A Facilitator’s Obligation to Social Justice

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I spent my weekend in a facilitation training with an impressive group of people from across my university community.

Over the course of two full days, we were introduced to a specific facilitation method of Reflective / Structured Dialogue.

All of us were there as people. As members of a shared community. As individuals who felt that dialogue is an important groundwork, an important foundation for shared understanding.

And mutual understanding really is the goal of the facilitation technique we studied.

As many in the Deliberative Democracy world have told me, mutual understanding is a critical and foundational goal. People with opposing ideas and opinions may not come to find common ground, they may not come to agree. But well-structured dialogue can help them lower the rhetoric. Can help them humanize each other.

Can help them find mutual understanding.

A common push back to this approach is the question, “is dialogue enough?” For those of us with a bias for action, it can be daunting to imagine having whole series of dialogues organized for no other purpose than to talk.

I mean, I’ve been in many a meeting which seemed to have no point at all, and doing this as a past time doesn’t necessarily seem like an optimal thing to do.

But whether it is “enough” or not, it is clear to me that dialogue is important.

Unlike a meeting that goes off the rails, a well-facilitated dialogue feels like a productive use of time.

You may not plan a boycott or complete a power analysis, but you get to know other people. Really get to know them. As people.

You remember that it’s an amazing experience to be genuinely interested in learning more about someone and to have them genuinely interested in learning more about you.

That can be a powerful experience.

And it’s an important experience. It’s what makes a community a community, and not just a fractured network of factions.

The role of the facilitator in these meetings is intentionally agnostic. They layout a structure, they keep time, they help the group agree to norms and keep the group honest to those norms.

Their role is to serve the interests of the group.

In many ways, this is how we’re used to thinking of a facilitator, and in many ways this structure makes good sense.

When you’re bringing together a polarized group, for example, it seems important that the facilitator be a neutral party, someone who can honestly and equitably enforce the ground rules a group sets for itself. Someone who can generate an unbiased calm and keep the group focused on the seemingly simple task of mutual understanding. Of getting to know each other as people.

And while in theory, that all sounds great, I can’t shake the question: Does a facilitator have an obligation to social justice?

Someone truly committed to the neutral facilitator model would say no. The facilitator has an obligation to the group, to help the group achieve mutual understanding. That understanding will ultimately serve social justice, as people from divergent views learn to humanize each other.

But the facilitator’s primary obligation is to the group, and that requires the facilitator stay neutral.A facilitator might call someone out for not speaking with respect or for not speaking from their own experience, but a neutral facilitator wouldn’t point out the fallacy in someone’s argument or the structural privilege that helped build their view.And in many ways, that seems like the right approach. A well structured dialogue might help someone realize – truly, for themselves – their structural privilege. And that self-realization serves social justice better than any well-intentioned condemnation ever could.But I feel a facilitator’s obligation to social justice goes deeper than this. I think not of polarized groups, but of groups where people’s views are too similar, or where people are too polite.A key step in the Reflective / Structured Dialogue approach is to open with a question that everyone can relate to, that get us all through personal stories, to recognize our common humanity.But recognizing our shared experiences should not lead to an expectation that our experiences are the same.I may have occasionally felt like an outsider. You may have felt like an outsider every day. I may have occasionally felt misrepresented. You may have felt misrepresented every day.Recognizing those common experiences is critical to developing humanized relationships, but social justice means recognizing that a common experience doesn’t imply a comparable existence. It means recognizing that deep systemic inequality, has dramatic outcomes for our different life experiences. It means recognizing that I may able to hide my deviance from social norms, while you may not. And while shared experience is important, the frequency and intensity of those experiences is important, too.I think it’s great to start with a question that everyone can relate to, that opens the door to mutual understanding.But I think a facilitator does have an obligation to social justice and, once commonality is recognized, has an obligation to ask next, how are those experiences different and why are they different? What has shaped our experiences and shaped our world?And, of course, a facilitator must ask, how can we all work together to positively shape the experiences of those who follow ?

Why you Shouldn’t Give Anonymously (even if it makes you feel like a tool)

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve been reflecting a lot on philanthropy the last few days – as I’ve been posting about organizations whose work is important to me, I’ve also been making donations to each of those organizations. In case you missed it, here are a few great organizations you may want to donate to:

Somerville Homeless Coalition (donate here)
The Welcome Project (donate here)
Somerville Local First (donate here)
JCI Scholars Program (donate here)
Oxfam (donate here)

Like many of you, I try to do what I can to improve my communities. I give time and energy, and I also give money.

But that last bit always seems a bit awkward.

You don’t talk about money in polite company, after all.

I mean, there’s something that feels a bit audacious about philanthropy. As if giving money, even to organizations doing important work, is this wildly extravagant thing. And sharing your donation publicly – well, you might as well just admit that you’re really in it for the glory.

Or, at least that’s what I thought before I started working for non-profits.

Initially, I suppose, I thought giving anonymously was more altruistic.

There is of course, a rich philosophical literature about the nature of altruism and whether such a state even exists, but I’ll neglect that debate here, and simply say that my gut instinct told me that anonymous giving was somehow better. Somehow more noble. The route of those who cared about the work more than they cared about their ego.

So I was somewhat taken aback some ten years ago, when I overheard a development colleague comment that he was trying to convince a donor not to give anonymously.

I was surprised.

A Good person would give anonymously. Why would this fundraiser want to degrade that humility?

I was able to stick around for their reasoning – which I didn’t quite buy at the time – and heard him explain that putting a name to the donation would have a positive impact on other donors and prospects. It would increase the fundraising capacity of the organization, and ultimately, provide better support for the work.

To be honest, that sounded like one of those made-up reasons a corporate type might throw out to cover some deeper motive. Or maybe it was one of those things that only applied to rich, egoist types – if your rich, egoist friends see your name in lights, that will compel them to follow suit.

If that was the case, it still all came down to ego – even if you are one of those rare people who is not motivated by public recognition (or can sufficiently hide their glee at praise) – the reason to not give anonymously was so that you could play on the egos of others for the benefit of your organization.

That’s how I wrote it off at the time, but the incident has stuck with me.

And I think about it often as I make my own non-anonymous gifts to the organizations I care about. Of course, it’s entirely possible that I am just an egoist who really is in it for the glory, but on better days I think of it like this -

Supporting organizations doing important work is not some extravagant thing.

Not everyone has the capacity to do so financially, to be sure, but really, most people do. If you’re not trying to decide whether its the gas bill or electric bill to default on, if you’re not skipping meals because you can’t afford food. If you have the ability to buy something without doing the math on just how much that will leave you with -

Then you can afford to do something. Maybe not much, but you can do something.

Not giving anonymously makes me feel like a bit of a tool. It makes me feel like an egoist who is in it for the glory. But I continue to not give anonymously – not because I hope to manipulate other people’s egos, but because I hope to normalize that behavior.

Supporting organizations doing important work is not some extravagant thing.

It’s not for the rich. It’s not for the self-important. It’s for anyone who has the financial breathing room to spare.

So whatever organizations you support, give. Give publicly. Give at whatever level is meaningful to you, and help us all remember – philanthropy is not an extravagance. It’s an expectation.

I Am Not a Babysitter

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Wrongzo

Pictured: Boring Women’s Work

This is going to be a quick (hopefully not “quick”) relatively link-free post. There’s literature talking about this, but I’m not going to drag it up right now since I really oughta be working. It’s just really been bugging me, so this is a philosophy/vent.

I have a four-year-old daughter. As a result, I organize my life to a significant extent around her schedule. Often, this means that I either can’t make things or need to schedule them around the fact that she’s got to get to preschool in the mornings and home in the evenings, I’m making dinner, and that early evening (between when I knock off work and when she goes to bed) are prime family time.

This is often at odds with my professional culture, not to mention culture in general, that drive me up the fucking wall. Recently, for instance, I was in a conversation about scheduling a meeting that several other attendees really wanted to schedule in the evening, during the week. I was already annoyed enough by the fact that I needed to justify at least three times during the conversation how, NO, you need to LISTEN, meetings at 5PM really suck for me because that’s when my daughter is coming home from preschool and we’re eating dinner and stuff. Later, it came back to me that one of the people involved in the scheduling had quipped that they were trying to set up this meeting with me, but it was hard because I had “babysitting duties.”

GREAT VENGEANCE AND FURIOUS ANGER.

OK, not quite, but still. A couple caveats: I know the person who said that, and I don’t think anything was meant by it and generally like this person. And in terms of formal stuff, my job is pretty good about me having a child (certainly much better than many other jobs under capitalist conditions of production) – I got my tenure clock stopped for a year, I mostly set my own hours, etc. So I have it much less bad than many.

But the culture around this stuff really sets my teeth on edge. I am not a “babysitter.” There are so many things wrong with this. First, while I am lucky enough to be married to a wonderful woman with whom I have a healthy relationship, I am not merely a backstop to her primary child-care duties. I really resent the implication that comes out, e.g., not only in the term “babysitting,” but in the way that if I say, “I can’t do Mondays, as my wife gets home late,” it mostly passes, but if I say, “I can’t do Wednesdays, I like to be home for dinner with my family,” it seems to be more looked-askance-at. Part of our healthy relationship is that we try our best, within the confines of our socially inflicted normative damage, to be co-equals in our parenting. Yes, of course, we don’t always need to be there both – but neither of us is “covering” for the other when only one of us is there.

Second, while of course I have obligations to my daughter (and trust me, sometimes I am playing “you be the King, and I’ll be the Princess” out mere teeth-gritting Kantian duty), that is not the primary reason, most of the time, that I spend time with her. I spend time with her because it is valuable to me to do so. Most of it is enjoyable! It’s really cool to hang out with someone who’s learning a lot of things about the world, and it’s fun to be silly with a four-year-old in ways that I’m not with other people. Even the parts that may not be “fun,” we’re building an Aristotelian friendship – I am trying to help her be a _phronemos_ and she’s helping me, cultivating virtues like patience and care in me.

Academia, for all its lefty cred, is not always the most congenial place to see things this way. It’s not just about my daughter – I recall one incident, when I was talking about the job market, when I was told by a colleague _in front of my then-fiancee-now-wife_ that I shouldn’t have a serious relationship until I had tenure, as otherwise it would prevent me from moving around as needed.

But of course it’s not just academia (and I want to reiterate that though this is a pet peeve, most of this comes up among people to whom I bear no overall ill will. Except the “no serious relationships” guy, fuck that guy, he was also just an asshole in general). Numerous times I’ll be out on the street with my daughter and get some variation on “it’s so nice to see a father spending time with his child!” That shouldn’t be laudable. It should be expected.

Part of what frustrates me, I guess, is that it doesn’t need to be this way. I don’t work on a nuclear submarine or in an ER. As I’ve pointed out to my students when I sneak in some feminism, the only thing that keeps me from bringing my daughter to work with me is social norms about the separation of the work and home spheres. I doubt that the quality of their education would be degraded if instead of meeting for 2.5 hours with only adults, we met for five hours, talked philosophy, ate a meal together, and played with our children (or took care of our elderly, etc.). Along with some colleagues, I organized a free philosophy class in Baltimore, that had “kid-friendly” plastered all over the proposal material I sent the organizers, and yet when I showed up to the first class with my daughter, I had to go home because they neglected to tell me that their space wasn’t lead-abated and so young children weren’t allowed in – I doubt if there was an issue with the content of the class it would have been relegated to an oversight in the same way. I gave a sharp student the suggestion (at her request for some literature on the ethics of care) to read one of my favorite books, Sara Ruddick’s _Maternal Thinking_ and she said she liked it, but couldn’t relate to a lot of it, since she wasn’t a parent – and yet, you know, we consume media about war and police procedurals as if they’re touchstone human experiences.

We’ve got a society that’s unfriendly to children in the public sphere, and expects women to take care of them in the private sphere because we made it that way, not because it has to be that way, and it hacks me off.