One of the first things I noticed about “Emergent Strategy” is how much I like the style of the book. It is somewhat quirky in the style, organized lists of quotes, and dictionary definitions of the titles of the chapters. I found this made the book more interesting and hold my attention with the quick changes of pace. In the chapter, “nonlinear and iterative,” Brown discusses that emotional growth is nonlinear, meaning, it does not happen in a straightforward process. This is the same for the organization of social movements, and Brown chooses to discuss Black Lives Matter and Occupy. She discusses a “time traveling emotion,” that is, an emotion that you once experienced in a particular moment that suddenly comes rushing back. Brown also dedicates a section to her experience at an Occupy movement in New York City and the feelings she felt when she was there. She notes that she was touched by the amount of “normal looking white people” there in support of the movement. Brown discusses the motion and emotions of the movement and how it has changed. She ends the chapter with a quote that stuck out to me: “we are all learning what it means to be somebodies who shape the future, to operate at the scale of transformation.” I appreciated this quote in the context of that class, because, in a sense, it perfectly describes all of us.

In Emergent Strategy, brown describes various elements of emergent strategy that are distinct from one another, but totally connected. The fractal element consists of the “relationship between the small and large.” Fractals are structures that repeats itself in a never-ending battle of patterns. The smallest and simplest of daily work practices unfolds into a paradox that is infinitely complex. “We must create patterns that cycle upwards” (38). The intentional adaptation is “how we change” while the interdependence and decentralization is defined as “who we are and how we share.” It is not a new idea that change is constant, and embracing change is a non-negotiable act. Brown states that “we will adapt to that change, or we will become irrelevant” (45). Furthermore, “The idea of interdependence is that we can meet each other’s needs in a variety of ways, that we can truly lean on others and they can lean on us. It means we have to decentralize our idea of where solutions and decisions happen, where ideas come from.” One must be willing to be interdependent, and recognize that they cannot operate and survive alone. One must see themselves as part of a whole. These three are just the few elements of emergent strategy that are important to take note of and reflect.

During my reading of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown, I got similar feelings as I did when reading Feminist Accountability and The Revolution Starts at Home. I thought all of these books were very effective in offering realistic reflections on how to create more positive and productive movements. I thought that Emergent Strategy was inspirational and beautiful. All of the insights from brown gave a very meditative impression, and suggested deep rumination from the author. The writing style that brown has, while discussing very smart ideas, is very down-to-earth, and accessible. The ideas expressed in the text seem not only useful for establishing positive feminist spaces, and sustainable ways to deal with conflict within those groups, but I thought many of the lessons gained from this book are beneficial in learning how to deal generally with conflict throughout all our lives. And I think that was part of the point; if we can deal with conflict within our own personal lives, our attitudes within feminist movements will reflect that. As Brown says, “In the framework of emergence, the whole is a mirror of the parts” (12).

In the introduction to the book, brown states that emergent strategy is “strategy for building complex patterns and systems of change through relatively small interactions” (6). This emergence is “adaptive,” and a unique way of interacting with ourselves and others. A key point that I took away from this chapter is that love and connection are fundamental aspects of emergent strategy. Brown talks about the importance of love, saying that “love leads us to observe in a much deeper way than any other emotion” (11). Brown states that humans are the most perfect and resilient when we are doing things out of our love for others. I think brown states these ideas in a really beautiful manner, and these ideas are important in building positive personal and political lives.

This chapter featured an interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs, a member of the organization UBUNTU. This organization focuses on the communal support and safety of their counterparts. It was mentioned a few times that they utilize the community accountability method that we read about last week. I thought that it was beneficial to be able to take the reading that was assigned and discussed last week, and then be able to see the real world application of it through the case studies that were mentioned. Not only was it empowering to hear the stories of specific instances where communities of women came together in order to ensure their protections, but it was also informative, in allowing us a chance to see it being enacted.

UBUNTU is a coalition of women of color, that focuses on the voices and needs of survivors of sexual assault. In one instance, when a member was threatened by her then-husband, who was a police officer. They helped her in offering places to stay where he could not find her, watching her children while she worked or attended meetings with her lawyer, and other services that would take all of the weight of her situation off of her shoulders. Within this organization, their priority was each other’s well-being, no questions asked. This unity is important to community accountability and empowering for the women within the coalition.

One thing that was brought up a few times in our discussion last week, was that these concepts of community organizing are very interesting and important to read on paper, but it doesn’t seem feasible for them to be enacted in reality. We were skeptical of the current “systems” of society and if this sort of organization would be possible with such extreme stratification between groups. However, through this reading, we are provided with a specific and successful example of this.

Part 3 of The Revolution Starts at Home, “(re)claiming body, (re)claiming space”, touches on themes of guilt and performance when detailing cycles of abuse, as well as on the empowerment that comes from establishing boundaries and asserting a right to space and bodily autonomy. This section highlighted inter-community abuse and the silence that surrounds it, as well as the complications that arise in trying to navigate it, which is significant as often it feels like the conversation around abuse fails to consider how it manifests within feminist and activist communities — just as it does in other spaces. The first essay in this chapter, “Without My Consent” by Bran Fenner, argues that while community call outs are appealing, this ultimately can “stunt the perpetrators growth process, creating a false sense of relief for the person (and community) wronged.” (157). What is centered here is not the feelings of the perpetrator, but rather the well-being of the community as a whole.

Moreover, Fenner emphasizes a dedication to “transforming our interpersonal dynamics” (158) and communication – rather than relying on isolation – as a means to disrupting the silence and cycle of abuse in the community. These concepts and complications that can arise are highlighted in other essays throughout this section, like N.’s essay “A Sliding Stance”, where the author details the tensions and conflicted feelings they have – especially with control  (164) and also with the involving of law enforcement – when describing their seeking of a peace order against their partner.

Another piece in this section that stuck out to me was Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha’s poem “When Your Parents Made You”. Specifically, I like how this poem looks at how violence and trauma contribute to cycles of abuse, but also how this doesn’t excuse the abuse continued by the person affected and doesn’t center their experience alone as being the ultimate point of reference/doesn’t take away the right of the person experiencing abuse from them to tell their own story.

While I have enjoyed much of the reading up until this point, this section “Beautiful, Difficult, Powerful” has left a bad taste in my mouth concerning both the author(s) (The Chrysalis Collective) and transformative/restorative justice. While it is possible that there are restorative justice practices that may work, the specific process described in this chapter of The Revolution Starts at Home fills me with dread and sourness.

For starters, I wonder if the Chrysalis Collective would have gone to the same lengths in an effort to transform the offender Tom if he hadn’t already been a member of their activist community. If he had just been some guy who acquaintance raped their friend, would they have cared so much about his well being and reformation? Would it have been worth it to them to dedicate so much energy into trying to make him see the error of his ways in such a deliberately gentle way? Personally, this feels counterintuitive to me. I can only assume that Tom has deeply violated the politics he claims to advocate for, and if I were in this situation it would completely destroy my trust not only in Tom as a person but in Tom’s contributions to activism. Shouldn’t we throw it out if it’s built on rot?

I found the insistent attempts at gentleness towards Tom and intentional lack of shaming rubbed me the wrong way as well. The use of the word “aggressor” to describe Tom instead of things like “rapist” or “offender” to avoid using criminal language unnerved me. While the Chrysalis Collective claimed this was not to diminish the severity of what Tom had done, to me it absolutely did. What Tom did was rape. He is a rapist. Not calling a spade a spade in this case feels again like leniency granted because of his status in the community. Had the assault been by a stranger, or happened in a more violent manner, I’m not convinced this group would have thought restorative justice was the right path.

The transformative justice procedure described in the chapter feels incredibly vague, still ultimately offender-centric, and gave me no confidence that it would genuinely succeed in transforming Tom. It did not feel that Tom was facing any concrete consequences for his actions. In my sophomore year, I was brought before the honor council for plagiarism (due to unclear instructions on an assignment), and part of my punishment was to write a 10 page paper on why plagiarism is wrong and how I’ll never do it again. It was the part I took by far the least seriously, and wrote only to get it over with. I learned nothing from that paper. This approach feels like the equivalent of that to me. I don’t know Tom, but I worry that this process leaves too much room for compliance just to make it end faster. Since he will be remaining in the community and his status has not changed, why should he feel like he needs to learn from his behavior? How can they really measure the accountability they claim to be holding him to and if it’s actually working?

The Chrysalis Collective explicitly states that Diane’s needs were often overlooked in their meetings because they became so focused on Tom’s reformation. I don’t believe Diane could get the necessary justice and healing from this process that it set out to provide her. The organization is so focused on Tom and his feelings, it felt as though Diane was an afterthought. It felt like they had decided she could deal with it herself, as long as they were there to validate her feelings. This did not feel like a productive healing process to me, but to each their own.

Ultimately, restorative justice has never been successfully taught to me as a viable system of justice. Reading this passage seemed to solidify this view in my mind. I didn’t find any of their technique to be beautiful, difficult, or powerful. I found it to be distressingly misguided, hypocritical, and unable to satisfy the goals it set out to achieve.

After Julie and I presented the first half of our powerpoint/discussion on the book Feminist Accountability, I was so ready to keep the discussion going on what I thought would get into even deeper and possibly more meaningful conversations over the next five chapters. Though I found the beginning conversations to be a bit difficult since people weren’t really volunteering to share. I think Russo’s want to help create a culture of accountability relates to a lot of our pasts readings and because the nature of accountability is inherently personal I think it was harder to dive deeper into the passages that Julie was highlighting because a lot of it stayed very surface level. While, people don’t need to share personal stories they could have used more examples from the text or ones they had just witnessed in life or media. 

I personally connected and found the chapters more on transformative justice and the everyday violence that occurs very interesting. I was sad to not be able to continue the conversations, but am happy that will happen this coming week. One thing I might share Thursday and really felt like I wanted to share this past class was that Russo was able to put things I had thought in simple and understandable language. I thought a lot about transformative justice in situations of sexual assault and about my own sexual assault. I see the huge flaws for the survivor and possible lack of accountability for the other person, but it also made me think about how in domestic violence cases many women don’t report because they don’t want their partner to be punished, they just want to stop being abused. And this more community style accountability and ways to work through situations made me think this could have real potential for so many, while ignoring more technical difficulties and realities of implementation and carry through.  Personally I wanted the person who assaulted me to be punished, but not by police, by the school. I thought if he was suspended or expelled it wouldn’t ruin his life, but it would show that this was wrong and actually make him be accountable whether he wanted to at that moment or not. 

The video chat with Katherine Cross was wonderful though, so I’m really thankful you arranged that. I loved the way she spoke and think she should definitely write a book and then record an audio book, because somehow hearing similar words to some of what she had written really helped me to hear her voice as a writer and better understand her work in the first place. For the questions part I was a bit scared because all the notes I was going to reference for questions were on my computer and since we used my computer for the video chatting I totally blanked about what questions I had originally begun to form. So, I hope my question wasn’t too bad; I just couldn’t bare people not talking when Ms. Cross had taken the time to speak with us!

Our class discussion was so lively yesterday, that we were only able to cover the first half of the book Feminist Accountability. We went over the chapters Cultivating Feminist Accountability, Building Communities, Navigating Speech and Silence, Disrupting Whiteness, Shift Paradigms to End Violence, and a little bit of Collective and Communal Support. An important topic from the introduction, was the idea of cultivation, and how intent is vital to accountability, because it is something deliberately conveyed with a productive goal, yet it is unpredictable, much like Dr. Lothian’s garden. Privilege came up as a common theme and we discussed its effects on being accountable. For example, in Navigating Speech and Silence, we talked about how to effectively balance a position of privilege. Even when privilege is accounted for and someone is trying to use their position to help others, not focusing enough on listening can overshadow stories and experiences of oppression. Speaking over and for these experiences reinforces the systems of oppression that devalues them. Further, “white innocence” and the image of the “tearful white woman” were other aspects that were noted as methods of using privilege to acknowledge oppressed groups, while simultaneously turning the attention away from the issue at hand.

I thought that the book we were assigned, as well as the discussion that we had, was an important perspective for our class in particular, as it is a predominately white class. It was constructive that this privilege was acknowledged, while having the opportunity to have conversations about the most effective way to cultivate our own feminist accountability.

The second chapter of Feminist Accountability by Ann Russo details the equating of silence with oppression. Russo describes her personal experience with this, and how it grew in college when she exercised her “fighting” oppression by constantly speaking up for every type of injustice she saw or hear, she was taking up the space and opportunity for others to speak. She then delves into the practice of listening and why it is important. It is incredibly important that feminists who are more privileged (straight, white, higher socioeconomic class, etc.) to take a seat and listen to those less privileged. I very much enjoyed reading this chapter because I feel like that is something I need to be reminded of every once and a while, as a white woman. Russo explains that our goal shouldn’t be that we don’t speak out, but rather, we speak as a learner, not an authority. I thought this was very powerful. I do believe white people find it necessary to deflect or evade these difficult conversations, as mentioned by Thandeka is this chapter. This discomfort comes from shame is evident when white feminists complain about feeling alienated or no longer welcome in feminist discussions. This made me think back to the hashtags we discussed last class, and it is very true that some white feminists feel this way. I would recommend they stop complaining and grab a copy of Feminist Accountability.

In chapter one of Feminist Accountability Russo, in the second essay , “Navigating Speech and Silence”, Ann Russo discusses her journey towards realizing that using her voice in every given situation, especially her voice as a middle-class, queer, white woman, does not always equate with liberation points to how the centering of whiteness in various social justice spaces leaves little – if any – room for more marginalized voices to find the same validation in these spaces. In one section of the article she writes of the “inhabited silences” of whiteness, and specifically of “how keeping whiteness an invisible and unscrutinized presence reproduces inequitable power lines rather than disrupts them.” (47). In other words, pretending that whiteness, or race in general, (in combination with other factors) does not influence the experiences of each person does more harm than good in terms of how it detracts from conversations to be had, and how it silences or overshadows the voices of those with different experiences. These concepts connect with those outlined in the opening essay of this chapter, “Building Communities”, in which Russo writes of recognizing privilege and taking accountability for the ways in which we are complicit in systems of oppression. The chapter ends with the essay, “Disrupting Whiteness”, where Russo states that it is the “distance” of those with privilege from situations and oppressions which do not affect them that she wants to disrupt. This essay, as well as the other two in this first chapter, emphasizes how whiteness and the silence of those with racial and class privilege, in addition to the lack of accountability, has fostered a culture of passivity and white entitlement.