| Reinventing
power / TRAINING
Imbalances in power relations are everywhere, including
within those groups working to change such imbalances. Peace
trainer George Lakey recounts workshops he has conducted
with activist groups, uncovering their internal power dynamics - and
transforming them.
To build
movements that can transform society – including its power relations – requires
transformational work in the training. We work with movements whose
activists are at very high risk of injury and death from police and
security forces. The very minimal emotional risk we see in doing transformational
work is worth taking when seen in the context of what social movements
around the world do every day. The transformational opening, as we
see it, is to go beneath the surface of talk going on in a workshop.
The goal? Empowerment. We do transformational work only when the group
has grown cohesive enough to support it, and when we sense a strong
motivation for breaking through limits to activist effectiveness.
The
charismatic leader
Charismatic leadership has made enormous contributions to social change and
even egalitarians often have heroes like Aung Sang Suu Kyi and Martin Luther
King. The downside of dependence on such leaders is, however, obvious. Sometimes
skill-building activist workshops can address the leadership issue, if the
facilitator is alert and waits patiently for what we call ‘the teachable
moment’.
In
Asia a charismatic religious figure was leading a campaign to
save the regional rainforests; his style of leadership was to
think things out and call the shots. One practical difficulty
with his style was that the movement was heavily dependent on
him and he was at that time at risk of imprisonment or assassination.
I went into the forest to facilitate a campaign strategy workshop
for him and his group.
The
teachable moment came a couple of days into the workshop when
one villager, reporting for his small discussion group, acknowledged
that his report was scanty. He accounted for the poor quality
of the report by saying: ‘I’ve never thought for
myself – I’ve only done what the leader tells me
to.’ To me, it was as if a bell rang and I thought I saw
reverberations in the group as well. So I asked a series of questions
to help them think about the possible benefits of shared strategic
thinking. It was delicate work because leader/follower balances
can be heavily charged.
The
group came to the view that it would like to participate in strategic
thinking with the leader, and the leader said he could see the
value of that, I challenged the group to show with their bodies
their new commitment by sitting close to the leader (who habitually
had deference space around his person). They did, half expecting
lightning to strike – and I fully expected lightning to
strike because I was taking such a risk in cultural dynamics.
Once
they’d done the moving around, the relaxation of tension
was palpable. Smiles started to appear. About the new arrangement
the leader said, poignantly: ‘I don’t feel so alone.’
A
new relationship had emerged which enabled the leader to ask
the question which had been tacitly hanging over everyone’s
heads for the entire workshop: ‘What will this movement
do if I am jailed or killed?’ The group had by then grown
to the point that it could start to answer that question. |
The
invisible woman
It was Sunday morning in a weekend workshop in the US. Only a short way into
the part of the workshop we call Open Sharing, an Asian American woman began
to speak about her experience of invisibility in the workshop session the previous
evening. It had reminded her vividly of the invisibility which is characteristic
of the oppression of Asian Americans in the larger society. I encouraged her
to express herself as strongly as she felt, and she did so, with tears and storming.
Aware that the listeners might shut down from guilt, I assisted the group to
make connections not only to their own pain but also to the dynamics they are
likely to encounter in doing social-change work. It turned out, in debriefing,
that others in the group remembered ‘losing their voices’ at times
in their lives and found inspiration in watching someone stand up for herself
so powerfully. The impromptu ‘speak-out’ was not only transformational
for the Asian American woman but became a vivid metaphor to anchor the remaining
work of the workshop. |
Gandhi expected
truth to be uncovered through action. He expected truth to unfold in
the interactive process, including the process of confrontation.
My colleagues
and I are constantly inventing training tools which will bring the
group’s issues to the surface. We can’t know ahead
of time precisely what will emerge, but we know it will include perceptions
of truth. Then it’s our job as facilitators to assist the group
to take its next step on the journey, knowing that enormous resources
are present within people in the circle.
What reassures
us is that this approach to training works with rural villagers in
Thailand and anarchists in London, Russian graduate students
and African National Congress cadres, US coal miners and Cambodian
monks. Perhaps it travels so well across lines of culture and class
because
the design is based on a simple imperative: respect.
George
Lakey is Director of Training for Change,
a nongovernmental
centre based in a Philadelphia
neighbourhood. Since 1992 TfC trainers
have travelled
to 14 countries on more than 50 training trips and
led
500 workshops for over 10,000 activists. TfC's
pedagogy builds
on the work of Paolo Freire and
other popular educators. www.TrainingforChange.org
|
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