Rethinking power—our own
jess November 28th, 2007
(Frances) Sitting here just after sunrise in a Sonoma, California coffee shop, I’m filled to the brim with the presence of the extraordinary people I’m encountering on this tour.
The themes of power and peace surround me. Just two nights ago, at San Francisco’s legendary City Lights bookstore, there in the front row were Jan and Dave Hartsough—friends of 30 years. I was overjoyed to see them. Dave is a founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce — a nonpartisan and unarmed peacekeeping force of trained civilians. In conflicts, members use proven nonviolent strategies to help protect human rights, thereby enabling local peacemakers to carry out their work.
Peaceforce embodies the often under-valued power of human witness. Seeing Dave and Jan, I flashed back to the University of Calgary, where just a few days earlier, as part of their 2007 Global Citizenship conference, I’d presented a workshop on Rethinking Power. It brought together 40 people — from an Iraqi immigrant to a Colombian professor working to empower Colombian woman immigrants, and to a 19 year-old student who acknowledged how hard it is to be “different” from her peers.
We shared stories of moments in our lives when we felt powerful and reflected together on the elements enabling that sense of power. Among the many underappreciated sources of power one person mentioned the power of “witness”—how just being present as an observer can help to defuse and deter violence.
Here in Sonoma my hosts are Georgia Kelly and the Praxis Peace Institute, whose work carries similar themes. Visit their fascinating website. Over cookies and tea after my talk I met Tom Greco, a world leader in the work to promote complementary currencies, which have the power to create community and break us out of the disempowering scarcity-fear trap. (Two weeks ago, at
As I leave this little shop and head to Santa Clara University, I see on the wall a lovely “How to Build Community” poster. Its last lines are: “Learn from new and uncomfortable angles. Know that no one is silent though many are not heard. Work to change this.”
Hmmm, how perfect. A core message of Getting a Grip.
I’ve always loved horticulture and growing fruits and vegetables, but I chose parents in the suburbs, and my suburbs are getting buried under the suburban spread of Seattle and Tacoma. Have a fascinating wine grape garden and have been breeding grapes for over 15 years, but sense the vulnerability of having no extended family or group to work with, and I cannot afford to buy good farmland in the area, with Industry having inflated the market value beyond any farm crop potential.
Would love to connect with like minded people in the Pacific Northwest and pursue my passion to grow crops and work the land.
Am growing tired of seeing the Tobbacco Industry buy up our farm land and create corporate vineyards, with the blessings of our legislature in Olympia.