The city of Madrid, which I never get to see. Photo by Cuellar
The Afghani fellow asks, quite poignantly, if the speakers had a master key he could take home to help his country. I try to pay attention. He doesn’t talk much and obviously feels a deep human suffering, the normal suffering of a human compounded by the additional suffering of a nation which is more than a bit messed up. The Palestinian girl says she’s looking for something practical to take home after years of trying. An Egyptian tries to say that asking to resolve these questions in a four day workshop is not fair, and then emotion breaks out, across the room. For most, this is just felt as awkward.
I always liked awkward. Awkward is when reality intrudes upon illusion. The reality is suffering, a word I use in the Buddhist sense. Awkward is a moment that we stop pretending that everything is OK and silently observe that it is not.
What the Afghani and the Palestinian are feeling is pain. Living with injustice sucks. Not being able to do anything about it sucks even more. The idea that you could do something about it but not knowing exactly what just adds a Sisyphean dimension to the pain. At some point it’s hard to listen to theory without having that brutal reality acknowledged.
The next day, it gets awkward again. The teacher is trying to explain YouTube mash-ups and a journalist from Yemen can’t take it any more. He keeps interrupting and finally gets up to speak about how bad the situation in Yemen is and asking how this can help. He’s not especially coherent, but I can get the emotional import of his words, which is broadly that he’s in pain. He’s asking for help or, at the least, understanding. Instead, people ask him to shut up and, if he can’t, to leave. He’s not in the best physical state and he’s not actually contributing to the workshop program. In a very important way, however, he is.
I’m in Madrid for a workshop on Citizen Journalism and Civil Resistance. There are academic instructors with codified theory and practice and also participants with unique experience, including one of the organizers of the Egyptian protests. Like school, some of the best learning is on the sidelines, the crash courses on street organizing during the break, the personal experiences of different activists.
The teachers, however, keep having to pull the discussion back to keep it focused. They must, because group discussions that meander eventually fail. At the same time, however, there is serious shit going down in Yemen and Afghanistan and Bahrain, all of which are represented here. That’s not really acknowledged at all. There are some people here from safe countries like mine looking for information, but there are also people from dangerous countries looking for, essentially, salvation. It’s hard to hear that the answer is no.
There is no salvation here, and even the theory is not a guarantee. Non-violence works better than violence, but it doesn’t always work. It only works when the time is right, and there are numerous ways to mess it up. You never know exactly what’s going to abandon the theory and try. It reminds me of what the Buddha says about the dhamma, that it’s just a raft to get you across a river. Eventually you have to leave the raft and walk on your own.
Everyone here is looking for a way out of something. Not a personal pain, but a national one. What the organizers are trying to teach us is that even the most rigid security states are impermanent and that there is a way to make them change, that there is a way out. They don’t dwell on the pain because it’s not productive, but also because they are American and if things get dicey wherever they work then they can always get on the next flight.
Thus, they weren’t especially sensitive when a few people said, essentially, ‘I am in pain, what the fuck is this YouTube?’ It was off topic and at at times inappropriately put, but that’s life. Sometimes reality just intrudes. The organizers are good people and one apologized later, saying that he simply didn’t understand. This, I think, is all that people are asking for. Thankfully, they apologized for the misunderstanding and the participants rallied around the Yemeni fellow later, essentially to hug him and just listen. Which is I think all he wanted.
Civil resistance is essentially about pain. That this pain is there, that it is impermanent, and that if we’re civil then there is a way out. At the base of it all, there is suffering and there is pain. It’s important to focus on the way out, but you also have to acknowledge that the pain is there. Even if it’s awkward, it’s important that reality does intrude.
I’m at a workshop which teaches “how to write the pretentiously, so so pretentiously, that nobody understand you except the depressingly stupid.” I’ve found that my role here is to fill the awkward silences by uttering nonsese like “this is the proverbial it guys, where everything exist beneath and not almost above the time space continuum so that reality intrudes upon illusion for no apparent reason other than the relative yet hardly insignificant fact that they both are only slightly more than figments in my imagination in a way so hypnoticly cryptic.”
A conflict workshop organised by Americans? I smell a conspiracy. Indi might return as an agent/agitator for civil resistance.
This sounds interesting, tell us a bit more of what you see at hear.
Did they mention the organization CANVAS? Just curious that is all. Hope you do get to see Madrid after hours.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/16/revolution_u?page=full
“At the base of it all, there is suffering and there is pain. It’s important to focus on the way out, but you also have to acknowledge that the pain is there” -TRUE.
Excellent article. You couldn’t have said it better.
That’s exactly why I suffered during this workshop: I felt like too few people cared about those who die and suffer, often for nothing, because new oppressive leaders are born out of “nonviolent” civil movements.
I think we should definitely keep in contact. There is still a lot to be done , for ourselves and for our countries.
There is pain, but for those who care, there is also HOPE.
1. What if the comrade from Yemen may have been in pain, but had also drank much of a bottle of vodka that morning and his disruption was, as you note, not just “not especially coherent” but disruptive like a very drunk person disrupts?
2. What do you think other comrades inside Yemen would have done had one of their ranks gotten so drunk during the daytime at a moment of crisis like that country experiences now? Do you think they would have stopped all their work to pay attention to the person who, in your “hierarchy of pain” needed more attention than everyone else – what most folks came there for, ways to stop the causes of such pain – and allowed one drunk guy to derail their movement?
3. The two “Americans” (isn’t it you that holds a North American passport, sir?) in fact have a collective 30 years living and working in Mexico alongside indigenous and social movements, one has a Mexican family there, have accepted the risks of that, and have never run home to their own land when the going has gotten tough many many times. Another – not a college graduate nor child of privilege – did not run home when he was sued by Mexico’s biggest bank with all the local repression upon him that entailed. Neither has lived in the US since the mid-1990s. They have spent more of their adult lives outside of the US than any person younger than 32 anywhere in the world. Don’t you think your academically “politically correct” characterizations and caricatures of others based on incomplete information and national stereotypes are misleading and far from truth telling?
4. Are these questions examples of “awkward reality” intruding upon your own BS?
@Was There
1. Yes, it was disruptive in a drunk sense. Didn’t realize at the time, but that was obviously inappropriate. I was trying to talk about the idea behind that and the Afghani question, but realize later that the specific case should have been shut down. Being in the class at the time I took him at face value.
2. yes, agreed
3. I tried not to offend the teachers, but have obviously failed. It does make a difference that they were Americans and that almost all of the ‘teachers’ were western while the students were mostly not.
If you’re not from there it’s inherently more of an academic exercise than an existential one. I know because I, despite being Sri Lankan, also have a Canadian passport. It affects the way I deal with things and the consequences I face. This is not a judgement, but it is a bias that I and perhaps you also have.
4. No intrusion at all
Well, you buy the ticket, you take the ride, no? You knew when you applied for this workshop that it was led by a US based educational foundation and a Mexico based newspaper published by an American born journalist. You knew that the workshop would be in English and in Spain. The only presenters mentioned in the call were Western. So don’t you think it is a little bit silly and overly-PC to complain that if you buy a train ticket to a specific place, and the train delivers you exactly where it said it would, that the problem is with “them”? And not with you?
My own view is that people educated in universities (Western and other) tend to focus on these “identity politics” types concerns as a defense mechanism against having to actually do the hard work involved (and that was being taught), that by and large the non-Western participants were very very happy to have attended and now set out to do the real work, and that a very few complainers were Western educated and expected more of the same. Getting “School of Rock” of civil resistance just was, I guess, outside of your comfort zone!
@Was There, I think you’re responding partly to what I said and more to broader identity issues that you have. I certainly have my own.
I came to learn from the participants from Egypt, Bahrain, etc more than anything else. I went to every session, paid attention and I think participated productively. I was very happy to have attended and I wouldn’t define myself as a complainer. Not sure my fellow participants would either.
I’m just writing my opinion under my own name here. I’m sorry if you’ve taken anything personally, it’s really not meant that way at all.
It seems to me that you had plenty of opportunity – during three meals a day plus some free time – to “learn from the participants” from any particular country you wished. Nothing prohibited you from doing that. And there were three full sessions at the conference in which everybody was given the opportunity to speak about themselves and their work. If you didn’t use those multiple opportunities, that’s hardly the workshop organizers’ fault. But, really, having that opportunity for yourself didn’t seem to be enough: You sought (including during one of the scheduled and prepared sessions) to force everyone in the group to do what *you* wanted to do as well. That was an attempted *imposition* on your part upon everybody else there. And when the rest of the participants didn’t rise to back your position, you sulked off to pen this (very misleading and not fully honest) public article which basically reads like a restaurant review by a food critic for a consumer magazine. My sense is that you treated the event the way a consumer treats a product. But in this case, since everything about the event – the food, the lodging, the intercontinental air fare – was provided for free, it seems that you merely ended up taking the seat of someone who did not make it who might have wanted to come for what was actually announced in advance.
First off, thank you for writing this Indi, the points you raise are important and poignant. To me the environment seemed a bit controlled. I felt that within the space of the workshop there wasn’t enough room for real discussion regarding our many contexts and experiences. As “Was There” mentioned, there were a couple of opportunities for us to introduce ourselves, but to me it seemed limited in terms of time and very structured in terms of what we should or should not speak about. I realize time is always a restriction and a challenge planning any workshop. But still, I would have appreciated more space and time to express some of the difficulties each of us experience within our various contexts, including fears, frustrations, and emotions that are related to our work.
Considering ICNC is a Western based organization. I find it safe to say that the workshop both in structure as well as facilitation was “Western.” It is a very big (biggest maybe) challenge to hold a workshop for participants from diverse cultures. I did not feel this workshop was designed well enough for participants from traditionally non-Western contexts. To do this would mean including facilitators that would understand and relate to these contexts and could speak to them on higher levels. It may even mean facilitators from different countries. I would have definitely been more comfortable having a stronger feminine presence.
It would have been helpful to have a list of participants, facilitators and the workshop structure, circulated a few weeks in advance to give us time to decide whether it would be the best environment and workshop for us.
It is important to keep in mind that while some of us have crossed more than a couple of international borders, and lived in more than one country, it’s all but impossible to shed our mother tongue and the culture we grew up in. Some of us function within multiple arenas, cultures and with various ‘identities’ as a consequence lines can blur at times. As the world changes and more people begin to hold these complex and multiple identities (or maybe just more one global one), we can make space to respect the choices and incredible challenges we have all undertaken – facilitators, participants, et al.
Well, “Was There 2,” I’m sorry, so very very sorry!, you didn’t get “a list of participants, facilitators and the workshop structure, circulated a few weeks in advance to give us time to decide whether it would be the best environment and workshop for (YOU),” and therefore had to suffer A. a free trip to Madrid, B. three or more nights in a nice hotel, 3. meals (and some very good ones among them), 4. free drinks on multiple occasions, 5. the company of 34 people from many different lands cultures and languages, 6. many, many unstructured hours with which to enjoy or converse with any of them who would listen to you about whatever you wanted to talk or ask about, 7. plenary sessions by organizers of successful resistances from Egypt and from Serbia, 8. videos and other information culled from struggles around the world on the topic of “citizen journalism and civil resistance,” 9. the experience and skill sharing of journalists (even some “Western” ones, since Mexico is oh so Western) who actually spent time developing their presentations to make them efficient and action packed, 9. lots of great jokes! and 10. people who would tell you honestly if they thought you were wrong and, unlike many paid workshops, because you weren’t a customer or paying client to them, they didn’t need your business, they didn’t want or take your money, they were there in a spirit of camaraderie under the impression you came there to learn new things, not rent a soapbox for yourself. But if that leaves you with the sense of feeling like you were a political prisoner for three days, why didn’t you just escape? The prison came with the keys to your own cell!
There are always some in every group that, unless they get to have meetings and group process, are unhappy. This is a common experience since the 1970s in “activist” circles. Nobody forces them to be there, nor to stay. But they stay nonetheless, if only to complain. If it wasn’t your cup of tea, I’m sure you will recover from the terrible trauma of your all expense paid vacation in Madrid! But hopefully you learned some new skills and ideas, too, that will help your own struggles win and not lose. That was the point of this gathering, it was never billed as a group encounter therapy session, and I would bet that of 34 participants, the great majority, if invited with a disclosure “WE WILL DO IT THE SAME WAY AGAIN” would love to come back and jump at the chance to do so. And those are precisely the ranks being formed in this one corner of a larger international movement without leaders.
Al, my post is just an opinion. As is the comment above.
You don’t have to take it personally or as a repudiation of the whole workshop. It’s not.
Also, is the response to criticism “go home” or “don’t come”? Seriously?