Shifting and Growing in My Intentionality

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone: Day 4

I haven’t had a creative flow like this in a long time. Only a few hours of sleep again. I feel the need to get out of my head and back into my body. That will be my main goal today. It’s supposed to be a rainy day as well so our Conversation Café hopefully won’t need as much energy this time around.

One thought that kept me up was this deep questioning of this “defund the police” demand. When I first heard it a few weeks ago, I was super skeptical and it seemed a little radical. But the more I thought about it, I realized it is not radically liberal, it’s fairly conservative and capitalistic when you break it down.

Let’s say that we don’t want to raise more taxes, we just want to make sure that our limited tax dollars are being spent in the most effective ways for their intentions. So let’s look deep at our budget and our goals and see what is working and what isn’t.

So with that logic, we see a large police budget, but crime not actually going down. It might even seem like for every new cop we put on the street, more criminals pop up (the dehumanizing categorization and use of the word criminal we’ll save for another conversation). So why not look deep at our city budget and see if some resources used in a different way could have a greater impact.

From my perspective, absolutely!! So why don’t we invest in some “free market” style innovation, and see what ideas we can come up with as a community to address the problems we have unfairly put on our police force.

Maybe deeper investment in education and professional development? Or weaving community bonds? Or we simply trust each community to figure that out themselves?

But that’s just me thinking out loud.

Today was a roller coaster. I don’t even know where to start. I’ll keep the overview catch-up brief and then mostly focus on a course correct of my own internal work and agenda.

So to go over the day first. The Conversation Café was still beautiful in so many ways. Lots of pockets of diverse groups coming together for transformative conversations. I get so encouraged by what I see here every day.

The overall feeling of this community has shifted though at many times today as more curious voyeurs came by to get a feel for the entire space after seeing so much from the news. I feel like that caused a culture shift as most of the people were no longer interested in how they can contribute, but rather to make judgments and comparisons based on expectations they have made from the news.

There were also a couple instances of white pride and evangelical Christians trying to divert the message away from Black Lives Matter, and that caused some serious moments of tension.

And then there was the continued beauty and expression of so many of our marginalized communities of color. Indigenous performances. A Black women led teach-in. Stories being shared in the evening, and then another evening concert by “Marshall Law” like on Wednesday night.

But the rest of my writing today will focus on my internal work and vision after I ran into two people I’ve known for a while who brought something needed to my attention.

The core message I received, with a raw heart and gratitude, is that over the course of the past two days, the vision I have shared alongside this Café in my writings has been taken over by my own ideas and dreams. This is a tendency I will always battle. It will always be an ongoing internal fight and balancing act to find my place and role in the community work I find myself called to.

The process, the intention, the roles, the power dynamics, and the ego, all deeply matter in this work. Combine all of that with my privilege and a natural tendency to dive right into a vision I feel called to manifest when it becomes clear, is making this journey an up and down one for sure.

I can never regret what I’ve built here with the Conversation Café (I know first hand it’s been transformational on so many levels), and I believe deeply in my heart that this project’s origins were in the right place, but there’s still work to be done in how it is further manifested into the world and it’s larger intention moving forward.

So, I will continue doing everything I can for this Café, but make sure to co-create with those this movement is about in a deeper way, always checking myself to keep my own intentions and agenda out of the equation. This sounds right — to approach every moment and idea simply as an opportunity for me to ask my Black neighbors, whose stories, pains, and dreams this movement is all about, how best I and this Café can support them and their efforts.

All in all, I will head home with a heavy heart. I will continue to move forward, be resilient, and adapt as I mess up and keep trying in front of everyone and continue to grow as a human in my work to build a world where everyone belongs.

I will always have to battle and grow in my awareness when my excited creative side takes over and I bring an idea to life before thinking it through. It doesn’t matter what I imagine this place can be, this movement is most definitely not about my voice or perspective coming through and I have to make sure that nothing in my work co-opts this more important shift of power.

Allyship and solidarity is wonderfully messy and transformational work. It’s clearer now that it’s time only for the imaginations, dreams, and visions of our BIPOC community to be what guides me.

I’m finally home and have to add two new updates that have just made me feel even more like a pinball.

First, a woman who was at the Café earlier in the day shared that in a portion of the Black women led teach-in, two of the leaders gave a quick shoutout of gratitude for the Conversation Café opening up and taking the shape it has where a lot of white allies are growing in their solidarity work.

Second, a friend sends me both a screenshot of a BBC instagram post showing off the Café and a Telegram article from the UK titled: “Tear gas replaced with “conversation cafes” as dreamers take over Seattle”. I can’t even tell at this point if that’s a good thing or not, but at least it’s shifting some of the global narrative away from this anarchists talk.

Couple those two things with the transformative, connecting, and diverse experiences I’ve personally witnessed, clarifies things a bit as I think now just to stay in my lane a bit more, keep bringing every conversation in the Café back to antiracism, the fight for equity and belonging, and the goals and vision from our Black leaders. And full heartedly make sure that any conversations with press about the Conversation Café get directed straight back to the Black Lives Matter leaders.

I definitely need some rest.