Personal Violence

“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Most people do not grasp the breadth of violence that Dr. King admonished so frequently. Much like his nonviolent forefathers Gandhi and Thoreau, King saw the depth of nonviolence permeating daily interactions that extend far beyond physical melee. Instead, the lessons of Dr. King extend far into the hearts and minds of everyday folks who think we're above such brutish and aggressive acts. And these actions and interactions reveal the very nature of society today, emotionally, socially, culturally, educationally...

Today's post is simple, as I want to challenge you, my reader, to look at your own life and examine it for violence. What thoughts are you thinking? What interactions are you having? What perspectives do you keep, what songs do you sing, and what ideas are yours that are truly violent at their core?

We each have a responsibility to develop our personal ability to overcome violence throughout our lives. Lets start, now.

Come Home

Isaac Graves of AERO just interviewed me for a book he's working on. While we talked about community the conversation was swelling in my chest, and now I feel like I might explode.

I have lived in Olympia, Washington, for more than 13 years now. It is a place of constant contradiction for me, where I can go from feeling completely complacent to completely aggravated in three seconds or less, and that's not just because of my apparent ADD. All this time I've struggled with connections and meaning here: devoid of the urgent crises that gave my younger self purpose, I have yearned for the critical engagement of community, and that rapid purposefulness of activism. From almost the beginning I connected with the city's social justice community in an attempt to find conciliation between my perception of nonviolence and their appearance of peacefulness. However, I have never found a home within that community, and after all that time I continue to settle for skirmishes on the outside. My allyship to a group of youth in a group called, "Get It Right!" morphed into Freechild; my connections to Partners in Prevention Education and Community Youth Services have never went beyond preliminary. My friend Megan at Together, Inc., has amounted to some good trainings and a speech, but nothing sustained.

No part of me blames any of these groups for my inadequacies. Instead, I embrace the reality that I have to travel across the country to feel deep affinity with a community, particularly ones similar to what I grew up in. Sit me down with homeless kids or African American youth, and I feel like I'm in the middle of my people! Put me into calm, complacent Olympia, and I feel disconnected. This is my reality.

I want no more than to come home, to arrive at a place that I can call my own. For me, this would mean an organization that fully actualizes the ability of children and youth to change the world; friends who are fully committed to supporting one another in healthy, whole relationships; family who is accessible and kind and learning and powerful; and a life that reflects my highest intentions and conception of myself. That's what I want.

And maybe that last sentence holds the key to my own home. The Mahatma Gandhi taught the simple truth that we must, "Be the change we wish to see in the world." For all the complexities and transactions we face in all of our complex and networked lives, at the end of the day the work of tomorrow is seeded in today, and today the only person I can actually change is me.

If I want to feel connected, its my responsibility to get off my butt and get in touch with people, reaching out to reach in. In this same way, the Hawaiian belief in ho'o pono pono is related, as it relates the responsibility for forgiveness back to me every time. I like this idea of teaching consequences and actions, cause and outcomes, and relating this back to my life all the time. If I really want to come home, I need to welcome myself there, because in that cheesy sense, wherever I lay my head is home.

When Youth Leaders Sell Out

Yesterday I was at a meeting of folks from across my local community who work with youth, including school personnel, nonprofit staff, government agency workers, and others. One topic discussed was what youth in the community should be invited to an event focused on listening to youth voice. As usual I raised a voice for nontraditional youth leaders, the kind who are inconveniently positioned in their schools and social lives to provide vital perspectives in any conversation about any topic. Those perspectives are often uncomfortable, unpredictable, and inconvenient, which ultimately only adds to their value.

You've seen "convenient youth voice" happen, or maybe you've done it yourself: A young person gets a position with an adult-led group, and suddenly they start dressing and talking like an adult. Adults often reward this behavior with recognition and encouragement, even foisting these "youth leaders" into more representative positions. In a way, adults are rewarding compliance: By acting like us, we are not threatened by them, and this must be acknowledged.

Paulo Freire wrote about natural community leaders who are taken from their neighborhoods for leadership training only to become ineffective afterwards. He explained this happens because of a mis-alignment of values between the community leader and the leadership teacher. However, minus the ability or desire to see the mis-alignment clearly, the community leader literally learns their way out of effectiveness by ultimately becoming a purveyor of cultural norms and values that are not their own. They literally lose touch., and for want of a better word, "sell out."

This is what happens to a lot of youth leaders. Unconsciously, these young peoples' desires to achieve and please adults alienates them from their peers. They inadvertently sell out by becoming "little adults" whose perspectives often align only with other little adults, and adults themselves.

Needless to say, my perspective wasn't acknowledged to my satisfaction in the course of the meeting I was in yesterday. The perspective of a local school administrator who has "worked over a dozen years to lead youth forums of all kinds" was that the group select "the kids who know how to do it." This seemed to me to be coded language for what I call "convenient youth voice," which is a predictable, familiar, and acceptable type of behavior.

For me, this goes back to the idiom that, "If you do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."

In order to meet the harsh realities facing our communities today we need to embrace inconvenient youth voice. This requires brave and bold and intentional new approaches that get the results adults want while meeting young peoples' own desires to make their voices and actions heard and felt throughout the world we share.

I know that as a community we can rise to this challenge. Let's go!


-- This is Adam Fletcher's blog originally posted at http://www.YoungerWorld.org. For more see http://www.bicyclingfish.com

Fighting Times, or, Living for Democracy

These are fighting times when many people seem to be living just because they're alive.

In my global community I'm watching as friends, allies, and partners are being decimated by financial crises, painful hunger, and overt pain. Dangerous tones of hopelessness and despair are taking hold among our leaders. Challenging perspectives about the future are setting into our own imagination. We are believing the myths we're being sold.

Those myths? You've heard them from the news, from your neighbors, from our politicians: There aren't enough jobs, there isn't enough work to do, money is tapped, schools are falling apart, birds are falling from the skies, and there's no hope.

But these are fighting times. These are times when we need to step up to the plate and take a swing at changing the world, or swing harder! The belief that we are too small or too incapable or too under-resourced does not suit us anymore; whether you are independently wealthy or completely broke, YOU MUST TAKE ACTION. We all must take action.

When it feels like our lives are loosing their meaning, we must make new meanings. We must define new purpose. The other day I was asked what my purpose is, and why I work so hard. I'll admit this to you: I'm not doing it for the money! I work a lot, I volunteer all the time, and the paychecks have been few and far between at times. Sometimes I'm not sure if anyone is paying attention. But I believe in why I do what I do, and I'll tell you what I told my questioner:

I'm doing it for democracy.

I'm doing it because I want my 7 year old to live in a better world that I do. I am doing it because the children and youth I meet all the time are desperate for change in their lives right now - and I'm not talking about changing the type of video game system they own. They want tangible, real, and practical change in their lives.

Join me in this movement, please. I am calling it The Engagement Movement, and I want you on board. Please read this page and let me know what you think.

Meaningful Youth Engagement in Miami

These last few days I had the honor of going to Miami for an exciting opportunity to consult Catalyst Miami, aka the Human Services Coalition of Miami/Dade County, and to facilitate a day long seminar on meaningful youth engagement. You may have already read my post on consulting spectacular people doing awesome work, or getting ready for the seminar. This post is going to explore this Imagine Miami workshop in depth.

The night before the workshop I had a spectacular dinner at People's BBQ in Overtown, a neighborhood near downtown Miami. There I met with my wonderful hostess, Daniella Levine, who is the E.D. of Catalyst, and Queen Brown, a spectacularly powerful advocate against youth violence in Miami. It was a humbling conversation that reinforced for me the focus on non-violence that has filled my month. I left that table with a tremendous sense of humility, knowing that the powerful work of mothers in communities ravaged by violence, people like Queen, is vitally important to the work of engaging humans in brand new ways.  

For my seminar on Meaningful Youth Engagement I was joined by 150 of the most determined learners I've been with in a while, including middle school students from a local school, nonprofit leaders from a variety of organizations, and concerned community members looking to learn about a truly revolutionary concept. I spent the day in full-on "Adam mode", packed with energy and enthusiasm and completely present to the challenged, warm, and moving space we shared. And I was moved. There was so much passionate determination among the folks in the room, and I learned a lot from people there.

After a very deliberate prep time led by Lori Deus, the event coordinator from Catalyst Miami, and warm welcome from Daniella, the group was greeted by Modesto Abety, the President of the Miami Children's Trust, who provided generous support for the event. With participants seated 10 to a table, we did some earnest small group introductions, and raced the engines to go.

The first section of the day's event covered the basics of youth engagement. The day began without youth in the room, and when there aren't young people participating at the very beginning of the conversation I like to begin with a memory visualization exercise that I learned a long time ago focused on helping adults remember their own young years. After that we continued with a simple discussion of three different terms that often get inter-used: Youth Voice, Youth Involvement, and Youth Engagement. After having each person define the terms for themselves, I shared my definitions. There were great conversations about different meetings, and they provided a great segue into the next conversation about the locations for meaningful youth engagement throughout our communities, all the places youth voice can and should and is being engaged throughout society today. Then we examine the Cycle of Engagement I've been working with over the last decade. The final component of this section of the workshop was an interactive examination of how adults and youth perceive each other, and how those views contrast and compliment across age awareness.

In the second section of the workshop, participants focused on making engagement meaningful. The basic premise behind this section is the acknowledgment that what makes some activities meaningful for some young people isn't the same as what makes engagement meaningful for others. From there we discussed convenient versus inconvenient forms of youth voice, and how those perceptions of value, predictability, and purpose affect the engagement of young people. I led participants through a brief brainstorm focused on authentic youth engagement, and what role being concerned with "real" youth voice has in efforts to meaningfully engage young people. In the final component of this section participants examined the Ladder of Youth Involvement.


Section three of the day focused on the barriers to meaningful youth engagement. This section hones in on discrimination against youth, which is a new conceptual framework for many adults to consider. Participants were introduced to the definitions of adultism, adultcentrism, and ephebiphobia, and I shared with them the reality that youth, adults, and structures can be barriers. We acknowledged these forces in practice by examining by assessments of youth voice. 

The forth and last section of the workshop was focused on engaging non-traditionally engaged youth, and planning for action. We identified some typical attempts at youth engagement, and juxtaposed those against new activities that are more expansive and generally hold more potential. Under the heading, "The Widest Possible Range of Youth", participants examined their own and their organizations' assumptions about which youth are targeted for engagement activities, and how they're targeted. Finally, I skimmed over different potential ways that youth can be engaged, which I later processed with the Catalyst Miami crew as another workshop for a different day.

At the end of the day, I think it's important to acknowledge that just as all learning activities, this one was flawed and imperfect. As you can see above, there was a lot crammed into the day, and as is my tendency, I wanted to impart too much all at once. However, there was a tremendous energy among the participants and staff. With the deliberate and intentional support of Catalyst as this effort moves forward, I am sure the potential for a spectacularly wonderful future for engaging entire communities throughout Miami will burn bright.

I want to thank all the excellent staff at Catalyst Miami, especially Daniella and Lori Deus, as well as all the powerful folks who joined me as co-learners throughout the workshop. The future is ours, right now, and I look forward to working with you all as you move forward!

Dream Big, Do Big

This is the second of my live blogs from Miami working with the Human Services Coalition (HSC) aka Catalyst Miami. Yesterday was a whirlwind day, filled with meetings and introductions, and simply reveling in the joy and strength of this movement for democracy building we're in.

My day was led by a lot of cool people, folks doing the legwork at HSC who are powerfully energetic and driven. It was heralded, though, by Daniella Levine. Daniella is the whirling dervish ED of HSC, and is a force in this community. In one day I saw her tackle dozens of issues, all the while playing gracious hostess to me and strong leader to her staff. One of her strengths seems to be to dream big and do bigger- through a combination of determination and knowing how to rely on her people to get the job done.

This is the challenge of all my work: how, when and why do I rely on "reality", or my perception thereof, to guide us? Too many times I've thought small when I could've been thinking large; other times I've lived macro when I should've been living micro!

I must've heard Daniella spin a dozen ideas yesterday, and watched her (apparently) single-handedly birth a few of them into reality. But it's those "right people" around her that made all the difference. One idea that is happening is for a spectacular new program centered on youth engagement as a pillar of HSC. Just like that, they're taking the organizational plunge into this work, powerfully, fully, and meaningfully. I look forward to watching this unfold with great effect!

Today is my workshop, so off I go. More later...


-- This is Adam Fletcher's blog originally posted at http://www.YoungerWorld.org. For more see http://www.bicyclingfish.com

Miami, Exceptionalism, and Integration

Today I'm live-blogging from Miami, where the Human Services Coalition of Miami-Dade County, aka Catalyst Miami, has brought me in to facilitate a day long seminar on Meaningful Youth Engagement. I arrived at the agency's headquarters about a half hour ago, and it's a typically powerful environment filled with busy, passionate people doing spectacularly important and vibrant work. From all indications so far, a focus on Meaningful Youth Engagement appears to fit well within Catalyst Miami's programs. That they're welcoming 150+ folks from dozens of agencies tomorrow speaks higher still of their capacity and commitment.

(Sidenote: I'm a little tired! Red-eye flights used to make so much sense to me; I'm rethinking that right now!)

In my next post I'll share my agenda for the training. But for now, this thought will have to suffice: In talking with Dana Bennis from the Institute for Democratic Education in America last month, I (finally) crystalized my understanding about solely change-oriented engagement activities for youth: By creating special programs focused only on change we effectively except organizations and communities from normalizing youth engagement; we excuse ourselves from integrating young people into the leadership of the world we co-occupy with them.

My concern is that while this type of "exceptionalism" may be appropriate to meet the apparent developmental needs of youth, it doesn't meet the less-obvious but equally important evolutionary requirements of young people. All children and youth inherently want to be actively integrated into the lifeblood of their families and communities. This is why they repel against tokenism so severely when they learn about it: Young people don't want to be routinely segregated from adults.

So my question is whether youth-only programming focused on engagement is unquestionably self-defeating and ultimately ineffectual. I'm going to explore this tomorrow with my co-learners... Stay tuned for the results!


-- This is Adam Fletcher's blog originally posted at http://www.YoungerWorld.org. For more see http://www.bicyclingfish.com

Adam Fletcher on Violence

In my teens I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of violence, present in my own family, among my friends, and throughout my neighbors' lives. As a community youth worker, I spent a lot of time with young people who faced physical, psychological, social, and emotional violence almost relentlessly. Faced with the oppression of constant struggle and immoral disregard by adults throughout our society, I come to this work of promoting youth voice with the full intent of addressing the hatred, pain, and brutal immorality of violence.

I have found that social, emotional, intellectual, and psychological engagement with young people is the precursor to all non-violence. It is the only way to proceed at this point. Since 2006, I have used this blog to help understand and share my understanding about the relationship between violence and engagement. Here is a collection of my different blog entries related to violence and non-violence.

• Ending Youth Violence - http://commonaction.blogspot.com/2010/12/ending-youth-violence.html
• The Privilege of Disconnection - http://commonaction.blogspot.com/2011/01/privilege-of-disconnection.html
• On Youth Involvement in Social Justice Movements - http://commonaction.blogspot.com/2010/02/on-youth-involvement-in-social-justice.html
• Waiting, or Working? http://commonaction.blogspot.com/2010/06/waiting-or-working.html
• Why Schools Fail Democracy - http://commonaction.blogspot.com/2008/08/why-schools-fail-democracy.html
• Youth Segregation - http://commonaction.blogspot.com/2008/01/youth-segregation.html
• Theory, Discourse, and Freechild - http://commonaction.blogspot.com/2006/03/theory-discourse-and-freechild.html
• Risk Factors: New Pressures Facing Youth - http://commonaction.blogspot.com/2008/11/risk-factors-new-pressures-facing-youth.html

Write and let me know what you think and feel, and what you are doing to make a difference right now.

Privilege of Disconnection

The privilege of disconnection is one that is deeply seeded in the American psyche. It tells us that we have the right to leave whenever we want: Our families, our jobs, our towns, our lives... At any moment, we can strike out in strange new directions, and if we work hard enough we can make it wherever we end up. This mental positioning seems like it's entrenched in everyone's minds, as we struggle and strive with all that we can't leave behind. For some of us this shows up in subtle ways throughout our lives, as we leave work early and show up to dinner late. For others, this privilege of disconnection shows up loudly, as we quit public schools or shun going to the library, vote against public bonds or want to repeal the children's health insurance law. This is the United States today.

Earlier today I was talking with a youth empowerment worker in Nigeria about the tense elections in his country. Chukwuemeka Uzu is running an initiative in Lagos that is teaching young people in his country about democracy, elections, and voting. He explained to me, in very careful and unambiguous terms, that the work of the youth in his organization is central to the success of democracy in his country. According to Chukwuemeka, his youth are teaching the public about democracy and elections, protecting the voting boxes from tampering by thugs, and struggling for accountability and transparency in government. He explained that because long-term politicians and government officials in Nigeria have vested interests in keeping the voting public illiterate. Believing deeply in the power and possibilities of democracy to deeply change his country, Chukwuemeka is organizing young people to counter these painful realities. Chukwuemeka's youth organizing efforts are impacting his country deeply, as are the youth themselves who are connected through his work.

This is the type of engagement Americans routinely severe and disconnect from.

It is an engagement that reflects the true meaning of the term: social, emotional, and intellectual ties that extend throughout our lives for all sorts of purposes. These are the ties that bond us to each other, to the places we live in and co-occupy, and that build and sustain roots of all sorts. If you get the sensation that the very survival of democracy in Nigeria would be threatened without the work of Chukwuemeka Uzu, then you are starting to get it: Engagement is a necessity; disconnection is a privilege.

This is the reason why I stay committed to public schools, despite their flaws. This is the reason why I continue to attend city hall meetings, despite the fact that I can't vote (I'm not a US citizen). This is the reason why I believe there is so much more going on than any crass social abandonment advocate reveals. The forces trying to dismantle democracy in the United States are not nearly as overt as those Chukwuemeka Uzu faces in Nigeria; however, they're just as real, and just as pressing.

Stay committed - democracy depends on YOU.

The Purpose of Schools

I am an advocate for radical democracy, which focuses on creating inclusive, engaging, empowering, and connecting together all aspects of community for all people, regardless of gender, social, political, cultural, economic, educational, and other differences. My advocacy for radical democracy includes education, which is any process for learning, and schooling, which acknowledges a socio-political agenda for education and transmits those perspectives to students. In my belief, all public schools should support the purpose of engaging all people in democracy as much as possible. That means that if we're teaching math, it should be for the purpose of strengthening democratic engagement. If we're teaching science, it should be for the purpose of strengthening democratic engagement. If we're teaching art, debate, gym, or ethnic studies, or anything, we should be teaching it in order to strengthen democratic engagement. If we cannot explain how the topics taught in a public school strengthen democratic engagement, then public schools should not be teaching these topics.

There are those who do not believe in schooling of any sort, public or otherwise, including John Taylor Gatto and Ivan Illich. Illich's treatise Deschooling Society is based on the premise that our society's primary education methods create compliant, complacent, and inadequate social actors remains popular, as does his contemporary, John Holt. Holt, a teacher, maintained that all young people learn better without any boundaries.

"Unfortunately, we English teachers are easily hung up on this matter of understanding. Why should children understand everything they read? Why should anyone? Does anyone? I don't and I never did. I was always reading books that teachers would have said were "too hard" for me, books full of words I didn't know. That's how i became a good reader." - Holt, J. (1967) "How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading." in Norton Reader An Anthology Of nonfiction. (2004)

Recently more advocates are coming out against schooling, including Lauie A. Couture, who believes "children are born to learn everything they need on their own." (Luckily, despite the title of his recent book Against Schooling: For An Education That Matters, renowned critical pedagogue Stanley Aronowitz still believes in schools.) Unfortunately, many of the folks who are against public schools specifically, or schooling in general, are recoiling against the education they experienced as young students, or against the popular media-driven conception of schools. This is terrible and terrifying, if only because it's these same media engines that are driving the demise of democracy in general.

This is a dangerous trend. In a time when democracy is being dismantled and repackaged for consumption by an array of corporate forces, there need to be more critical advocates who are in the struggle to reform and transform public schools, not fewer. Young people need to be strategically, deliberately, and meaningfully involved in the struggle to improve schools, and sought after as vital agents for school change, not simply as passive recipients of whatever adults decide is best. In this way, they can also be advocates and actors in the transformation of the educational process, moving it away from the historic isolationary and consumptive learning processes many schools propagate and towards an engaging, equitable, and integrated future that can benefit all of society, and particularly radical democracy.

I am the product of a mediocre public education with teachers who were overburdened and disconnected from their students. The public schools I attended were not good, particularly for students from the racially segregated, socio-economically discriminated neighborhood I grew up in. I am the only one of my four siblings to graduate on-time, the only one to go to college, and one of the few members of my extended family to attend college. Maybe it was our free school lunches or middle and upper-middle class teachers, but things in my schools didn't work for me or my family, or many of my friends and their families.

Now, public schools have let down my daughter's education, too. Recently her mom and I decided to take her out of the public elementary school she attended because they simply were not capable of engaging her unique educational gifts. The number of students and the pressures to perform forced the school to attempt to label her and entrap her in "special attention" because they had no recourse for a student who wasn't interested in conforming to their learning expectations, conveniently.

However, I AM NOT, AND I WILL NOT, GIVE UP ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

I will continue to struggle and strive for their improvement, reform, and transformation. Not a month goes by where I'm not sitting at the table with public school educators and administrators learning the realities from their perspectives. Not a week goes by when I'm not listening to students tell their truths about learning in the system. Not a day goes by when I'm not thinking about making public schools better with the hope of making radically democracy better. Not a day.

Join me in reinforcing this perspective on the purpose of schools. They are vitally necessary for the success of the democratic experiment this nation is engaged in. They are vitally important for the future of freedom and hope. Public schools are vitally important. Let's start acting like it.

Join Me at Imagine Miami

Learn more and register for this event at the Miami/Dade County Human Services Coalition website.

Adam Fletcher Promotional Video

Check out this new spot from the Washington Youth Leadership Summit, filmed on November 13, 2010, in Everett, Washington. I am going to use it as a promo video - look for it in your inbox soon!