Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern provided the moral leadership that New Zealand and the world was seeking in response to the terrorist attack at two mosques in Christchurch last month. Women across the country showed their solidarity by wearing head scarfs to emulate the hijab that Ms. Ardern chose to wear when visiting families of victims, and Muslim leaders. “On behalf of all New Zealanders we grieve, together we are one…” the Prime Minister said.  “Many of those who will have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand, they may even be refugees here. They have chosen to make New Zealand their home, and it is their home. They are us. The person who has perpetuated this violence against us is not. They have no place in New Zealand. There is no place in New Zealand for such acts of extreme and unprecedented violence…”

We had our Lotus Leadership Awards in New York this month where we honored Christiane Amanpour for her championing women’s rights in her reportage of events in Asia. In her acceptance speech, Christiane Amanpour heralded Jacinta Ardern’s leadership, saying that she was the first journalist to undertake an in-depth interview with Ardern after she took office, and Christiane Amanpour’s belief then was that she was interviewing someone very special was affirmed and amplified by Ardern’s courageous leadership following the terrorist attack.

Photo credit: Leandro Justen

The introduction of a law by Prime Minister Ardern last month that bans all military-style semiautomatic weapons, all high-capacity ammunition magazines and all parts that allow weapons to be modified into the kinds of guns used to kill the 50 people will also make a difference. Just as it did in Australia in 1996 when Prime Minister Howard introduced a ban on all semiautomatic rifles and semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns after 35 people were killed by a lone gunman.  

“I had just been elected…and I had to do something,” said John Howard, Australia’s Prime Minister at the time. He fought off opposition from his own party to push the ban through. “I don’t regard this thing as a civil liberties issue. The greatest civil right you have is to stay alive,” said Howard.  Under this new law the government launched a national buyback program, confiscating more than 600,000 banned guns. Since then the number of deaths by firearm in Australia has fallen by about half.

What can we learn from other countries that have experienced terrorist attacks in how we provide funds to support the victims as well as direct funding to mitigate future attacks?  This was the question that staff at Philanthropy New Zealand were asking ahead of their biennial conference in Wellington next month, where I’ll be speaking.

My response was that, in terms of funding after such a terrorist shooting attack, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where 11 people were killed at the Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018, the Muslim community organized a crowdfunding campaign so they could maintain control and direct funds to affected families to support medical bills and funerals. The crowdfunding effort dramatically exceeded its initial target of USD25,000, which was reached in six hours, with the final amount raised being USD238,624. 

In Canada, in February this year, the government provided CAD1.75 million over five years to The John Howard Society to manage a fund to countering radicalization to violence to track the impact of efforts to prevent this radicalization in the eastern Ontario region of the country.  The Society is piloting a program which will work with individuals at high risk of committing acts of extremist violence. A referral system comprising justice and community partners will admit individuals to the program. Clinicians, social workers, and other specialists will work with the individuals to develop individualized intervention plans to address the risks associated with extremist violence.  One can imagine the potential for a similar approach, especially if it were bi-country involving both New Zealand and Australia in implementation.

Social media companies are also stepping up, conscious of the influential role they play, and in 2017 Google launched a $5 million innovation fund to counter hate and extremism.  One of Google’s first grants was to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a UK-based counter-extremist organization, which is using the grant “to produce innovative, effective and data-driven solutions that can undermine and overcome radicalization propaganda.”

The reality is that addressing violent/alt-right extremism requires a multi-strategy approach that includes law enforcement agencies sharing information and intelligence cross border; stricter gun laws; stringent regulations to address hate sharing on alt-right websites; a rapid response governance framework for engaging the major social media players including Facebook, Google and Twitter;  and medium and long term community based projects designed to change social norms, attitudes and behavior to mitigate risk and build more effective monitoring as well as cultures of belonging. 

In this case, and in the case of many of the gunmen, they have been socially isolated for myriad reasons, which isn’t in any way to excuse their behavior, rather to look to where we need to focus attention and resources. This includes focusing on the school system and creating ways to engage boys in conversations about community, trust, diversity, attitudes to violence and to difference.

In Asia where my organization works, in countries like Bangladesh, perception studies show that boys are influenced by broader societal norms and start to change their attitudes toward women and girls, and a range of other issues, from the age of 9-10. The Asia Foundation is currently supporting the Blue Ribbon Movement, a local organization in India, in conducting a Gender Labs for Boys in schools. The plan is to extend this lab to other locations to encourage boys to discuss their attitudes to violence and to share their thoughts on masculinity and to connect to male role models in the local community beyond school settings. 

The role of mothers and families is important in identifying early signs of radicalism and extremist attitudes in males and females and then acting. In the Philippines where we’ve been supporting women from different religions to work for peace in Mindanao, there are informal mothers’ groups who come together regularly to talk about actions they are taking to mitigate and address signs of extremism in their children. In this case there’s got to be strategies to reach families as well as schools to build connection and community with young people, including specific outreach to young people who seem isolated and/or are expressing extreme views.

Also critical is empowering civil society organizations and women’s groups to lead work to increase community safety and address violence against women. The other honoree at our Lotus Leadership Awards in New York this year was Kalpana Visnawath and her husband Ashish Basu, in recognition of the social enterprise they created in India called SafetiPin. Women can download the app and click on the visual icons that depict the domains of safety such as presence of street lighting, footpaths, and other women on the streets. Coupled with this, SafetiPin teamed with a rideshare company to place tiny cameras on vehicles to continually capture Delhi dark spots at night to determine where there needed to be better lighting for women to feel safe. The data from both the perceptions of safety and the camera capture are sent continually to a data capture unit. We worked with SafetiPin to present a Safety Audit to the government of India and the government responded by providing its own report on where it had installed extra street lighting, pavements etc. The government then asked for a second Safety Audit.

Since then different communities and countries have adapted the app for their own purposes. This includes women using the app to determine safe neighborhoods to rent or buy homes based on the safety ratings from the SafetiPin app. As Kalpana and Ashish have said, imagine what a gamechanger it will be for local governments when women, with rising economic and organizing power, rate and invest in a neighborhood’s real estate and value based on how safe they feel living there. So, we need to invest more in women who are using technology to address systemic issues that affect their human rights, wellbeing, safety and equality if we’re to see the level of change required in these countries.

Photo credit Leandro Justen

This last week I’ve been at the Othering and Belonging conference in Oakland, which is organized each year by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at University of California, Berkeley. I was invited to attend the conference as a Senior Atlantic Fellow, together with other Senior Atlantic Fellows from across the globe working to address different forms of inequalities. 

The eleven members of our group that gathered included Jody Barney, a Birri-Gubba/Urangan/ South Sea Islander Deaf woman who is part of the Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity – Australia/New Zealand. Jody is working to improve the equality of Deaf Indigenous women in Australia and for the preservation of Aboriginal cultural sign languages used in Australia.  Jody’s participation meant she had two translators signing for her throughout our gathering and she also taught us sign language for the words people, othering and belonging as well as for love and connection. To clap we lifted both hands in the air and waved our fingers. To me it felt poetic and we sound clapped and air clapped throughout our time together.

During our pre-conference day, Vincent Medina, a member of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, and Louis Trevino, a Rumsen Ohlone, performed a deeply moving welcome to country and acknowledgment of place and people from Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Government.  Jody gave an equally moving response on behalf of the Atlantic Fellows present. For me, in the seven years I’ve lived in the US I’ve only experienced this Welcome to Country a handful of times except for the annual Bioneers conference where Welcome to Country is an intrinsic part of this event. It was great to see the Bioneers co-founder, Nina Simons, moderating one of the sessions at this Othering and Belonging conference too.

The next day at the Indigenous opening for the conference, Vincent reminded us, ‘this place is old, it was never a new world.’   Holding the conference in Oakland was appropriate with its strong history of social movement organizing and the street art was one reminder of the agitating for justice.

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When we gathered as Atlantic Fellows, we were asked to present or perform a response to one of the writings from the Othering and Belonging Journals.  I wrote mine in response to an artwork by called It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping and accompanying articles, Reflections on Policing: Organizers in five communities speak out and Precarious Lives by Daisy Rockwell – who collected images of black and brown women who had died in jail after minor offences and painted these women and provided short profiles. Here’s my poem:

It Doesn’t Show Signs Of Stopping Artwork by Nafis White, 2013/4

This Work Was In Response To The Multiple Killings Of Youth Of Color Across America, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Oscar Grant And The Hundreds Of Others. The Violence Doesn’t Show Signs Of Stopping.

It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

Your power has a name; it’s called colonialism
Where we’re watched, followed, harassed, pressured 
Communities criminalized, undocumented deported and
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

We’re stopped and frisked twenty, eighty times
Black cab drivers, street vendors
Ticketed six times a month, for nothing much and
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

Those who are poor are piggy banks for cities 
Easy way to raise funds on the backs of blacks
Aggressive policing for minor crimes and, for sure,
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

Her white skin allows her to pass
No ticket for her
That Native American? He’s dead. A police target.
More likely than anyone else to be killed by police and
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

You killed my black sister
Because she held a pair of scissors 
You gave the white man with a gun
A free pass, claiming he was harmless 
And so, I say with certainty
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

All I know is my wife is
Dead and no one is saying anything and
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping
She was a mother, she was a wife.  She was mine.
No longer is she mine.  I just know
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

Two women, each a minor traffic violation
White woman’s father gets her bail (with some grumbling)
Black woman goes to jail. She’s dead a day later
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

No medical attention for the black gay man in jail
he dies in his cell 24 hours later
White man, he gets his diabetic medicine, outta jail the next week
Life pass for white privilege
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

White teenager gets caught shoplifting
Gets off coz his father knows the Chief
Black teenager caught too but he can’t pay the bond
Dead 48 hours later, beaten behind bars and
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

You follow me, frisk me, terrorize me
Yet I am the terrorist, you say
For what I wear, the skin I inhabit, the culture I claim
This is rising racism and ‘othering’
Where white nationalists build walls of fear and fury and 
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

This systemic racism demands our organizing
Our thinking and working politically where
Restorative justice replaces zero tolerance in schools
Communities in control replace punitive policing because
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

We must build coalitions, lift our leadership,
hone our policy analysis and advocacy
shift power for transformative change
so that no longer do we have to continue to say
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping

Can we broker a shared humanity?
Where we really see each other
Where police join protestors in solidarity
Because they see each other as connected
Rather than the other and so the belonging begins
And then we’ll know there are Signs of Stopping

john a powell (his name is intentionally lower case) is founder and director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society and his opening address at the conference was on Building and belonging in a Time of othering. He reminded us that “The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. We all need each other.  And we all have each other.”

powell spoke about the fact that we’re facing competing visions of a smaller and smaller ‘we’ that is hierarchical, that fears, dominates, controls and exploits the earth and, alternatively, an expanding world where we share the earth with each other with dignity, respect and care. What story we live in will define the world we live in.  That we can break, bond and bridge to create cultures of belonging.

Hearing Bertha Zuniga Caceres speak at the conference was wrenching. She was the daughter of Berta Caceres Flores, the human rights defender from Honduras.  I looked back on the notes from when I heard her mother, Berta, speak at a gathering of women climate defenders at the Green School in Bali in 2014 where she said, “We are fighting against nepotism, extractivism, patriarchy and racism. Our country is divided into enclaves – exploitation of banana plantations and other fruits; mining; energy; paramilitarism; privatization of our rivers; mercenaries, including young children; demands that we give up our sovereignty. We’re fighting these enclaves on multiple fronts. 30% of our country is given in mining concessions and there are over 300 mining contracts current in place; 17 rivers have illegally been made dams through international banks financing exploitative development.  Honduras is the most violent country in the whole world and women suffer the most.  Many people have been assassinated as a result of trying to stop corruption and violence in defense of sacred land and forests. 

Less than 18 months after speaking these words Berta Caceres Flores was also assassinated.

Listening to Haben Girma speak at the conference, as a deaf blind activist who surfs and dances, was inspiring. When she applied to and was accepted into Harvard Law School, she was told “we’ve never had a deaf blind person before.” “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ve never been to Harvard before.”  Speaking about surfing Haben Girma said “I can feel the power of the waves through the surfboard so I asked how inclusive and accessible we can make this experience?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JObq1nNBr5k

Art in many forms – poetry, song, dance – was woven into the fabric of the conference including a poem by British Somali poet set to music by the Aswat Ensemble – I scribbled down a line from the poem: ‘No-one puts their children in a boat on the sea unless the water is safer than the land.’

We heard stories of cafes doing their own bridging such as a Café in Tel Aviv that gives 50% discount to meals shared between Jewish and Arabic people. This affirmed the message that we needed to go beyond resistance efforts and build something on the other side of resistance that reflects an inclusionary vision. A big bold vision for belonging. 

Saru Jayaraman, advocate for restaurant workers and co-founder of the NGO, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United spoke about the restaurant sector having the largest workforce in the US. Predominantly women, being paid around $2 an hour thus making these employees reliant on tips and subject to constant sexual harassment. In this environment, the customers tipping become the employers with women staff encouraged to dress sexy, show cleavage, go out and encourage people to increase their tips. As Saru Jayaraman points out, when you pay a woman a living wage it turns out she doesn’t have to put up with sexual harassment. We need to shift power, resources and laws to ensure justice for workers, especially women workers subject to harassment and violence.

Casey Camp-Horinek spoke about being at Standing Rock and facing down the authorities saying “they could never take away our spirit. We became the warriors of the plains, the warriors of Turtle Island.” As the numbers went from 30 people who arrived at Standing Rock at the beginning to some 3,000 people at the height of the protest.  And, as Casey Camp-Horinek said, “Standing Rock is in your backyard now.”

Manuel Pastor reminded us of our own power saying, “It is our economy, not theirs.” He also gave us a crash course in the changing demographics in the US saying it’s not immigrant influx changing the demographics, it’s the rise and rise of Latino youth. Interestingly he shared that “California is America, just sooner” where whites represented 67% of California in 1980 and 47% in 2000. In the US, by 2050, the population will be 51% Latino and 43% white.  Demographics are shifting and so we need to democratize institutions and build authentic power informed by connection and curiosity.

Rev. William J. Barber gave a rousing speech toward the end of the conference, speaking of his relaunch of the Poor People’s Campaign as A National Call for Moral Revival to unite tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and ecological devastation. Rev. Barber reminded us that “Hope is always living in our proverbial neighborhood – we need to tap it by crossing the street.” 

I learnt later that the writer, professor, feminist and social activist, bell hooks, was also at the conference. I was re-reading her book, All About Love, which seemed to me the strongest message from the conference. In this book, bell hooks writes, “To live our lives based on the principles of a love ethic (showing care, respect, knowledge, integrity and the will to cooperate), we have to be courageous. Learning how to face our fears is one way we embrace love. Our fear may not go away, but it will not stand in the way. Those of us who have already chosen to embrace a love ethic, allowing it to govern and inform how we think and act, know that when we let our light shine, we draw to us and are drawn to other bears of light…”

Love was the radical heart and message from the conference. Not romantic or sentimental love but the transformative love that has seen social justice movements shift power, resources, voice and attitudes to create a culture of belonging.  The call to recognize our interdependence, and to see ourselves in the other, was also a compelling invocation to act and to organize.

In February and early March this year I’d been in Adelaide where I was able to work by remote while also having time with family and friends.  On my second day there, I went and visited my special tree, a bottle tree in the Botanic Gardens.  

I place my arms around its enormous bulk. How I love this tree. Tip my head to its leafy top, soaring to the sky. Its trunk feels ancient – it IS ancient – I trail my hands along the bark as I walk round the tree three times. Rest my body against the tree, chest first then back first.  Feeling its ancientness, its immense stillness and solidness. Its very being-ness. It feels like my body is a prayer to the tree, the tree in turn is our salvation for the earth. The wisdom of trees, I remember that book. At the Friends’ Botanic house, I buy some wooden bowls. The bowls were carved by friends of the Botanic Gardens from a 100-year-old oak tree that fell one day. I add them to my shrine; it glows for me.

IStaying by the sea keeps me close to my oceanic self and allows me the daily ritual of sea dips and walks.

I awoke early and pulled on my bathers, feet touching soft white sand, towel down, into the water, a clean dive and I’m home. Watching others swim is a form of prayer for me. Like the prayer wheels I saw in Tibet. It’s the eternal rhythm of the sea meeting the rhythm of a swimmer’s sea strokes.

After swimming and showering, I went round two with a walk along the beach. I watched three women leading their horses waist deep into the sea and then they hoisted two girls onto two of the horses so they were like girls rocking horses in the sea.  A third girl, whom I heard called Lulu, was watching from the shore.  One of the women in the water beckoned her, “come in, come in quickly. Lulu hesitated, watching. Nearby, another woman and a boy stood watching Lulu, the woman saying, “don’t go in, come over to us.” 

“Go Lulu, go the horses,” I willed her, watching to see what she did. Lulu edged closer to the sea, to the horses, as the woman on the shore said, “No, come back with us.”  Lulu walked into the sea and waded toward the horses, confident now, and then one of the women hoisted her onto the last remaining horse. Lulu wobbled and then clung to the horse as it rocked through the water. As she slipped, the woman righted her again and off she went with the other girls. What a beautiful sight watching these girls rocking on their horses in the sea. After some time, one of the women re-mounted one of the horses as it came fast out of the water to the shore, spritzing water as it touched the shoreline, galloping fast along the sand. 

I watched this scene with awe, aware of the magic in these moments. Yesterday I’d been walking along the beach and spotted a dolphin playing in the water. It seems that, these days, magic is all around when I stay close to sea and nature.  Last night, under a bright moon, alongside a glittering sea, I walked toward a woman, maybe in her 80s, as she moved with her walker. She gave me a radiant smile and said she was glad to be walking against the wind now. I watched her move slowly down the path and hoped that when I was her age, I’d also be going for my nightly sea walks, perhaps along the same stretch of path. There is something to this daily rhythm of living close to the sea that infuses me with a sense of wellbeing. The happiness seeps through my body and slowly I feel my energy and joy returning.

There is a peace to this beach that I love. At night I’m bewitched by the crabbers with their tiny headlights, walking knee deep in inky black water with their crab nets. This morning, an intriguing sight – pale blue water spilling into pale yellow points on the horizon. 

I wake early and half skip, half slide down to the beach. A big man with a beaten-up olive grey hat, green bag, baggy khaki shorts and white top standing in the sea up to his waist with fishing line spun out. He looks like an ancient buddha fishing in the sea.

The following day, early morn, I watch a guy ride his bike along the sand, dismount, keep his red light flashing on his bike, walk into the sea, dive into the water and then, soon enough, wade out again, get back on his bike and ride away. Soon after, I dive in and swim. After a while I flip over and look at the pale imprint of moon, treading water and feel at peace. It seems like a form of sea bathing, akin to the forest bathing that has become so popular in Japan. 

Looking out at the tranquil (eternal for me) colors of matte green and a soft, liquid blue, reminds me of Australia, this place, this territory, this time. So now these songs of enchantment beckon (thank you, Ben Okri) and I arise.

Later, driving from Port Fairy Folk Festival to Mt. Gambier I had a similar feeling of connection to land and place. Cockatoos flying out, creamy wings dipped crimson, a koala ambling across the road as I drove carefully around her, the sky so magical it seemed like it was tipping into the sea. All a mirage, I know, and yet…it seemed like I was lifting my car toward the Great Sea, on a great journey, a great voyage, like driving off the page, driving off the earth into the Great Consciousness. The light, the light, everything starts with the light, Pico Iyer said, and so it was as I drove. Everywhere the light. 

Home is ultimately not about a place to live but about the people with whom you are most fully alive. Home is about love, relationship, community, and belonging, and we are all searching for home. Maya AngelouM

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself. Erwin McManus

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity, belonging to us.  When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. Aldo Leopold

Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation. Albert Einstein