RIVERS WITHOUT BORDERS

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Change in the Making

I recently returned from four days participating in the Social Change Institute held at Hollyhock on Cortez Island, BC. This conference brought together many thinkers and doers from multiple sectors of the social/environmental movement to share our ideas, the pieces of work we do, and to create synergistic understanding of how all the various kinds of work we each do can and need to work together. 

With climate change currently acting as a catalyst for getting real attention for environmental issues, we are at a pivotal time for making real change. But we discussed the fact that we need to find ways to maintain this widespread level of inspiration, concern and action; and we need to ensure that this upsurge of energy doesn’t flow only into climate change work to the neglect of other key issues, while at the same time recognizing the linkages and potential for heightened impacts from climate change on so many other social and environmental concerns.

The theme of the conference was collaboration and I think some key ideas were raised around how all that we do as agents of change works in relationship to each other, and about how we could better use collaborations and interactions to raise the bar even higher on social and environmental change. Some things we discussed were: the key role of personal growth in social transformation, the importance of storytelling to inspire and educate, the need for creativity in shaping interaction and activating change, and the integral importance of difference and diversity. We looked examples from Latin America, from campaigns for peace in the U.S., from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and many other case studies, stories and examples.

The recognition of diversity was a repeated theme and really reminded us that while we are feeling an upsurge of interest and action in the environment, there are many people, in BC, in North America, and around the world who are just struggling to survive against daunting poverty, health, and rights challenges. Recognizing these kinds of injustices reinforces the need to ensure we don’t get swept up in narrowing the issues facing our world to focus on only energy use. At the same time, that does not mean that action on climate change is not essential, but that it is important to weave the interconnections among inequities and unsustainable situations.

And we talked a lot about the question of power. How do we hold it effectively, how do we build it, and can we get more comfortable with our own power? This theme carried into many sessions, particularly on personal growth, on coalitions, and on leadership. Karen Mahon, Executive Director of the Hollyhock Leadership Institute, introduced a discussion of leadership by reminding us that many cultures share ideas about what makes a good leader: honesty, storytelling, and vision. These criteria can go a long way in guiding our sense of where to turn for inspiration in places like electoral politics, the organisations we are part of, and in the work we each do in the world.

Honesty is most likely to be present when those who are speaking are doing so not for only their own self interest, but for a greater good. Storytelling plays many important roles: it reveals relationships to place, to practices, and to others; storytelling also allows for greater understanding and articulation of the complexities involved in the state of the planet. And vision. Vision is all too often forgotten in social/environmental circles and certainly is often lacking in modern politics, and yet it is so key. We need to first imagine the world we want to see before we can bring it into being. And then we need to let those dreams become the beams that hold our communities together. Because real change needs us all. So let’s get busy imagining the change we are going to be in this world.