Exploring grassroots practices of psychosocial liberation in the US context

In her book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander argues that in the same ways that Jim Crow laws were created as a reaction to the advances of African-Americans during the reconstruction era, the racial caste system of mass incarceration was created in response to the US Black freedom movement of the 50s and 60s (Alexander, 2012). Alexander argues that unless we are able to address the root moral and spiritual causes of white supremacy, people will just continue to find new ways to enact violence and exploitation. Similarly, across many contexts, systems of oppression and colonial matrices of power have continued to morph and evolve in response to the victories of liberation movements (Mignolo, 2009).
Further, in the US context, a framework known as “healing justice” has been developed by grassroots organizers, cultural workers and healers, which emphasizes integrating practices of collective healing into social movements and communities of resistance, in order to transform embodied and affective consequences of oppression (Page, 2010). The practices help us to be interdependent and resilient in the face of the tremendous violence we are up against, heal from internalized oppression which may cause us to act in toxic ways to ourselves and each other, prevent burnout, and relate to each other in ways that model the liberated society we want to live in.
Both the deep-rootedness of oppressive ways of being, as well as the harmful effects of the embodied and affective consequences of oppression within our social movements, together suggest that the work of liberation includes both material and structural processes (such as shifting the distribution of power and resources or the repatriation of indigenous people’s lands), as well as psychosocial processes (such as the healing of internalized superiority and inferiority, the development of communal sense of self, or the healing of intergenerational trauma).
In this presentation, I aim to engage the interrelation between structural and psychosocial processes of liberation, by providing examples of practices of psychosocial liberation developed in social movements and communities of resistance in the US context, practices which in turn support material and structural processes of liberation.

A transformative learning journey of a researcher in experiencing participatory action research

Over the past decades, a body of research has highlighted the benefits of Participatory Action Research (PAR) in which focuses on generating changes within communities through empowering both researcher and participants as co-researchers, and developing a critically conscious understanding of their relationship with the world (Cammarota and Fine 2008; Fine 2007; Freire 1987). In developing PAR, researchers’ identities influence the co-creation of knowledge to negotiate/change the historic social conditions that produce inequities. Although we have a body of research on PAR and challenges researchers face, there is much to learn about issues of identity (power and positionality) that researchers experience across time. The aim of this study is explore issues of identity in the process of being and becoming a PAR-researcher across time and to interrogate the way in which solidarity emerged. We utilise critical autoethnographic techniques to describe and analyse the transformative learning journey experience by the lead author on five PAR, developed in Brazil, United States and Australia across seven years. The lead researcher described how her first two PAR helped her to understand and negotiate the complexities of her outside position, suggesting the cultivation of a learning community. She described how love as solidarity emerged in her third PAR when she opened to transform herself by developing emotional connections based on trust and friendship with young people, reconnecting with her own identity. Finally, the lead author discussed how her ‘otherness’ helped her to see herself in the marginalized people she worked in a new context, raising the possible intersections in solidarity. Future studies should continue to explore researchers’ identities in PAR across time, seeking to challenge the dichotomy insider/outsider status and recognizing a messy social space where differently people meet, clash and grapple with each other (Torre and Fine 2008).

Slow-motion action research: An urgent struggle; a long conversation about decolonizing solidarity.

The book Decolonizing Solidarity was a non-Aboriginal activist’s answer to the challenge by Aboriginal activists and scholars to interrogate whiteness. It left space for a reply; for this conversation to be ongoing. This presentation will share some reflections that have been woven into the soon-to-be-published revised edition of the book based on the first edition’s reception. It will include an exploration of 1) the dynamics of defensiveness from people with access to multiple privileges, and the lessons for the pedagogy of solidarity; 2) the politics of solidarity by settlers of colour, and whose work it is to discern and articulate this; 3) conversations about ‘next-level’ insights that the first edition has enabled. It will also include discussion of the Decolonizing Solidarity Book Club program that has sparked at least 25 self-organised book club groups to be established. Delegates’ responses to the presentation will help to develop further insights into whether the book is doing what it is supposed to be doing and whether the critical self-reflection by non-Indigenous people that is seen as necessary is going far enough to generate more humble and powerful action in solidarity with Indigenous struggles.

The Power of Apology: The MOVE Bombing of Philadelphia

There is a growing interest and corresponding literature exploring the potential healing benefits of public apologies and the role of these in larger reconciliation processes. Apologies that include acknowledgement, taking responsibility, and commitment to preventing the harms being repeated, can be healing for perpetrators, victims, and wider communities impacted by human rights abuses. On May 13th, 1985, the City of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on a house in a residential neighborhood, killing 11 people, including 5 children, destroying 61 homes and rendering nearly 250 residents homeless. Despite repeated individual public apologies by former Philadelphia Mayor, Wilson B. Goode, he continues to be held largely responsible for the events of that day. Following public protests to the naming of a street in his honor in 2018, we initiated a reconciliation process between key players involved with the MOVE Organization and Philadelphia officials and community members and family. The reconciliation process has involved multiple community gatherings, some private, some public, and conversations with many involved, either directly or indirectly. On May 13th, 2019, 34 years after the MOVE Bombing, a full day, live public radio broadcast featured a conversation between Mayor Goode and the current MOVE spokesperson and their commitment to work together towards reconciliation. In this paper we will discuss the various strategies being employed towards reconciliation and righting the wrongs of the past related to the MOVE bombing and other related events.