Resist and Renew

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Season 2 episode 5 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we talk about some frameworks of justice, and reflect on them in relation to conflict.

'Whose responsibility is the conflict? Is it the responsibility of the people within the conflict…or is it the responsibility of the whole group? Because they are nodes within a network of a group – they are in conflict, so the group is in conflict'

Show notes, links

An explainer for the different approaches to justice that we use to reflect on conflict in this episode:

Note: these words are used in many different ways. Some use restorative justice (RJ) and transformative justice (TJ) interchangeably; some see RJ as between TJ and punitive systems; some see RJ as focusing on individuals and TJ as situating individuals in structures etc. Words are multivalent - don’t get too bogged down on “the right definition”.

A quick summary of the episode:

People choose the tactics they use to respond to conflict in service of a broader aim.

These different approaches all come up when thinking about what tactics to choose to respond to conflict. People may respond because they want to disappear a problem through punishment, or because they want to bring cohesion back to a group.

So it's useful to have some shared language to discuss in your groups the different tactics you use. What are your rituals around conflict in service of?

Deeper responses to conflict should look at the people in your group, the relationships between people, and what need to change in the wider structures.

Conflict can be one of the most visible instances of structural power in a space. Working with conflict in a group can be a path to address how those structural powers impact the group and the relationships within it, in a way that could help shift or transform things.

Some useful links:

Brick By Brick, a new book by Cradle Community on prison abolition and transformative justice.

A collection of resources on transformative justice at Transform Harm

Fumbling Towards Repair, a workbook for community accountability facilitators. A small bit from that book, to give you a flavour:

Perennial resources:

our sister facilitation collective Navigate have a conflict facilitation booklet (from back when they were called Seeds For Change Oxford).

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

Transcript

ALI

This is Resist + Renew,

KATHERINE

the UK based podcast about social movements,

SAMI

what we're fighting for, why and how it all happens.

ALI

The hosts of the show are

KATHERINE

Me, Kat.

SAMI

Me, Sami,

ALI

and me, Ali.

SAMI

I'm recording this now, baby!

ALI

Shit, it's a podcast!

Welcome back to the Resist + Renew podcast. This is another Toolbox episode with a focus on conflict. Last episode we looked at some of the common ideas around conflict, which might be floating around in people's heads and groups; which may not be that helpful as to impacting how we approach conflict.

In this episode, we're going to take a look at some ideas around conflict, which are often held up as better, as more appropriate ideas around conflict, particularly in social movement spaces. These might be ideas like restorative justice, and transformative justice. But as they’re used quite a lot, we'd like to take a bit of time to explore what those words mean a bit. So yeah. Gonna get a bit more clear on that. Sami, are you up for giving us a bit of a spiel around these frameworks of justice?

SAMI

[Laughs] Yeah, I can, I can definitely start with a bit of a spiel. So I think so I guess a few things to note so like, yeah, we mentioned terms like ‘transformative justice’ and ‘restorative justice’, I guess, like one thing to note is like, often these things are brought in as ideas that are a lot broader than things that you'll talk about, relating to like conflict and working with conflict and moving through conflict and resolving conflict and all that kind of stuff. It's often, they're often used in far more broad, far more societal ideas of, like, how justice works, rather than like approaches to conflict, necessarily.

But I think there is a lot of commonality between the approaches. And like, so I think that's what we can flesh out a little bit here is like, when we talk about transformative justice, what does that mean, in practice? What does that look like? How's that structured? And therefore, like, how is that relevant to conflict? This may be like, how we can approach it. And to go back to the caveat from episode one. Like, again, often these things that use in the context of like, often more abuse, like dynamics would be more like in terms of like negotiating abuse dynamics, and things like that. And like, that's not what we're talking about here today, there's a lot of chat that you could also find and read and listen to about applying these ideas to different areas. But that's not what we're talking about now.

ALI

Before we get started, it might be just useful to say that, because we're talking about a few different frames and different aspects of those frames, just listening along could get quite confusing. So we have created a visual resource to go with this. It's like a table. And it might be helpful while you're listening along just to have a look at that. If that's something you're able to do. We will mention it again later. But yeah, just just before we get started might be helpful. But yeah, back to you, Sami, to start.

So I guess to start, yeah. So, people have like, there's like a framework that people will use when talking about, like, different ‘models’ of justice is often a phrase people will use where people will put three different approaches to justice out there, and then use them to talk about different ways that different people approach justice. So one of them is transformative justice, one of them is restorative justice, and then there's a third one, which people use a lot of different names for often kind of synonymously, which would be like punitive justice, or like carceral justice. And sometimes there'll be scare quotes there. Sometimes people say like, carceral injustice, or people talk about, like, retributive justice and things like that.

So those are like kind of three, three different models of conflict. And I guess a way to kind of differentiate those different models of conflict is having a think about like, what are the like, what are the different strategies that those different types of those different approaches to justice, employ, to achieve the justice that you're talking about? And I guess, like maybe starting from like the kind of carceral justice/retributive justice/punitive justice one, because that's like, that's the model that's used a lot in the society that we live in. Like, it's what's used in our so called ‘justice system’, which involves like courts, policing, and exclusion from schools, all this kind of stuff. And, like the strategies that are used in those forms of justice are strategies of like, retribution, of punishment of like, ‘someone did a bad thing and so a bad thing should be done to them’ to, like, balance the scales-type thing. So that's like, that's like a, an overarching strategy that kind of comes up a lot in punitive justice. And there's also often something around like, incapacitation, incarceration, things like that: like, isolating people who have done harm in some way from the wider collective as like a method of justice. And that's, like, the logic that underpins prisons, and also the logic that underpins, like school exclusions and a lot of those other forms of like, incapacitation, and remove, like removing stuff: disappearing the problem basically, is one way of thinking about it with.

ALI

With, with, with like prisons especially but probably other areas, people talk about ‘social death’ as like the punishment, like the reason prison is so horrible is because you are ripped from your communities and ripped from your families and loved ones and put away from them and like those connections have been severed. And that's part of, part of the punishment, I guess.

SAMI

Yeah, yeah, I definitely think that's true. And like, I think there's also a frame that I know like Angela Davis has used before and other people, which is like ‘prisons are like a way of society for disappeared to disappear its problems, basically, like. And, and in that frame, often the problems are, like, people. It goes back to that, like, essentialist idea, like: there are bad people that do bad things, because they're bad people. And so the strict like the strategy is that we get rid of those bad people, and we put them somewhere else. And that's like our solution to the problem.

And so that's like, those are the kind of strategies. And then like, there's a lot of different tactics within that you can talk about like prisons, you can talk about like all these different tactics of those approaches to justice. But then then maybe thinking about like some of the ones that often use more positively as terms you've got like restorative justice and transformative justice. And there's often like a bit of a crossover in some some of the strategies between restorative and transformative justice: some people use them synonymously. Some people use them to mean different things depending on like, what kind of background you come from, and like what I guess, like, what tendency you come from and stuff as to how you use the words.

But like, often, in both of those approaches to justice, there is at least an intention, often in the strategy for prevention. So like the aim of restorative justice, transformative justice,...

We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there's always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!

Season 2 episode 4 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Savan from the No Evictions Network.

“Evictions, arresting people, kidnapping them – it has a long history… undermining human rights, disrespecting human beings”

- Savan

Show notes, links

No Evictions Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

A few extra links:

No Evictions' statement after the raid in Kenmure Street. A Guardian article summarising ("Glasgow protesters rejoice as men freed after immigration van standoff") and an interview with an NEN member ("Kenmure Street's 'van man' speaks out after protest in Pollokshields").

A site from NEN highlighting the conditions in asylum accommodation.

Transcript

ALI

This is Resist Renew,

KATHERINE

the UK based podcast about social movements,

SAMI

what we're fighting for, why and how it all happens.

ALI

The hosts of the show are

KATHERINE

Me, Kat.

SAMI

Me, Sami,

ALI

and me, Ali.

SAMI

I'm recording this now, baby!

ALI

Shit, it's a podcast!

KATHERINE

Okay, so here we go. Welcome to this episode of the Resist Renew podcast. Tonight we're really glad to be joined by Savan from the No Evictions Network. Savan is originally Kurdish, he joined the No Evictions Network in January 2021. He's a student studying Political Economy and Philosophy, as well as being a human rights activist and campaigner. Welcome. It's so great to have you tonight.

SAVAN

Thank you very much, Katherine. And Sami, thank you for having me.

KATHERINE

Great.

So we're gonna start with the first question, which is: What is the political context that you're organising in? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SAVAN

Yes, in general, well, I, I suppose answer on behalf of No Evictions, so what No Evictions does at the moment, we concentrate on a few things. One of them is basically what we stand for is No Evictions. We're trying to see, we don’t want to see any eviction in Glasgow, in general because that's our capacity in Glasgow, but also we're trying to influence other organisations to do the same around Scotland and even in the UK.

We're focusing on that, and also the new Immigration Bill’s one of the things I'm focusing on. I've got a group, we are trying to resist as much as possible and trying to raise awareness and also influence, influence the politicians to stand up against the Immigration Bill. And one of the things it was I'm sure you both familiar with the Kenmure Street event it was trying to obviously was about eviction and arresting people during the Muslim celebration. Trying to put two people again in the van and stuff like that, so we have a group monitoring the immigration van and trying to be there for them be there for the people who are at risk to be you know, we call that kidnapping in our you know, a way to say kidnapping and actually taking them to somewhere we don't know and nobody else know. And we have a group focusing on raising awareness in East Ends and in those areas we focus in on those areas mainly refugees and asylum seekers learning.

And we trying to get in touch with the community, basically, be trying to raise awareness from the local community with the shop and you know, the neighbours and all of that. So we're trying to let them know that's what's going on. If you notice something please give us a call or please stand up, you know, we're trying to hold them off to we're going to be there. And we're trying to, you know, save lives as much as they possibly can. So that's what we mainly broadly we focus in on.

KATHERINE

Thanks so much for sharing, it sounds like really varied work as well that you're doing: both like on the ground stopping the kidnapping from happening, but also this raising awareness within the community so more people know. And, and for people that maybe are a little bit less familiar with what's going on with the immigration system and with evictions, more generally, could you just share a little bit for us about, kind of, what's, what's happening at the moment: why why is this resistance needed?

SAVAN

Yes, sure. So we have, we have a broken immigration system, we have a very broken immigration system. And in recent years and under Priti Patel the Home Secretary it’s going to be more broken and demolished. So if eviction and arresting people and kidnapping them has been, it has a long history, actually: it’s not, it’s not a new thing. I know Camera Street highlighted that than any other time. But it's been happening and it was happening and it's still happening.

So basically what they've done is a people with ‘failed asylum seekers’, ‘failed asylum seekers’ are those people where they've been here for 10 years, over 10 years, though they're undocumented migrants. And so, what the Home Office do, you know, usually they don't even send a notice for for the applicant for the person. So they just go to their house: six o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning. They simply go you know, they rack into a terror event, you know what I mean? So so they go, they're arresting them while they're sleeping, with no respect for their human rights and nothing like that. Put them in a van without letting them know where they go, how they go. All of all of this kind of stuff.

So they completely undermine the human rights and the human rights and they completely disrespecting human beings in general. And those people, at the end of the day, might not have a piece of paper say they’re legal, so to speak. But they have blood in me, like all of us, so they're human and they need to be treated as the way we all been treated.

Even if you takes llegal action, do it in a legal way that you normally do for any other human being any EU citizen. So they make a big difference. They treat this human being just because they're not citizen, a citizen or they don't have citizenship, they don't hold any citizenship. They treat them like very inhumanely; but whereas you know, in compare in, you know, in contrary, they treat other people, rightly with the justice system with legal. Let them know, give notice: that's the court date, that's where you're going to go. All of these information, they don't have these things and sometimes they go… ah, no, I talk too much, please stop me when whenever you want.

KATHERINE

No, it’s great.

SAVAN

So they put them in a deport centre without letting them know, without having a legal access. And even nowadays with new immigration law they’re trying to take so many more rights, legal rights away, they cannot challenge that. So I would like to stop.

SAMI

Amazing. Thank you, Savan. And I think firstly, no, please, please talk as much as you like. I think we're definitely enjoying it. Yeah, thank you for that information about like, the broader context, the current like immigration system and things like that. Because and I think it's really important what you said that, I also agree that people can act as if, if like evictions, like detention, deportation, all of these things can can be considered to be like quite like ‘new’ things and people will talk about the ‘hostile environment’ and so I think it's really important to make the point that like these things have been going on way longer than the phrase ‘the hostile environment’ in the UK. For decades, if not longer, depending on what kind of stuff you’re bringing into scope. So I think it's really important to ground, ground ourselves in that when we think about it.

So you said a little bit about No Evictions Network and the work you do, and you talked a little bit about having some like Glasgow-focused work because you're there's at least some kind of link with Glasgow in the No Evictions Network but please correct me if I'm wrong. But also you mentioned some wider stuff around, like, Scotland and maybe the wider UK and things like that. So could you say a little bit more about, like, what like, what what does your organisation kind of like focus on and what you're about. Like, is it a Glasgow thing, it is a Scotland thing, is it a UK thing, like: what do you see as the focus of the group?

SAVAN

Very good question! So we have, so we basically work on events and on necessity. For example, in Glasgow we have the highest number of refugees compared, for example, to Ayrshire. In Ayrshire for example, we might have five or six refugees here. Although we are not thinking about ignoring them just because they are less numbers, though, out-numbered. But so the main focus is on Glasgow because, just because of the high number of refugees, and obviously when there is a high number of refugees and asylum seekers there will be a high number of events and incidents.

But in terms of broad work together, when it comes to, for example, when the issue requires more collaboration for example, we had an act that we were working with every organisation in the UK, from London, Manchester around the UK, Edinburgh, all of Scotland, Wales, so it was it was gotten very y’know, collective. It was a it was against Mears Group so we're trying to expose the you know the managers and stuff like that. So for that, it was collection work around all around the UK, because Mears Group also had a house in, for example, in Manchester and places like that. So we have shared values and organisation came together.

Obviously, unity is one of the things we are focusing on, we’re trying to be united we’re trying to be an organisation to come together because I think together we have stronger voice and we have stronger influence on, on the policy, on, on, on government. So, but when the situation only requires one particular area, for example, in Glasgow, we have more capacity in Glasgow because actually No Evictions was in Glasgow so the beginning of No Evictions was started in

We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there's always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!

Season 2 episode 3 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we talk about some unhelpful frames* that come up when we think about conflict.

'Conflict may not be the choice of how you’d choose to improve relationships, but given the conflict will happen... play the hand you’re dealt'

'We need to be in it with each other, which makes the conflict worth it'

* We give examples of different “frames” in this episode, but don’t define the term “frame” (for shame!). To plug that gap:

A frame is a lens you look through to see the world. When looking at conflict through the frame of essentialism, you will see people who do bad things as inherently bad people. Frames will always highlight some things (‘they did something I didn’t like, so they must be a bad person’) and hide others (e.g. questioning what could have led them to act the way they did).

No frame is an accurate summary of the world. To adapt a phrase we’ve alluded to before, “all frames are wrong but some are useful”. A few other ways of thinking about it:

“mental structures that shape the way we see the world” (George Lakoff)

“The frame around a painting or photo can be thought of as a boundary between what has been left in and what has been left out. Each of the elements placed inside the frame is significant, and makes a difference to the meaning of the piece.” (Common Cause)

Show notes, links

A very condensed summary of what we talked about:

How we think and feel about conflict is shaped by our histories, our society, our traditions

People often don’t consciously know what these ‘norms’ around conflict are, though they can affect how we act, how we approach conflict -- and as they sometimes make us act out of line with our values

And the zine that was mentioned was "You can't blow up a social relationship".

Perennial resources:

our sister facilitation collective Navigate have a conflict facilitation booklet (from back when they were called Seeds For Change Oxford).

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

Transcript

ALI

This is Resist + Renew,

KATHERINE

the UK based podcast about social movements,

SAMI

what we're fighting for, why and how it all happens.

ALI

The hosts of the show are

KATHERINE

Me, Kat.

SAMI

Me, Sami,

ALI

and me, Ali.

SAMI

I'm recording this now, baby!

ALI

Shit, it's a podcast!

KATHERINE

Welcome to the second episode of the Resist+Renew Season Two toolbox.

Last time we talked about conflict in general, we talked about how we three feel about it: as facilitators, as people in groups, as people. We talked a bit about what we're going to cover in the toolbox this season. And we also had some introduction to what we mean by conflict, and and some of the ideas that we're, sort of, using throughout this toolkit to shape our thinking.

In this episode, we're gonna do a deeper dive here on ideas that people often have about conflict, and why they might not be so great. Sami, do you wanna tell us more about that?

SAMI

Sure, yeah. So I guess, maybe we can start by just, like, putting forward some like, axioms or assumptions, I guess, about, like, conflict and our thoughts around it, just to make sure we're all starting from the same page.

So one is that like, and we touched on this a lot in the last chat, like how we think and feel about conflict is shaped by our histories, the society we live in, cultures, internal norms, assumptions, all these kinds of things. Like, there's a hodgepodge of different different things that go into that mix of how we think about conflicts and how we interact with conflict. And what that means in practice, is that the ways in which we interact with conflict will be like shaped by a lot of that stuff, but, because a lot of these things are like societal norms, or maybe like unspoken norms and groups, they're not always norms that we're aware of affecting our behaviour.

So I guess that's partly why we want to spend some time on it today, like, to draw out and make explicit, bring into the spotlight some of these norms, so that people can listen and be like, Oh, yeah, I definitely, I feel that thing. I feel those totalizing feelings, or whatever, I guess we'll see. Let's talk about what the things are.

And like, and so those things will... And I guess the third, maybe like assumption-y type thing, axiom-y type thing is that like, these ideas, and these norms can often be the causes of why how people think they should act when they're in conflict, and how people actually do act when they're in conflict, don't match up. And so what we want to do now is spend some time thinking of like, some of those assumptions, some of those norms, some of those frames, and like what they can mean, in practice.

ALI

I guess I can go. I feel feel very, feels like a very philosophical thought experiment-menty thing: axiom! Such a big word.

SAMI

[Laughs] It’s because I'm a mathematician, I always talk like, I'm a mathematician, I try and hide it normally. It's always that or -

ALI

What are our base assumptions here? Yeah, I can go first.

So, one idea that I am definitely guilty of bringing into conflict. Or one thing, an idea I have around conflict, which shows up is conflating the idea that people doing something I don't like, something that's bad, makes them a bad person. And that is a bit of a sneaky shift. I feel like it's like, definitely, I definitely, like don't see it, and then I catch it later, where like, oh, wait, I'm deeply deeply annoyed with this person. And it's gone way beyond like, what they actually did.

But I'm like, just seeing them as like, grrrrr, I'm so annoyed with you. And yeah, I guess, what that does. What's the impact of that kind of assumption? And thought is: it doesn't give me much like, empathy for like, some of the understanding of like, why they might have done some things and it doesn't give me much, like, motivation to, like, engage with them as a person. Because I'm like, ‘Well, they're just bad. So: write them off’-kind of thing. And I, it when I catch myself doing that, I have to, like, do some, like, unpacking of that in my own head and like being like, okay, is that true? No, it's not. What else could have been going on here? Do, maybe go back to that, like, conflict iceberg model we brought back in season one and be like, ‘Okay, I can see those positions are really separate and, like, why's that pissed me off so much? What might have been driving them?’ And like, just do some of that in my own head and like, I can feel, like, a shift in my own self being like, ‘Okay, I feel like I’ve got a bit more space now, now that I'm moving away from them being an inherently bad person. Now I might have a bit of space to talk to them.’ But if I don't do that unpacking, then I'm not very, like, open to dialogue in that sense. So, yeah.

KATHERINE

Can I jump in with a question? I'm just a bit curious about something you said. Like how, when you said, you catch yourself, I'm really interested in that, because it feels like once you've caught yourself, and you're then doing that work of like, dialling yourself back from the narratives around them being a bad person and trying to build in that empathy. That's like, really great. But I'm wondering like, what is the the work of catching yourself? Like, how do you notice that that's what you're doing? Or how do you help yourself shift? Because I find when I'm in that place, I get so stuck in the ‘rrrrrrr,’ that it's really difficult. I don't want to be moved out of it, I kind of am holding it just for holding it. So yeah, I'm wondering if you can share just a bit about how you do that shift.

ALI

So: one of the ways that I noticed this recently was thinking about like, nervous system reactions, and like, the defaults between like, fight, flight, freeze, dissociate, and all that kind of stuff. And like how those are tied with responses to conflict. And like, my initial one is like a Freezie, one of like, ‘Oh, God,’ rabbit in the headlights-kind of thing. ‘This is a bit scary.’

And then I can feel myself, if I go past that (I don't always go past that). Then I go to, like, a Fight. And I'm like, ‘Fuck that guy!’ And it's usually, like, a bodily sensation. And like, ‘Wait, that's, that's different from what it was before.’ And like noticing the internal state around things can, that can be a catching moment, as well. But it doesn't always happen that quickly. And sometimes, I can hold those thoughts for... a long time! [Laughs]

SAMI

So one of the one of the lessons to take away from this conversation: Just because we're giving a series of talks on conflict, doesn't mean we're all saints. [Laughs] Which I think we said at the start, but we should probably just keep saying again and again, in conversations. I think that was really useful Ali. Did you have anything else to say on that?

ALI

I don’t think so.

SAMI

Because I've got a different one that I want to throw in. Okay, cool.

So, another idea that I think can play out a lot is this frame that conflict is a zero sum thing. So meaning, like, conflict is a thing, if there's two people that are, like, in conflict, or whatever, one of them will win, and one of them will lose, and that will be the outcome of the conflict, that will be the conclusion.

And I think there's a few things that that, like, foregrounds, and the few things that like hi- like a few things, that highlights in a few things that hides. I think there's something in that idea of like, it being zero sum i.e. ‘There is one winner and one loser.’ I think often means is that that's a thing that can lead to like, Well, I think this other person has, like, won this conflict in the sense of like,...

We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there's always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!

Season 2 episode 2 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Henry Chango Lopez from the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain.

“In our union, the cleaner gets the same as the general secretary, in terms of being paid an hour...We pay £3 more than the London Living Wage, for instance, and the cleaner is paid the same”

- Henry

Show notes, links

IWGB website, Twitter and Instagram.

A few extra links:

A podcast from Pluto Press where Henry is interviewed alongside two authors on labour, Eve Livingston and Jane Hardy

Solidarity Squad -- a new scheme from IWGB where friends and allies can provide material support for IWGB branches

List of IWGB branches: Charity Workers, Cleaners and Facilities, Couriers and Logistics, Cycling instructors, Foster care workers, Game workers, Nannies and au pairs, Security and receptionists, United private hire drivers, Universities of London, Yoga teachers. And there’s a general members branch if none of these apply to you!

Transcript

ALI

This is Resist + Renew,

KATHERINE

the UK based podcast about social movements,

SAMI

what we're fighting for, why and how it all happens.

ALI

The hosts of the show are

KATHERINE

Me, Kat.

SAMI

Me, Sami,

ALI

and me, Ali.

SAMI

I'm recording this now, baby!

ALI

Shit, it's a podcast!

ALI

Okay, welcome back to the Resist and Renew podcast. Today we are going to be talking to Henry Chango Lopez, who is from the IWGB. So a little bit about Henry and the IWGB. Henry is the General Secretary of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain. The IWGB is a union that represents and supports some of the most marginalised workers in Britain. The union focuses on outsourcing, the gig economy, and other areas where precarity, low pay and exploitation are the norm. Henry has been closely involved with the union since the early days and previously worked as an outsourced porter at the University of London, where he was involved in high profile campaigns.

Henry has years of experience in organising, listening to the experiences of workers in precarious positions, and advising them and what avenues are open to them.

Thanks so much for joining us, Henry.

HENRY

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

ALI

Great to have you here. We'd love to just get started by getting a bit of your understanding as to like what is the current political context that you're organising in right now? How do you see the situation, I guess, for workers right now in Britain?

Yeah, I mean, the situation at the moment is, is very difficult for workers, especially in regards to what has been happening during the pandemic, with with employers taking advantage of the pandemic, in order to worsen the condition of workers. And before the pandemic started, we already were fighting the pandemic as a union, which is exploitation in the, in the UK.

And this obviously has made the situation worse because workers have gone through a very difficult situation in our union. We represent low paid workers, migrant workers, workers without workers' rights, and also workers who are in a difficult situation, and have been put in a difficult situation during the pandemic.

Because of the sectors that they work in, the sectors that we organise as a union, like cleaners, like security guards, like couriers, private hire drivers, foster carers and other workers that we represent as a union.

And most of them are, have gone through very difficult situations in terms of health and safety. For instance, during COVID, we have had to even take the government to court in order to improve the health and safety in the UK. And we've been successful in that regard.

But yeah, we've been basically challenging many employers who have been over exploited workers.

ALI

You mentioned that before even COVID pandemic happened, there's a there's a pandemic of exploitation. Why are we in that situation? Like, why is that the case in the UK right now?

HENRY

I think one of the big problems is that, you know, we live in a rich country. Unfortunately, there are many workers in this country who are not organised. Like, especially with unions, they have worked to organise workers who are now the real working class of this country, like, workers who are really, you know, working in, in sectors that are very, how can you say? very, you know, big sectors. Like, for instance, sectors, like the gig economy, where it's new, new ways of working; new ways of, new ways of providing a service.

Like, for the public, for instance, in this case, we have these workers who, um, don't have rights. And we have had to challenge you know, employers like Uber, Deliveroo, who are employing these workers, who don't give them the proper protections and the proper pay, for instance, that the work is needed in order to, you know, survive in this country, basically, in the new economy without workers rights, without things like sick pay or holiday, pensions, that everybody takes for granted: maternity pay, paternity pay. It's very difficult for these workers to to live, you know, when they have families as well.

And the other sectors that we represent like cleaners, you know, we've been fighting outsourcing in the University, we've been fighting outsourcing in many workplaces, because outsourcing is one of the big problems as well. That we've been challenging and we've been winning, huge victories in universities where we have managed to end outsourcing like in University of London, where we managed to secure better sick pay, better holiday, better pensions, maternity pay, paternity pay in line with direct-employed staff. And we have also managed to end their abuse that comes with that, it's not just about conditions. It's not just about terms and conditions. It's about dignity and respect in the workplace. And it is something that these workers don't have in many workplaces.

And we see, like, in this country, there is not, unfortunately, there is no law enforcement in terms of employment protections. Most of the time, many of these workers, if you have a problem, for instance, you're not being paid in this country. 1000 pounds of your months of wages, let's say as an example, there is no way you can get that money back. You have to take your employer to court. How can you, as a cleaner, who doesn't speak the language, in many cases can't take an employer to court? Or how can you as a courier, private hire driver, have to fight with a lawyer and pay, you know, 1000s maybe pounds in order to get justice.

So that's why we are encouraging workers to join the union. Because through the union, we've been able to break those barriers and, you know, take, take action and get justice for, for workers. And that's why the IWGB was set up: in order to do that, because we didn't have that, that that route of getting justice. And that's something that we've been doing over the years, for all of our members.

ALI

Amazing. Yeah. I guess I'm curious, again, about that, that context where workers' rights are really don't exist, or like you have to really fight hard to get them. Is that a new situation? Is that a result of the gig economy of outsourcing? Or is it a legacy of like, Thatcherism? Where, like what exactly means it's like it is now? Why why is it so bad?

HENRY

I think, I think, it's just, in terms of outsourcing. I think it's just the way that the economy has been functioning for years, you know, the use of 'Xerox contracts'. The, the, the way outsourcing works, for instance, you know, that most of the time when they employ workers, especially in many of the sectors it's low, low paid workers, you know.

Lower wages, these workers, migrant workers, who work in those industries, and they take advantage of them in order to over exploit them, by, you know, like giving them unfair conditions of work. But also, in many cases, we have many companies that don't even pay them. But I think it’s the lack of protection in this country, there's no law enforcement. And I don't think there's got to do with touchscreens or whatever, I think it’s just the government that hasn't implemented proper law enforcement in the country, in terms of the protections for workers.

But in terms of the gig economy, this is a new, a new way of, of work, that is changing: it's changing, the economy is changing the lives of people, and it's expanding day by day. It's seen as something that is just it's just happened, and then it's just expanding, and is not the law, the law, the workers' rights are not going according to what's happening at the moment. You know, there's all these huge corporations like Uber, like Deliveroo, who basically are doing whatever they like. And because they have so many investors that invest in that most of them are, you know, rich people who are even in the government that you know, supporting this, they there is no interest in changing the way they are functioning.

So I think there's a huge it's a huge challenge for us as a union and that's what we've been fighting in the courts, we've been fighting in the streets, we've been fighting you know, with demonstrations and trying to organise the workers in order to to keep changing this because if it wasn't for a union like us, things wouldn't wouldn't have changed. I think I mean, these recent rulings from Uber giving workers some some conditions, some, you know, like, conditions, but that's not everything.

We're still fighting for better conditions, and also to improve the situation of the workers because by not having workers' rights, you don't have protection of your work.

We've we've seen deactivation: so people, with a click of a button, they deactivate one person. They're finished with a job, there is no right to appeal....

We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there's always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!

Season 2 episode 1 of the Resist + Renew podcast (we're back!). In this one, we go over what we think conflict is, why we're focusing on it, and some ways to understand it.

'Conflict is both the spark, the fight, the loud things, the incidents which you notice above the water, but it's also the things that have been going on under the water'

Show notes, links

Our sister facilitation collective Navigate have a conflict facilitation booklet (from back when they were called Seeds For Change Oxford).

As we only briefly touched on the idea of "cancel culture", check out this longer ep from You're Wrong About getting into more depth.

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

And finally, a visual representation of different types of conflict (designed for a therapy context, but still relevant)

Transcript

ALI

This is Resist + Renew,

KATHERINE

the UK based podcast about social movements,

SAMI

what we're fighting for, why and how it all happens.

ALI

The hosts of the show are

KATHERINE

Me, Kat.

SAMI

Me, Sami,

ALI

and me, Ali.

SAMI

I'm recording this now, baby!

ALI

Shit, it's a podcast!

ALI

It's the toolbox again. And as we said, in our teaser, we are gonna do a theme for the whole of the toolbox. And that is conflict. So, in this episode, we are going to talk about framings to help understand conflict. We're going to share our aims of this toolbox for the season, why we're focusing on conflict, how we feel about it, and then we're going to share some frameworks that we find helpful to understanding conflict, and that will shape a lot of the other episodes which are coming up. And we'll, we'll come back and reference those.

But Sami, do you want to start us off by giving us a bit of a framing as to like, What even is conflict?

SAMI

Yeah, we’re, I thought this would be a good thing to start with. I just, I have a memory of a session. Like a training for trainers thing that I attended once, where there was a session on, like, managing conflict, conflict resolution; and someone maybe got 10 minutes in looking really confused. She was like a woman from the Balkans and was like, ‘Why are you talking about just like arguing with each other in like a conflict resolution session?’ Because she thought of it in like a statecraft kind of way. So that, to be clear, that's not what we mean, we're not talking about like wars.

And there's a, there's a description of conflict. And that comes from a person called adrienne maree brown, she’slike a writer, amongst many other things, and facilitator. And, and I think it's quite just like a helpful summary of what conflict is, which is disagreement, difference or argument between people. And, and so when we talk about conflict over the course of this toolbox, that's broadly what we're going to be referring to. So, like, more the like interpersonal, like kind of beef-within-a-group type stuff, less the like, society to war, nation state to nation state, kind of deal.

And so probably makes sense for us to start by talking about, like, why we thought this was a good idea for a podcast. Who would like to start?

KATHERINE

I can start. And so I am interested in conflict, mainly because I'm quite scared of it. And I find it difficult, I avoid it quite a lot. And I guess recently have been noticing that I also name things that are difficult in groups, which means maybe I'm more likely to invite conflict, even if once it arrives, I don't want to deal with it. Um, so I'm kind of interested to understand a bit more about like, how do I deal with it once I've named it? But I guess also sensing into, like, my own conflict avoidance. It's something I see quite a lot in groups that we work with as facilitators: people not wanting to talk about conflict, not wanting to go there. And/or when conflict arrives, like, finding that really, really hard. And so yeah, really just curious to explore, like, what actually is conflict? And people keep telling me it's transformational, but I don't know how! So this conflict toolbox series is that exploration for me and to learn from Ali and Sami, and also the people that were we're in conversation with, about how how conflict can be different and how we can work through it in ways that can be transformational. And, yeah, that's me.

ALI

Feels like a mini documentary, the way you’ve framed it.

KATHERINE

Oh, yeah? Well.

ALI

[laughs] Yeah.

KATHERINE

Do you wanna go, Ali? You’re second.

ALI

I can chat. So, I can also be a bit scared of conflict too. I've been in a lot of conflicts, just as a

virtue of being in different groups, and being in quite high pressure situations. But as well as, yeah, finding it difficult, I do tend to engage in it quite a lot. I take up certain roles in groups, of like mediating conflicts; I tend to be the one who's like, ‘There's something going on here people shall we maybe talk about it?’

Yeah, and I guess I have, I guess Katherine just said, like, she's heard people say that it can be transformative. I've seen it, in some ways and it can be like quite small moments or shifts that I feel in my relationships or it can be in slightly bigger things in the groups. So I guess I do believe it can be transformative and, yeah, based on experience a little bit.

But I've also felt like totally stuck and like nothing's ever going to change. So I guess I want more of the former, and less of the latter! And I think it's the latter, like, from a like a wider perspective as like a facilitator or someone who cares about social movements and social justice, I think conflict is one of the biggest reasons groups fail. And if we want to do the things we want to do, it's a good reason for us to get good at conflict and like, engage in it, whatever that means, which we will look at later. But, Sami, do you want to say for you?

SAMI

Yeah, sure, I guess. Um, maybe of all of us, if this were a spectrum line (call back to last season!) then I would maybe be the person that would be the furthest ‘Not Scared By Conflict’ end?

ALI

Our Residential Beef Expert.

[All laugh]

SAMI

Well, I guess, but that's, but that's the distinction, right? Like, I think I feel less, like, I feel more able to be in conflict necessarily. Maybe like, I feel less scared by it. But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm better at it, right? I'm just in a maybe just like, more more happy to go into it, I guess.

Because I think like, as I think is probably true for a lot of people, like come from a family background and like tradition, where like, it's not the like the ‘English, normative, conflict averse family style, - that is like the norm that people say is the ‘English norm’, right.

But the conflict wasn't, like useful, helpful, transformative. Like, there was just loads of it. So I guess I can feel more okay, like being in that frying pan, or whatever. But I think what, what I always feel like is that I'd like more helpful, like models of like, how to move through conflict.

Um, and I guess there's also a part of it, that's just like, I like things that I find hard. And I find like, conflict stuff hard. Like, it's difficult, like it's emotionally activating. All this kind of stuff, like, and so I think part of me is, like, drawn to that. And I think a lot of people say that they're, like, ‘not good at conflict’. And so like, often a lot of people shy away from it. And in situations like that, I'll often be like, ‘Ooh! I can give it a go!’

And so yeah, I think the main talent I bring, like with a lot of my, like baking and approach to many other things in my life is like, the main thing they bring is a willingness to give it a go, rather than necessarily like an underlying strong talent.

ALI

And willing to get messy.

[Sami laughs]

Really willing to get messy, willing to, as Ali and Katherine will know, just sit in meetings and just go, ‘BEEF, BEEF, BEEF!’

So, what's next? What's on the list?

KATHERINE

I think it's like getting a bit clearer about what conflict is. So I think that adrienne maree brown quote is really, really helpful. But I guess like, I think there's something around what people maybe immediately think of as conflict. As like the spark or the heat, or a fight happening, or some, like, loud conflict, or, like, complete stony silence that tells you the room is like, not in a in a great place.

But we want to, like, introduce this idea of, like, the iceberg to help us with understanding a bit more about what conflict is; and that those those, like, moments where we might feel the most intense conflict could be like the tip of the iceberg. Could be the, um, yeah, the loud argument or that feeling of silence or whatever it might be. But actually, like, there's often a load of stuff going on beneath the surface. And that might have been going on for a long time. Before or after those moments of spark... mixing my metaphors between spark and ice, but I think you probably can follow along.

And, and there's something about like, I think what I'm learning is that in the transformative conflict, it's not just about like, “resolving” (in air quotes) the the moment of the spark or the bit above the water. It's like really tending to all of that other stuff that's kind of going on beneath the surface. And thinking about, like, what is the cause of this conflict? What, what are the symptoms but but why are we in this conflict.

And that might mean, for example, like you're in a meeting, and there's just not enough time to like really talk through everybody's needs, and so a conflict might emerge. People might get angry with each other. But potentially beneath the surface, there's like a misalignment of values,

about, like,...

Episode 15 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we bring a little teaser for season 2.

This season, we have a Patreon (patreon.com/ResistRenew) if you want to help support us in our podcasting and wider facilitation work. If not, there's always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!

Transcript

SAMI

Okay, so Hello, everybody, we're back, because we've decided that we're going to do another season of the podcast. (Yay!) Round of applause for everybody.

So: season two, weekly thought it was a good idea to do more, what are we going to be doing?

KATHERINE

So like last time, we're going to do some interviews with some great grassroots groups based here in the UK, and some of the groups we're going to be speaking to are: Youth For Climate, based in Leeds, No More Exclusions, the Independent Workers of Great Britain, Decriminalise Futures, and the No Evictions Network. And, alongside these interviews, we're also going to be doing the Toolbox. Ali, do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

ALI

Yeah. So, if you listened last time, our Toolbox is like 15 (maybe a bit longer, 20 minutes, this time) shorter episodes about facilitation tools, and we kind of just had a bunch of random tools that we liked last time. This time, we have a theme running through it, which is: conflict. And we're grimacing at the thought of it now some of us. Yeah, it's just going to look at some of the: why it happens, some of the frames and maybe some tools as to what to do about it as well. But we'll get into that shortly.

SAMI

Hmm. And another difference? Oh, before I get to the difference, one thing to say is, so we listed some of the grassroots groups we're talking to, we may talk to other groups that we don't include in that list. We haven't mentioned them now, because we're still finalising some things. So, that's some dynamism right there. Keeping you on your toes. But also a difference is: we have a Patreon this season.

ALI

Money, money, money!

SAMI

[Sings] Money, money, money, money: MONEY!

So we're not doing this for the cash. And so because of that, there's no requirement that you pay us anything to be able to listen to the episodes, all the episodes will still be in all the places where you listen to podcasts. But we are doing it so that if you are having such a great time, you would love to just open your wallet and throw some cash at us, we will give you a mechanism where you can do that. It will be patreon.com/ResistRenew. And we probably aren't going to release any super great secret content through it because we've had a thought about some super great secret content, we could release through it and we didn't think of any ideas; but we'll probably I don't know, maybe we'll chat to you on there? Give you some goss, some behind the scenes stuff. Who knows? Who knows, but probably nothing super valuable. So don't, don't sign up under those pretensions. If you want to just listen to the podcast, you can just listen to it. If you want to throw cash at us? patreon.com/ResistRenew. Ali! No? Katherine? Katherine go on you started talking go, do it.

KATHERINE

Yeah, I just wanted to let people know if you weren't aware last time that we have transcripts of all of the recordings that we do in the show notes. So if you want to read along, you're very welcome to do that. And and also this time particularly it's worth checking out the show notes for the toolbox because we're going to be sharing additional resources about conflict and conflict facilitation. And so definitely worth checking out those this time.

ALI

Amazing! Go back!

KATHERINE

The end! [laughs]

SAMI

The end, stylish intro, small teaser. Done.

ALI

Great.

KATHERINE

Great.

This is the final episode of season 1! We can only do a season 2 / iterate and improve this with your feedback: so please, let us know how you've found this season using our super-quick feedback form.

Episode 14 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Farzana from Healing Justice Ldn.

“And at some point, it stops being about recovering yourself, and it becomes about uncovering who you've always been, and it's the uncovering, and then expansion that is super, super delicious.”

- Farzana

Show notes, links

Healing Justice London website, Twitter and Instagram.

And a few things mentioned in the episode:

Loss and Grief: a litany for survival (a research project on loss and bereavement within marginalised communities)

Voices That Shake: Bringing together young people, artists & campaigners to develop creative responses to social injustice

INCITE: a network of radical feminists of color organizing to end state violence and violence in our homes and communities

Lumos Transforms

Molly Boeder Harris from Breathe Network (a network that connects survivors of sexual violence with healing arts practitioners for trauma-informed, holistic support)

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me, Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us again for this episode of the Resist+Renew podcast. And before we go ahead and pass to Katherine, who's gonna introduce this week's guest, just wanted to say a couple of things about this being our final episode of season one.

So as we mentioned last week, we have some thoughts and ideas around doing a season two at some point. But we'd love to get some feedback in the meantime about what's been working and what you'd like to see more of what you'd like to see less of. So if you are up for that we have a Google Form, which we're putting with the show notes, and also sharing on social media. So if anyone wants to let us know what, yeah, what your thoughts are, that would be really great, and really appreciated, and help us think about future episodes.

Ali: One other thing to say about this episode is that during the editing process, a couple of the segments asked to be changed by our guest. And we're really happy to do that. But it just means the audio quality is a bit different, as these were voice notes sent to us later on. So a little bit of a warning about audio quality, but stick with it because there are gems in there. Over to Katherine.

Kat: Right. Okay, so, welcome to the Resist + Renew podcast, and we're joined by Farzana Khan. Welcome. It's really great to have you. And because great and Farzana is the executive director and co founder of Healing Justice London. Her practice works on building community health repair and self transformation rooted in Disability Justice, survivor work and trauma informed practice working with communities of colour and other marginalised and underrepresented groups. We're so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us.

Katherine: So the first question, and that we'd love to ask you is to just invite you to share a little bit about the context that you're organising in

Farzana: the context. So I guess that's like, the political reality and the social reality. I think we are living in a world that is chronically unsustainable, and has been designed to be so it brutalises our bodies, all our bodies, but particularly those that are authorised on racialized class gendered ableist sexist lens. And so I guess that's the context in which I am organising is how do we, within the real limits and confines of these social constructs that we are forced to live in, but also live the cumulative impacts of everyday and reproduce? How do we restore agency? How do we access profound connection in these worlds that separate and thrive on our separation? And, and also live meaningful lives that feel fulfilled and generative and and as whole as possible? So I guess that's it. And the context of what is being revealed right now, of COVID, global political uprisings is very much the, the the revelations of that

Ali: I just wanted to hone in on you said that the world we're living in is clinically unsustainable, and that definitely feels true. And you said, it's designed to be that way, like what what, what is your analysis or understanding that means you you see it as as designed that way?

Farzana: I think when we look at some of the most dominant power structures, which aren’t isolated, even though I might be talking about it, so if we look at white supremacy, we look at capitalism, look at neoliberalism, we look at these dominant paradigms that we live in our products of what they thrive on is things that contribute to unsustainability of planet of people, relationships, they rely on breaking and disconnection. And to me a lot of my work explores, and has had to explore violence and the heart of violence is disconnection in the spectrum of ways that we become disconnected, emotionally, physically, spiritually, energetically,, communally, And and so when we see we think about what those paradigms rely on is this that that absolute unsustainability in in not just an external level, but also what we internalise. So we internalise behaviours and patterns that mean that things are not designed to thrive, to generate, but to operate in a very exploitative and extractive way. So things are only as valuable as they produce. And, and and that that modality, that brutalised modality, is one that and isn't sustainable in and of itself. But it's also something that when we really connect with it, and we are not the the few that are in the power powerful don't seek to sustain as well. So I think that's what I mean. And I think it becomes really localised. When you look at your own self and how you're trying to liberate yourself and work through different forms of oppression and or even navigating life, then I think it becomes clear how much the chronicness of unsustainability informs our our lives from the ways that we are routinely having to self abandon, you know, even in our organising even in our community work, because these are the the structures in which we're operating in. So I think that's, I definitely see it as chronic, because it's cumulative. And, and I also, and I want us to have an analysis that isn't just that it's been continuous, but that each moment then accumulates deeper layers of oppression and and harm and abuse.

Ali: I found that definition very clear. And I definitely appreciate it. They're like locating exploitation and unsustainability in our bodies. Like I feel like I don't know, like if you think of like, Marx, Marxist texts, it's like exploitation and accumulation of capital. It's all very abstract. It all seems like, yeah, there's a system, but I don't really get how it interacts with me, except when I go to work. And then it's under certain conditions or whatever. But yeah, like locating it in our bodies and locating in day to day interactions, choices, even our organising, I think that like grounds it in reality that I'm living, and I guess those moments are also choices where I can choose to not do that. And I guess that leads me to like the question of like, why is healing justice? And like, how does Healing Justice London See, doing things differently?

Farzana: So I can only speak more for myself in healing justice, because there are lots of people who make up healing justice, from a core team, to core practitioners to a whole bunch of practitioner networks, which is huge. and international. Healing justice is a framework that really connects the relationship between oppression and liberation and healing. And it's emerged out of survivors, disability, justice, communities of colour, and also connecting the relationship between our health, our personal sustainability, and also what are the ways that we do get to heal ourselves that are non-Eurocentric modalities that don't re rely on whiteness, to to save us. And also capitalism, as we see with the wellness industrial complex, so I think that within healing justice, a lot of our focus is trying to create a space to build analysis, information, share around what community health is, especially for those that are marginalised and what the types of health needs are, but also to disrupt public health because we do have it here in the UK context, in the ways that it participates in our oppression from, you know, eugenics, which are still present in our public health systems, to the deep gendering to the class classes and ableist ways in which not just the NHS but surrounding public health systems interactive, which or other parts of public infrastructure in interact. So, you know, we know that predominantly deaths in custody have been folks who experience emotional mental distress.And so really thinking about what what does wholeness and health look like without the normative model or framework being centred on a white male body, which is why you know, as much as there's so much value in Marxist analysis, it was still generated from a white male body that doesn't have to experience even itself because itself is the norm. And so when you made that connection between the body and not an act things marginalised bodies are forced to encounter oneself and what we know about and oppressors is that oppression oppression oppresses don't experience themselves. And part of that disassociation then enables abuse and harm and violence to take place, which is why the redress is so often connection and reconnecting.

Farzana: And so yeah, healing justice really does explore those kinds of those points of health healing, and, and oppression and liberation,...

We are nearing the end of season 1, so please, let us know how you've found this season using our super-quick feedback form.

Episode 13* of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we feel the heat of temperature checks: what they bring, issues and benefits.

(* the observant amongst you will spot that this episode was meant to be number 14: we did some last-minute rearranging of the season. Please bear with us!)

'A temperature check can visiblise polarisation in the room' - Ali

Show notes, links

The perenially-useful Seeds for Change have a description of temperature checks on their tools page.

Ali also mentioned the work that Navigate do around convergent facilitation.

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements

Sami: What we’re fighting for, why and how it all happens.

Ali: The host of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat

Sami: Er, me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali.

Sami: I'm recording us now, baby.

Ali: Shit, it's a podcast!

Laughter

Ali: Helloooo. And welcome back to the Resist + Renew podcast. This is another episode of the toolbox. We've switched the order around just now, so this is the second to last episode we have for the season. And before we jump in to the episode itself, just wanted to say a little bit about the end of this season. We've enjoyed it a lot -- recording, interviewing people, chatting through stuff about facilitation tools. And it's been really nice to hear some feedback informally via social media and through friends, about how it's been going. We have some intentions and plans to carry on and do a season 2. But before we do that, we would really like to hear a bit more structuredly from people who have been listening. So it'd be great if you could fill in a little Google form we made, and give us some feedback about what you liked, what you didn't like so much, what you want to hear more of, what you want to hear less chat about, and that will help us to make season 2 even better when we come around to do that. So there will be a link on the website page for this episode, and also we'll put it out on social media. So if you're up for that, that'd be amazing. And maybe some of you would like to chat to us more and have some kind of 1 on 1, or focus group type thing. We haven't figured it out yet, but if you're up for that, let us know on the form. So... today's episode is a toolbox episode, and it is about temperature checks. So, Sami, would you like to kick us off and tell us what they are?

Sami: I would love to. So, temperature checks are a tool that is used by facilitators to kind of get some kind of often visual representation of how people are feeling about something. And so often it's based around some kind of question. And, and they're generally used as a tool to gauge whether people so like a classic example is if people want to like do people want to continue talking about something or do people feel happy to like move into a decision making kind of conversation from a discussing conversation would be the kind of example of where you use a temperature check. And they can there's like, kind of more discreet, kind of like, yes, no versions of temperature chips, but often temperature checks are quite continuous. So, it'd be like, one would be, you'd like stand somewhere in a room based on how you feel about something which is getting a bit more spectrum liney, which we'll find out about. spectrum line chat. And sometimes it'll be more like kind of hands up hands down, or like hands kind of in the middle if you feel kind of middling about something. And, and often as a tool they use to kind of make visible similar to spectrum lines, whether there is agreement about something or not. And, and there's kind of a bit of a crossover between temperature checks and voting. And I guess some of the key differences are temperature checks, generally, often more like indicative, voting is often considered more binding. Obviously, that depends on what the question you ask is, but often temperature checks are used to see like, how do people feel about something in a way that then means you can inform the next thing that you do. And like I said, they're often also continuous, voting is often like a kind of Yes, know how you feel about something. And, and there are kind of crossovers between the two, like, for example, there's kind of like more continuous voting mechanisms, which are quite similar to temperature checks, which are used, if people are familiar with quick consensus decision making, there's like a kind of fist to five tool in there where you can use 0-1-2-3 or five fingers to express like how you feel about a thing. And and generally the best use when you're, when you want to do something differently with the answer to the question, and so that was all a little bit esoteric with no examples. So Katherine, do you want to take it away with an example of using temperature checks within a workshop or meeting scenario?

Kat: Absolutely, um, a few years ago, I was facilitating a meeting with some new economy activists up in Manchester. And there were two big topics left that we had to work through and with quite limited time. And so I wanted to sort of check the temperature of the group on how to proceed. And so asked for raised hands, if people wanted to explore a particular topic, and hands in the middle, if they were either not that bothered or didn't really mind, and then hands down low if they really didn't want to do that, and then put some different options. And so we did the hands high, middle or low for the first topic that we could discuss. And just that, did it again, for the second topic, did it again, to try and get through both, and did it again, to do something completely different and not do either. And when we did, that, there was a really clear direction from the group to explore just one of the topics in detail. And, and we had a discussion after doing the temperature check that that would mean not being able to do the other topic. And the group agreed that they were happy to do that. So then that gave us a clear steer on what to do with limited time left.

Ali: Nice. I guess that brings up for me how, even though it's not voting, that there's still like, I don't know it has, temperature checks can quite strongly influence what happens and like, it can be towards more of a majoritarian approach to things rather than like a consensus approach to things. So like, some people might have really wanted to talk about that other topic. But practically, it wasn't possible. And, you know, that's just how the process goes. And and compromises have to be made. But like there's, there's a power in in the tool and how it's how it's wielded, I guess. Something I’d add.

Sami: Yeah, I think there's also something so like, one of the things that maybe get a little bit into the limitations that I see can often be a struggle in temperature checks is something that was not hit on by your framing of it is often there's something like, because it can be used sometimes in a way that can be not too dissimilar from voting and can be quite similar to voting, how you frame the question is really important. And like I was definitely part of a group once where temperature checks, always kind of created more strife than just like kind of asking people how they felt about something, because because it was a group without a clear decision-making process, it means that anytime a temperature check came up, they were often seen as like a sly way of getting agreement on something. But it wasn't really another way of getting agreement on stuff and a way of using that kind of majoritarian framing in a group that wasn't particularly into majoritarian ways of agreeing stuff. And which meant they're quite difficult, and the ways around that often around, either just not using temperature checks as a tool, or having clear decision-making processes. But then the third choice, which is kind of the way that you went in that example, Katherine is just make sure that the framing of what you're doing is exhaustive. Like, don't just say, do you want to do this thing or not? Because then what like, you kind of need to know what the not is, how you feel about the thing. So saying, like, do we want to discuss this, you will discuss option A or Option B, both or neither? At least gives people the kind of everyone will probably have at least some preference in one of those areas. And asking all of the questions means you don't people don't feel like they can't engage the temperature check one, because they like I don't want to say I feel more into something because actually, I feel it's talking about both of them that making it clear and I guess that's part of the implied thing is making it clear before you do any of them what the options are gonna be. And so that then people feel able to have a think about it and engage.

Ali: So I guess now we're talking about limitations though. So another limitation we have noted is that a temperature check can visiblise like polarisation in in the room, if there's a meeting where some people really want to do something, and some people really don't want to do something, then things can just feel stuck, then you can, like, exacerbate that stuckness by visibilising it. So, knowing what you're going to do, once you've got the data or the information from the group and knowing how to move forward in, in these various scenarios is like a really important thing to have in mind. Yeah, I guess like,

Kat: No I was just gonna say I really agree with that, and feels like sometimes visiblising, the stuckness for a group can be really helpful, especially if there are people in the group that think there is a clear way forward, like showing quite visibly. No, there isn't because there's a lot of disagreement is is real

Episode 12 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we lay down some spectrum lines: what they bring, issues and benefits.

'What's really valuable about them is their way of drawing out and making visible polarity' - Sami

Show notes, links

The perenially-useful Seeds for Change have a description of spectrum lines on their tools page.

Training For Change have a video 10 Ways to Use A Spectogram Online. ("spectrogram" is another term for "spectrum line"), which includes a how-to guide for making your own spectrum line slides in Google Slides.

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Sami: Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Toolbox. So today we are talking about spectrum lines. The reason I'm doing the introduction is because spectrum lines, I have decided, are my favourite facilitation tool. And what they are, is it's a tool used to kind of show a spectrum or a continuum of positions on a thing, often they're framed around a question. And which you can sometimes it will be like, often the IRL version will be like two ends of a room. So it will be go towards this end of the room if you feel this way about something and go to the other side of the room if you feel the opposite way about something. And so could be like how much you agree with a question. And then like from not at all to loads. That's a classic spectrum line. And, and online equivalent versions that people do are things for example, where they'll like put a little line on like a slide tool that everyone can edit. And then everyone like put a dot somewhere on the line, things like that. So that's what it is. And and very quickly. So what it's good for generally, it's a it's used as a thing where you can kind of it's used as a tool to highlight differences in response to something that's a very broad answer. Maybe Ali, if you can give a specific example. Yeah, let's make that concrete.

Ali: Let's make it concrete. Okay, so sometimes I run workshops on things around sci fi, and like utopia and dystopia. And I've used spectrum lines in the beginning of those kind of workshops, asking kind of questions like that one in the room would be I think the world is getting better. And at the other end of the room, I'd have I think the world is getting worse. And people stand on the line in that position. And I think it's, it's, yeah, I've enjoyed doing these spectrum lines, because it draws out like a whole range of opinions and perspectives around the world, like, how can anyone objectively say which it is like it's too difficult, you can always draw examples of things which are good in the world. And you can always try examples of bad things that are bad in the world. And I find that optimists and pessimists struggle to talk to each other, like they're so wrapped up in their particular worldview. But like with this spectrum line, I found that it was like, a powerful and quite emotional way of getting those people to talk to each other and see, like, the complexity and the ‘both and’ in that situation. So it is really shift in some places and certain situations. And it is really amazing in certain situations, and often in the same place, it can be both things. And I think that's a cool tool to bring that out and have those conversations and hear each other.

Sami: And I think as a facilitator, a reason that they're often very useful as a tool is, so you can easily get a read of a room around a specific question. So often when I feel like when I use them, I use them quite near the start of a workshop, especially if it's an open workshop for a group of people, I don't know. And that wasn't possible to find out information about in advance. And so a classic one that we'll do, in a lot of situations will be like, what's your like, how confident you feel around something. And so if you're going to be doing a training around I don’t know, facilitation, maybe some people will be bringing a lot of experience from facilitation, some people won't be bringing much. And it's useful to be able to know that to be able to know how to pitch the kind of things you're going to talk about in the workshop. That's a classic, classic spectrum line. But as with all tools, it's not all not all gems. So where can I go wrong?

Kat: So I guess I've seen some uses of spectrum lines that have been really divisive in an accidental way, where the framing of the polarity of each end of the spectrum has basically ended up with one side being clearly good and one side being clearly not good. And people form a spectrum line and then those that end up in there clearly like not good end have a really hard time. And I think that can end up being really divisive, and sometimes can be quite harmful for the people in the room who might experience a shaming or an outing, but they weren't necessarily prepared for or willing to share and disclose. But the structure of the spectrum line basically is like you either do this or you have to sit out. And yeah, I've seen that be quite harmful for people sometimes.

Ali: Maybe to give a complex to give a nuanced position on the example, Sami gave earlier around people's experience. I've been in ones where people have asked, like, what's your experience with this thing. And then you just put yourself on a line. And then nothing was really done with it. Like I felt that was like, useless information. And it was just like, and then it was like, either telling people about confidence or experience or just like how they felt about something. And then that was it was dropped. And like, I feel like, there needs to be follow up with these things. So like, if it's a spectrum line of experience, then you could like, physically fold the line in the middle and meet have the most confident person talk to the least confident person, and see how they could support each other. I think that that is like building on it. But if you don't do that, it can feel like, Okay, great. I feel I'm not that confident. Now, what?

Sami: Yeah, or another example of like, how you can use that information is, so like you said, there's the example of folding the line. So you can pair people up, maybe if you're doing some kind of listening exercise, or some some kind of practical exercise where you need to make sure at least one person has confidence in what they're doing, for example, or if you're trying to work out. So for example, if you're in the confidence one. And if you're looking then to try and elicit answers from the group at some point, then it means you, if the room is a bit quiet, you can be like, Oh, well, like, blah, blah, blah, you said, like, you've done things like this before, like, what do you want to know. And one thing also that I've seen people use spectrum lines for that I have done before is using spectrum lines at the start and at the end of something and it that I'm I don't really like it necessarily, because it does kind of go into that thing, which is like where spectrum lines go wrong is where there's an there is a correct answer. And I feel like people know that the correct answer, if you've just done a workshop, is that you're meant to be more confident than you were at the start. So like, I'm not, I don't really, I don't really like it. And I've stopped doing it over the years. But that's the funny thing people can do.

Ali: Do we have any top takeaways around spectrum lines,

Sami: Can I share an example of another situation where I think spectrum lines are, have or are not certainly right or wrong. But it's been a thing, which I know, done a lot of direct action trainings in my time, and a thing, which there's always a lot of conversation around the group that we'd often do direct action trainings with, is around, especially if you're working within like the anti militarist and peace movements. There's a very strong,

Ali: I know where you’re going

Sami: Yeah, like there's a very strong non violence tendency. And some people come at this from like, a very strategic non violence perspective, some people come at it from a very, like moral non violence perspective. And, and so you so like, have done workshops where there has been a spectrum line about like, kind of how you feel about different tactics. And, and so there's different versions of that some of which may or may not be useful, depending on the group. And so they could say that there's one version of it, which is like, how confident would you feel doing this? Or like, how good an idea do you think this is? Which is a slightly different question, maybe we feel competent doing it, we don't think it's a very productive thing to do. Or, like, how much do you think this thing's count? This thing counts as the violence The classic example being like property damage, like how much do you feel like this example of property damage counts as violence, and can be useful illustrative tools to kind of draw out tension within a group, but it's a it's a fundamentally polarising tool. And if your intention is not to polarise the group, then it's probably not a good shout. If your intention is to polarise the group. That is a great shout. I guess it really it really depends on your intention, what the group is, what you're trying to get out of it. But if you're not intending to polarise the group, definitely want to steer away from because you can create divisions that then will just run through a whole workshop or series of workshops.

Ali: Well, that group's existence. Does anyone else have any good or bad things to say about spectrum lines?

Kat: I think it can be a really good way of finding allie

Episode 11 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Rabab from Gentle/Radical.

We couldn't pick one pull quote, so here are two!

"Conversation and dialogue is probably the bedrock of how I understand the work, how I understand organising, how I understand cultural work"

- Rabab

and

"Cultural praxis, for me, has to embody our principles that we must do more than just talk about stuff and make it look good and sound good"

- Rabab

Show notes, links

Gentle/Radical website, Twitter and Instagram. The project mentioned towards the end of the episode was Doorstep Revolution.

And a few things mentioned in the episode:

The Out of the Spiritual Closet report, by Movement Strategy Centre.

Audre Lorde

Emergent Strategy, by adrienne marie brown

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Kat: Welcome to the Resist and Renew podcast. And today we're really excited to have Rabab Ghazoul talking to us from Gentle Radical. And welcome Rabab.

Rabab: Thanks. Hi.

Kat: And so just to give you a little bit of an introduction before we dive into the questions, Rabab Ghazou is a socially engaged visual artist, activist and founder director of Cardiff based organisation, Gentle Radical, centering, social justice, healing, justice, decolonial practice and non extractivist engagement, Gentle Radicall work to curate collaborate and build projects that seek to make the marginal our mainstream, born in Mosul, Iraq, living permanently in the UK, from the age of 10. And in Wales for the last 27 years, Rabab is deeply engaged in ideas of place, colonial coloniality, connectivity and the disporic experience. So glad to have you here revived. That's great. And so yeah, the first question, can you tell us a little bit about the context that you're organising in and why you choose to do the work that you're doing?

Rabab: Yeah, I can. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It's really great to be with you both. So yeah, I, I suppose we are organising, Gentle Radical is based in Cardiff, and I've been in Cardiff since 1993. I came to Wales as a student, actually. And I stayed. And I think that happens for a lot of people that come here, and then they, they sort of end up a lot of people end up in Cardiff. And so on a personal level, just, I suppose before I talk about maybe, how we're organising why we're organising here and why I choose to continue being here. I think I almost came here by default. So I was in Aberystwyth as a student, as an undergrad and then moved to Cardiff to work in the arts or to start trying to work in the arts. And I ended up sort of staying like a lot of people. But I think at a certain point, I had a real realisation or a kind of recognition in myself that I was consciously making a choice to stay in Wales. And I realised that was because there was a certain consciousness around the colonial that I felt was deeper, more alive. Of course, it would be as because of Wales’ own history and experience of colonialism for the last well, it's it's, it's England's first colony. And so I felt that as someone who is someone who's living out of a diasporic experience, or someone who, whose homeland is not easy to get back to who in many ways, I've not been, apart from a moment in 2016, I hadn't been back to Iraq since I was 10. So there's so much bound up in those, those dislocations, those disconnections, that the sense of the losses that you're constantly sort of navigating and negotiating. And the and I suppose the, the new places, the new spaces, the new person you become the person you have become the person you've been evolving into is, I felt somehow that alongside my interest in the work and the interest in the complex, nuanced landscapes of coloniality, Wales felt like I could speak to those things in an in a, in a, in a way that there was, how can I describe it, like there was kinship around that there was a more immediate, does that make sense to kind of kinship around that, of course, from a different context and a different perspective, than I felt that there was in England and these are huge generalisations to make as if, like, you know, like, England is a phenomenally diverse place. And many of its cities, some of the most diverse in the world, so like, but somehow this sense of being to the side, being being at a tangent to the centre, and I think probably that is a very live experience for me as someone who is never quite knows you don't, you know, it's hard to talk about myself as being Iraqi because I've not been there for so long. And actually, Iraq has changed, like the Iraq I grew up in, was not the Iraq that even remotely exists any longer not just because like many of the places in our childhood have changed and don't exist, but as we know, the history of Iraq because the catastrophic history of the last 30 years or so. So that sense of like, how do you own being of a place when that place wouldn't recognise you any longer when to go back to that place, you go back as a tourist, like, we know that so I think, and at the same time not being British, whilst knowing I sound British, I'm a product of British culture not being Welsh. So I think being in this in between space, felt like there was space to explore that more here in Wales. And because I think Wales is also in between. and Wales’ own relationship to coloniality is highly complex. Of course, it's been colonised, but it is also a beneficiary and a recipient of the wider European colonial project, you know, so it's, it's a white, it's a small but still white majority nation, that is a small nation in Europe, and there is there are huge responsibilities, radical responsibilities around Wales’ experience, in a way on the coattails of Empire, you know, so I feel like this felt like a rich place to be and a complex place to be. And I think complexity, I like I like complexity a lot. I feel happy in amongst contradiction and complexity.

Rabab: And then as far as Gentle Radical was concerned, I think I it came out of the fact that there wasn't any need to move, there wasn't any need to leave. This is where I live, it's where I've made my home. And I suppose there what what Gentle Radical is interested in doing is really working in a hyper local way. So hyper locality. And this idea of what does it mean to remain in one place? And what does it mean to remain in one place for a very, very, very long time? A little bit like adrienne marie brown, in emergent strategy, she talks about like, and building instead of mile wide inch deep movements, how do we build, like, inch wide mile deep? So I've been in Cardiff, I don't know, I sort of set up Gentle Radical in 2016. So I've been in Cardiff, maybe anywhere over 20 years, maybe 25 years, 23 years. So I felt like, I felt like that was the right moment to set up an organisation. I felt like I needed to live that much. I needed to know this place that much, I needed to make mistakes enough. And of course, I didn't stop making mistakes, but I needed to really be ready to once this work begins, it needs to keep going deeper. So I felt I had a deep commitment to place. And in a very specific sense, we're based in Riverside, it's an area I've lived in for 23 years myself, it's very, it's a very diverse part of the city. It's not an affluent part of the city, there's a lot of different, huge richness and huge need. So the idea of what does it mean, to construct projects, and to organise and to use culture and cultural praxis? Not for two years, or five years or 10 years, but like until I'm dead and beyond? And then who's going to come after? And then after them? So how do we really pull elastically our sense of the work that we want to do with with people and community?

Rabab: The other sorry, the other thing to say, I suppose about Cardiff and Wales is, particularly in Cardiff, I think we are in very close proximity to seats of power. Because we're tiny because we're 2 million people. So you can, you can go and speak to the First Minister, I mean, it's possible you can absolutely have conversations with people who are at the Assembly or at Welsh Government. And I think that gives Wales a very different kind of relationship to its political structures. In other words, they're not as hierarchical. There's less density and bureaucracy to get through. Of course, it's there, but not anything like to the extent of it is in England. And I think that creates sort of possibilities, it creates possibilities of disruption, greater fluidity greater dialogue. So for example, some of the really I think they're groundbreaking. I think there's there's there's definitely space for these bits of legislation or policy to be more groundbreaking. But if I think of the future generations commission and legislation around future generations, those kinds of developments within the political arena are really, so for me that in Wales, there's a, there's the possibility for quite radical thinking and the possibility for that to impact in quite deep ways, because because of the scale, because of our scale is small enough to not be hindered by much more cumbersome, historical, deadweight. So I kind of personally, people laugh when I say this, but I really feel like I'm excited to say, I feel like the small nations will be the global leaders of the future, basically. So it seems exciting to be in places like Wales.

Sami: I think I think that's really interesting. I think they're a question that comes up for me, which is, as somebody who is not as familiar as, with yourself, or with gentle radical as an organisation, you use this term cultural praxis, and which I've seen before, but I'll be honest,...