Moments of Insight • Vol. 1 Issue 7 • June 12, 2020 A Note from Anna, our Founder & Director Send us a Letter We know we cannot be there in person Hi all, I hope this newsletter finds you safe and healthy. We wanted to take with you, but wanted to encourage you some time to acknowledge all that’s been unfolding in our country over to check-in with us like we do when we the past few weeks and dedicate this edition of the Newsletter to our are together. You know how Anna unwavering support of marginalized communities and people of color usually asks us to state how the week everywhere. Emotions have been very high and very low and everywhere in has been and share something we've between. I have felt angry, sad and sometimes hopeless. But I know it doesn't learned? We'd love for you to write it help me or anyone else if I hang out there too long. I can see the deeper down and send us a note. feelings of love and optimism everywhere I look, and so I dive into hope and I reside there instead. I prefer the view. Send us a poem or artwork There’s something about these protests that feels different this time. It’s like We would also love for you to share any everyone - people of all colors, ages, backgrounds, and gender identities - poems, artwork or insights you've had are out in the streets saying enough is enough! We demand change. And that we can include in one of our next some change is happening (see page 6). Of course we have a long way to go volumes of 'Moments of Insight'. Feel to change policy, re-direct funding, and even begin to right all the wrongs of free to share ideas of what you'd like us decades of systemic racism, but I’m looking around and witnessing people to include in this newsletter as well. challenge their entrenched ways of thinking as people, as a community, and as a society. Me too. It’s uncomfortable, clumsy, and painful but has me All letters, art and ideas can be sent to: sitting upright in my chair, listening more deeply. And, ready to roll up my The Insight Alliance sleeves and work harder to help change the system from the inside on out. PO Box 820214 Portland, OR 97282 As Michelle Alexander, author of ‘The New Jim Crow’ writes in an Op-ed piece in the New York Times last week asks - “Can’t we design alternative approaches to poverty, drug abuse, mental illness, trauma and violence that would do less harm than police, prisons, jails and lifelong criminal records? Fortunately, the extraordinary protests sweeping the nation and the globe are beginning to have an impact…. On Wednesday, the mayor of Los Angeles announced that city officials may cut up to $150 million from the city’s police budget “so we can invest in jobs, in health, in education and in healing.” By Friday, the Minneapolis City Council president announced that the council was preparing to “dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a transformative new model of public safety.” These developments reflect a long-overdue paradigm shift in our approach to race and criminal justice….” THE INSIGHT ALLIANCE PAGE 01 CONTINUED FROM PG 1. Lockdown Diaries (Inspired by the Willamette Week) I know I feel hopeful when I read that and when I look around at the change that is happening. And I feel hopeful and continually inspired by the resilience and humanity of all the people we work with. As an organization we are committed to continuing our work supporting people affected by the criminal justice system and those who have been traditionally marginalized to live fulfilling prison-free lives, out of the cycle of repeated incarceration. As Former President Barack Obama said: “Change will not come if we Lindsay wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve Staff Member been waiting for. We are the change that we seek”. 1. Occupation: Operations Director 2. Age: 36 Systems are made up of individuals, individuals that have the power to change. In 3. How many people do you live with? Two helping people affected by the criminal justice system wake up to their true worth and 4. What have you been eating? Lots of veggies, their potential, we start to change the system. One by one, people with a new and chicken and fish....we're doing the Keto diet. healthy mindset gain power and agency that contributes to systems-wide change. 5. What have you been watching, listening to or playing during Lockdown? Watching: Project While we are committed to continuing this work, we also acknowledge we must step up Runway, Top Chef, Better Call Saul, Harry Potter; to the plate to do even more around racial justice. It is not just about what I say here, Listening to: the Frozen 2 soundtrack on it’s about what we do: How is The Insight Alliance “being the change we want to see in repeat....not by choice, lol! the world?” 6. Have you picked up a new hobby or resumed an old one? I've been doing a lot of projects In solidarity, Anna around the house (painting the bathroom, re- finishing our kitchen table, reorganizing the garage, working on my garden). 7. What's the weirdest thing you've done so far? Vacuumed the garage! Yep, that definitely happened when I was organizing things the other day. Who have I become? 8. When was the last time you were closer than 6 feet to someone outside your household? This past weekend. 9. What's your secret to staying sane? Zoom calls with my family, puppy snuggles, doing my work for The Insight Alliance, and volunteering with The Black Resilience Fund and Beyond Black. 10. What's the first thing you're doing when this is over? Traveling to the east coast to visit grandparents and other family members. 11. What has quarantine taught you about yourself? I need to do a better job resting and giving myself space to create/be artistic. Having that space over the last few months has been SO healing and essential given everything going on in the world. THE INSIGHT ALLIANCE PAGE 02 A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH A Reflection from one of our Board Members OTHER BY WILLIAM STAFFORD BY AMELIA PAPE, INSIGHT ALLIANCE BOARD MEMBER ”If you don't know the kind of person I am Times are heavy, to say the least. I feel very grateful to be a part of this and I don't know the kind of person you are organization and so proud of the work that all the teachers and a pattern that others made may prevail in the participants are doing. I've been revisiting Dr. King's Letter from a world and following the wrong god home we Birmingham Jail multiple times over the past few months, and this may miss our star. passage keeps sticking with me: For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break "You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so sending with shouts the horrible errors of forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for childhood storming out to play through the negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent broken dike. direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to And as elephants parade holding each confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension And so I appeal to a voice, to something which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary shadowy, a remote important region in all to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the who talk: though we could fool each other, we bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative should consider— lest the parade of our analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent mutual life get lost in the dark. gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of For it is important that awake people be understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably or no, or maybe — should be clear: the open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call darkness around us is deep." for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue." His citing of the value of tension is what stays with me.