New Year’s Resolution 3: Engaging New Leaders

The four tenets of Leaderful Practice as against the traditional model of leadership. In the public domain. Author: Madhwani Vicky.

By Kathie MM

Selected New Year’s Resolution of the Day: Engage new leaders at every level of the political system.

The country’s government is a mess, has been so for ages , and is getting worse.  That’s why you frequently hear the term “populism” in regard to the last election.

Populist movements act to “disrupt the existing social order by solidifying and mobilizing the animosity of the “commoner” …against “privileged elites” and the “establishment”.[1]

Last year’s populist leader on the right won out over the establishment; the populist leader on the left was shut out by the establishment. And now, income inequality continues to grow, all the evil isms increasingly  contaminate daily life,  environment rape accelerates, and violence spreads its venom into all our lives .

But we’re still here.  Millions of people want greater equality, benevolent justice, environmental protections, nonviolent solutions to conflict—and an end to racialopathy, ethnicopathy, sexopathy, environmentalopathy, and all those other social pathologies plaguing our land.

What will it take to move us in a better direction?

Better leaders. Ethical leaders who will fight for peace and justice—inside as well as outside prevailing political structures.

Consider the image at the beginning of this post.  Does the “leaderful” profile fit your idea of the kind of leader we need?  If not, what characteristics would you seek?

Can you think of anyone in the country today who has the kind of qualities you would want in a leader?

I asked my friend Tony Marsella this question. Here are some of his nominees: Noam Chomsky, Andrew Bacevich, Chris Hedges, Helen Caldicott, Daniel Ellsberg, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Maya Soetoro, Johan Galtung, Robert J. Burrowes.

Who are your nominees for potential leaders who will seek  liberty and justice for all, promote democratic ideals, and act to sustain rather than destroy life on earth?

They’re out there.  Search for them and tell us about them.

And please support engaging peace. You can click here to donate

 

Speaking of epidemics and the need for cures

Grandmothers Against Gun Violence March to City Hall, August 8, 2015. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Author: Seattle City Council.

by Kathie MM

Racialopathy and ethnicopathy are intimately related to another form of social pathology —addiction to guns — a topic regularly addressed on Engaging Peace (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017).

A must-read article by David S. Bernstein in the Atlantic argues that despite media furor over mass shootings, “Americans Don’t Really Understand Gun Violence.”

Why? Because they focus only on fatal gun violence — the tip of an enormous, bloody iceberg of untold pain and suffering for victims of nonfatal violence and their families.

Although estimates suggest over  a million survivors of gun violence in the US today, “nobody really knows how often people are shot by their intimate partners, how many victims are intended targets or bystanders, how many shootings are in self-defense, how such incidents affect community investment and property values, or how much it costs taxpayers to care for victims.”

Ignorance includes assumptions that nonfatal shootings are generally confined to African American neighborhoods; however, data show that from 2001 to 2013, “nonfatal-assault victimization rates declined among African Americans and increased significantly for whites.”

The reasons we know so little about nonfatal gun violence are largely politically based. For example, in 1996, Congress passed the Dickey Amendment “which, along with accompanying budget cuts to the CDC, effectively took the federal government out of the business of funding gun research. Though it was ostensibly designed to prevent federal backing of biased anti-gun propaganda, the National Rifle Association-backed law has had a huge chilling effect.…”

If we want to reduce the epidemic of gun violence, we need more information about it. Speak out against the suppression of information and in favor of research.For motivation, see this video.

 

 

 

Beware Resurgence of Deadly Diseases, Part 3

by Kathie MM

Out, out damn deadly disease!

We recently began a series on racialopathy and ethnicopathy , deadly social diseases, all too contagious in these virulent times.

How can we stop them?

Many diseases—think of cancer—are very complex, taking different forms, attacking different parts and processes in different ways in different people.

To combat those diseases, it is vital to understand them in all their complexity.

A useful place to begin is by uploading (free!) The Official Study Guide by Mary Pugh Clark.  Written to accompany Deep Denial, The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life by David Billings, it has considerable merit on its own.

Billings, an anti-racist trainer and organizer with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (www.pisab.org), is an ordained United Methodist minister and historian. According to civil rights activist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, “No one speaks to racism and its cure better than David Billings, a white Southerner who has seen it all. His is a voice that needs to be heard.”

Clark’s chapter-by-chapter exposition of Deep Denial, like the book itself, is rich in history,  ideas, and  reasons why all of us should challenge the specter of White Supremacy in all its noxious cloaks.

Among the valuable features of the study guide are questions encouraging analysis, reflection, and action related to the material in each chapter.

Here are some examples:

“• What can white people who benefit from gentrification do to mitigate the effects of displacement on families and businesses?

  • What are ways you can engage people who have opinions based on racial stereotyping?
  • If you are involved in non-profit or religious organizations, what are effective ways you can do anti-racist work?

Reading Clark’s Study Guide and Billings’ Deep Denial may get us one step closer to curing one lng-deadly disease.

 

Beware Resurgence of Deadly Diseases, Part 2

This work has been released into the public domain by its author, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

By Kathie MM

In my last post , I described causes, contexts, and symptoms of a major form of social pathology—racialopathy. Racialopathy is a subtype of a much broader  social pathology—ethnicopathy. In all cases, the carriers of the disease tend to be the group with greater power within a social context, and the victims of the disease are the less powerful groups.

In the United States, the carriers tend to be extremely rich white men (who pass the pathology on to many others, male and female) and the victims tend to be men, women, and children of color—the designated scapegoats for social unrest.

Evidence for ethnicopathy abounds elsewhere, and has taken “non-racial” forms; a few examples:

White Christians (Catholics) versus White Christians (Protestants), which played out violently long before “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland .

Black (Hutu) versus Black (Tutsi) in Rwanda .

Muslim (Shi’a) versus Muslim (Sunni) in the Middle East (and elsewhere) .

Buddhist nationalists versus Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar .

Although these examples of ethnicopathy involve gruesome amounts of violence, ethnicopathy, like racialopathy, can take less violent forms—for example, disparaging,  stigmatizing, and denying rights to “the other.” These less blatantly violent forms of oppression may be a form of “ethnic cleansing,” as when White authorities in the US, Australia, and Canada seized indigenous children to “educate” them for productive work (often virtual slavery).

In the last few generations of your family, have there been any examples of ethnicopathy?

If so, did they get resolved? If so, how?

Have you ever participated in any activities designed to reduce racialopathy and ethnicopathy?

If so, what is your view of the success of those activities?

Check in again after the holidays for suggestions as to how to tackle this epidemic–and please send your own ideas and experiences!