to you.  It’s called 75 Things White People Can Do. 2) A quote very dear to my heart and offered to all ARTists who are engaged with issues of power and its transformation from feudal-supremacist forms of “power over” to “power with”  and who are committed to accomplishing more together…
 

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” – Rev. Dr. MLK

The following poem memorializes Eric Garner who died in similar circumstances as George Floyd. That their harrowing deaths may signal unstoppable progress as we turn resolutely to the bleeding wound at the heart of democracy. May they, and the all too many others who suffered similar fates, rest in peace. May their families and all troubled and touched find peace.    May all sentients wake up and act with kindness to self and others.

A Small Needful Fact –  Ross Gay

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.