Episode 29: Spotlight: Feminist Movement Builders School with Awino Okech & Shereen Essof

[Music] Welcome to Renewative Feminist Justice, a podcast produced by the Feminist Center for History Justice. This is the final episode of our spotlight series on the Feminist Movement Builder Schools, co-created with Jazz Justice Associates. Over the last three years, FCRJ and Jazz co-created two Feminist Movement Builder Schools with 35 activists from Latin America, Eastern and South Africa. In this podcast, as the directors of FCRJ and Jazz, we discuss the partnership and the process that led to this work. We explore what in models has movement building work and action and the lessons we have jointly derived from this partnership. Please join me, Arrheno Paige and Shireen Essof in this conversation. Shireen, welcome back to Renewative Feminist Justice, how are you doing? Thanks so much Arrheno, I'm doing well as we end the year and really excited to be invited back to be in conversation with you. Excellent, I look forward to this conversation which, as you know, is about reflecting on the work that we have done thus far on the Feminist Movement Building Schools. It started in Mexico and at this particular moment, opposing with the conclusion of the schools that we held for Eastern and South African activists. So let me kick off with a question, a blast from the past, if you will. So in May 2023, I approached you formally about co-creating a pilot movement building school in Mexico in August of that year. I think if you recall, you are also at the time preparing for the fast-just in-person and organization while gathering COVID was slowly becoming the new normal and the world was opening up. What went through your mind when you received this email? Thanks so we know for that. I think your email landed at a time when I was really thinking about those sets of things and more specifically at that time, what it meant to move the organization into a place that meant that not just our political orientations, but that the management and strategic direction of this organization was really centered firmly in the majority world. At the same time, I think that your email landed when I was also thinking about how it is that we reinvigorate the cross-pollination between the academy and movements, between scholarship and learning. And Wild Jazz has always had a very robust engagement was the academy and the interplay between theory and praxis and praxis and theory. I felt that this was another articulation of that, but it had a political meaning because it was rooted through the feminist center for racial justice and because at some level, I understood what it is that your aspirations were given weight is that you were at and what it is that you were cultivating. The last thing that I'll say is that at that moment, I was also very curious about you, how it is that you were moving in relation to both conceptualizing and beginning to breathe life into the center and energizing, I guess, in a different way, the relationship that we had had and the conversations that we had had in terms of seeing this invitation. We know I'm curious about what was the initial driving force that made this organizational partnership between Jazz and if CRJ, the right sort of strategy and choice given weight is that you were at as the director of the center. Yeah, so as you know, the center as a vehicle and as an entity only really came to life in 2022 and that was made possible by a seed grant for Ford Foundation, the Gender and Racial Justice at the time and it was an opportunity to test ideas and work that had been puckulating for a while. I, as you know, but for the audience, I have known Jazz for a while and known Jazz from the boiler room because I served on the board of Jazz, I served as chair of the board so I understood the work of the organization very well and I was always very fascinated by the work that Jazz was doing in Mesoamerica and the alchemia schools in particular. And so when I was thinking through the body of work that a center such as FCRJ could do in the world, for me it was clear that partnerships were going to be central to that. There is no purpose in the world today of replicating what others are already doing at the taskings to join forces and strengthen and consolidate the work. So that really was the energizing force, my curiosity about alchemia and how it is that we could build upon that existing methodology that was always rooted in this dance between, you know, working with the academy, working with movement, builders and thinking about a methodology that was hybrid for lack of a better word that could produce some meaningful shifts around the range of issues and how we were going to figure out those range of issues was a sort of work in progress. The idea was there's something to be done that will figure it out. Are you interested in exploring this with us? And I think for me in the course of that work, there are a number of things that I potentially didn't anticipate as learning points are seen and I'm curious from your perspective, if you think about away from the partnership but in connection to movement, what do you think you have learned in doing this work about the state of movement in the world, specifically in relation to this work, I know jazz has been working with movements for a long time. Is there something about this collaboration that you thought, I didn't see that or ha, these are funds, everything that we have been doing over the last couple of decades. I think across the board, the need for stronger movement infrastructure is something that I've learnt differently in this moment. So it's something that I've come to understand differently in this moment and I feel that across the board, even in relation to the work that we've done, both in Mesoamerica and Southern and Eastern Africa, the conversation around what it actually takes to build movement infrastructure to allow for the building of power and leverage the agendas and the energies that community-based activists are leading is critically important and I think when I speak to infrastructure, what I mean is we need the physical infrastructure, like the tangible sort of things like feminist movement builder schools, different kinds of spaces where we are able to convene, where we are able to share resources, which I think is also something that has been part of this partnership specifically, but for movements to think in that way. How do we make the boundaries between us a little bit more porous to be able to share spaces, to be able to share the physical infrastructure that we need to do this work? For me, that's one of the most potent learnings that I've had around the state of movements and what it is that we might be needing, that we may have partially right now, but we still need to invest in as we move forward and I know that is big, right? It's bigger than any one of us and I think that is why partnership becomes so important and I mean, you've already alluded to that, we know, how do we join forces and join hands in this moment, to think about how it is that we do this work in a way that means that we are bigger than anyone organization, right? And so it gives, as you reflect, on this partnership between IFCRJA and jazz, what were some of the key principles and practices that you think were central to building and maintaining a healthy dynamic partnership, because that is what is essential, right? For how it is that we also build strong movements. I've been thinking about this a lot in the last year, because I think people talk about partnerships a lot and as somebody who did conflict studies, one of the things that I often say is that we should approach all relationships, recognizing that conflict will happen. So how do you anticipate that conflict and manage it, right? So I lead with that because there are often assumptions that partnerships are all rosy and nice and then when challenges happen, you're like, oh my god, how did that happen? I thought we were friends and all of these things. So there are three things that I want to foreground in relation to what I think are four actually that I think are important. The first is a level of humility. I think as institutions, because we're holding institutional imperatives, we know we are bringing something to the table. That is why we want to come together to bring the various things that we have into this potent mix that allows us to do something that each of us could not do individually. That requires a level of humility. It requires a level of humility in relation to letting go of the things that you want very far as your institutional identity as the things we do into recognizing, yeah, those are the things we do, but those are not the things we are going to do everywhere. In this particular partnership, we're going to focus on one or two things that are critical to what we are offering to the port and the rest are the things we do also, right? And that is difficult in terms of humility because it's about your identity as an institution. It's about your the things that you hold dear as part of the intellectual investments that you know for institutions such as jazz, you're built for decades. For us, it's we are sort of operating in a slightly different place. And our humility was critical to navigate at various moments as we thought through how we're designing the process, how we're going to manage the sort of operational aspects of the work and how we needed to build ways of working that would meet each organization where they were. The second thing that I think was absolutely essential was our understanding that we have both positioned differently as institutions. Jazz is a martial arts organization with I will use the word larger infrastructure in comparison to the feminist center for racial justice. And that means that you have more people, for instance, on hand than you would have on hand to do certain things. Now, you can get into a partnership and assume that people are going to work at the same pace that you're going to work at because you have people on hand to do certain things at particular moments. Or you can approach the partnership by recognizing that you're positioned differently and bringing those resources in ways that you both move together and deliver each and those institutional resources in a different way. And I'm not talking about financial resources. I want to emphasize this for those who are listening. I'm talking about our people, I'm talking about our systems. I'm talking about the knowledge that it's held as a result of those people and systems that has been built over time. Because if you leverage this institution or strengths, then the big issue around rhythms, which I think is often an important one, is dealt with. Institutions have different rhythms. In terms of the pace at which things move out of the institution, the pace at which internal processes are also critical to navigate before external processes occur. As somebody who is working in a center that is situated within a university, I, for instance, had to think about the bureaucracy of the university that I'm working and ensure that that did not impede the work that I was doing with other organizations such as yourself. So really thinking about our institutional rhythms and the resources and how we hold the institutional imperatives for effective partnerships. Because you cannot just write a work plan and say you go and do this, go and do this, you have to think together and have critical conversations about that, which leads me to the third grant, which is about communication. I think there's no partnership that works without effective communication. And this is something that people talk about a lot. But my biggest lesson is that we live in a world with very poor communicators. And when I say poor communicators, I'm talking about the thought that sometimes there are things we think in our head and we thought we have put it an email or have communicated it, but it got stuck in our head, right? Or you are feeling something in a particular moment, you did not communicate it to our window. And then it shows up three months later. And our window is wondering what's going on, you know? Or some communication is important. I operate from the principal and my colleagues at FCRG will know this. I would rather you over communicate and under communicate. Because it is in the under communication that a lot of things get missed, a lot of assumptions, a lady and I met expectations are also rooted in that. The fourth and final thing that I think was absolutely essential. And I would recommend this for anyone who's entering into any partnership is that leadership alignment has to be has to happen. Those who are leading the world, whether those are the directors of the institution or whether those have been assigned within the institution to run point on a particular piece of work, you have to be aligned with the person on the other side. If if a window is off to Cape Town and Shirin is off to Bamako, there's no way we are going to be delivering the same thing. If we are not on the same page, moving from the same runway and taking off at the same time. But you can only do that if you have clear channels of communication that in my view often anticipate where the the roadblocks might be, the challenges that might exist. I would recall in closing that when we did the first workshop as school rather in Mexico, which has done really in a short period of time. If I think about it in relation to the work preparatory work and the intentional preparatory work we did for the Eastern and Southern Africa schools, I got to the end of that process and I thought to myself, we are still starting. We are still going to work out of here talking to each other despite the challenges that existed even through that process and why was that possible to call you talked. When the challenges emerge, we talked about them. We figured out a way a way through them. We took those lessons into the next process because there's no need to talk about things if you're not embedding those lessons for how you avoid some of those challenges in the future. So for me, those are some of the key principles that I think were really, really critical out to this process. Do they resonate for you? Is there one thing that you'd like to add that from Charles was critical? If I have to think about one thing that we've learned about partnerships in doing this process, it's that one has to really believe in the meaning of why the partnership. For me, it's that political commitment that then indicates and drives how it is that you navigate through the hard things, through the more useful things and through the process that allows you to really co-create in a way that really means that you are living into that invitation of harnessing the individual, organizational and personal, I would argue, sets of offers to be able to create something that can meet the moment in a way that is vital. It's not impossible to you, but it's harder to do than we sometimes imagine. And I think it's that that I have been reminded of and have have renewed through this process. And so as I think about that, or we know for you what is the most surprising thing that you've learned about partnerships from this particular collaboration. For us as FCRJ, I want to go back to where I started from. It was always my curiosity about the potency of the alquimia schools. And that I knew there was something that was going to be valuable in a collaboration with jazz around this particular offer. Now if you're clear about that and I remain clear about that as the journey went along. So really a lot of affirmation rather than something that surprised me. But folks who might be listening to this Shireen might think we're being all serious. And this has been all very focused people who just think very critically about designing modules and delivering important work at this political moment. But it's one of the memories that you hold on to from Mexico through to the two live ushers that brings a smile to your face. Yeah, there were lots of laughs. And I mean, there are still many moments left to think about across the three years that, you know, even now when I think about them, I laugh out loud. And I'm going to ask you the same question, by the way. So this is just a cue up. I think one of them for me, that is automatic, was actually in Mexico. And we were preparing to step into a methodology that allows you to think about the intersections of race, class and gender as systemic. And it's called the master's house. And in sitting up the methodology, you have to sort of build a structure of this house. And I think I was trying to put up the roof like high up on the wall. But as you often remind me, I am vertically challenged. And so I was like literally really struggling on my tiptoes. And you were standing sort of close by and just I think initially just observing us like, what is this person trying to do? And then you came to me and you said, shall I help you? And I think that for me, that moment, and even I'm laughing about it, I think it encapsulated a whole set of things about the meaning of partnership, actually, that we bring different things, right? And that we can, if we are in rhythm, be in tune to each other, not just as people but institutionally, to be able to do that dance. And if we are able to do that, we are able to both crack the systemic analysis while at the same time being joyful, right, about how it is that we do that. So I mean, there are millions of moments like that that I've been reconnected on. But I want to throw the question back to you. What brings us mild to your face when you think about the last three years? Like here, there are several, some of which only bring a smile later because in the moment, it was not necessarily finding, you know, you know, we all have to manage all kinds of situations and processes. So you can only smile about it after the fact, but I will not share that one. The one that is in my mind at the moment. I think for me, the thing that brings a really warm smile and joy was really watching the faces of the cohort from the Eastern and Southern African school at what I'm going to call the closing event. So for those who might after this go to both our websites, you will see that as part of this second iteration of the movement building schools, we had two schools. We changed the methodology from Mexico. So we had part one of the schools with the 20 activists from Eastern and Southern Africa in between that process. We gave a small seed grant, if you will, for them to develop action research projects. And then they came back a year later into the second iteration of the school. And at the end of that process to be had a public event in Nairobi where they were able to interact with the activists and movement leaders from Kenya to talk about their work and obviously a celebration event. But it was really seeing the joy in the cohort's case after the showcase event. In terms of how people engage their work, their ability to talk about their work. And sometimes Shireen, I think I will speak for myself that sometimes we underestimate the importance of these things. We thought it was important to do a public showcase and we did it. But I did not think that the way to what it would mean to the participants had fully landed for me until I saw their faces and just their words of affirmation and how much it mattered to them. So whenever I think about that, I smile. And for me, those are the intangibles. Like if we were to talk about does the intellectual work which I believe is absolutely central to why FCRJ had of course just in this work, which is tooling, preparing, strengthening the intellectual basis for challenging the work that he lived in. And that is, she will be rooted in feminist thinking, African feminist thinking, black and indigenous knowledge is. But it's this little moments of the relational that are the things you go home at night and you think that I am exhausted. It has been five days and I am absolutely exhausted but it was well worth it. So Shireen, I think that is a wonderful place to stop. Let me, you know, talk to you before I wrap up and just ask if there is one parting note or reflection because you and I have had a conversation before about the fact that everyone is now doing movement building work. I hold a particular critique around how people define movement building work, which I'm sure you're familiar with. In this current moment, what is your parting reflection to anyone, whether they're funders, whether they're activists, whether they're young people are mobilizing on the streets and squares of their country's today challenging their regimes about the imperatives from movement building today. Earlier this week, I was in a conversation where we were talking about how in this moment, we are living between heartbreak and hope and we are holding those two things. And I think at the nexus of those two things, it's movement building work. And for me, when I think about movement building work, it's about the work to build that infrastructure that I spoke about. It's not necessarily just about supporting organizations as organizational entities. It's about exactly this conversation, how do we leverage who we are to be able to build towards a shared vision over the long term that allows us to challenge power as we build collective power. And so I think my parting words would be exactly that in this moment when we are living with both heartbreak and hope. Our work is to build that infrastructure that also serves to move us off the streets in times of protest and that holds us to be able to enter into the corridors where negotiations of a future world takes place in a way that allows us to carry those visions and really, really challenge power in a range of different ways. And so I think for me, that's the invitation. Heartbreak and hope. And I think that's a perfect place to stop. Thank you for joining us at Runway to Feminist Justice. Please listen to past podcasts from the schools and watch highlights on the FCRJ YouTube page. Follow us on Spotify and Apple to ensure you do not reset on future conversations.