Welcome to my space in this virtual worldwide net! I hope to use this site as a depository of thoughts, ideas, questions, and research as I shape my contributions to the field of community development in an era of global citizenship. Before I get too far ahead of myself, I would like to use this first exchange to share how I got here.
In 2013, after working close to twenty years in the field of community development with a focus on urban revitalization, alleviation of homelessness, and women and gender anti-poverty strategies, I finally acted upon a decision to step away from the grind for a few years to enter into a period of personal and professional reflection. I had become burned out through implementing programs and policies that failed to call out underlying racial and gender biases that were contributing to the oppression of the communities that my various places of employment were trying to serve. I could not understand why so many programs and approaches served to conform the individual (and family system) into practices that limited potential and fostered dependency verse true liberation. Why was the nonprofit industry complicit in creating a permanent underclass when so many helping professionals entered the field to make the world a better place? And why, even within the most progressive circles of nonprofit donors, was it considered impolite to talk about race when the colorblind attitude of the late 20th and into the 21st Century was a huge contributing factor to the ongoing assault and marginalization of communities of color?
To search for these answers some people may have joined the Peace Corps, spend time in an ashram in India, write a book or have a baby at 40. I however took an academic path and decided to pursue a long-held hidden dream of earning a PhD. I entered into the Community, Liberation, and Eco-Psychology track of Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Depth psychology is the study of “soul”- the sensate of spirituality repressed in our modern world. Soul is found through an intuitive way of knowing revealed in dreams, ceremony, stories, dances, language, and even through the rhythm of the landscape. Soul provides a different way of relating to the world through the establishment of unconditional relations with humans and nature beyond social constructs put in place to center the world around humans and in particularly Western patriarchal systems of power .
My studies offered the opportunity to re-member other ways of knowing embodied in my being to produce my own counter-narratives to dominant ideology upheld in mainstream culture and society. Family stories, dance practice, spiritual ceremonies, dreams, art, and other products of my creative process produced new methods of data created out of my lived-experience that began to inform a deeper, more personal narrative of the person in a fluid state of becoming, clarity on the values that have been guiding me, and an authentic vision of what it is I am trying to achieve before I leave this earth. In essence, I entered into a relationship with the journey, with less focus on “beating the clock” to achieve the goal. As a self-described former “over- achiever” and “people-pleaser”- this new outlook on living in the present has truly been the medicine gained from my journey.
As of July 2015, I am pleased to have completed my coursework and now am ready to begin re-integrating back into community as I prepare for my dissertation research and writing rituals (yes, to me the acts of research in community and of writing are sacred acts that must be done with clear intentions, mutual respect, and honor). My dissertation project will focus on creating a language of race for the 21st century in an era of global citizenship. With massive immigration of citizens from around the world, it is time for the U.S. to address its festering wounds of slavery and Native American genocide so that it can recapture its spirit of innovation and reinvention to sustain its global leadership position. It is simply unfair to our children to burden them with a hushed history and must begin to speak the painful truth to move beyond victim-perpetrator to rewriting our historical narrative of the bloodshed let in the creation of this nation that we call the United States. It is unfair to force a black/white binary of racial that subjugates nonwhites based on skin color and silences that voices of “other” communities of color. It is unconscionable that in 2015 we have to have a social movement focused on Back Lives Matter as our earth cries out in environmental pain reminding us that we are all equally part of one citizenship class when it comes to the future of this planet. It is only through expanding the voices and honoring the various lived-experiences verse old strategies of integration and assimilation- that any of us will ever be able to develop a truer sense of who we are as a nation and thus who we would like to become. It is thus my hope to contribute to the development of a 3rd language – a language of the “borderlands” (Gloria Anzaldua) used by self-identified persons of all racial groups in dialogue, in ceremony, to speak their truth and be heard without judgment. In this third space of language the border of the “other” can be morphed and collective healing and transformation can begin.
So stay tune if you would like as I seek to apply soul to my social justice praxis using the community development tools of community building, collective healing, and creative placemaking.
Alisa's thoughts on Beloved Communities 