Reflection after taking 11 youth to GA 2017 --Part 2 of 2--
I have another story to tell about this last week of work, traveling in New Orleans with high school youth. (you can read the first part here)
At the Charlotte airport, as we traveled home from GA on Monday, the 26th, I sent the following email to the parents of the youth from our trip:
Hello Parents,
We are in Charlotte, and boarding soon. Seems like we will be on time.
These travelers are fantastic, I'm going to miss them.
I want to let you know that we had a tricky experience last night that was a little scary for some of the youth. In hind sight I wish I had managed it differently, so I want to let you know about it in case anything comes up.
Last night as we prepared to leave we found ourselves with a significant amount of leftover food. A huge batch of beans and rice, lots of shredded cheese. Sandwich fixings etc. A suggestion was made that we should bring food to the homeless people down the road whom we had been passing as a group all week.
The youth made up lunch bags and portioned out warm beans and rice with cheese and salsa. And we went as a group down to the underpass to hand out meals. In all we fed over twenty people but toward the end as we walked in further from the road, there was a shift in tone and several youth started feeling nervous. Moments later a homeless woman told me we should leave as there was a man further ahead who was 'not right'.
We left, and headed for the Wendy's beyond our house as the man had started walking out toward us. It seemed wiser to go to a public place then to show him where we lived. That said, the exit was scary for several youth and I feel like I did not use my best judgement in the decision to go give out food without thinking through, preparing all, and having an intentional method planned.
When we got to the Wendy's we gathered up and waited for the man to leave the area before going home. When we got home and settled we spent about an hour processing what had happened. I began that conversation with an apology. I did not use good judgement, and it resulted in a scary moment. As I mentioned, I wish I had made different decisions around this and I am still thinking that over as I write this message.
Our time processing was incredibly fruitful. The thoughts shared by the youth and advisors demonstrated deep love and trust and incredible compassion.
I have since touched base with each youth one on one, and they all seem solid. I am, of course, available if you have any questions.
Looking forward to seeing all of you soon!
Even as I write now, having spent a week thinking about this event, my thoughts are evolving. Navigating life is rarely simple; this is true with most things in the world, and it is certainly not simple to help raise teens to adulthood and teach them Unitarian Universalism (whether as a parent, a mentor, or in a professional capacity). Yet, we are living in a culture that perpetually attempts to paint things in a binary- good or bad, right or wrong, helpful or hurtful, do this /don't do that- and with that binary, simplicity is implied.
Our Unitarian Universalist faith talks about inherent worth, about justice, equity, and compassion. We hold up the importance of acceptance of one another, and the search for truth and meaning... I could essentially regurgitate the seven principles here... but where it gets hard, is finding ways to live those principles. Too often, I hear disappointment expressed in our faith because we spend so much time talking about what we believe but not enough time pushing ourselves out of our safety zones, grappling with the reality of living life in an interdependent web.
AND. That is not only because of privilege. It is also because it is complicated, messy, and problematic, and we have learned to avoid those things.
We have created some communities in this country where poverty is nowhere to be seen, where "doing good" is writing out a check and sending it off, where people wring their hands about statistics, but are quick to call the police should they encounter a syringe on the street or an aggressive panhandler. We have created other communities where poverty is everywhere, where children are raised with the overt and unspoken message that they are not one of the lucky ones, and that that it's their fault somehow, because "if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work hard, you can go anywhere"-- only that isn't actually true. People write about these two Americas, and even in this, we fall into that binary-- when of course between these two communities there are countless other complicated combinations, and all of it, living within the context of the United States, which itself possesses a unique ability to remain ignorant about the experiences of the rest of the world, and our role in those experiences..
In my community, which is a community with a lot of wealth and privilege, I often find myself having to remind people that safety does not exist. I teach this, not because I wan't to rattle anyone, or cause panic, but because I believe the idea of safety is getting in the way of so many things. This is not to say that I do not value the importance of mitigating risk, I think it is the most important part of my job, actually, particularly when I am traveling with and responsible for other people's children. I think you can hear, in the letter I sent last week, that I am grappling with having stepped over that line too far. I am not attempting to excuse myself for that, but I am also not perseverating on that fact, because I am human, and I make mistakes, and everyone is ok, and- Wow! We learned a lot from this experience. My take away is not that we should have stayed home, thrown away the food, and "stayed safe", rather, my take away is that I should have moved more slowly, collaborated with my fellow facilitators more, and listened more closely to all of our youth. I know this, because as we processed the experience together, we found the places where we could have done a better job mitigating our risk, while still stepping out of our comfort zone, and still feeding most of the folks we fed.
Among the things that I find myself picking at lately, is the complexity of power- the ways that I hold power and the ways that I do not, and then, stretching out from my own experience, the way power exists for others- the ever changing reality of power, and the ways in which our inclination not to talk about power makes it dangerous. I do not think power is, inherently dangerous. However, power + silence... that is something to watch out for. "With great power comes great responsibility"-- there is a reason these words are so often spoken.
I am holding up power, because I made a mistake in the story rooted in the power that I hold in my work and in the context of this group of travelers. That mistake is one that any of us could make, but it is still important to examine it. Talking in public about mistakes that we make is probably even less common than talking about power relationships. It doesn't feel good to make mistakes, and I think because of that, and because within our culture we expect perfection from ourselves and others, we rarely wish to spend much time thinking about the mistakes that we make, let alone holding them up for others to examine.
The funny thing is, the more you intentionally challenge yourself to step into that kind of examination, the more comfortable it becomes. Breaking silence about power, seems to almost instantly shift that power to a healthier place, and acknowledging mistakes so we can learn from them becomes the seed for incredible new understandings.
Here are two of those understandings, and how they are rooted in power:
- There were people in our group who were nervous about going out to give meals, and did not speak up because they felt like they should go with the flow. As the leader of this group, I should have been aware of the power that peer pressure can have. Taking a risk is a personal choice, and that is a lesson I want our youth to know. I wish I had stopped us as a group and shared my own nervousness, I think it would have helped everyone feel empowered to speak their own minds, and I suspect we all still would have gone forward, but we might have done so more mindfully of one another, and without anyone feeling like they were the only ones who were scared.
- Ideally, I would have had some prior experience with giving out food to homeless folks. Certainly, if I had been home and this idea had come up, I would have contacted people who do this work regularly, and we would have done some active preparation around how/where to deliver food, how to prepare, and how to reflect. This was on my mind as we were getting ready, but I did not think to bring my lack of knowledge out into the open- Power + Silence. When we are in positions of leadership, we must remember there is always more wisdom in the group. Just as it would have been helpful to check-in before we went, it also would have been a great help to have a plan we all understood. If I had said to the group, "I don't have experience doing this, what things do you each think we should keep in mind as we walk over to the underpass?" I think we would have articulated:
- Stay together
- Move Slow, and check that everyone still feels ok
- If anyone wants to leave, we respect that and leave together.
All that being said, there is a beautiful truth to this messy, clumsy, risky part of our trip. It was a week of heady conversations about whiteness, and oppression, and corporate greed. About violence, injustice, and too-slow progress. It was long days with lots of walking and sticky heat and reminders of Katrina, and also the voodoo museum, the french quarter, and city park, and a trolley ride that took us, in a matter of blocks, from the struggling community where we were living, filled with black bodies, to the sprawling porches and hulking homes in the garden district with so many white faces. This was an imperfect trip and an imperfect end embraced by imperfect beautiful souls, who will live into every one of those moments, imperfectly.
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