This line from an essay by writer Rebecca Solnit has been stuck in my mind recently: “I always pair privilege with obliviousness…” Talk of privilege often centers on tangible advantages. …
Author Archives: Palma Joy Strand
How Does Civity Grow?
In Civity’s work with communities, work that we call “seeding civity,” we start with the soil. We find communities, organizations, and institutions where a handful of local leaders already see …
Putting Difference on the Table: A Civity Tribute to Toni Morrison
“File:Vitoria – Graffiti & Murals 0392.JPG” by Zarateman is licensed under CC0 1.0 The word most frequently used to describe a group of people who are linked in some way …
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Civity: Dancing to Change
At Civity, we are about cultural change. We use the word “civity” to describe the particular change that we want to see: a culture based in positive relationships across difference. …
From a Hummingbird to a Wave: Civity and System Change
Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her vision and creation of the Green Belt Movement, which empowers people to plant trees in parts of Africa …
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The Power of “Both-And” Stories
In our civity work, we have discovered the power of “both-and” stories. Both-and stories portray people as multi-faceted, as not simply one thing or another. By introducing complexity or even …
The Journey from Head to Heart
At Civity we talk about the power of relationships to make it possible for different people to “see” others and care about their well-being. Relationships – especially relationships between people …
Empathy and Infinity
Civity relationships are relationships of respect and empathy. Respect has always seemed straightforward to me. The root of the word – the Latin “spec” – means “to see”: To respect …
Reaching for Civity
Krista Tippett, host of NPR’s On Being, struggles with the word “civility.” In a recent Living the Questions segment, Tippett names the danger of using “civility” as a “passive-aggressive weapon” …
Civity Iceland: “Thingvellir” or the “Assembly Field”
Who would have thought that I would find reverberations of civity while sightseeing in Iceland? Last month,I attended a conference in Reykjavik and then had the opportunity to spend a …
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