Affectively - Why our collectives hurt us with Sarah Durieux | The HOW

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[SPEAKER_02]: neoliberal and individualistic society has taught us is that we're responsible for everything that happens to us.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're an activist and you're tired, you know, that's your responsibility is because you don't rest or it's because you care too much or because, you know, there's so many ways to make this an individual's problem.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, it is not an individual's problem.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's the question of structure.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's a question of how a group is designed, who's doing what, how do you
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are your goals achievable with your amount of resources that you have today?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are you the right person to do that?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Who should you work with to be able to do that?
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[SPEAKER_02]: All these questions are organizing questions.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And if you think about it, they are the only way to be healthy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't want to diminish the
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[SPEAKER_02]: What I'm really trying to do in the book is that I got a bit frustrated of conversation that we're like, oh no, it's only systemic, there's nothing we can do, you know, this person is behaving in a bad way, but yeah, but it's systemic.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And on the other way, on the other side, you have this kind of very individual, the problem is this person, this person is not a great person, when actually this person is,
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[SPEAKER_02]: you know, existing within a group of people within a society within a system that also brings them to behave in a certain way.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so with the book I really wanted to reconcile both and say that of course there are system and there are structure and this is what we have control over but there is also how we show up as individuals with our history, with our background.
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[SPEAKER_02]: with our trauma and with everything that we bring with us just as a human being when we come into a group, that challenge also those structures.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So those structures should be made also to incorporate the reality of an individual when they want to join a group and they come with a lot of baggage.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, I think it's really important if we want to talk about burnout and not only in activism that we reconcile the individuals and the collective, the emotional and the structure
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[SPEAKER_02]: and that both sides need to be taken into account for us to find solutions that work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Effectively, a podcast miniseries exploring the intersection between self-organizing and emotions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Emotions, they are there all the time everywhere and yet, we know so little about them,
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[SPEAKER_01]: self-organizing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What happens when we move from traditional power over to power with structures and cultures?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Join me in these conversations with practitioners and researchers to better understand other possibilities of working and relating together.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I hope you enjoyed the effectively miniseries hosted within the
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[SPEAKER_01]: I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Saturn, durian.
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[SPEAKER_01]: author of the book Activism at all costs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This episode opens a line.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So usually I do the line of podcasts called Effectively.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But there's another one that we're starting with this one.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That is in the intersection, which is this is political.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The work that we've been doing, I think, has high political value and relevance, especially for the moments that we are living.
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[SPEAKER_01]: right now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We need to organize, but how do we do it?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we can take a lot of the learnings that we have and put them more in the public's fear and support each other in finding good ways, organizing and move forward and fight for our rights.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and get to that future we talk to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see with Sarah and which we want better air, but to food, healthy relationships, we want to bright future and a future full of possibility for our kids and grandchildren.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And this goes through the capacity of being able to organize and fight for this future and live it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think as well, in our organizing settings.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So this is political.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The work we do is political and it's so important.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it also has to be effectively, because in order to do that, we need to invite more emotion.
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[SPEAKER_01]: How do we organize with emotion?
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[SPEAKER_01]: How do we include it and how we are not only as individual human beings, but with each other.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And
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[SPEAKER_01]: bring it in in in our culture to build a future we want.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So specifically Sarah talks about these different symptoms of domination cultures.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She names some of them in the interview.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So power dynamics preventing people from joining social movements because they're based on participation is based on privilege.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The competition between social movements, a class of gone.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've been hearing about it for the past 10 years and it's used as a let's say it's a
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[SPEAKER_01]: but it's also often used as an excuse, as she talks about that, the role of strong sacrifice for the cause, which is a classic one that we are made to think that we need to sacrifice ourselves and that what we want to achieve goes over our health and over our lives.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The sense of urgency, the illusion of rationalization is linked.
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[SPEAKER_01]: quantifying everything and taking out everything that's more qualitative.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Death of the Trump.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So Sarah really manages to talk about these huge structural topics and then to break them down in practices for activist groups and I would just encourage you to have a look at the book.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's in French at the moment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully we'll be
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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to another episode of The How I'm very very thrilled to have Sarah Duria with me for this episode.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, Sarah!
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll be having a conversation that very much looking forward to it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let me introduce Sarah briefly and I'll give her the word to so that she can do it herself.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I would say that Sarah is a specialist in citizen mobilization.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I really an expert has loads of experience.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk about some of those in a moment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And let's say from the formal recent formal rules from the past that she's been co-director, the multitude's foundation and executive director for Change.org, which was the
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[SPEAKER_01]: or is the world's largest online petitions platform.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She's authored two books, both in French, change the world, a guide for activists to retake power and I translated the other one activism at all costs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the book we're going to,
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[SPEAKER_01]: focus on for today's interview, which is for me an intersection between seeing the world in another way or moving away from domination patterns based on the world of activism and how can we build?
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[SPEAKER_01]: What is the vision actually that's one of the questions I'm going to ask you later, the vision for activism that we would want to have at least a year or one.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then I just wanted to mention also that she has taken her part in at least three goose bumps at the moment of recent history, but yeah, really amazed by that she was one of the mobilizers that supported the wing of the left during the 2021-4 French election.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think a huge example for many many European countries facing the same challenges.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then she with a coalition that they managed to register abortion in the French constitution, also very important.
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[SPEAKER_01]: the country come from Spain and the country living in Australia.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that would be great.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And finally, you're campaigning with my choice and you have collected 1.2 million signatures for safe and accessible abortion in Europe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So this is just the glimpse of Sarah's work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So over to you, maybe you want to introduce yourself in a more
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for inviting me and thank you for this presentation.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think you said it all and I just maybe to add something that's important for me is that one of the practice that I'm inspired by and that is like the philosophy of my work is
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[SPEAKER_02]: community organizing, which means that in everything I do, I put a lot of importance into centering people, people affected by issues they are working on, and also centering people and their relationship with one another, which led me to this work we're going to discuss today.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's very often when we talk about activism, we talk about, you know, big stunt and demonstrations, and all of this, you know,
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[SPEAKER_02]: can only work if we think about how we relate to each other and so that's one of the things that that I'm passionate about.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah it was a pleasure to read the book activism at all costs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I know I had a hint that it would be related to my work but it has so many overlaps so yeah really excited to talk about that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You're bringing emotions, you're bringing in
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[SPEAKER_01]: the critique of hyper-rationalization.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You talk about healthy systems, about the relationships between people, power relationships.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's sort of like the work that we do at greater than but then applied in the very specific context of activism.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I'm just excited because I think that's so relevant for the challenges that we are facing at the moment and how can we learn from that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So let's start with maybe linking into your experience.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So when did your first notice that activism itself could mirror the systems?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's six to this mantle.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, I started to think about this and started to think about writing about it when I left change.org, which is a petition platform I worked for for for more than nine years, and so the reason why I was interested in that is that I started to think about the way, you know, capitalist values or capitalist practices could show up in activist space, and especially when you work for a petition platform, you know, that is a tech platform that is
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[SPEAKER_02]: you know measuring the impact of campaigns based on the number of signature, the number of shares, the growth of the platform, the number of users.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think like it, I started to just, you know, think about the way this measurement have a very big impact in the way we think about activities, and also how growth.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And EG money was one of the things that I was seeing showing up not only at change.org, but in other organizations that were not take organization that I was working with.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So that's kind of the entry point where I was like, oh, I would like to talk about how capitalism influenced the way we...
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[SPEAKER_02]: We work, and I came across the work of Dema Okun, who is American activists, who has worked on what she calls the... She doesn't call them the symptoms, but like the pieces I call them symptoms in the book, but she calls them like different ways in which white supremacy shows up in the world and in our relationship.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And she was mentioning...
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like the worship of scale, the value of the written word versus the spoken word, she talks about the either or, you know, the binary that we can use and all how all of this has basically built a culture that is the way to premise a culture where we...
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[SPEAKER_02]: We create norms and then we differ between people who are valuable because they fit within that norm and people who are not who can be disposable because they don't fit within that norm.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so all of this thinking, I was like, okay, actually, it's not only about capitalism, capitalists culture, it's actually a culture of domination.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Because then I started to make a link with like patriarchal structures and the way we overvalue for example the public space versus the private space and you know how that impacts the way we think that activism always needs to be public and visible especially with social media when everything that's happening in the you know the backstory or everything that's having that is not visible is not valued so
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[SPEAKER_02]: All of this made me think that actually we are, you know, as an active society, we live within a society that itself is imposing some kind of norms, some kind of culture that I think are taken from those, those domination cultures.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so I wanted to really dig into that and try to name it in a very concrete way how it shows up, but also to politicize it because I think that we've talked a lot about the fact that being an activist can be tiring can be difficult.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I wanted to politicize that to say it's also the result of a culture and the result of a system.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so if we can question the way we do certain things, if we can politicize them, then maybe we can try and
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[SPEAKER_02]: and be part of an activist movement that shows different norms and different culture.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for that overview.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Can you also describe a little bit more of the the symptom like how, how is it like to be in an activist circle?
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[SPEAKER_01]: in your context, for example.
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[SPEAKER_01]: For those of us that don't have access or not.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, those.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I think being an activist at the moment, especially with the rise of authoritarianism across the world is being constantly on call.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's being constantly worried, is also being emerged in a situation where you know that
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[SPEAKER_02]: or you feel that they will never be enough that you need to constantly fight.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You receive a lot of violence and so sometimes you know all this sense of scarcity of violence you can reproduce in your activity space.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So what is being an activity today is looking at the news seeing some decisions made by policy makers or by political leaders or by companies.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes decisions that are extremely hurtful to the people, sometimes hurtful to the people you love, sometimes hurtful to the people that look like you, and feeling an urge and a responsibility to do something about it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that in my opinion, sometimes we have a vision of the activist only being the one and the, as I was saying, like, you know, doing the demonstration, I think all of us are activists in some way, when we decide to take actions on things that feel not right to us.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Just to give an idea because you ask me what it is to be an activist and I think that I could tell you about, you know, you go to meetings and you discuss to with other activists about what should be done and then you organize action and then you know you do stuff online to try and bring attention to the issues and you do some stuff in the street and you go and
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[SPEAKER_02]: and try to pressure and negotiate political leaders, but really being an activist for me is more than, you know, like this known references for what is activist work is like the idea of you being active in trying to solve for the issues that are that I hurt in you.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm saying that because at the moment in the US, what we are seeing, the deportation of so many people and the horrible kidnapping by ICE, for example, is met with resistance from people who are physically opposing those kidnapping and and this is being an activist as well.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's just for us to open the conversation like there's many ways actually to be active and to be an activist.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But one thing that I explore in my book is how it is when we try to do that together.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And because we are human beings and because we are trying to do things together, you know, like when you meet with your need for action and the reality of doing stuff with others.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Doing that, sorry with other people, you know, what are the limits, what are the difficulties you can meet and how you can solve for this.
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[SPEAKER_01]: of days and love the book because one of the things that really gets me angry when I'm my preferences is that people say get together and organize.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's what you can do at the moment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you know, how difficult that is.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's possible there are many cases, there are good practices, you can learn a lot and do that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, it's so challenging when you get together and try to do something.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think this thing of, oh, you know, don't, I think there's to say it's like, don't agonize organized, it's also an injunction.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like something you have to do, you know, like you have to take care of your rubbish and you have to go to sleep early and you have to exercise and you have to eat well and you have to do so many things well in your life.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, when on top of that, you know, someone say, and now organized, for me, it can be very,
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[SPEAKER_02]: Because this is the reason why I think like organising is a practice that you can learn by talking about it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's not something just you, you can do just simply like it's something that you have to practice in order to do it well.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think one of the ideas of this book, sometimes people say, because the book is talking about, you know, how being in collective can be hurtful, etc.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I think it really talks about how to be organised, you know, how to organise well.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's both a book about ethics and, you know, the kind of work we want to build and the kind of activist society we want to build, but it's also how do we win.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that sometimes also the issue, not only in activism, but we see, you know, we see self-care and we see health and we see like healthy relationship as a nice to have or us something moral to do.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I also think that it's something that is strategic, you know, if we want to survive, if we want to actually have impact, we need to be considering like how our relationship at either support or we can, our activist work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a very important point because
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, there's also a sort of an assumption that, oh, it's like, we do the same thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then we just need more rest, more just because, and it's like, that's not what you talk about.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, we have to change the structures, that the base is on which we build our action.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that that rest has an integral role to play, but it's not, we do the same thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then we rest.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I need to have better boundaries, better limits with people, and then that will solve it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And this is interesting just going back because, you know, making the link with capitalist model or like one of the things that very, you know, neoliberal and individualistic society has taught us is that we're responsible for everything that happens to us.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If you're an activist and you're tired, you know, that's your responsibility, it's because you don't rest or it's because you care too much or because, you know, there's so many ways to make this an individual's problem.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, it is not an individual's problem.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's the question of structure.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's a question of how a group is designed, who's doing what, how do you define your goals?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are your goals achievable with the amount of resources that you have today?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are you the right person to do that?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Who should you work with to be able to do that?
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[SPEAKER_02]: All these questions are organizing questions.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And if you think about it, there are the only way to be healthy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't want to diminish what I'm really trying to do in the book is that I got a bit frustrated of conversation that we're like, oh no, it's only systemic.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's systemic, there's nothing we can do.
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[SPEAKER_02]: This person is behaving in a bad way, but yeah, but it's systemic.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And on the other side, you have this kind of very individual or the program is this person, this person is not a great person, when actually this person is existing within a group of people within a society, within a system that also brings them to behave in a certain way.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so with the book, I really wanted to reconcile both and say that, of course, there are system and there are structure, and this is what we have control over, but there is also how we show up as individuals with our history, with our background,
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[SPEAKER_02]: with our trauma and with everything that we bring with us just as a human being when we come into a group.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That challenge also does those structures.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So those structures should be made also to incorporate the reality of an individual when they want to join a group and they come with a lot of baggage.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, I think it's really important if we want to talk about burnout and not only in activism that we reconciled in individuals and the collective, the emotional
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[SPEAKER_02]: and that both sides need to be taken into account for us to find solutions that work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's a very good point that we often thought about like how, you know, you move away from the powerlessness.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So like it's a structural problem and I think that's at least, I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It frees me up a little bit.
20:40.495 --> 20:42.017
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, okay, it's not my fault.
20:42.077 --> 20:49.408
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that I'm not doing enough in structures, but then also like how can I change the like mess of structures like how we
20:49.726 --> 20:50.468
[SPEAKER_01]: fight the system.
20:50.508 --> 21:03.803
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that your book is very gives me a lot of hope and that you give a lot of queues and ideas of things that have been, maybe we can talk about it a bit more later, things that are reserved and we just don't apply for
21:04.492 --> 21:05.633
[SPEAKER_01]: various reasons, right?
21:05.653 --> 21:07.255
[SPEAKER_01]: So I find that really interesting.
21:07.616 --> 21:14.525
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought first one is there's a very nice quote in your book from Satish Kumar because we're talking about like what is it like?
21:14.565 --> 21:15.546
[SPEAKER_01]: What is it to be an active?
21:15.566 --> 21:16.467
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like what does it mean?
21:16.988 --> 21:21.133
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just wanted to it to bring it on and maybe you can comment on it.
21:21.153 --> 21:28.062
[SPEAKER_01]: My translation of it because at the book, French is like activism is something to offer not something to achieve.
21:28.242 --> 21:29.824
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that quote mean to you?
21:29.804 --> 21:45.923
[SPEAKER_02]: So I use that quote because there's one in this chapter of the book that talks about the one of these culture that is coming from capital society and also from the patriarchal one and the white supremacist one is this idea of transaction.
21:45.903 --> 21:49.771
[SPEAKER_02]: that we will overvalue transaction over relations.
21:49.791 --> 21:51.314
[SPEAKER_02]: How does that show up in activism?
21:51.374 --> 22:05.481
[SPEAKER_02]: We care more about what we can get people to do than what we can help people achieve personally or develop or, you know, like, we care more about what they will produce than what they will, you know, like they do.
22:05.461 --> 22:09.607
[SPEAKER_02]: for example, their own sense of empowerment or autonomy, etc.
22:09.647 --> 22:13.333
[SPEAKER_02]: So the reason why I use this quote because I think it's easy to all.
22:13.613 --> 22:15.075
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a gift for people.
22:15.276 --> 22:18.961
[SPEAKER_02]: I think for all of us, it's a gift to be able to understand your power.
22:19.162 --> 22:29.477
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a gift to be able to understand how your relationship with other puts you in a position to have a say in the future of your kids and in your own future.
22:29.457 --> 22:46.656
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think that when we, I think that this quotes explain how it's not only about the angle, it's about the process and it's about everything that can happen between the moments someone, you know, pushed the door to like start and engage in the moment where you win the campaign, you know, all of this process.
22:46.636 --> 22:58.661
[SPEAKER_02]: is even for me more important than the end goal and sometimes the process can be very successful and can really build people's power even though they don't win the exact campaign they were working on.
22:59.102 --> 23:05.455
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I take the example of the yellow vest movement in France because I think it's an interesting one.
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[SPEAKER_02]: They were like, the movement grew very big.
23:08.661 --> 23:13.250
[SPEAKER_02]: It started with fuel prices, but then it grew much bigger with much larger requests.
23:13.270 --> 23:17.138
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of these requests have not been met with political decisions.
23:17.318 --> 23:22.127
[SPEAKER_02]: And so sometimes we portray these movements, it hasn't worked, it hasn't made any effect.
23:22.167 --> 23:25.654
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's a very short-sighted way to see this movement because
23:25.634 --> 23:45.482
[SPEAKER_02]: The sociology of this movement teaches us that actually a lot of the people who came to this movement had never been engaged politically before, like the for many of them there was the first demonstration, but we also forget to tell about the camaraderie and the link and the solidarity that has been built between the people who came there.
23:45.462 --> 23:53.434
[SPEAKER_02]: some of them living in a very close to each other but never talking to each other and who really have built bond and have built solidarity.
23:54.035 --> 24:06.795
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that you were like what would be a culture that is not a culture that is a dominant culture and what is and I think with your culture where the relationship is more important and where the relationship
24:06.775 --> 24:15.498
[SPEAKER_02]: builds this kind of power and not just you know as you were quoting like just something that we need to achieve.
24:15.699 --> 24:22.978
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you maybe give us an overview of some of those elements we've been talking about like so on the one hand like
24:23.296 --> 24:31.076
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, like, all elements of, are you starting, for example, talking about, so it came from the white super, so your question came from capitalism.
24:31.617 --> 24:34.405
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it was like, okay, that's actually white supremacy.
24:34.425 --> 24:36.249
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, it's patriarchy.
24:36.269 --> 24:38.335
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they only outside this division, right?
24:38.355 --> 24:40.039
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was a healthy system.
24:40.019 --> 24:40.540
[SPEAKER_01]: talk about.
24:40.881 --> 24:57.235
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you maybe give us an overview of a few maybe of the topics or like anchor points or elements or call them and whatever way you prefer about like what is it what is in place that is problematic about how we organize.
24:57.215 --> 25:04.745
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, and so I wanted, you know, this this book and I wanted this reflection to be very practical for people to be able to use it.
25:04.845 --> 25:16.601
[SPEAKER_02]: So of course now I'm using like, you know, the big world that it seems very conceptual, but the book is actually organized around, you know, those symptoms, like the symptoms of this culture that we see everyday in activism.
25:16.621 --> 25:18.143
[SPEAKER_02]: So one of them is,
25:18.123 --> 25:46.965
[SPEAKER_02]: the worship of scale and the quest for a gemony, I think that's something that I mostly seen in my work at change, but you know, also as I was telling you around me, which is that many organizations will pay more attention and will invest more resources into growing into becoming the first one and you know, like the most representative and the one with the most member instead of thinking about, okay, like, what is the goal, what do we want to achieve?
25:46.945 --> 25:55.438
[SPEAKER_02]: you know like the biggest or is it more efficient to work with so many other partners that can take in charge other pieces of the work that we don't have the resources.
25:55.978 --> 26:05.292
[SPEAKER_02]: So you know like for me being able to you know divorce yourself from the capitalist model in activism is to say maybe we don't have to be the biggest one.
26:05.272 --> 26:06.935
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we can be the best partner.
26:07.135 --> 26:11.602
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we can be such a good person in coalition building that everyone wants to work with us.
26:12.102 --> 26:13.985
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you can build much more power.
26:14.005 --> 26:24.421
[SPEAKER_02]: Another example of this symptoms that we see and that we can challenge, as I was saying, is this idea of I'm just going to try and take an example of of the binary.
26:24.441 --> 26:27.786
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that what I call binary, you know, is the
26:27.766 --> 26:31.573
[SPEAKER_02]: It's your with me or against me, it's like it's a victory or it's not.
26:31.773 --> 26:33.055
[SPEAKER_02]: It is good or it's bad.
26:33.075 --> 26:36.481
[SPEAKER_02]: This person is with me, this person is against me.
26:36.882 --> 26:39.466
[SPEAKER_02]: This person is pure, this person is not pure.
26:39.566 --> 26:43.012
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think like this binary, we see a lot in activism.
26:43.132 --> 26:43.333
[SPEAKER_02]: Why?
26:43.393 --> 26:44.775
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it's been super effective.
26:45.376 --> 26:48.762
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so easy to find like the other one.
26:48.742 --> 26:52.187
[SPEAKER_02]: to define another one to mobilize people against another one.
26:52.608 --> 26:59.718
[SPEAKER_02]: It's much easier to call people to, you know, mobilize on one single issue with, with no complexity.
27:00.679 --> 27:06.227
[SPEAKER_02]: And with one single ask, then it is to say, okay, we actually need to take into account all of these things.
27:06.207 --> 27:12.116
[SPEAKER_02]: It's much easier to say we want everything than to say well we want a little bit and there's more work to do.
27:12.436 --> 27:17.183
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this binary shows up as you know a maximalist approach of activism.
27:17.203 --> 27:22.130
[SPEAKER_02]: It shows up also with some kind of purity where we're going to look for like the perfect activities.
27:22.150 --> 27:24.874
[SPEAKER_02]: The one that never says anything bad, the one that's
27:24.854 --> 27:33.345
[SPEAKER_02]: It's never making any mistake, but also like where we're looking much more for we're looking for open and we're not looking for partners.
27:33.685 --> 27:43.277
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think all of this showing up in activism is also deeply entrenched in a way supremacy culture that itself has been built on the idea of a binary.
27:43.717 --> 27:47.402
[SPEAKER_02]: Like all of us know that racism is a social construct.
27:47.382 --> 27:53.776
[SPEAKER_02]: And that, are you white or are you black, you know, I was in South Africa recently and I was reading about during the apartheid.
27:53.816 --> 27:58.786
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some group of people who went from white to black or from black to white just to give this example.
27:58.846 --> 28:04.378
[SPEAKER_02]: So the idea of binary and norm has been in society created to be able to
28:04.358 --> 28:21.424
[SPEAKER_02]: have a group of empowering another one and it's true also in patriarchy, you know, and so I think that it's really interesting to question how when we do activism we reproduce that binary for strategic or tactic reason and to question it especially in the era of rising fascism.
28:21.944 --> 28:26.451
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's this one of the way in which, you know, this culture is showing up.
28:26.431 --> 28:37.708
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe one last one that I find interesting is and that we did not mention yet is the question of the emotion versus the reason.
28:38.409 --> 28:52.371
[SPEAKER_02]: So in politics, we talk a lot about how you need to be pragmatic and how you need to have the data and how you need to speak in a certain way to be seen as someone that is, you know, is a good political partner.
28:52.351 --> 29:03.849
[SPEAKER_02]: And the realities that emotions are at the center of political engagement and emotions and experience are also at the center of building policies and political engagement.
29:04.129 --> 29:18.291
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, especially on the progressive left, we have difficulty to welcome the idea that maybe it's not enough to have a report and to show it to people, maybe we need to connect with their emotion, maybe we connect with their experience in order to
29:18.271 --> 29:20.794
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, being able to be in a conversation with them.
29:20.954 --> 29:42.422
[SPEAKER_02]: So those are just some of the symptoms and some of the ways in which they are entrenched in in our culture and in the emotion versus reasons, you know, in the patriarchal culture, it's also been built that there were people who think and people who feel and that the one who feel have less importance, you know, and should have less power, especially in that case, would be women or people of God, for example.
29:42.402 --> 29:58.797
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just want to, I think it's important to understand that these are very real concrete stuff that happen in the activist work, but they are deeply rooted in historical and cultural narrative and practices that we must let go of.
29:59.137 --> 30:03.060
[SPEAKER_02]: I really think we have to do this work if we want to be able to win.
30:03.080 --> 30:10.587
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a bit different, but it also connects to the emotions I find super interesting.
30:10.567 --> 30:31.911
[SPEAKER_01]: narratives that you have been doing and how it would be important and we speak more to the emotion but also this just means what does it mean to engage or let's say a left oriented program that just means better air, better food, a good life for our kids and future generations and this sounds doesn't sound smart, right?
30:31.931 --> 30:40.540
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like we have to make it complicated and
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[SPEAKER_01]: It leads and fascinating.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's an heritage from, you know, like the filosofi-cold thinkers.
30:52.281 --> 30:56.025
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when they started to say, you know, there's the reason and the emotion.
30:56.085 --> 31:02.393
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think that, you know, coming from there, there's been this idea that,
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, only people who think pragmatically are real thinkers.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And actually, the book that is called the mistake of Descartes, Descartes who was one of these philosophers, who says, like, you know, Descartes has said, you know, like, the only place in, you know, the only thing that matters in making a decision, you know, is like, y'all.
31:22.910 --> 31:32.429
[SPEAKER_02]: your computation, the way you think you will, and so this book explained basically that you take wrong decisions when you're not connected to your emotion.
31:32.529 --> 31:40.885
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you don't take good decisions when in the half of your brain that is connected to your experience that generates emotion is not able to interact with.
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[SPEAKER_02]: in the decision-making process, and so I think that because we inherit from this, that also stops us, especially on the left.
31:48.853 --> 32:06.332
[SPEAKER_02]: To question the fact that talking with people about the emotion or the experience is not manipulation, is actually really political work, and I believe that there is a little bit of elitism sometimes that, you know, if it's not written in a book or if it's not like with a theory, and if you don't have a
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[SPEAKER_02]: 150 pages report with like very complicated number what you're saying doesn't have the same value.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't want to do untie and tell actualism because I think like we need ideas and we need research and we need data to be able to make good decisions and you know but when we when it comes to convincing people when it comes to helping them know project themselves as a group you know.
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[SPEAKER_02]: need to go beyond that.
32:29.907 --> 32:53.308
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and that's also like one of the things we can do in my opinion to make activism a bit more inclusive is to start from how people, how we all, actually, we're not different from everyone else, like how we all function when you, I have certain opinion about certain things that are related to my history and the experiences that I've had, maybe you will have different ones because you had different experiences.
32:53.428 --> 32:57.852
[SPEAKER_02]: And if we don't understand that, if we don't understand the experience and emotions,
32:57.832 --> 32:59.854
[SPEAKER_02]: then we can't do the political work.
32:59.875 --> 33:01.837
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's one of the things I think as well.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We have to, we have to.
33:03.359 --> 33:04.660
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you were hinting to it now.
33:04.700 --> 33:07.003
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you get a little bit more into what can we do?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, in electives to ground ourselves more in emotion to invite it more.
33:12.010 --> 33:20.059
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first thing I think to be able to have emotions in our political work to convince people is to be able to welcome them in our groups.
33:20.220 --> 33:24.565
[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things that I talk about in the book is the ability to
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[SPEAKER_02]: build groups while centering, you know, the connection and the experience and the emotional connection as a center piece in building healthy groups.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I take an example that is really amazing is a feminist organization in France that is called Lalab.
33:41.032 --> 34:07.326
[SPEAKER_02]: So, it's a feminist organization that defends the rights of Muslim women and it's made only of Muslim women and the way this group has imagined their onboarding for people who come into the organization is very much to say that you can't just have someone who joins with all the baggage and trauma that may be the face because a lot of the women who came in the association, they suffer a lot of Islamophobia and sexism.
34:07.306 --> 34:16.904
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you can't just, you know, welcome Ben and straightaway send them on the TV show to receive so much hate and, you know, like horrible questions, etc.
34:16.964 --> 34:26.462
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the first step in building a group that can actually have a political voice is to create a safe or at least a safe or a space where they can meet each other when they can
34:26.442 --> 34:39.361
[SPEAKER_02]: share the experiences, find ways basically to be a trust with one another and also to be trust in themselves and their ability to be politically vocal before they actually go out in the world.
34:39.681 --> 34:50.897
[SPEAKER_02]: I think like you know I give this example because it's it's very obvious that the amount of violence that sort of those women is like you understand but I would say it should be done in any cases.
34:50.877 --> 35:12.092
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been in so many activities group when you arrive and, you know, your chart with, I don't know, so many difficult stuff you've been through your life and the meeting starts and no one asks how you're doing and straight away you're going to like, okay, we have to do this and we have to do that and but also like you, I don't know, I give the example in the book like I was in this demonstration and I was, you know,
35:12.072 --> 35:17.659
[SPEAKER_02]: We were opposing the presence of the extremists in the demonstration against anti-Semitism.
35:17.919 --> 35:23.726
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's this guy who was with the extremists and came to me and insulted me and pushed me.
35:24.327 --> 35:27.190
[SPEAKER_02]: And no one in my group, there was so much confusion.
35:27.270 --> 35:28.652
[SPEAKER_02]: People didn't see what happened.
35:28.672 --> 35:35.380
[SPEAKER_02]: And so after the day finished, everyone came home and we had no moment to join them.
35:35.360 --> 35:43.669
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, kind of leave this moment and the emotion maybe it had triggered and so everyone came home and then there was this what's the group and it was like, oh, that was amazing.
35:43.689 --> 35:59.545
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we did this so great and I was feeling very stressed and traumatized and I didn't want it to waste the party and so all of this negative emotion created something in me that I felt also left by my group and I was like, oh, no one cares whatever.
35:59.525 --> 36:04.396
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that in order to overcome these emotions, we need to make space for it.
36:04.897 --> 36:10.691
[SPEAKER_02]: So it can't just show up spontaneously if it's not welcome in a structured way.
36:10.931 --> 36:16.504
[SPEAKER_02]: And so one of the way we invite emotion, and I know that's probably what some of what you do at but...
36:16.484 --> 36:27.800
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to build, that's why I'm talking about structure, you have to build at the space for this emotion to be not only heard but welcome and sometimes used for political work.
36:27.820 --> 36:37.073
[SPEAKER_02]: And going from the intimate to the political is also a way for many of us, and I include myself to, you know, to make trauma become like political action.
36:37.214 --> 36:43.082
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's super important that we understand that many of us come to activism because we need to,
36:43.062 --> 36:54.837
[SPEAKER_02]: repair and so if there's no space in the activist group to voice the reparation that's needed and to put it into action to be a real reparation then it's too difficult.
36:54.857 --> 37:03.568
[SPEAKER_01]: Two things I want to go in there in a moment but there was a nice anecdote that because I have the lecture I'm lucky that we work together.
37:03.548 --> 37:28.071
[SPEAKER_01]: and so we were having this session in in Masey and we were doing one of these exercise about like personal stories and your values and why are you doing these activities work and I remember this was very important to you and then this one one of the participants had like I don't understand like why are we doing this you know they are the far-right they are super organizing themselves and they are you know destroying everything and here we are talking about our emotions
37:28.051 --> 37:36.265
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and then another participant answered, but it was a sort of life lesson, and he said, you know, that's not what we're doing here.
37:36.606 --> 37:40.512
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not what the traditional left is doing, which was the critique of the other person.
37:40.552 --> 37:42.596
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something new.
37:42.656 --> 37:44.439
[SPEAKER_01]: We're trying to think in a different way.
37:44.459 --> 37:45.761
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is so important.
37:45.861 --> 37:48.846
[SPEAKER_01]: This is actually the word that we have to do.
37:49.247 --> 37:50.970
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, it was very impressed.
37:50.950 --> 37:55.659
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was glad that this person answered that I didn't have to defend the proposition.
37:55.860 --> 38:06.360
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it's super important and I think that it's interesting because with the rise of the far right, I think everyone feels like, you know, we need to fight back and we need to be there and we need not to lose time.
38:06.340 --> 38:26.242
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's true, you know, like there are urgencies, you know, that we need to take care of, but also like the best thing we can do is to become more to build our solidarity and to build our strength together because honestly, the only thing that can, sorry, I hope it doesn't feel too much like Star Wars, but like the only thing that can defeat.
38:26.262 --> 38:28.325
[SPEAKER_02]: The far right is this ideology.
38:28.445 --> 38:34.812
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, what the far right is rising on is a sense of hopelessness, cynicism and loneliness.
38:34.792 --> 38:49.269
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, in the way we do activism, we can't have activist group that are trying to fight extreme right with the exact same ingredients, like what we need is to have the solidarity, the sense of community, the sense of strengths.
38:49.590 --> 39:03.246
[SPEAKER_02]: And also, I think it depends, but you know, like we are in friends, I'm working in friends mostly and, you know, we still can demonstrate even though it's becoming more violent and, you know, we still have some kind of freedom of speech.
39:03.226 --> 39:20.475
[SPEAKER_02]: but there are places like in other places in the world and I work for example with people in Georgia that you know cannot even demonstrate anymore and like their lives that are at risk and because they've built this solidarity they also are able to use that fuel to find ways to protect each other like physically.
39:20.455 --> 39:48.353
[SPEAKER_02]: So we should never forget that everything we build now is also like for the future and as this fascism grows like the best thing we can do is to actually make sure that we are together and that we trust each other enough that we we can support each other, you know what I mean But I remember this moment and I was so not surprised that this question came up
39:48.873 --> 39:52.560
[SPEAKER_01]: Preventing us from actually doing Yeah, it doesn't work.
39:52.580 --> 40:07.168
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wanted to get it to the point of trauma and Healing in the collective because that's I think one of the most amazing things that I have found and you talk about it It just makes so much sense we've been usually your traumatized in relationship
40:07.148 --> 40:10.676
[SPEAKER_01]: So you heal it also in relationship in part.
40:10.796 --> 40:15.687
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that we've been wondering, and I don't know, we have, I have some colleagues that are more like experts in that.
40:15.827 --> 40:16.950
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say draw mine form.
40:16.990 --> 40:18.032
[SPEAKER_01]: Where is the boundary?
40:18.353 --> 40:20.818
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we say, in our case, our context is work.
40:20.838 --> 40:24.887
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll turn it to organizing for, let's say, alternative work.
40:26.150 --> 40:30.794
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's something we say, okay, like work is also, it's not therapy, can't of.
40:31.035 --> 40:32.716
[SPEAKER_01]: But we don't know exactly.
40:32.756 --> 40:33.477
[SPEAKER_01]: Where is that?
40:33.497 --> 40:39.963
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you can talk a little bit about, is there a boundary or where is it in your case and in active is it?
40:39.983 --> 40:42.426
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think that goes a level deeper.
40:42.606 --> 40:43.827
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, here's the know you're taking.
40:43.847 --> 40:52.275
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I'm very done with this question because I think the boundary shouldn't be defined by the base, but by the people.
40:53.234 --> 41:05.069
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think for me the question is like the boundary is more like the boundary that each individual in the group wants to put in the kind of opening up in how they feel and some personal issues and traumas.
41:05.770 --> 41:17.385
[SPEAKER_02]: Then it is the space because I mean I think that we are a society where we're really struggling with with emotions we talked about it already and we're really struggling with people who are not well.
41:17.365 --> 41:20.109
[SPEAKER_02]: How often do you say, hey, how are you?
41:20.129 --> 41:21.051
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, I'm great.
41:21.211 --> 41:22.994
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though you're doing so bad.
41:23.675 --> 41:31.227
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's just like I'm I believe that we would win to have more spaces where we actually can say how we're feeling.
41:31.447 --> 41:34.572
[SPEAKER_02]: I think work is where people spend a lot of their time.
41:34.772 --> 41:38.718
[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, the boundary is more like where people put it than the space.
41:39.179 --> 41:44.908
[SPEAKER_02]: I think actually work and be a healing space when you find in your coworkers with who you build trust.
41:44.888 --> 41:54.849
[SPEAKER_02]: There's always the issue with the RK because we still like in a model where in most organizations the RK and so, you know, someone has power over you and so how much can you open up.
41:54.869 --> 42:01.783
[SPEAKER_02]: But I would say that one of the things that I've been advising to a lot of the people that I've been talking to, who do management or leadership,
42:01.763 --> 42:11.860
[SPEAKER_02]: or who are in leadership positions that the best thing they can do to allow their, you know, the people they work with to actually be healthy is themselves to be a little bit more vulnerable.
42:12.522 --> 42:25.524
[SPEAKER_02]: And to open up a little bit more about, I mean, I'm not even talking about personal stuff, but just opening up about the difficulties you face at work and, you know, when sometimes things are hard or you are not motivated to work with something, etc.
42:25.564 --> 42:26.185
[SPEAKER_02]: because
42:26.165 --> 42:37.526
[SPEAKER_02]: I really think that this model of powerhouse and everything would be okay and you do that eight hours a day and then you come home and you crash, it's just not sustainable for anyone.
42:37.567 --> 42:47.886
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would just to answer your question, I would say I think the boundaries is individual is not so much in the space and I actually think that what we do in activism can absolutely work.
42:47.866 --> 42:48.928
[SPEAKER_02]: for workspaces.
42:49.329 --> 42:58.947
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just that the entry point is different because I think people in activism all of us come because, you know, I mean, there's something that accepted that you come to activism because you're passionate about something.
42:58.987 --> 43:01.692
[SPEAKER_02]: So your emotion already can be a little bit more welcomed.
43:01.972 --> 43:11.410
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I actually, you know, some of the support that I give to organizations, like, okay, they are organization working on social issues, but they're still organizations.
43:11.390 --> 43:20.342
[SPEAKER_02]: They are still like, you know, employers, employees and managers and managers and managers and so we're still working this out so I don't see how this wouldn't work in other type of organization.
43:20.543 --> 43:24.768
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I mean, I'm all for trying to open up a little bit.
43:24.788 --> 43:25.309
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you.
43:25.329 --> 43:26.150
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, very insightful.
43:26.351 --> 43:38.207
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to touch upon like now because a little bit more on the vision and possibilities and there's a concept you bring to the book, which is based on Edward Gleason of Archipelagos.
43:38.187 --> 43:42.040
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sort of in these like plural interconnected islands.
43:42.140 --> 43:45.190
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all the metaphors for it from from other authors.
43:45.210 --> 43:49.986
[SPEAKER_01]: But how can these inspire a different way of organizing movements?
43:50.253 --> 43:55.882
[SPEAKER_01]: to maybe draw of some of the big examples that you've lived with the day.
43:56.102 --> 43:56.783
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
43:56.803 --> 44:01.150
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, it's to answer the question of hegemony and scale.
44:01.210 --> 44:06.218
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that the opposite model of hegemony is called collaboration.
44:06.258 --> 44:08.461
[SPEAKER_02]: In my case, I even talk about coalition.
44:09.022 --> 44:10.945
[SPEAKER_02]: And I make a difference between,
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[SPEAKER_02]: collaboration is like we work together and you know we have to share the work.
44:14.994 --> 44:23.472
[SPEAKER_02]: I think coalition is more like we share a goal together and we think about ways in which we we can manage each other's a bit of the work.
44:23.953 --> 44:28.663
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think the reason why I wanted to push this is that for two reasons, the first is that
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[SPEAKER_02]: We are, as I said, already like we are in a moment of raising fascism and so the most resistant ways of organizing is decentralization.
44:37.296 --> 44:48.112
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the more you have multiple actors that are connected to each other, the less risk you have for organization to be targeted and also of the movement to be weakened.
44:48.292 --> 44:52.558
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like if there's one organization that's targeted, you know, everyone else is still there.
44:52.538 --> 44:54.802
[SPEAKER_02]: So, that's the first reason.
44:54.842 --> 44:58.227
[SPEAKER_02]: The second is that we start also comes a lack of resources.
44:58.307 --> 45:05.599
[SPEAKER_02]: So, we have less and less funding, some organization in the civic space they work with public funding that are being cut.
45:05.779 --> 45:08.303
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, we know that with USA, that's been resolved.
45:08.283 --> 45:16.515
[SPEAKER_02]: with run by Trump or even like, you know, big movements, big foundations that I've stopped funding in Europe, for example.
45:16.695 --> 45:21.742
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm European, so I speak from that perspective to fund more in the US or in other parts of the world.
45:22.323 --> 45:26.950
[SPEAKER_02]: And also like the ones who are in a train to get funding,
45:26.930 --> 45:32.478
[SPEAKER_02]: From people, you know, people are also like suffering the economy crisis, so anyway, there's less resources.
45:32.798 --> 45:37.185
[SPEAKER_02]: Working as an archipelagos, and it's an archipel.
45:37.765 --> 45:43.634
[SPEAKER_02]: This idea of, you know, many islands that are connected, because the archipel is not just one island.
45:44.115 --> 45:50.323
[SPEAKER_02]: A archipel is like a group of many islands, so like there's a connection, you know, like there's a shared water space.
45:50.484 --> 45:52.887
[SPEAKER_02]: And in this idea of doing that with
45:52.867 --> 45:58.133
[SPEAKER_02]: The organization is also decided that we are many people, but we are connected with a common purpose.
45:58.153 --> 46:01.796
[SPEAKER_02]: And because we have less resources, we need to think about how we use them.
46:01.977 --> 46:11.447
[SPEAKER_02]: And so if we all are doing the same thing, if we all are raising money on the same thing, we actually like making ourselves poorer, we are increasing competition.
46:11.987 --> 46:22.418
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm really pushing the idea of when you start an organization or even when you try to refocus your organization like
46:22.398 --> 46:49.722
[SPEAKER_02]: which which player am I playing and so I give the example I'm sorry I'm not even sure if that example I give in the book but I will say the example of like when we work on the last election in France in 2024 we had a snap election so we had only three weeks to organize you know it's been beautiful to see how a lot of us you know we were a group of 130 organizers it was so fast that we didn't have time to decide who was going to be the leader
46:49.702 --> 47:18.038
[SPEAKER_02]: like everyone's putting stuff together and so everyone was doing different things and everyone was sharing with others you know like the resources they have whether it was data, intelligence, so you know training each other or you know someone is a room to make an event I have a room someone needs this you know and so this idea of being more as an archipelago as a group of different organizations that share a world of space and share resources and are not competing for the
47:18.018 --> 47:41.292
[SPEAKER_02]: resources made it the only way actually I think we could have one and so I think it's worked because it was an urgency moment but I'm really pushing for us to think about how do we do that when it's not urgent you know how do we and I'm thinking a lot about that as I start you know new projects every time I'm like okay who's doing that already and sometimes it's a bit tiring because you just want to go with your idea.
47:41.272 --> 48:04.073
[SPEAKER_02]: But spending time to explore, you know, like who else is doing that and discussing with other people also allows you to really like feel the gap but also build partnerships already with other people and I think that's the way we should all view our organizations and be able to like be
48:04.103 --> 48:13.134
[SPEAKER_01]: was this archipelago from the 2024 elections like was it based on any structure or was it mostly relationships that you've been building?
48:13.674 --> 48:15.076
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was relationships.
48:15.096 --> 48:23.446
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, we're going back to this point is that the reason why we were able to act together with trust is that we knew each other already for some time.
48:23.786 --> 48:29.453
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's, you know, it's not like we've been working for one year and suddenly we trust each other and then this thing happened.
48:29.433 --> 48:41.647
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just like there has been many moments in the past 10 years, I would say, that people in this, you know, who participated in this kind of fast coalition, wearing contact at some point, doing stuff together.
48:41.727 --> 48:48.395
[SPEAKER_02]: And one thing that's interesting is that they were not in contact as like formal partnership, like they were individuals knowing each other.
48:48.715 --> 48:54.141
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when we decided to set up this group, we didn't say, we want this organization and this organization, we say,
48:54.121 --> 48:57.324
[SPEAKER_02]: We want this person to be there and this person should be there.
48:57.344 --> 48:59.907
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, we should say to this person, she can join the group.
48:59.947 --> 49:10.978
[SPEAKER_02]: And because we were individuals also working in groups, like it was much faster and the trust had been built between those people before, so they were able to act quickly together.
49:11.298 --> 49:21.428
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess that's also one of the, or from what I hear, critiques to let's say the left or like non-right that's, you know, we're disconnected from each other.
49:21.796 --> 49:23.699
[SPEAKER_01]: that we need to make a lot more of this work.
49:23.839 --> 49:25.621
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
49:25.681 --> 49:25.782
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
49:25.842 --> 49:34.434
[SPEAKER_01]: To finalize, I wanted to ask you, because in your book, again, so you talk about, so we should not focus on what is that we don't want.
49:34.774 --> 49:36.497
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's focus on what is it that we want.
49:36.877 --> 49:41.804
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I wanted to ask, can you describe, or also like, what headline would you give?
49:41.824 --> 49:42.645
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it like healthy?
49:42.665 --> 49:43.787
[SPEAKER_01]: Activism?
49:43.887 --> 49:47.232
[SPEAKER_01]: Or like, what is it like, say your main attribute to it?
49:47.312 --> 49:48.594
[SPEAKER_01]: And how does it look like?
49:48.934 --> 49:51.718
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you give us a bit of a picture,
49:51.698 --> 49:52.359
[SPEAKER_01]: What are we like?
49:54.041 --> 50:00.209
[SPEAKER_02]: I have done this exercise for another interview and I should have written it down because not I need to to revert it.
50:01.030 --> 50:16.069
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think like the kind of activism that I hope I can help contribute to build is one where we find community, one where we find support, even like I would say one where we find the trust in ourselves.
50:16.049 --> 50:18.472
[SPEAKER_02]: the ability to trust ourselves and each other.
50:18.693 --> 50:23.840
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one that is very determined to win and still conscious of the world we live in.
50:24.201 --> 50:27.005
[SPEAKER_02]: So very pragmatic yet with a big vision.
50:27.205 --> 50:34.395
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also a place where we understand that everything we do, the way we act to each other,
50:34.375 --> 50:40.741
[SPEAKER_02]: has an impact on our political project, and therefore we put a lot of effort in the way we are with each other.
50:40.922 --> 50:45.646
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's an active space where there is conflict, but there is an violence.
50:45.867 --> 50:55.697
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a space where we are looking to make each others better, but we are not looking to punish each other.
50:55.837 --> 51:01.142
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, I had to do a little bit of negative.
51:01.122 --> 51:20.735
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think very inspired by the idea of, you know, in sociocritic models where you're not, you know, like you have an objection and the if someone proposed something and you say I have an objection because this is going to be problematic like the role of the group is not to fight the distances but is to try to find a solution to lift that objection.
51:20.855 --> 51:25.122
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want activism that is inspired by those practices of
51:25.102 --> 51:27.726
[SPEAKER_02]: trying to find solutions together and that's it.
51:27.846 --> 51:28.907
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
51:28.927 --> 51:29.508
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
51:29.528 --> 51:30.930
[SPEAKER_01]: And congratulations on the book.
51:30.970 --> 51:52.780
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you did an amazing very challenging work to bring down like all these like philosophical perspectives down to something also very pragmatic and specific about how people you know can take the book and start changing how they meet to be able to get
51:53.182 --> 51:55.367
[SPEAKER_01]: individuals and as a system.
51:55.587 --> 51:57.090
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you and thank you for reading.
51:58.854 --> 52:00.377
[SPEAKER_01]: This is political.
52:00.758 --> 52:08.575
[SPEAKER_01]: How we organize is political and I thought that it's become clear or clear to you through this episode.
52:08.723 --> 52:25.468
[SPEAKER_01]: with Sara, how important it is to challenge the basis of the dominating cultures that we find ourselves in, because if we don't do that, we're reproducing those cultures and we're just representing more inequality and unfairness.
52:25.889 --> 52:35.423
[SPEAKER_01]: So whatever it is that we engage in doing, there's the needs to look inside, of course individually, but also and especially for the focus of the work,
52:35.403 --> 52:39.847
[SPEAKER_01]: that we do in this intersection between the individual and then the collective.
52:39.947 --> 52:46.214
[SPEAKER_01]: How is it that we engage together for our common purposes and goals?
52:46.574 --> 52:54.902
[SPEAKER_01]: And how from here we create new cultures, healthier ones, that then allow us to get to a healthier, better world as well.
52:55.283 --> 53:03.891
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I take with me is the power of vision from her book.
53:04.124 --> 53:27.246
[SPEAKER_01]: about it in her book about from even a very practical perspective how important it is to when we engage with people when we have conversations, you know, and we disagree and there are people from let's say the opposite direction to what we would want towards a more progressive world that, you know, let's not engage in criticizing what the other person
53:27.496 --> 53:38.774
[SPEAKER_01]: is saying or in acting in opposition, but let's just try to picture what is it that we want to achieve and it would be much easier to understand each other from that perspective.
53:39.154 --> 53:47.487
[SPEAKER_01]: And also the power of vision is what allows us to then move forward towards something and not move against something else.
53:47.748 --> 53:49.150
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I haven't
53:49.130 --> 54:07.628
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm sure like I know I haven't, I didn't understand this for a very long time and I started I think working with vision at the personal level the last couple of years and seeing how powerful it is and how much it just allows me to for example just in my relationship if I imagine
54:07.608 --> 54:09.430
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm pissed off because of something.
54:09.811 --> 54:16.360
[SPEAKER_01]: And I imagine, okay, I use that emotion to help me connect to what is it that I would want to achieve?
54:16.420 --> 54:21.267
[SPEAKER_01]: How would I see my, how do I feel the potential of the relationship with my partner?
54:21.647 --> 54:31.140
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is such a pulling force that then I'm able to go through those feelings or understand, okay, I was angry because of something, but what is it that actually wants?
54:31.160 --> 54:33.463
[SPEAKER_01]: And then talk about that thing that I want.
54:33.443 --> 54:43.303
[SPEAKER_01]: And for example, my partner responding much much better to that and both of us moving forward to the potential that we see in our relationship.
54:43.343 --> 54:47.471
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a very simple and a sort of oscillate example.
54:47.852 --> 54:55.367
[SPEAKER_01]: But from this embodied experience with my partner, I've been doing this more and more also in the my understanding of
54:55.685 --> 55:20.258
[SPEAKER_01]: the collective in this case like what is it that we could be with the potential and moving more towards that vision and the energy that that gives and I think that from there we can understand each other much much better and collaborate with each other it's not even in a smoother way it's just in a way that makes sense yeah that's one of the big things that I take for myself
55:20.508 --> 55:25.794
[SPEAKER_01]: her book if you speak French and it's not the help of war and English version soon.
55:26.315 --> 55:47.258
[SPEAKER_01]: I think as I've said for the interview and I think the intro she does bridge very very well these huge systemic topics with very specific actions that that we can take and why those actions that sometimes we don't know why you might don't know if you're a facilitating
55:47.660 --> 55:58.391
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't always known, as well, or sometimes I feel insecure when I'm in a group, but this helps you also ground, why is it so important to ask people how they're doing?
55:58.632 --> 56:00.153
[SPEAKER_01]: What is that we want to do together?
56:00.213 --> 56:01.274
[SPEAKER_01]: What are our needs?
56:02.996 --> 56:08.322
[SPEAKER_01]: What I feel that they are if they express pain.
56:08.802 --> 56:09.343
[SPEAKER_01]: Stay there.
56:09.983 --> 56:12.586
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is the work.
56:12.927 --> 56:17.211
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, this is a sum of my takeaways.
56:18.237 --> 56:21.683
[SPEAKER_01]: Organizing is political always.