This episode features a presentation from Rev. Dr. Ry Siggelkow and Ricardo Perez on Organizing in the Spirit of Accompaniment. In this episode, Ry and Ricardo share stories of accompaniment through Ella Baker, SNCC, the Zapatistas and Pueblo de Lucha y Esperanza.
Resources
-The Zapatista Principles
-Pueblos de Lucha y Esperanza
Episode Transcription available here
Host: Ry O. Siggelkow
Producer: Adam Pfuhl
Podcast Engineer: Michael Moua
Music: Kavyesh Kaviraj
Episode Recorded on October 24th, 2023
You can find out more about the Leadership Center for Social Justice on our website and on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
This episode features a presentation from Rev. Dr. Ry Siggelkow and Ricardo Perez on Organizing in the Spirit of Accompaniment. In this episode, Ry and Ricardo share stories of accompaniment through Ella Baker, SNCC, the Zapatistas and Pueblo de Lucha y Esperanza.
Resources
-The Zapatista Principles
-Pueblos de Lucha y Esperanza
Episode Transcription available here
Host: Ry O. Siggelkow
Producer: Adam Pfuhl
Podcast Engineer: Michael Moua
Music: Kavyesh Kaviraj
Episode Recorded on October 24th, 2023
You can find out more about the Leadership Center for Social Justice on our website and on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Organizing in the Spirit of Accompaniment
Ry Siggelkow [00:00:01] You're listening to the podcast of the Leadership Center for Social Justice at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. We seek to open a space for critical theological conversations about pressing social issues we face in our world today. Thanks for listening.
Ry Siggelkow [00:00:23] Good evening. Friends, colleagues, people on zoom. Hello, everybody. Thanks for attending this public symposium event. Our second evening of this and our second full day of symposium week here at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. My name is Ry Siggelkow, and I am the director of the Leadership Center for Social Justice. And I'm very pleased and honored, really, to be presenting tonight with my friend and colleague, Ricardo Perez, the Leadership Center's first artist organizer in residence. Ricardo's presence with us tonight and throughout this year is another chapter in United's long tradition of bringing theology and the arts together with struggles for social justice. So this is another chapter, and we're thrilled to have Ricardo as a part of our seminary this year.
The title of our talk tonight, Organizing in the Spirit of Accompaniment, is inspired by the late historian, movement intellectual, lawyer, and activist, Staughton Lynd. Might be a new name to you. That's Staughton who died this past fall. And that's his wife, Alice Lynd. A self-described Quaker Marxist, that's right, or Marxist Quaker, Staughton served as the director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, that is SNCC, the director of their Freedom Schools. Staughton was recruited to direct the Freedom School project in Mississippi during the summer of 1964. There he was at a training in 1964 with SNCC staff and volunteers. In April 1965, Staughton chaired the first March against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC. In August of that same year, he was arrested together with Bob Moses and David Dellinger at the Assembly of Unrepresented People, also in Washington, DC, where demonstrators sought to declare peace with the people of Vietnam on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. This is an image of Staughton, along with Bob Moses and Dave Dellinger, at that march, at that demonstration. His involvement in political resistance against the war would cost Staughton his post at Yale. And later he became blacklisted from the Academy altogether. Staughton and his wife, Alice, decided then to become lawyers, working in service to the labor movement alongside steelworkers in Youngstown, Ohio, and later, after the steel mills closed and a supermax prison was erected nearby. They put their legal expertise in service of incarcerated people. They lived a remarkable life.
In 2012, Staughton wrote a marvelous little book that I highly recommend called Accompanying: Pathways to Social Change, which reflects on the social movements of the 20th century in which he played such a pivotal part. The book has a simple but no less provocative thesis. "That most, not all, of the movements of the 1960s suffered from a mistaken and superficial conception of social change that we called organizing". That's a quote from Staughton's book. Staughton, in his book, challenges a model of organizing that is still quite dominant today, even in faith based organizing, which views social change as a process whereby person A or organization A decides what would be desirable for person B to think and do, and then seeks to bring about that predetermined result. Staughton believed that this model of organizing was mistaken and superficial because it often, from his perspective, resulted in a restrictive institutional environment that can come to obstruct or actually undermine creative and spontaneous action from below. And it can result in a situation in which the worst aspects of the way things were, begin to reassert themselves, when the organizer decides to leave a place or a group of people.
By way of an alternative, Staughton offers a different vision and a different practice to those of us who are seeking to transform the world. He calls this practice and this vision, accompaniment. Throughout his book Staughton looks closely at a number of important social movements that reflect and embody this different practice and vision. And this evening, Ricardo and I would like to introduce you to some of the lessons that might be learned for us today. We believe that these lessons are particularly relevant for those of us who are involved in, or training to be involved in, various forms of ministry for social justice, whether as pastors, chaplains, activists, or organizers. What we want to suggest is that the work of Ministry for Social Justice is best approached in the spirit of accompaniment. See if I can keep up with my slides. Rather than leading others in struggle, imposing ideas and strategies for social change. Ministry, in the spirit of accompaniment, is much more about joining the spirit active in the world and coming alongside those in struggle.
We will focus some attention tonight on the organizer and movement builder Ella Baker, who helped to found SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and mentored many of its young organizers. Then we'll look briefly at the Zapatistas, an indigenous movement that publicly emerged in Chiapas, Mexico, on January 1st, 1994. After introducing you to these figures and movements and highlighting some of their key insights and lessons,. Ricardo will share about his work as an artist and organizer in the community, how he understands the work of organizing in the spirit of accompaniment, and how our shared work with Pueblos de Lucha y Esperanza, a local faith based organization, is informed by the principles and practices of accompaniment. And then we will also be including you for an exercise as well. Don't run away.
But first, I want to say a bit more about this word accompaniment. The idea is often associated with Oscar Romero, many of whom I believe you'll be familiar with him. The Archbishop of San Salvador, who was assassinated while celebrating Mass on March 24th, 1980. In Romero's final pastoral letters. He spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven as not only a future reality, but as something that is available to us here and now, present to those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear. Now, he saw this presence of the kingdom, not in the established order. He was, after all, living under a repressive fascist military regime. But in the life of the ordinary people of San Salvador, the majority of whom lived in extreme poverty, who nonetheless had begun to live together in such a way that they felt themselves to be brothers and sisters. And Romero recognized that it was the poor to whom Jesus turned. Quote, "He united himself with, defended and encouraged all those who, in his day, were on the margins of society. Sinners, publicans, prostitutes, Samaritans, lepers". For Romero, the Kingdom of Heaven then emerged in history, not from above, in the halls of power, whether political or ecclesiastical, but from below, among the poor and dispossessed. Romero believed that the ministerial task is to accompany those in the struggle for life, and together to oppose the structural forces of death for the sake of that new world. To minister in this way, as another Salvadorian theologian once put it, is to begin to face reality, to take hold of it, and to allow ourselves to be carried by reality. For the sign of the kingdom of heaven is always, in the words of Ignacio Ellacuría, a historically crucified people, which remains constant, although the historical forms of crucifixion are different. Jon Sobrino reflected, "the reality of the people bore up Monsignor Romero and the reality of Monsignor bore out the people. They bore each other up in life and in death for the sake of another world". This bearing with one another is what Romero calls accompaniment.
The late physician Doctor Paul Farmer, a groundbreaking practitioner and thinker in a field now known as social medicine, and founder of the organization Partners in Health, was inspired by Romero's life and witness. In a commencement address he delivered at Harvard in 2011, Farmer repeatedly used this word accompaniment to describe what he had learned in his work in Haiti. He wrote, "Accompaniment means just what you'd imagine and more. To accompany someone is to go somewhere with him or her, to break bread together, to be present on a journey with a beginning and an end. We're almost always unsure about the end. And so there is an element of mystery, of openness in accompaniment. I'll go with you and support you on your journey wherever it leads. I'll keep you company and share your fate for a while. And by a while I don't mean a little while. Accompaniment is much more about sticking with a task until it's deemed completed by the person or people being accompanied, rather than by the accompanier". Reminds me of what Reverend Prestemon was sharing earlier this evening at our UCC dinner, talking about global missions and the UCC church. Very similar to this idea of accompaniment, I think. Farmer's address consists of a number of illustrations of accompanying, but one of the things he emphasizes is the importance of physical proximity to the work of accompanying. Reminding us that the Latin roots of this word accompaniment are being together. “Com” in eating bread, “Panis” face to face, and being together face to face.
Now I want to turn to Ella Baker. The work of SNCC and their relationship to African-American people who lived behind the so-called cotton curtain in the Deep South. For me, their work is an illustration of organizing in the spirit of accompaniment. SNCC was born out of radical student activity in the early months of 1960, which began when four black college students walked into a Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and sat down at a whites only lunch counter and refused to move. After several days of actions, and in the face of intense hostility, intimidation, and physical violence, the store gave in to their demands. News of this dramatic, confrontational and successful form of direct action began to spread like wildfire across the nation, and before long, several thousand young black people were performing similar demonstrations in more than 100 different cities. The demonstrations caught the attention of civil rights organizers everywhere, and established organizations like Martin Luther King Jr's Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the SCLC, were looking for a way to harness the energy of student activity through the creation of a student wing. It could be perhaps incorporated into the work of the SCLC. But Ella Baker, who at the time, was serving as the executive director of the SCLC, King's organization. She had other ideas.
Perceptively seeing that the moment could be catalyzed into a movement, Baker organized a conference for student leaders and activists to gather and converse about their experiences and their ideas for future actions. This conference took place at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, which was also Ella Baker's alma mater in April 1960. So she organized this very quickly. Some 200 students from all over the country came to the conference. Against the wishes of the SCLC, Baker urged the students to consider creating their own independent organization. Baker had political goals of her own, of course, but she knew that she needed to remain open and careful not to alienate these students. After all, as she had said in the spring of 1960, there was absolutely no basis for these students to embrace me with open arms. It's hard for us to imagine not embracing a figure like Ella Baker, but in those days, there was no reason, right? They didn't know Ella Baker. She did not want to rush things or overwhelm these students with her ideas. Instead, she created space for student leaders to meet with one another, share their experiences in the sit-ins, the struggles of their respective contexts and to compare notes, share analysis, share their passions, their desires, their hopes and dreams, and explore possibilities for a way forward.
As Baker's biographer, Barbara Ransby put it, "It was the radical youth, Baker was concerned". She wanted to preserve the brazen fighting spirit the students had exhibited in their sit-in protests. She did not want them to be shackled by the bureaucracy of existing organizations. At this early stage, the nascent political ideas of the students were not much more radical than those of the SCLC's leadership. However, Baker saw enormous promise in their courageous actions. Their creativity and their openness to new forms of struggle. And she wanted to give them the space and freedom for that potential to develop. Yet Baker also knew that these students needed guidance, mentorship, training, and perhaps more importantly, connections, relationships. And she knew that their youthfulness was no guarantee for political radicalism or effective leadership. The young people who joined SNCC were mostly between the ages of 18 and 24. Most were black and most were first generation college students attending historically black colleges or universities. They were not middle class, but they were not poor either. They were moving up the social and economic ladder from where their parents had been. They were young. They were passionate, impressionable, curious, and they were searching.
Baker had long been organizing in the spirit of accompanying. She had created strong networks across the South, traveling and working an unbelievably demanding schedule for several decades by this point. And now she had the opportunity to accompany these students. But Baker did not impose her agenda on the students, nor did she incorporate them into the hierarchy and bureaucracy of existing organizations. Instead, she met the students where they were at. She listened more than she talked. Much of her teaching and mentorship happened in the form of posing questions, not telling people what to think or do, but asking critical questions that could lead the students to the root of an issue or a problem. She emphasized the importance of conversation, debate, and coming to a consensus. She maintained a radically democratic vision in which those at the bottom of the social, political and economic hierarchies were not only included in decision making, but privileged. She helped students see that the sit in movement was bigger than a hamburger issue, or even a giant sized Coke, and that a full time commitment to the struggle would be required of them if they wanted to scourge America, "of racial segregation and discrimination, not only at lunch counters, but in every aspect of life". She also helped the students see that their involvement in the black freedom struggle was not merely a domestic issue, but one that connected them all across the globe to anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and anticapitalist struggles.
Baker had become critical of the SCLC style and understanding of leadership, especially this idea that people should follow and look up to a charismatic leader, which of course usually meant a male minister. In truth, Baker had a different understanding of revolutionary leadership and power and where it comes from. "To build another world", Baker thought, "to defeat white power, we must defeat plantation power. And to do that, we must go to the roots. The struggle must be radical, which means that power must be built from below by those most impacted by the plantation regime. And that meant that the Deep South must be the primary focus of organizing for systemic change, and that organizing must begin at the grassroots among the people".
One of the people that Ella Baker organized in the spirit of accompaniment was a young man named Bob Moses, who became one of the most important SNCC leaders. There's a picture of young Bob in 1964. Moses was from Harlem and had been working as a math teacher at an elite private school. He'd also studied philosophy at Harvard University. Awakened to the action by the sit-ins, Moses had gone down to Atlanta to work with the SCLC. When Moses met Baker, he was immediately struck by how much time she took to listen to him and really get to know him. This is what he said about Ella Baker. He says, "Ella Baker made time for me to come in, sit down and talk with her. She asked me about my upbringing, my thoughts on Harlem, my entrance into the movement. Her interest in me was what struck me. It was in marked contrast to that of Doctor King. Miss Baker was actually talking to me. I felt that this first conversation had seemed important enough to her that she had made time for it. It was not something that she had just squeezed into her busy schedule. She was frank as well as intelligent. Her interest in me, I think, was something I needed, because reaching out to really probe into personal things isn't a particularly strong point of mine. But this style was part of what we learned from Ella Baker. If you really want to do something with somebody else, really want to work with that person, the first thing you have to do is make a personal connection. You have to find out who it is you're working with". These are simple lessons, perhaps, but they were profound and they are profound. You have to find out who it is you're working with, make a personal connection.
In a sense, Bob Moses embodied Baker's leadership style in his role with SNCC. He was practical, quiet, relational, thoughtful, and analytical. Like Baker, he refused the spotlight of the media and believed that organizers should approach the communities in which they worked with deference and humility. He learned from Baker that organizing must begin with relationships, and that to get at the root of things, one must work alongside the people at the bottom, listening to their stories, trusting in their capacity to become leaders and agents of social change. And this is what Bob Moses and the young black students of SNCC, who traveled to Mississippi in the summer of 1961, would try to do.
SNCC had been invited to take part in a voter registration event by a man named Amzie Moore, a black Mississippian and war veteran who knew and trusted Baker and who had long been involved in community based efforts. There's a picture of Bob Moses there on the left. Hollis Watkins, you can see, he's the fourth or fifth one and recently died. He was one of the first people that SNCC organizers recruited, who was actually from Mississippi. He recently passed away. He had a beautiful, beautiful voice. Google Hollis Watkins and music. He had a beautiful voice and did wonderful things in Mississippi. Moses and other SNCC workers, many of them, most of them came from the North. They had some ideas about the South, of course, but actually traveling there and getting to know the people was something very different. Moses describes his first experience traveling to the South this way. "Although I was now traveling in the much feared Deep South. I didn't know enough to be afraid. I was in the role of observer. Listening and watching. Learning how the dominant society feels. As I moved through it, I could see that the South was not the same everywhere. Birmingham, Alabama, belching smoke and fire from surrounding steel plants matched no image of the South we held in Harlem. Low hills dotted with pine and hardscrabble farms rolled through southern Mississippi, then north along the Mississippi River, the land flattened dramatically, presenting an expansive vista of cotton fields, big plantations and sharecroppers shacks. Everywhere white power was clearly the dominant power. But every day was not roiled with lynchings. Black folks had a life and I began learning how to enter into it". Now what's striking, I think, about this passage is the way in which Bob Moses is really observing, he's listening and watching and learning. And notice how his attention is on the geographical and the geological, but also on the affective dimension of life in Mississippi. The feeling of the region.
Discussing how SNCC approached organizing in rural Mississippi, Moses once said that what we did, in essence, was to try to do for the community people that we were working with, what Ella had already done for us. We tried to do what Ella had done for us. The work in rural Mississippi was not easy and it was not glorious. It involved knocking on doors day in and day out, and usually getting those doors slammed right back in your face. It involves showing up to church on time every Sunday. Even when church was not where you wanted to be. And when ministers were often the most difficult to work with. And when white folks caught wind of what you were doing, you would face verbal and physical harassment, threats on your life, or worse, threats on the lives of those you were trying to organize. It involved getting beaten up and arrested by the police and for some it meant death by bomb or shotgun.
Despite these daily risks, and despite all the abuse, SNCC organizers describe their experiences as life transforming and life affirming. The dominant experience was actually not slammed doors. Instead, as Moses put it, "Everywhere we went, I and other civil rights workers were adopted and nurtured, even protected as though we were family. We were the community's children, and that closeness rendered moot the label of outside agitator. Indeed, if we had any label at all, it was as Freedom Riders. It did not matter whether we had arrived in that fashion or not. This identity was liberating, conferring respect in every community we worked in. In calling us Freedom Riders, these communities were fighting the most defiant image they could to signal their approval of our work, even if they crossed the street when they saw us, but were not yet prepared to brave the dangers of trying to register down at the county courthouse. Importantly, as is always true in close families, our young generation was dynamically linked to a rooted older generation who passed on wisdom, encouragement, and concrete aid when possible”. And pretty soon SNCC was growing and new local leadership was developing and people were registering to vote. By 1962, the SNCC Mississippi staff had 20 young people on staff in Mississippi, 16 of whom were from the state.
Now I want to introduce you to a different group, the Zapatistas. And why I think they offer us another illustration of organizing in the spirit of accompaniment. The Zapatistas first came into public view on January 1st, 1994, 30 years after the formation of SNCC, when thousands of indigenous Mayan people rose up in arms to Mexico's southeastern state of Chiapas. They stormed city hall, burned files, liberated something like 230 prisoners, political prisoners and occupied police centers. On that day, the Zapatistas declared their resistance against centuries of brutality, exploitation, dispossession, oppression and brutality. Ya Basta!, they said. Enough is enough. They said this in their "First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle". Far from coming out of nowhere, they announced that quote, "we are a product of 500 years of struggle. We have been denied the most elemental preparation so they can use us as cannon fodder and pillage the wealth of our country. They don't care that we have nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a roof over our heads. No land, no work, no health care, no food, nor education. Nor are we able to freely and democratically elect our political representatives. Nor is their independence from foreigners. Nor is their peace, nor justice for ourselves and for our children".
The "they" was a reference to the new iteration of abuse and neglect by the Mexican state, especially President Salinas full embrace of neoliberal economic policies signaled by Mexico's participation in NAFTA. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which came into effect on the same day of the uprising. The timing was purposeful. Two years earlier, the Mexican government had amended article 27 of the Constitution, which had permitted the sale of communal village lands or ejidos. Ostensibly, of course, the idea was to stimulate economic growth through foreign investment, but in reality it forced indigenous people to sell off their communal lands. Between 1991 and 1994, 23 new billionaires emerged in Mexico, while 41 million Mexicans live below the poverty line. Entering into NAFTA meant that the peasants of Chiapas, most of whom were left with small and very, very poor quality plots of land, would be forced to compete not only with the business elite of Mexico, but also with larger and wealthier U.S. and Canadian farms. The people who were bearing the brunt of these policies were the Mayan people of Chiapas. As Subcommander Marcos put it, "NAFTA is a death sentence for indigenous people". The Zapatistas immediately made demands for employment, housing, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace. Their uprising marked a refusal to be killed. The refusal to die. Enough is enough. Ya Basta! was a cry for life. And it remains, in Chiapas, a movement for life.
The uprising was met with a brutal reaction by the Mexican military. The Zapatistas faced tanks and the air force. Hundreds were massacred. The international community was sympathetic to the Zapatista demands and very critical of the Mexican military's repressive reactions to the uprising. But most Mexican people did not want to be at war with the Mexican state. Within a matter of 12 days, prompted by international pressure, President Salinas declared a ceasefire and the Zapatistas and the Mexican government negotiated a peace process. According to one scholar, the negotiations marked one of the quickest transitions from guerrilla uprising to peace process in global world history. The negotiations were held in San Cristóbal Cathedral in February 1994, actually mediated by Bishop Samuel Ruiz, a bishop who had been deeply shaped by liberation theology, who had done some of the spade work. What Ella Baker would call the spade work in the community prior to the uprising. Eventually, through fits and starts, negotiations, divisions and conflicts, the Zapatistas were able to create 38 autonomous municipalities, in December of 1995. They had been able to recuperate 12 to 17,000 acres from the plantation owners to construct a material base for what became a kind of exilic territory. A territory of exile. The main municipalities consisted of about 1000 communities and around 300,000 people, and these in turn were organized into five autonomous zones.
Just as SNCC discovered existing traditions and networks in Mississippi upon which they built in their organizing, so too of the six people (three mestizo and three indigenous, five men and one woman) who had left the city for the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas in 1983, ten years before the uprising, they too discovered traditions, ways of life and resistance tactics among the diversity of Mayan people. The six people who entered the jungle had their own political goals in mind, but they soon realized that in order to survive in the jungle, they needed to adapt and to learn from the indigenous people, new ways of living. The indigenous people of Chiapas challenged their view, which was a very traditional left wing view of the leader mass relationship, in which a vanguard leadership with a higher political consciousness would somehow lead the masses into action. Instead, they inverted this relationship. They inverted the relationship and replaced it with popular and radically democratic forms of organization. The activists from the city then began to be changed. They began to listen and to learn from the people. And soon they began to walk together, forging a new path.
By 1994, when the Zapatistas first became publicly visible, Zapatismo policy and practice was still in formation. And indeed, part of what is distinctive about Zapatismo, is that it is less prescriptive of future structural forms and practices than most orthodox Marxist movements. In this way, it bears many of the same marks, I think, as the organizing philosophy of Ella Baker. And those who have shaped popular education models in the 20th century. Figures like Myles Horton, the founder of Highlander Folk School, Highlander Center, which still is around. Septima Clark, who ran the citizenship schools. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator. Zapatismo follows this motto, "we make the road by walking".
Over time, though, Zapatismo became a distinct and conscious political project which has emphasized autonomy, communal lands, self-government and international solidarity. Because the indigenous people of Chiapas were abandoned by the state and because they refused the terms of being incorporated into capitalism, they decided to address their issues of self-organization. The return of mis modes of governance. For the Zapatistas, autonomy means subsisting on the land independently. So they began to build their own infrastructures, including houses and roads, schools and health systems, along with their own laws and methods of self-government.
Zapatista communities are far from perfect of course, but they have sought to develop liberative and revolutionary structures within the shell, we might say, of the old order. A taste of the Kingdom of God to use theological language. An important dimension of these structures has been the struggle from within by indigenous women in their fight for dignity and equality. Before the uprising, the Zapatistas had instituted what they called a women's revolutionary law, which was imposed by Zapatista women on March 8th, 1993, which some have described as the revolution before the revolution. As one Zapatista woman explained, quote, "some things must be asked for and others must be imposed. Our freedom and dignity are things which we shall impose. Whether or not they are recognized by the government or by our partners". Laws regarding the rights of indigenous women across all dimensions of life were immediately enforced in Chiapas after the uprising.
So much more could be said about the cooperative structure of Zapatista communities, their mode of self-governance, their justice system, their autonomous education system, and their incredible work to develop their own health care system that prioritizes reproductive health and justice. Much could also be said about the ways the Zapatistas have needed to navigate the failures and betrayals of the Mexican government. The challenges of creating some kind of autonomy in a globalized, capitalist economy, and how they have navigated the particularity of people's struggles while also opening up to international forms of solidarity. The Zapatistas actually have been traveling the world. They've been traveling in Europe over this past year, talking and sharing about what they've learned in their context so that people within the European context can learn as well from them about their own context. Fundamentally, the Zapatistas are committed to a world where many worlds can fit, to a world where many worlds can fit. And they believe that this new world, this other world is possible and that it is available to us here and now. I have a list of Zapatista principles and praxis for you to take home and look over. But if you didn't get the handout, it's up there and we'll post that in the chat for you.
But I want to conclude now with a few reflections, before we turn to Ricardo, on what lessons we might learn about accompaniment, from Ella Baker, from SNCC and from the Zapatistas. And I want to share these in the form of some proposals about ministerial leadership for social justice. You knew I would get there. Here's a sign. You are in the territory of Zapatistas in rebellion. Here the people lead and the government obeys. And you see these different images which are central to Zapatista life, production. Someone is farming there. Education and health. All right, so here are some proposals.
Number one, ministerial leadership for social justice should become radical. That is in the sense that Ella Baker understood the term. We should go to the roots of an issue or problem, not about band-aids, but go on to the roots. And we should do so not only in thought, but in action.
Two: ministerial leadership for social justice should be committed to accompanying people at the grassroots. What are the struggles and hopes of the people and how do we walk together toward justice and freedom?
Three: ministerial leadership for social justice should listen, learn and be guided by people from below, from the people at the bottom of the economic, social and political hierarchy, at the grassroots. And it must put its trust in the capacity of ordinary people to lead. The church is not the vanguard of the spirit. The church is rather to join the spirit already active in the world from below to put it in theological language.
Four: ministerial leadership for social justice should move to the left. That is, it should be oriented toward a broad vision of the Kingdom of heaven, where the earth truly becomes a common treasury for all. Or, as the Zapatistas put it, a world in which many worlds can fit, from below and to the left.
Five: ministerial leadership for social justice should be committed to building intentional relationships and meeting people where they are at. Not to impose a top down agenda, but to partner with people and struggle on a journey and to learn the way forward by doing, by acting together.
Six: This is the last point. Ministerial leadership for social justice should be willing to take risks in the struggle for life and to act out of love, which involves a commitment to taking the crucified down from the cross, ever open to revision and self-criticism. Ricardo, now it's your turn.
Ricardo Perez [00:43:03] Hey, everyone. Hard act to follow. Not gonna lie. Ry's a pretty cool guy, huh? Hey, everyone. Good evening. My name is Ricardo Perez. I use he/him pronouns. I am an organizer. Coalition organizer. I am an artist. I'm a dad. Many other things. So basically, a little bit about myself. I was born and raised in Mexico. So, I was probably between 9 or 10 in Mexico City, when the Zapatistas arised, I was very young, and I got to see some of these in real time. And the disparities that led them to move became clear to me. On a personal note, seminaries are close to my heart, I guess. My parents studied at one in Mexico City, and that journey led them to be the directors of an orphanage where we lived for five years in Acapulco,Mexico. So we grew up with, you know, kids whose parents couldn't afford to live with them or were unable to guard them or be with them, or who didn't have parents or lived on the streets. So for me, the spirit of the work in my life has been very present from early on. And I have witnessed back in Mexico growing up. I feel like indirectly I was living that spirit of accompaniment by living in the orphanage, you know? My dad was very adamant about us having the same experience as the kids to avoid having, like, the spirit is within the orphanage, you know. So we used to go to the same school, eat at the cafeteria together, and it was very hard for us coming from like a single family. Well, when we live in a multi generational family household. But it was hard to share my parents there with like 20 kids, 30 kids, 100 kids, it went to 100 kids. But you know, like for me, that again marked me. That really was setting me up for what's coming next. Right?
And before I keep sharing my story, I do want to highlight some of the principles that guide the Zapatista community life and organization. So, as Ry mentioned earlier, the Zapatista's refer to the relationship of leader and masses within the traditional left. This actually became fundamental to the Zapatista's principles. Zapatistas emphasize truth, decision making and leading by obeying or Mandar Obedeciendo, which, by the way, if you're a Spanish speaker or are curious, I invite you to check out the Oh, well, they're here in Spanish, but in Spanish they're almost like, poetic. You know, it's a play on words, which to me really talks about the wisdom of indigenous people and how simple it is. And when I look at these principles, I feel that it's very obvious and it's very simple and it's very much like nature, in my opinion. So again, leading by obeying is one of the seven principles to obey, not to command, to represent, not to supplant, to step down, not to climb up, to serve, not to help oneself, to convince, not to defeat, to construct, not to destroy, to propose, not to impose.
And I didn't really grow up in an academy background myself, so I didn't really learn this through school, but through my experiences here have come to really see these principles. Hear them, feel them, smell them, taste them, experience them on the flesh in real time. Like, this is not something someone told me, but I have seen this happening and as we saw examples today of the past. But this is something that's happening right here, at least in the Twin Cities. I know some of you may not be from around here, but I'm sure that if you look around, you'll find something like this, right? This is happening near you. So for me, organizing is about building power, right? It's the idea that, many become one and one becomes many. And you might have seen the meme or the image. You know, I am a millennial I guess. But where there are these fish who are running away from a shark, have you seen it? And then in the other image, all of the little fishes form a giant fish that's now chasing the shark away. So to me, that's really like the definition of organizing, right? And the shark is capitalism and white supremacy. So, you know, for me, that's what organizing is about.
You know, building power as an immigrant in this country. My experience, maybe something unique. But to see my parents experience moving into this country and struggling to do anything really marked me. Because the people that were the leaders in my house, now were very vulnerable in this country where they couldn't speak their language, where they didn't have an ID, where they just didn't know how to be successful or to function as well as they did back in Mexico, you know. So anyways, so I moved here, my parents moved here. I was looking at all these situations, you know, and at the same time I was trying to be independent. So I started interpreting and translating as language was one of the skills that I wanted to or that I felt I could lean into to become independent. And I started working for Ramsey County Human Services department. So I started working there as an interpreter, and this office is basically like a public assistance office, where, as you can see in the computer there, there's a system where you like have people's notes and cases, and they work with financial workers with, you know, social workers with child protection and a bunch of stuff that needs a Spanish interpreter. So, I used to interact and to interpret the hours in all these really interesting settings. And as an interpreter, when you get trained, they teach you to be invisible, right? The best interpreter, you cannot see them. It's like a window. You're there but you're not there. Communication flows between language A and language B and language B to language A, and that's the best. I do a good job, I go home, right.
But I was listening, I was paying attention, and I noticed the common denominator that the community that I was interpreting for experiences oppression at every stop of their journey since they got to the border. Up until I got to interact with them. There's a lot of single women. Women who had young children, were pregnant, didn't have an I.D., didn't have anything, you know, like, can you imagine, like, being there? And then someone walks up to you and they're carrying that, you know. And I saw that everywhere all the time. You know, to the point where I was upset, like, why are people coming here? And then I started wondering, why am I here? I started seeing how, I started seeing myself reflected in my people in my community. So for me, accompaniment wasn't about looking up towards down, but it was realizing that I was down there alongside my people. That we were all victims of the same oppression, of the same evil. And even though I had it a bit different, the oppressor didn't make a difference when they looked down at us, you know?
Through this interpreting journey, like I started being really good and I started getting gigs outside of the building and in one of these meetings, I encountered a very interesting situation that really changed many things for me or everything. I was in the city of Bloomington. It was a meeting with a community that lives in a manufactured home community. And they were about to lose their homes because when you live in a manufactured home community, sometimes referred to as a trailer park, that's not good. You don't really own the land. You own your house. But if they sell the land. You lose everything, right? And this disproportionately impacts the immigrant Latino community. So I was at this meeting and I didn't really know what was about to happen. But what ended up happening is at one point I found myself interpreting for a white man who was speaking in Spanish to another white man. And it wasn't just a casual conversation, but he was upset, you know, like he was pretty much yelling at the city official. And then came a woman named Antonia Alvarez, who then testified about what was happening, you know, and Antonia and the way that she delivered her message, like, just shook me. It branded me like fire in my heart. It was like a community showing up. A lot of experiences, that really, you know, it really shook me. And, you know, Antonia was there asking the city not to let the sale of these lands so she wouldn't lose her home. And, you know, as the good interpreter that I was, I was very quiet in the corner. I was invisible, you know what I mean? We were in that location. I broke down, I started, I couldn't keep going.
I was crying, you know, because to see someone who in our society is the most vulnerable. A woman, who is undocumented, who is cleaning houses to be there, in such a powerful manner. It really challenged what I was doing in order to help or to do something about the injustices that my community experienced on a daily basis. And the other important thing to note here is interpreters of all kinds, Somali interpreters, Hmong, Karen, Vietnamese, Lao and our experiences were very similar across the board, even though our cultures and our languages were very, very different. So there was a pattern that was starting to form around my experience around power here in this country. So, you know, Pueblos de Lucha y Esperanza or people's struggles and Hope is the organization that, again, me and Ry, happen to be involved with. And I'm very, very fortunate to have found them. They found me. We found each other. And I found purpose by working with them because I couldn't really go back to normal at work and pretend that I haven't seen the things that I saw.
So all that to say, maybe we can show some. Oh, there we go. So anyways, this picture here. So to the left. And again I'm an artist so I tried to bring some art to this. To the left is a mural that we painted during the uprising here in Minneapolis in 2020, and we wanted to work with advocates there. We took photos there in the mural, so it's a little bit of art for you. But then in the right there, this is una asamblea, an assembly that we convened in Circle Pines, if I'm not mistaken, where more than 14 manufactured home communities showed up to testify the need for liberating funds to repair their homes. A lot of the people that you see, they're needing houses where the roof was caving in or the electricity wasn't working properly. And the money in place to fix homes is not meant for us because we don't have a social Security number. So the fight in this situation was for us to liberate the funds. Now this is a culmination right, of us getting there. But what you don't see in this picture is, you know, me and Antonia going to this community and doorknocking, we would need to find someone who lived in the community because they would be the safe person to go to help us navigate the community. They would take us from home to home, and then we would tell people, we heard that you're struggling. There's issues happening here. We're going to have a meeting and we will call it, and we would apply some of these principles into how we deploy them, meaning into how we hold this space, into how we make decisions, and who we want to empower. And let me tell you, without a doubt, just like with the Zapatistas, time and time again, women lead in my community. Women are the ones that showed up, are the brave ones that bring messages back to family to have the hard conversations. So for me to be able to witness that and to see them here with the Zapatista community has been very powerful.
So just another picture here real quick. And there is Senator Patricia Torres Ray, you know, like there's, like when you organize, people listen. And what we say is when you fight, when we fight, we win. Right? And I am a dad and I love my kids. And I do bring them everywhere. So in there I want to show my little daughter because now five but Ramona is there in the meeting with me because again, this is like a family business. And Ramona, inspired by the Zapatistas as well, as there is a commander named Ramona. The other thing I wanted to note real quick here is like, when you think of my community, you know, for me, it's been really cool to see that a lot of the times I go out, even to communities where are my people, you know, it's like, okay, like medical center and maybe over here. But like, if you go to church, to a church on a Sunday, like as an organizer, holy smokes. It's like, that's a gold mine. We have 150 people we can feed in the room, which is incredible, right? That's where my people are at. They're so loyal and so faithful and so spiritual, you know? And it's so interesting for me to be in churches like Ascension Church, Ascension Church in North Minneapolis, here in the Twin Cities and see a church that has these stained glass, you know, like, stained glass. And I'm not kidding. It's kind of comical, but it's interesting, like, it's like the whitest Jesus I've ever seen in my life, you know, or the whitest saints that I've ever seen. You look at the congregation, and it's brown young immigrant people. You know what an interesting intersection. You know, that we're in that space. But it is really awesome, it's really happening. And in north Minneapolis, the issues that community is experiencing there are very severe, you know, for housing conditions, jobs that are exploitative, lack of transportation, lack of affordable healthy foods, and Pueblos has a presence there, right. Now, when we move into trying to build a base with us in action. And actually, thanks to the work of Ry, there was an important triangulation there with one of the folks who attended your class. So, when we were there, people told us something very specific right away. They said, we don't want you to come tell us something nice and then leave, and we never see you again. So we heard about accompaniment. We know that it exists. But to hear it as an ask of the community. It was very powerful. And we said, absolutely, we don't have an agenda yet. We want to build that with you. So rather than bringing down our solutions to these problems, a very great solution that they need to buy into, we just ask questions about who is your people, what is your struggle, what is your hope. And we'll talk more about that in a second here. But, I just wanted to showcase that the work of Pueblos is a work of accompaniment and that it is happening today in places like Ascension Church in North Minneapolis.
So this other one here, this is more showcasing the art aspect of the work. So on the far left you'll see Pueblos. You know, Antonia is there, her husband and other leaders, showed up to protest in Saint Paul in the Cedar Armory when, a soldier in, I can't actually recall the state, but Vanessa got murdered. I don't know if you remember about it, but for the Latino community, it was like, that was right after the uprising. So it was a very tender moment in the community. And they call us to show up for a protest, you know, and in this situation, it was really cool because I was there as an organizer and as an artist, and I've never really done work live. But we painted this mural live and I’ve never seen the work of art happening live in a protest. But I love the element that he brought into the picture for people to have a thing to lay their eyes on and reflect or talk to their peers about it. You know, it was really cool to see art into action and organizing, and Pueblos was there as well. So again, when you're doing art, when you're accompanying people, that's very different than bringing a solution. It's really like a style, an approach.
So here's another really wonderful picture of Ascension Church. As I mentioned, this is a place where we're building a base with Pueblos. This is a posada. I chose this one because you can see Ry, the back of his head or as some say, his best angle. But, you'll see there, we're just like breaking a pinata. You know, I'm like, this is what the community looks like. And as you can see, you know, it's so important to also bring joy, because a lot of times there's a lot of pain. And that was very necessary for us to understand the arc of justice. But to be able to lead with joy, I think, is an important calling. So anyways. So again, these were pictures there. And then I want to show some of the board members to the left, my friends, Teresa and Juan Luis and resident leader in Ascension Church.
So, to perhaps close us up. I think I'm good to start closing. So just to close, the one thing I did want to say, it's like, I think I understand my audience today and I feel for you. I can only imagine what you carry. And I know that there's no way that you can solve all of the world's problems, right? But I guess my hope for you today is that you can find yourself and put yourself in situations where your journey can take a left from the bottom and to the left. And that's what I wanted to share. So we have a cool exercise to prepare for you next.
We're now going to leave it to you, looking at pictures and hearing about organizing and Pueblos, well you're going to conduct an exercise that we usually run when we are out in community, in the manufactured homes or the buildings in the churches. So you must have one of these sheets with you, I'm sure. So in there you'll see a couple of questions that we're hoping you can answer. And again, this is who are your people? What is your struggle? What is your hope? And then there's two extra questions that we created for the purpose of today. Who do you accompany or who do you feel called to accompany in ministry? And what might accompaniment look like in your context? So the idea here is that you will first take about five minutes to self-reflect and answer yourself. With the idea that you would then be in a small group to talk to your peers about your answers and to perhaps gain some more learnings from each other. After, we would share and close. So we're very close to being done. Five minutes for you to answer these questions. Thank you.
Ry Siggelkow [01:04:27] And I would love to hear from some of you, some of the groups. What it is that is kind of coming up for you in these conversations. Specifically, I think I would like to hear, given the theme for tonight on accompaniment, your answers to the last couple of questions, which, you know, perhaps might be related to the first three questions.
Ry Siggelkow [01:05:33] All right. Welcome back breakout groups. Okay, so, we just wanted to take a few minutes. We, especially the last two questions. Your answers to the last two questions on accompaniment. Who do you accompany, or who do you feel called to accompany in ministry? What does that look like in your context? And that may or may not be related to the first three questions, but, would anybody like to share with us? Your answers to these questions. Anyone feel brave enough?
Audience Member [01:06:15] I've been working on these answers for two and a half years now. I better have something to say. Yes. Who are you? Well, yes. I'm feeling called to accompany. Well, my people, you know, are like white European Catholics who grew up in small town America and were predominantly conservative. And. Yeah, but I feel called to be working there. Yeah. Christian congregations starting. I feel like I am finally connecting to the Catholic communities that want to be working on anti-racism. So that's who I'm called to accompany. And what it looks like to me has been my social transformation work of developing, you know, what it looks like to do consulting work in congregations and perhaps doing community grief rituals, working on like, healing, different kinds of liturgy, like, what is it? What could be different? How does it look differently? Guest preaching, retreats and workshops kind of just. Yeah, doing all those types of consulting, facilitating things with the congregation.
Ry Siggelkow [01:07:34] Thanks, Bridgette.
Ricardo Perez [01:07:35] And we have Kate on the zoom line. So, Kate, the floor is yours.
Ry Siggelkow [01:07:41] Kate.
Audience Member [01:07:42] Thanks. Hi. Yeah. Thank you for this activity and the presentation. I loved the questions. And I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on them, this being my first semester here. And, the kind of larger vision I guess I have for ministry or the chaplaincy I enter would be supporting people who are earth workers or farmers in navigating climate grief. And so I think like one, you know, like a concrete way of understanding who the people I want to accompany are as farmers and earth workers. But I also think, like more generally, just people who are affected by unjust loss, especially in the context of the climate crisis. And the last question was harder for me. So what might accompaniment look like? I think that it would require, like, opening myself to loving a place and being in it long enough, that I can also show up to the loss that people are experiencing when that place changes or experiences disaster of some kind. And that's where I really see the work of chaplaincy coming in is just like, that's what accompaniment seems like to me. It seems like chaplaincy, just being there, listening, holding people. And then at some point that moves into organizing, in my vision. And I don't know what that point is, but, yeah, I appreciate y'all, giving some framework for that.
Ry Siggelkow [01:09:39] Thanks so much, Kate.
Audience Member [01:09:44] My name is Diana Noble, and I graduated this spring. Last spring in social transformation. And, who would I feel called to accompany in ministry? I have been holding an arrow in my heart since 2019, when I first came across the wave of technology that was descending on us. And right now there are a lot of folks who are really afraid of technology, especially artificial intelligence. And the research that I've done since then, has only proved that it's not going away. In fact, many people are calling it as transforming fire. And I think about telling our digital chart that if we can harness love for the second time, it would be like harnessing fire for the second time. And I really believe that the artificial intelligence is accessible to us right now through these large language learning models. So many, many people don't know how to use them without doing what is being promoted, which is all about profit and greed and really betterment of someone's economic situation. And what I found is that there are many, many people who can actually change the course of the future. We should be being paid to be these engineers, these end user engineers. But we're not because they want to get as much free labor as they can. And there's a lot of people who could really put in their lived experience. It's you know, all of these different philosophies. It's not in there because nobody's calling for it from the outside. So when we put our hopes and our dreams in these prompts, we can have really engaging conversations with these large language learning models that nobody else is having around the world. And that missing information can then be weighted mathematically as this machine does and literally have it put in there before the machine figures out it's a lion. Most lions don't really care about mice. But if we can right now, in courage and have conversation, being able to show that mice might be really good allies, we have a hope of ensuring the future not to become a greater divide. So I'm accompanying those that don't understand this and that have a need for agency, need to be able to somehow have autonomy in shaping the future. And it's simply through having conversation with artificial intelligence.
Ry Siggelkow [01:12:29] Thank you.
Audience Member [01:12:34] Good evening. I am a community member. These are some good questions and it relates to my journey of accepting myself as disabled, which has been a decades long process.
Ry Siggelkow [01:16:06] Thank you. Greg. So we're at about time. Thank you so much for attending this evening or this special event. Organizing in the Spirit of Accompaniment with Ricardo and I. And, thanks for those of you online who stuck it out till the very end and for having these conversations. And I hope you will continue and continue to reflect on, you know, your calling in ministry and our call as ministers to accompany others in their struggles. Have a great evening. Take care. And we'll see you next time.
Stella Pearce [01:16:50] Thank you for listening to the Leadership Center for Social Justice podcast. To learn more about the center and its programs, visit unitedseminary.edu/lcsj. Or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at united_LCSJ.