This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Friends, come on in. We were kind of imagining setting the talk up in just a circle, but then when we came in... I was like, are this many people going to show up? So thanks so much for being here. I mean, it's really an honor to be here with all of you. And residential practice is a deep practice. So thank you. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about Buddhism and social justice, which is the nexus and intersection at which we find ourselves. And if at any time you're having trouble hearing, just Put your hand up or let me know. I'm happy to use my acting voice for that.

[01:02]

So, I'm just going to start off sharing a little bit about ourselves. And part of the point is to begin a dialogue and a conversation with all of us about what do we think activism is? And what can activism look like when it's combined with certain spiritual... work or spiritual superpowers that we get from Buddhist practice. So my name is Katie, and my last name is Wong. In my family and in my ancestry, on my father's side, there was the Middle Passage and slavery, so my dad's black. The last name Long is Dutch, and it would be a slave name coming through the Dutch West Indies, so it would at that time be called Dutch Guyana and is now Suriname. And then my family came through the Caribbean and eventually to the United States. And my father was active in the black power movements of the late 60s.

[02:08]

There's a hover... of Life Magazine from 1969, where he's there in the middle of a black student takeover armed with machine guns of a campus building at Cornell University. And he's not armed, but he was actually kind of the go-between between the administration and the students who were advocating for more black studies and black professors at the university. That was a very intense time. And I'll talk a little bit more later about how the legacy of black struggle and black liberation in the U.S. is continuing in Oakland, where we're living, and we're participating in it in various ways. On the other side of my family, my mom came over from Austria to the United States when she was two years old, and her family was fleeing the Holocaust. Most of my grandfather's siblings and family were killed in camps, and he survived actually four different camps.

[03:17]

He was sent around as an auto mechanic. He was useful to them. And so in the United States, my mom grew up speaking both German and English at home, but eventually pretty much assimilated into a more normative white U.S. kind of culture, but still has a deep commitment to social justice. And I grew up really hearing a lot about women's rights and reproductive justice and all this. So I kind of come at this intersection from the social justice place. It was in my family. It's kind of a commitment that lives in my blood. However, as growing up, I kind of I would describe myself maybe as an on the spiritual side as an arrogant atheist. I don't know if anyone else has ever been one of those. But I thought that any kind of faith was for people who were kind of like weak-minded or just needed something to believe in.

[04:18]

And so I'm just going to stick with the intellectual secular side of life. But eventually, and I won't go into the whole long story, I kind of realized that, oh, Social justice work is actually really difficult and hard. And wisdom maybe doesn't automatically accrue to us over time. It might be something that we actually have to try, to try it for. And that's how I started studying Dharma. And now the combination of them feels so natural and so important and so powerful. But it really has been a process and a journey for me to get to where we are now. And I'm Dawn Haney, Katie's counterpart at Jesus Peace Fellowship. And as I was reflecting on my journey to how Buddhism and activism fit together, I realized that in some ways they feel very naturally connected to me because I

[05:26]

It was my experiences of suffering that brought me to both spiritual practice and to activist practice. And so even though that yearning and that knowledge seeking maybe took me in different directions that didn't feel connected, they feel connected in me because of the motivation or the intention behind it. And I think, I imagine, I know many people I talk to suffering is maybe there are a few folks who've never suffered here. You know, that that can often be a rich place that brings us to practice. And so I would, as we talk, sort of encourage you to think about, you know, where is the not just internal work that we do with that suffering, but how can it be work in the world as well? Maybe unlike Katie, I think, came from a family in Northeast Indiana that was neither spiritual nor activist oriented.

[06:26]

I think in Indiana it's, I think the only polite things to talk about are sports and your pets. Politics, religion, all of that is pretty off the table as impolite conversation. So it just wasn't really part of my upbringing. But what was part of my upbringing, it was always interesting. I feel like on the surface, my family looked very normal to me, like most families in Indiana. But it always felt deeply dysfunctional to me. And I couldn't ever quite put my finger on why and what was happening. And so the thing that's potentially seen clearest is that my parents were both drinkers. And it seemed like they were really using alcohol or other intoxicants to be pretty distant from what was happening in their lives. So my first foray into activism was in high school and college where I was really involved in like Mothers Against Storm Driving and work around alcohol abuse as a way to try to create a different kind of world and be connected with different kinds of folks than who I just automatically had grown up with.

[07:43]

But then it was when I was in graduate school, the partner I had moved from Indiana or Michigan to Georgia to be with became an alcoholic. And I was like, crap. Like what? You know, like I have done all this work and I'm like trying to, you know, do all this amazing work in the world and create a different kind of environment for myself. And yet I'm still choosing to be around people who are using intoxicants to not deal with reality. And so if I'm still making those choices, maybe I need to start looking inward to see what is it about me, what is it that is driving me to feel most comfortable in those kinds of connections. And so I started doing some 12-step work. I went to Al-Anon, which is for families and friends of alcoholics. I actually really resisted it for a while. I was probably in the, what did you call it? The... Arrogant atheist. Arrogant atheist. I may have been in that mode as well.

[08:46]

And I was living in Georgia at the time, so I was really terrified that I would go and I would, you know, 12-step work, they really want to talk about a higher power. And I was like, I'm in the Bible Belt. Like, what are they going to be talking about? I felt like it was going to be all about Jesus and Christianity. And it really wasn't. It was a lot of folks who were seeking a higher power that maybe looked really different than that. A friend of mine I met there gave me kind of children's book, When Things Fall Apart. And it became my daily reading, my real guidepost for interacting with the world. So I went along with that for a while and moved to Colorado and started doing work in a rape crisis center with sexual violence prevention. And that became my activist work for a while. And I was... You know, as I got into that work, I realized I started looking again at my own history and my own experiences of suffering around sexual violence.

[09:51]

And I was doing some therapy work and doing, you know, all of this work. And I ended up actually burning out because you can imagine dealing with that sort of direct violence. sort of like every day hearing people's really horrific stories of suffering was really challenging. And also like working with my own experiences of suffering around it as well. So I took a break after doing that work for a while and dug back into the Dharma. You know, I had been with me, I'd been sort of like reading voraciously, but hadn't actually been introduced yet to practice. uh, in a, in a spiritual community. So I started, uh, participating at the Durango Dharma Center, which, uh, comes out of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center lineage. There are several folks there who have been through their training programs. Um, and I think for me, the, one of the most profound teachings at that time for me was around, uh, the four Brahma Viharas or the, or the divine abodes.

[10:58]

Um, because I, uh, you know, doing so much work around suffering, I'd sort of had this deep groove of compassion for others. And it was really transformational to me to start thinking about not only how I could be more compassionate to myself, which was a part of it, but also how these other qualities of kindness, of joy in the joy of others... and of equanimity or a sense of balance actually were more of what I needed rather than just compassion for myself. That it was like, I needed all of these qualities to be in my heart, to not be sort of overwhelmed with the sense of suffering. And so it was really, it felt like this really important for me practice to combine with any activism that faces suffering, which I think is most all activism. is to really be paying attention to the qualities and heart that I'm cultivating, and if any of them are out of balance.

[12:03]

And I'll just say something about my current, what I think of as my current primary activist work in, I feel like, so we were in Oakland, actually live in a little north of Oakland in Richmond, California, and And I feel like for most of the past year, since last August, when Michael Brown was murdered by Darren Wilson, a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, there has just been this like outpouring of folks in the streets to protest this, to say like, actually, and as Katie's shirt says, black lives matter. And they're important to us, and it's not okay with us that just because someone is black and they happen to be walking across the street that they're shot, or even if somebody shoplifted something, that the response to that is death.

[13:04]

People are like, that just doesn't make sense. So I've been part of a number of protests related to that, which we can talk about more, folks are interested in, but I've really been, as a white person, really been paying attention to, like, how is this related to my own suffering? And I think that it can, it can be a little tricky. I really appreciated the Dharma talk that Charlie gave last night. And for those of you who missed it, he was talking about, I think it was something from Zogan and he was talking about like, you know, we're all like maybe in this vast infinite ocean, but we're here in our little boat. And from the perspective of our boat, the ocean just looks like this circle of water. And we can actually see the whole vastness of it. We can only see our circle. And I've just been reflecting on that and how that relates for me as a white person or any other place where I have a certain amount of privilege.

[14:07]

Like, I can only see my circle of water. But yet there's a whole vast ocean out there where there's a lot of other stuff happening and a lot of other experiences that people are having that I'm not knowledgeable about unless folks tell me. And that there's actually something about some of these differences where there's power involved, where if I'm in a position as a white person or say as an able-bodied person who can walk up and down stairs, There's actually something about those kind of privileges that are often invisible to me unless I encounter other folks who don't have those same privileges. And so I feel like sort of doing that work for a long time and encountering, you know, again, this is a basic privilege. I can jaywalk across the street and I don't ever have to worry about cops even stopping me, much less... trying to arrest me or trying to do even greater harm.

[15:08]

And so I think that this, it's been really powerful in this, in these actions to think about, to think of, I guess what I want to say about it is this, to think about how, when I'm in, when I can only see my circle of water, how much I'm missing and how much of other people's suffering I'm missing and how much I'm not actually able to connect with other people because I don't understand the suffering that they're experiencing. I've actually, like my whole life has been about, has been sheltered from that kind of suffering. And that that causes a certain amount of suffering in me because as I try to connect with folks I care about in my life who have really different experiences, with race or with other forms of oppression, that feeling of disconnection.

[16:13]

That's for me, at least, and I don't know if this is true for other folks, that feels like one of the core places of suffering in this world is just feeling alone and feeling disconnected rather than, as we learn about in Buddhism, really feeling into our sense of interconnectedness and knowing that that's possible for us to really be connected with each other. So it's just sort of some layers of some of the places where, for me, activism and spiritual practice are overlaying with each other. And I'll kick it back to you, and we can open it up for more conversation. Yeah, because, I mean, this is a little bit of an introduction to us on how we're coming at this, but we'd love to hear from you all a little bit more about your impression, even of this term, activist.

[17:15]

Because it can mean a lot of different things, we realize, to different people. So just kind of going around the room and saying what comes to mind, are there any associations that you have with the idea of activist or activism that one might describe or categorize as, like, aversion or difficulties or, like, fears around activism? Like, what just kind of, like, turns you off about when you think about activism? Um, that it can ultimately slip into hate rather than non-hate. Mm-hmm. That it's the only way to end. Mm-hmm. It could be someone who's just more loud could just, like, want to state their opinion, and it's just kind of their narrow opinion. Like being dogmatic or kind of thing.

[18:16]

Like being dogmatic. Yeah. Can people speak up? I really care. Oh. I said whoever speaks up first, like whoever's the loudest, gets their way. And it's not necessarily for the benefit of everyone. It's just, like, you know, their preference. So it could be good for them, but it could hurt a lot of people. Yeah. So turn it to right and wrong, right versus right. Yeah. The most activism that I've seen is fueled financially by the same powers that are causing the problems that they're trying to help test their limbs. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What? Do you have a little confrontation with law enforcement? Mm-hmm. dealing with that. Can you say more about that? Like, what about that, please? I used to go to, I used to participate in activism, but I felt like I stopped doing it because it was, I mean, definitely during the Iraq War, it just seemed like police were always there.

[19:16]

I have always, I just felt all these feelings and emotions come up against that authority, which was never, like, calming or positive presence, so he's always just like, well, now they're here, and something's going to happen. And you don't have any control over that. One is, you can never have phone around activists, because they're always going to make you think about stuff you wish you didn't have to think about, like your own privilege. And they're always talking about horrible stuff that's going on in the world, and actually making you think that maybe Maybe there is right and wrong. Yeah. Yeah, I've been around slash maybe exhibited some of those characters. Yeah. Just to echo what Don was saying, the burnout factor.

[20:18]

Even from the beginning, you can see that it has a particular half-right in it. you're gonna be maybe depleting yourself in ways that it's hard to know if you're coming out with something more. When I think of protests, I think that it feels like often it doesn't bring people together, it polarizes. I think a lot of people just see protests as negative. So if some rebellious students are protesting, they're not going to pay attention to what they're saying. It's just like, oh, it's another protest. So it feels like us and them and amazing. Sometimes the feeling of being stretched too thin in a way, like there's more problems going on in the world.

[21:24]

I'm going to be the worst at optimism because my experience has given me a tremendous joy and community and strong bonds and relationship to put on communities and areas and areas. And I can't deny anything that has been expressed. Interject joy. We're absolutely going to get there. That's the next part. But does anyone want to add anything else about, yeah, what's difficult? Sadness and frustration and lack of results. Yeah. Oversimplifying issues so that it's hard to talk about the complexities and the interdependencies between both sides. And the frustration of trying to bring up some of trying to bring up a complexity and people say, well, you're on the other side.

[22:28]

Demonized. I can answer what you just mentioned. Sometimes within going to a protest and being within one group where sometimes the louder voices are what's heard. It's kind of a spectrum of people that are there. you this fear of not wanting to be there for the issue, but not wanting to identify or rebut something, even more extreme, the voices within that group. Right. Right. Because we need coalition to make things happen oftentimes, but then what kind of agreements or trust might exist between the different groups? People have different approaches to that, for sure. Yeah. I think a lot of times, devotion to the cause that is being fought for can become more of a way of organizing the activist community hierarchically rather than actually trying to accomplish something in the world.

[23:34]

Yeah, and what's funny about that too is sometimes in the spaces that claim that there's no hierarchy, there really is very strong hierarchy. Some people's opinions are worth more than others, so that gets tricky. Totally. I don't know if this has been said, but sometimes the sadness, the hopelessness, how large the problem is, and how hard it would be to be, or if possible it may seem to fit. Thank you everybody for sharing. Anybody else that hasn't said anything? I mean, it's really real. Like you're saying, this is about suffering. It's about life and death and degradation and really, really difficult things. So it makes sense that it's not easy, right?

[24:38]

But what I hear and what many of us are saying also echoes so much with into practice let in dharma. So, like, meanings are numberless. But we've obviously learned, right? Like, what does it mean to work with this paradox of not being attached to outcome and yet giving it your all, right? So, what we say in BKEP is, like, how do we accept the world just as it is and fight like hell to change it? Like, what does that actually look like? And... the urgency that can come along with that too, right? And this can look really different in different cultural contexts because sometimes it's at the point of awakening to the injustice of the world or the harms of the world that we feel very disillusioned and cheated and kind of fundamentally wronged.

[25:42]

And then we want to go out and like... and just be like, no, this needs to be better, people need to have equality, housing should be a human right. And I think that there comes another phase or can come another phase where we sink into the sangha or the community of political ancestry and start to realize people have been working on these issues for so long. with such courage and such love and such creativity and brilliance. And it's actually a giant honor to be a part of this legacy where we also get to contribute to the furthering of that process, right? Like it's not in Judaism, it's like, it's not your job to fix all the pieces, put the pieces together, but you are obligated to contribute, right? Which is true. Okay. And we absolutely need each other in this process. And that also brings up issues that we face in Sangha of like, oh, has anyone ever had to like work on a group project with someone that is hard for them to be around?

[26:54]

Like, yeah. So some of the skills that we develop in Sangha and in practice are totally relevant to what we see in the political realm. Which also includes, I think, being able to hold boundaries, frankly. It's like, not everyone's gonna wanna have the same approach and actually that's okay. And we don't have to worry about being perfect all the time in making everyone absolutely happy and getting what we want. Like actually what we can do is build community of loving and thoughtful and compassionate people. and be working through this stuff together, be working through conflict together, be creatively supporting each other in growing with our defilements, with all the stuff that we come with as people, often traumatized people, often people dealing with a lot of stuff of our own.

[28:02]

These are people who have a state in fighting for a different world. So it makes sense that we have a lot of anger. Yeah, okay, so now, when you think about an activism that you... might connect with, or what brought you here today? Why are you, why does activism seem like something that might still be interesting? What kinds of qualities of activism do you think about there? 50s. You know, I've been involved with the women's university since the 60s, and I think women today forget All the things that they get to enjoy because of the struggles we did four years ago. And it's hard to project what other people might get a book from, 40 years from now, from the struggles we're engaging today.

[29:05]

So I recently, I think it was David Brook said, to have a rich life you need to be involved in something that your lifetime will not see the window. You don't have to divide up your personality and your values, but you can live wholeheartedly with the consequences that you want to know from the world. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I feel like integrity has been really valuable for me in this work around Black Lives Matter, because it feels like the systems that we're going up against are so huge that we may see small victories, but maybe not larger victories. But yet to feel like I am acting in the world in integrity with what I believe in.

[30:07]

Um... Regardless, it helps me practice with the, like, regardless of what the outcome is, it is important for me to be here. So I appreciate you bringing that one up in particular. The word possibility keeps coming into my mind. Especially living in a place like this, I know it's possible for human beings to live in relative harmony. So that possibility is there. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Joy of, um, yeah, acting together. You can see what you mean in accord with. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. For me, it seems like a natural continuation of Buddhist practice. You know, there was talk about turning the light inward. Um... to look at the self, and I think this kind of activism, as you go forward in it, you're always continually looking, trying to see what you're contributing to the situation.

[31:19]

I think that's helpful, meaning it can also give you such great joy. So being part of this is a necessary continuation in this world. On that too, from Charlie's talk last night, I was so moved by how he ended it on using doubt as, I think he said, the tip of a fresh blade of grass. And then that can bring us into a world where we question the status quo or question why certain harms are distributed out of proportion according to people, right? And so it's like a truth-seeking process as well. Truth-seeking without becoming dogmatic about it. Yeah, I think of this phrase that silence is acceptance. And so speaking out against something, just because it goes against your principles, even if it doesn't mean it can be a result.

[32:21]

Yeah. related to what many people outside being able to actually extend my practice out into the world and to manifest and embody it everywhere rather than just on the cushion or whatever practice could take away. I think it's to take a stand against something perceived as, um, uh, as unjust. And, um, even though I'm just one person, it's, uh, important to, um, make the other person realize that's, like, you know, you could think the way you want, but I'm going to succeed how I'm thinking, too. And just make, because that's where the other, whatever the

[33:24]

the other side is that they may not realize that there's other angles to it. So I think it's just important to put another angle on how it affects people. I guess a sense of authenticity is big for me. which goes with a sense of a joyful community. So thinking of the Stonewall Riots, a sense of belonging together as a community and having this authentic upsurge of anger about the way that you're being treated brings this power and honesty that somehow means something to do. Well, and I appreciated you bringing up a specific example of action that felt inspiring to you.

[34:33]

And I'm sort of curious if other folks have examples of things you've observed or participated in that felt, that had particular inspiration that you would love to see more of. Just sort of curious what y'all have been involved in, because it sounds like there's a lot of experience here in the room too. Well, I was a undergrad student at UC Berkeley, and this was in 2003, and they were having the budget cuts. They weren't getting as much state funding, and then they were going to close the ethnic studies department. And so some students, they went on a hunger strike, and then other students, they just camped out and took the chancellors off. built an office, and they did it for many nights. Sometimes the police came and showed the lights so the students couldn't sleep trying to kind of, and some went to jail.

[35:39]

Luckily, I went on a peaceful night. It was fine, but all these students, we just had our sleeping bags, and we were just sleeping out at night, and it was... actually really fun like there was just really good energy and people came and like even made food for us like the students that were out not the ones on the fast but like there were so much community involvement like the high school Berkeley high school came out and these Native Americans came out, like, all these outside from the university, Stanford students came out, and, like, UC Davis came out, and it was just really nice just to see the solidarity. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Yeah? It was, uh, one of, like, positive aspects, I think, hope and inspiration in seeing that Whether it's people you meet directly or people that you know are fighting for a certain cause around in different places is a positive aspect of it.

[36:49]

And then with the, these weren't limited scope for me, but my sister is one of the people who was vital in raising my awareness of being involved in activism. She just really involved with social justice and also environmental activism, believe you are. At this time, reflecting on it, I'm so appreciative of the fact that she was involved. The issue around fracking, hydrofracturing, that's what we're now in it. And it's just to know that her I think fracking is an interesting issue here in California.

[37:56]

We were actually invited to be part of an action trying to pressure Governor Jerry Brown to ban fracking in California because he normally sort of thinks of himself as a pretty environmentally conscious governor, but he essentially has said nothing about fracking and has actually supported more of it to happen, mostly in Kern County in Southern California. Some of you may know this, but Jerry Brown actually back in the 80s went to Japan and was studying in the Zen tradition and sort of still like I think he'll quote Suzuki Roshi sometimes and sort of thinks of himself as at least a Buddhist leaning if not officially a Buddhist and so we were invited in by some environmental groups who were doing direct action at one of the state of California buildings in downtown San Francisco

[38:57]

Um, and several people, uh, blockaded the doors to the building. Um, another group of people put up a 16 foot mock oil derrick. So it was like this huge black structure. That's like, you know, if you've seen an oil derrick, it's sort of like this and a flat thing on top. There's a person sitting on the top of that, making it very difficult to move. Uh, and then our crew, uh, I was in the middle of the street. That was in the middle of the street. Thank you. Also in the middle of the street was Idle No More, which is a Native American group of folks who have been participating in a lot of environmental actions. They were doing a round dance, and we were sitting on the steps meditating with various signage, but with particular signage around really encouraging Jerry Brown to fan fracking, which... That victory has not come yet.

[39:58]

We're not there with New York. But yeah, it sort of became this interesting place to me of where is it useful, not just to bring our Buddhist practice sort of secretly into our activist work, but where can it be useful publicly when we maybe have politicians or other folks who could be especially inspired by by seeing Buddhists in particular come forward around action, around issues. And I saw you. I just want to add one more thing. Actually, the signage for that action was maybe one of my favorite parts because it was these phrases like mindful of fracking disasters or fracking kills precious beings or mindful of environmental racism. dig for wisdom, not for oil. It was kind of these mashups of our wisdom language and political language. And to me, that's where we're working at this Venn diagram of, actually, our politics are an expression of our spiritual beliefs and our spiritual values and the preciousness of life.

[41:07]

And so how do we embody and communicate that at all levels of what we do? Yeah, go ahead. I just want to come to bring some examples. I'm from São Paulo. And we have some interesting things happening in the city, like using the city as this part of the activities. So there is two nice examples. Like we are here, there are draws there and also like São Paulo is a view we have all our rivers because they are supposed to have grown rivers, they are just in the streets. And there's a group who are exploring to make these rivers being seen. So there's that excursion to see them and sometimes they paint the streets showing the rivers for people to be aware that there's a river here. It's just not something that there's a river going. There's another example, there's an area of the city that because we had the subway so they really moved there but it was kind of nothing, no design and there's a group who like every Friday they make events and they are starting to organize and they are really making this place alive and it was a kind of a death, I mean they killed the area but then

[42:34]

which the energy of these people, of these places, is completely changing. A couple of years ago, the Unbroken Sensor took part in what was called the Day of Silent Recognition for victims of gun violence. Basically, we went to this park in Versailles, and there was a man shell, and there was a table. There was a list of names that we collected every seven words. A bunch of people came and sat and they would read the names and read the bells. They would be able to turn and read the names and read the bells. We did this together. It was very powerful. heart-breaking experience. But also all these organizations kind of got to meet each other really well in the afternoon.

[43:42]

Then people would kind of wander in the park, what's going on, and they'd sit for a while, and then they'd be eating. So it was very, you know, I think we were kind of sweet today, and everything. Very deep. Yeah. So I don't know if you knew, but Jerry Graham was here recently. I didn't know that. So, yeah, it was very interesting to see him around and see him kind of, you know, getting maybe back to his roots. So, you know, it was the reason. I've been involved in a lot of various other activist stuff, some positive, some laughing cohesion, some having results and some not. I guess, for me, one of the more powerful ones was going down to the Four Corners and being resolved with Big Mountain. And it wasn't actually the action that I did, which was bringing the supplies, but the camaraderie I made with the person I went down there, and then the connection I made with this Diné family that housed us over and going through ceremony.

[44:55]

And making this really powerful connection with this family through this ceremony. And it's affected me to this day. And I think that one activist experience kind of made me really realize the power of delving into yourself first and getting a really strong grounding with your spirituality before going out into the world and making a change. Because without that grounding, you really don't have, I feel like there is a lot of anger and there is a lot of lack of confusion and kind of this peering out of of convictions. So, yeah. My first one was the Huntington riots, you know, and so that was in San Francisco, and I think that kind of started me, but it definitely left an impression of, yeah, I was kind of strangled by a riot talk. And there was part of us that we started off as just a very peaceful march, and then all of a sudden it went to looting.

[46:00]

And it was the people who were yelling at the movers, you know, stop. And that's not what it worked out. I was living, I was homeless last year, so I was present at an immigrant protest. And for me, I think it was really important to be there in solidarity and to show up, but also I was really wanted to take kind of like, trying to have a backseat role kind of like, and really acknowledge like, okay, I'm a white man. Like, all right, this isn't my protest. Like I shouldn't be leading people. I shouldn't be doing anything. I shouldn't be listening and trying to acknowledge and like learn. And I mean, but just, I think just to show up, I think it was what I wanted to do.

[47:00]

It was, I mean, kind of what she was just talking about, looting, and you have the difference in tactics, and I know it was a very interesting experience. But we kind of, like, you know. Hold on. Yeah. We only have 10 minutes. Okay. But, I mean, it's so rich, right? It's like, I think the Oakland protests lately... I mean, one, what you were saying kind of reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh talking about mindfulness as inclusion. Like mindfulness means we are aware of whatever is happening and it's all included in our awareness. We're not really thinking like this is good, this is bad necessarily. It's like just being aware. I think that's really powerful sometimes in looking at what we call the diversity of tactics or some people doing vandalism or property destruction, other people being very specifically non-destructive with their marches.

[48:03]

It's like before we race to condemn something that maybe the media coverage is sensationalizing or whatever, can we just see it and question, what is this about? Why... Why do people think it's a good idea to smash up cars on Autogrow on Broadway in solidarity with Baltimore? Like, why? And then there's all this creativity, I feel like. I mean, so I've been super excited about, to take one example, there was a day where a bunch of groups got together and shut down the headquarters of the Oakland Police Department for four and a half hours to commemorate the four and a half hours that Mike Brown was left lying in the street after being shot in Ferguson. And I've had, this is a little side note, but I've had sort of criticisms or concerns about identity politics

[49:05]

in organizing, but this was a time when I saw people redistributing the risk of arrest according to racial privilege in a completely successful way and really powerfully. So there was a contingent of black folks of which I was a part that was physically in the center of this protest, but was not risking arrest because they were on the sidewalk that was free for us to be there. Whereas white allies and a group called Asians for Black Lives of Asian allies were blockading the doors and the streets around the headquarters. So they were the ones voluntarily assuming the risk they were asked and the risk of interaction with the police. And it was just so strategic and coordinated and the way that the chants were led also reflected this new kind of leadership style. And so I'm just, I mean, I'm excited to see how that continues to unfold and develop because we can't actually move past the point where we're just like fretting over privilege and start using it thoughtfully and considerately in our actions.

[50:16]

Yeah, of course. And I also, I guess one last thing that, I mean, there's so many things obviously, but excite us about activism but another thing in community i think and so we both are in more of like the insight or theravada tradition and um so there i don't know if nudita is a word that is in zen as much yeah okay great so sympathetic joy um when we take joy in seeing the joy of others right and to me like this is one of the more sacred experiences of organizing and activism is like seeing other people come into their power and like do things they didn't think they could do. The incredible facilitators and leaders play different roles according to their strengths. It's like so beautiful. And I think personally for me, that's one of the experiences that keeps me going a lot in organizing is just

[51:26]

while other people can just rock out. And it makes me feel so redundant sometimes. I'm like, y'all got this. I don't even need to be here. And that's the best feeling that you can have is just like, these struggles will continue beautifully, even if I'm not around. Well, and it's such an important antidote to burnout, as we've been talking about, is I think that the term that folks are using is having more leaderful movements rather than leaderless movements. where we all do have redundancy, where folks can step in and step out because there are enough other folks who are building their own capacities for leadership. So it is that time. Thank you all. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[52:30]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[52:36]

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