Beverly Daniel Tatum, psychologist and author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, provides a metaphor for racism that captures the feeling of being part of a larger system: the moving walkways that are found in many airports. Once you step onto the moving walkway, its motion carries you along. Even standing …
Continue reading “The Push of Antiracism & the Pull of Civity”
Civity has, from the beginning, taken a systems approach to social change. In complex adaptive social systems – such as our communities, our nation, and our world – it is the interactions of the people within them – our relationships – that create the system’s energy and character. The challenges and injustices that we see and experience are created by us – all of us.
Dear Friends- As we look ahead – coming off of the challenges of 2020 and the turbulent beginning to 2021 – Civity’s vision and Civity’s work are more vital than ever. We are seeing once again how race and class – the deep cracks in the foundation of our democracy – can lead to physical …
It is time to be honest with ourselves about the social contract of the United States, the core of our shared understanding about who We the People are and how we are going to be with each other. Most of us learn the basics of this social contract in elementary school. We are stirred by …
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are having weird and vivid dreams. Some of these dreams may be due to the anxiety many of us are feeling; others are due simply to the radical shifts in how we are living our everyday lives. One of the ways, apparently, that we as individuals respond …
The COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols are keeping us apart. Soccer and baseball fields lie empty, as do picnic tables and playgrounds, beaches and trails. Restaurants and coffee shops are in-and-out or delivery operations. Barber shops and hair salons are closed. The doors of churches, synagogues, and mosques are locked. And library buildings are quiet. Not even …
Continue reading “Where We Gather – Missing Our “Third Places””
In Greek tragedy, irony describes a situation in which the significance of a character’s actions or words is known to the audience but not to the character. What I heard in the interview, in contrast, struck me as the opposite of irony – a situation in which the significance of a character’s actions or words …
The fundamental question facing any community or society is how its members are going to be with each other. This question is more pressing now than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic is taking lives, and the shelter-in-place directives aimed at saving lives are devastating many people’s livelihoods. A natural disaster is creating a social and economic …
Dear Friends of Civity- We hope you all are holding up (and for many of us, holing up) and staying safe and healthy. We realize the current environment is unsettling, disconcerting, and scary. For us, it is a time to be grateful for the people we are in relationship with – our loved ones, our …
Continue reading “We Are All Connected: Civity in the Time of COVID-19”
The civity work of building relationships in communities doesn’t fit into standard categories . . . People sometimes ask us: Is civity about inclusion, diversity, and equity? (Yes.) Is it connected to democracy? (Yes.) Is it like community organizing? (Yes.) And what about civic engagement? How does civity relate to that? Both Malka and I …
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