A pleasant early morning walk from Jayne’s house to the All Souls Church (a Unitarian Church), which hosts the conference. More than 1000 people are gathered in the building, it’s an impressive thing to bring so much people together for four intensive days of seeking to elaborate a new and different agenda. I’m eager to understand the stakes of this project, and determined to find out how and where it might or might not work, and what is to be learned from it, either way. In this vein, and since this move is about articulating progressive politics and religion/spirituality, i want to take the spiritual side very seriously, and not merely assess it in terms of how it enables or hinders progressive politics, which would take an existing notion of progressive politics as the standard. But how to “assess” the spiritual dimension of the projects, what are the points of reference in this respect? i’m not sure, i’ll have to figure that out as i go along. But the obvious place to start is myself, and allow to feel and articulate what the spirituality that is invoked and practised here does to me.
A folder with the program and various kinds of background information – as it already was clear before coming, this conference is packed. Packed with speakers, activities, moments of prayer and meditation… We’ll be sitting in this church a lot, as we start at 9 am and go on till 11.00 pm. Tough on the body, and yet the set-up differs from an academic conference with a similar crazy schedule. Collective moments of singing, dancing, turning to your neighbor to have a conversation about what one just heard from the pulpit (of course, after all, we’re in a church). Hm, some of this is hard on the soul for me… i love singing. But the conversations with the neighbor are too soon, too forced for me. The sociability of such a large gathering is already demanding enough, i don’t feel i can do the “now take 10 minutes to discuss this with your neighbor” pedagogy from day one… The first people i feel obliged to talk to share the mixed feelings, as a couple. He is very enthousiastic to engage, while she makes it clear that she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Yet she’s following the conversation i have with her man, and gets really interested in what i do, and clearly wants to know more (she does radio, her man tells me, and these are the kinds of subjects she likes to make radio shows about), and finds herself oscilliating between an engaged conversation or total withdrawal from the whole scene all together. A plenary session later, she has left the place. We should have met somewhere outside all of this. A reoccuring feeling throughout the day – somehow the social set-up it too much for me.
The opening talk by Sister Joan Chittister impresses, Peter Gabel’s talk doesn’t. Rabbi Michael Lerner talks about the inspiration for The Left Hand of God, elaborating on his talk in Santa Cruz. See, this is the part i appreciate a lot: re-thinking the world from the values of love, care, awe, radical amazement, generosity, gratitude and ecological responsibility (which, for people who have gathered here, are religious and/or spiritual values). A new bottom-line, as this is called here. Then comes the slippery, risky, but also exciting, part that is affirmed throughout the three talks: the need to redo the public-private distinction. How do public-private relate in a world that is fiercely private (rampant individualism) and dangerously public at the same time? (Sister Joan Chittister) We need to learn how to speak for an agenda not in the bureaucratic language of “single payer health care” but in terms of values, of why social security matters for us (Peter Gabel). By the way: i won’t be writing up my notes of all the talks on this blog, i’ll do that in a kind of more comprehensive report – get in touch if you want to have a look at that.
This desire to transform existing political culture is accompanied by two tactical moves. Splitting up in small groups of about 10 to 15 people, which are organized according to where one lives. The idea is to strenghten local networks and initiatives, maybe even local chapters- in other words, movement building. There are a couple of Bay Area groups, mine is faciliated by Irene from Beyt Tikkun. Together with her, i’m about the youngest in our group, which confirms an impression i had about age when entering the church this morning (Serious Problem #1). There’s one black woman in our group, which confirms an impression about ethnicity (Serious Problem #2). Hm, this doesn’t look good for a new movement…
The second tactic is that of influencing or impacting political bodies here in Washington DC, where the conference intentionally takes place. The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a quaker lobby for peace, holds an informative session and hands out guidelines on the process of contacting and talking to one’s political representatives. Hm, i’ll have to get my head around these particular kind of “civic lobby politics”.
The afternoon is all about preparation for meetings with senators and congressmen and -women tomorrow. Hundreds of appointments have been made beforehand, with the idea that individuals or small groups of people go and see their representatives and speak about either one or more issues that are elaborated in what this Network for Spiritual Progressives calls a new Spiritual Convenant with America (in which a new bottom-line is articulated for a number of important axes of public policy). I go to the International Relations workshop, facilitated by Rabbi Lerner. What would a new bottom-line in the field of international relations imply? Lerner proposes to start with a commitment of spending 5% of the GDP to development aid – a global Marshall plan to eliminate global poverty. The rationale: a redistribution point of departure will foster better international relations and security (“this would do far more for “homeland security” than anything else”.) Something dodgy about how that rationale posits the relationship between the economic and the political, but of course economic redistribution on a global scale is a good thing. The critical questions follow soon: what about problematic regimes? We wouldn’t want to be giving those amounts of money to regimes that support terrorism… A solution in by-passing such regimes and giving the money to NGOs (oh, more dodginess, the question of public accountability of NGOs…) and a strong affirmation that measures like these will precisely take the grounds for terrorism away. We need to make the political representatives understand that the well-being of America depends on the well-being of everybody on the planet.
Then i participate in a workshop about the new immigrant struggles, by Norma Chavez who works for JOB (Justice Overcoming Boundaries) in San Diego. The emphasis is on the Christian dimension of the recent mobilisations. Norma wants us to understand how in many places the organization of the marches was led by Catholic organisations, and think more about how these kinds of politics and spirituality could enforce each other. In fact, some participants to the workshop literally have a Bible in their hand to argue for open borders and against the illegalisation of people (Exodus and Leviticus are helpful here). She offers an overview of different laws and law proposals in the process of making people illegal, with HR 4437 as a landmark. She also vents some criticism against Rabbi Lerner, who consistently emphasizes the need for an integrated vision and warns against the trading in and negotiating over agenda points here and there, which culminated in “Screw realism!” at the end of his morning talk. Norma wanted to make it very clear that the different law proposals currently discussed would each have different material impacts on people’s lives, and that this is reason enough to advocate for the least bad proposal, even if it clearly does not express our ideal vision…
We are encouraged not to eat alone in the evening. Oh god, i was so ready to go and eat alone. But then i see the guy whom i bumped into when he was looking for the workshop on the clash of civilisations. I was curious to know how it went, and he wanted to know about the immigration one, so we decide to eat together. Before we know it some other people stick to us. Did i already mention that the kind of sociability the conference sought to foster was affecting my ability to be social in a nasty way? Moreover, some of the “feel good” spirituality had exactely the opposite effect on me.
My main dinner partner, i’ll call him S., is really interesting. He calls himself a spiritual anarchist. He came to the UK as a political refugee from South-Africa during the 1980s, and pursued his studies in Oxford, where he developed a brilliantly sharp insight in the old boys network and the workings of power especially in relation to racism. He’s a professor in sociology now, still in the UK. I fall for his language and accent, British with a postcolonial touch and a very fine sense of irony. His account of the clash of civilisations workshop is most entertaining. “Now Sarah (hm, the first one at the conference who doesn’t americanise my name…), do you know what i mean when i say that the session boiled down to a white liberal chap instructing his eager audience that islam is all about love and peace?” Oh yes. “So tell me, how useful would you say that it?” We could have talked for hours, not only about luke-warm and lousy responses to the clash of civilisations discourse, but very soon we talk about the ANC and the anti-apartheid struggle, how power and spirituality worked there, about anarchism, etc.
But that was without taking our other dinner guests into account. The Presbyterian minister, a rather young guy. On the right end of the religious spectre at a gathering of spiritual progressives – part of the people who, once they had identified to which religious tendency they belonged to, are met with surprise and gratitude, “Thank you for your presence here.” At some point the pastor asks me where i live. His eyes start to shine when i say Santa Cruz, “What a great place, i’ve lived there for a while, you must love it.” Ay ay ay, wrong move. “No, i basically can’t stand it.” He’s taken aback, and wants me to explain. When i describe the sense of isolation (politically, culturally,…) he considers for a moment and kind of gives in. Yes, he could see that, indeed, “it’s a bit away from the world.” But that, he continues on a more theological note, has it’s value, “to be away from worldly things.” He nods complacently. “And surfing,” he adds, “there is something very spiritual about surfing”. Sure, i nod (my turn to make a complacent move), “but before you know it there’s more blood on your hands than you can stand or deal with. You see, that bloody war in Iraq is not going to stop by itself while one is surfing in Santa Cruz.” Oh friends, what can i say, a spiritual activism conference doesn’t really bring out my better self, does it… But i had to come up with something, no?, here’s a theologically conservative pastor (i’m sure if we’d started talking about sexuality or reproductive rights i would not have liked at all what he was saying) giving me a lesson of the value of staying away from wordly things which is subsequently connected with an imaginary of a wonderful life (and waves) in Santa Cruz. And of course i was surrounded by people very well-trained in being patient and practising forgiveness and love so i was safe. To push it a bit further, and so we end up digging a bit in this seperation between “wordly and spiritual realms”, as it is framed in theological debates. And i take the opportunity to check out some of the hypotheses of my intellectual work, in which i take fundamentalism to be a signal of trespassing the established and “proper” demarcations between religiosity/spirituality and politics with the Presbyterian surfing dude. He tells me his church has been concerned by such “fundamentalist” (but more accurately, Evangelical) tendencies that are formulating their politics on the basis of their faith, cause though his church might share very similar theological concerns, it doesn’t like the politics these new evangelicals come up with. This is why his church is, carefully, tentively, checking out the progressive religious lines – in first instance not for their beliefs, but for their politics.
Then there are two women doing and MA in women’s pastoral work. They want to know all about my doctoral research. So what do “they” want, they kept on asking, about Muslim women. Remember that these are believing Christian ladies – their point was not one about incomprehension of why women would be believing – and slowly it’s starting to get on my nerves. S. drops a point about western and eurocentric bias within feminism and i have first have to turn to him and make the point that it all depends on which feminism and which concrete groups you’re talking about (and before i can finish the examples he’s nodding and smiling and i catch the lights in his eyes – he just wanted me to say all this…). By then the words conflict and antagonism were flying in the air and the two women were shaking their heads and saying that it was such a pitty that there were so much conflicts within the women’s movement, that we should stand strong together. As i still wanted to make the point of the bias in the things they were saying, i couldn’t help saying: “No, there are not enough conflicts! We need more conflicts that acknowlegde and work through the antagonisms which are there, now that would make our movements stronger.” By then the ladies look slighty upset and S. is holding his belly which is shaking with laughter.
At some point during the evening session, which promises to go till 11pm, i leave. I want to walk home, but people around me say i really shouldn’t. Since i’ve just arrived in this city, i don’t feel i can assess the situation very well. My intuition says it’s okay, but then all these people say no. I keep on asking the next person, and everybody says no. Whatever, i accept the lift that i’m offered. When i get back home, Jayne says it is not supposed to be a very safe neighboorhood, but that she regularly walks home at night and that it’s fine. Oh all those god-trusting people getting worked out over security…
I notice that Jayne usually goes to sleep earlier, and i’m pretty tired as well (i forgot i’m supposed to have a jetlag while booking my ticket, and the program doesn’t really allow for one), but there are still many things we need to talk about. She lived three years in Kirgistan, which i want to hear all about, like she wants to know about Tatarstan. She tells me sweet stories about being at home and happy there, feelings which got interrupted by a need to return to the USA as she realized more and more that this is the place where she can make more of a difference. And we talk about lobby politics. At first she wants me to explain my preocupations and even why i use the term “lobbying” for the civic thing of concerned citizens meeting with their political representatives. While i’m just trying to figure out whether these are dots that can be connected through a continuum. She kind of insists on a difference between citizens (civic activism) and NGOs (advocacy) lobbying on the one hand, and corporate and industrial lobby politics on the other. But our conversation leads us to into one grey zone after the other.
Jayne works in a NGO focused on small farmers in the US. Among their activities: to strengthen support networks among small farmers, and to create conditions for transnational solidarity. One of the things they do, in search of countering global neo-liberal ideologies and tactics, is to invite famer activists from Africa to tour among small farmer communities in the US and start conversations about common grounds and strategies. This is the part of the work she likes. But at the moment their energies are consumed by the new Farm Bill, which is supposed to be renewed and voted next year. Trying to raise awareness among political representatives, advocacy and the spiral of lobby politics. You know that the big agro-business are doing it, Jayne says, so you can’t afford not to try to get your vision and points on the agenda “in Washington”. A widely spread rationale, hence the crazy amount of jobs opportunities in Washington, that are, in some way or another, about influencing political agendas. Sounds a tiny bit like Brussels. But you see, i tell her, in Brussels among certain political networks and circles, there’s a strong idea that politics shouldn’t be like this, shaped on the “lobbying” model… Well, here it’s an established and widely accepted way of how the political terrain operates (Jayne studied government studies and international relations, in some Boston school focused on political science and goverment), she tells me, and putting yourself outside of it means cutting yourself off from some of the available power and resources to change things. Mind you, meanwhile she’s looking for a new job and would so much rather be working on the farm…
