Understanding Intersectionality for the Freedom of All

First delivered as a sermon on Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday weekend 2018 at the Community Unitarian Universalist Community at White Plains, NY 

Rev. Dr. LoraKim Joyner

I was born into a racist culture and family – specifically in Atlanta, Georgia. We moved to Northern Virginia in 1968, only a few months before Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. My parents enrolled me in Louise Archer Elementary School an all African American school, founded in a black neighborhood mostly fenced off from white suburbs. I started only a few months after the school had been desegregated and I was in the first batch of white children to attend.

I found myself making friends quickly Thea, who I invited home so that we could practice a school play. She lived nearby, but on that the other side of that fence, which we climbed to get to my house. My mother came home from work and saw us playing in the living room and told me to get Thea to leave. As soon as she left my mother slapped my face and said, "Don’t you ever bring another _______ into this house again."

My family has a lot of work to do and so do I to combat that training of seeing more worth in some than others, undoing the fear that I would be loved less if I thought any differently. Though my example is more extreme than many, none of us escape this enculturation.

 

My family is not just my biologic nuclear family, but it is my cultural family anchored here in the USA. I didn't know how that family had trained me into a dominating colonizing culture until I started to work in Latin America. I consulted with the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery project. Once a million of these lived on the island precolonization, but by 1973, only 14 remained

The indigenous people were long gone due to European colonization, and the parrot nearly went extinct due to the large deforestation of the island after the USA invasion and colonization in 1898. The USA collapsed the Puerto Rican economy and put sugar cane all over the island. Due to extreme efforts the parrot numbers somewhat rebounded. But the recent hurricanes this late summer, Irma and Maria, devastated the people and the parrots there, vulnerable due to past and ongoing extraction economies, and instutionalized racist and speciesist business, taxation, and aid practices.

My human, USA family has a lot of work to do, and so do I because I benefited and continue to do so at the cost of the many. None of us escapes the work to stop this extraction and domination economy that marginalizes and colonizes.

I responded to the work my human family and I had to do by taking up the call to Unitarian Universalist (UU) Ministry. My sense of family grew to incorporate Unitarian Universalism. While preparing for the ministry I learned the long, hard, and painful history of how Unitarian Universalists had made many mistakes in how people of color were treated in our movement, as evidenced by the book, "Black Pioneers in a White Denomination," multiple painful episodes since, and ongoing ones as evidences in this book.

My UU family has a lot of work to do. I know this because I am at the forefront of a UU movement to understand how what harms animals, also harms humans. We ask how extending our sense of the inherent worth and dignity to individuals of all species helps humans too. This work brings up the pain and loss of how deficient UUs have been with people, as well as other species. This is uncomfortable, painful, and stressful, and it seems that none of us can say or do the right thing. Sound like fun? It is hard, but there is a tang of freedom in the air. Even if you aren't UU, join us as various possible denominational change, votes, and study groups are coming in the future. My family is doing the work, and we need to do more, for we have not won freedom yet

Our work for freedom means addressing intersectionality. Intersectionality means that oppression is experienced differently based on our various identities. Women experience oppression differently than men, and blacks different from whites, and hence black women experience oppression from being both black and female. The corollary is also true - we benefit from a system that oppressed others based on our identities and locations of privilege. I am white human North American from the lower middle class -this gives me privileges that others have, and oppressions that others don’t have.

Intersectionality also means that there are core oppressions that intersect all identities. Some call this core oppression patriarchy, which isn't really about men, so relax guys. It is a culture based on seeing different others as less than, which is tied to dominance, power over, white supremacy, and inequality, all of which catch each of us in a sticky web of harm and benefit.

What does the work of intersectionality look like?

First off, it is not shame or blame or pointing fingers at who oppresses more or is oppressed more. We all are enculturated to be oppressors and oppressed. We are not to blame, but we are responsible. All of us.

The world has lived with 500 years of modernity and colonization to hide the reality that we are inextricably tied to one another and all life in beauty, tragedy, and death. "Wishing for life at any price continuously calls forth death - the death of other people, other beings, the extinguishing of languages, ideas cultures, and worst of all, possibilities and degrees of freedom" (Andrea Weber). We all are trapped. Our work for freedom is undoing the core oppression for our co-liberation. For this liberation we must learn to "live without fear and to die courageously."

This is a death of individualism so that all are centered. In the circle of life, the suffering of another is also ours. In the countries I work in Latin America there is constant evidence of the devastation of colonialism and USA foreign policy. The people I work with, descendants of disappeared indigenous cultures and slaves, and the dearth of wildlife, do not let me forget it. But I am so alive there for it takes everything I’ve got to show up and be vulnerable. What began as a wound ends in a caressing touch. I’m undone and then made whole.

The work for freedom means we center the marginalized voices. Our individualism dies every time we allow another to speak. And we are born again.

We must center what we marginalize within ourselves. Miki Kashton, a leader in Nonviolent Communication, told me a few weeks ago to not believe a thing you grew up thinking or doing, for it was all based on core oppressions. We need to lay aside the armor that doesn't protect us, but fetters us. Let us lay that burden down.

We must center ourselves in history, ecology, and biology. We must look at past societal practices and how we have been harmed and benefited. Thanks goodness for our neuroplastic brains which are ready to believe that power over is the only way to meet our needs, but can also learn that cooperation and co-liberation brings flourishing to many lives. We must accept that we will die and no level of control will stop that. We must embrace  reality - to accept all that is now and also, paradoxically, do everything in our power to change it. We are so powerful in freedoms return embrace.

 (photo by Dagmar Ollman)

We need resilience because we tread a fragile path of feeling shame, separation, and oppression, but there is joy lurking in that journey. We can take a beginning step by sharing our social location when we meet with others, without shame or blame, being honest of our privilege and oppression. We confess. Here is an example.

My name is LoraKim Joyner. I identify as a white human heterosexual female of European descent raised in the southern USA in the lower middle class, 2 generations from Alabama sharecroppers, currently living outside of NY City. My childhood was full of experiences and hard lessons taught from family, friends, the surrounding society, and a dominant oppressive culture that acculturated within me the trappings of privilege, white domination, human domination, as well as victimhood. I am also a mother and grandmother of people who identify as of European/indigenous descent from Honduras. My work in the world is as conservationist throughout Latin America, wildlife veterinarian, Unitarian Universalist minister, and a Compassionate Communication trainer and practitioner.

All of this history and categories of oppression and oppressor cannot be unwoven from my relationships. They form me but they do not bind me. We can help each other loose these chains of bondage by sharing how this message  intersects with your identities, experiences, and locations of oppression and privilege.

I am held rapt by the power and hope of freedom won together, for none are free until all are free. My father in his older years nearly died of heart failure, but miraculously a heart match was found for him quickly. He was a small man so the heart of an African descent girl who had died in a car accident became his. My parents were grateful, and softened.

Let us not let death, or the fear of death, keep us from giving our hearts to one another.

They who bind to themselves a joy

Do the winged life destroy

But they who kiss the joy as it flies

Live in eternity's sunrise

(adapted from William Blake)

What You Can Do

1.  Join our new Freedom Project. This is an international campaign aimed at stopping the wildlife trade - most notably in parrots but also in other wildlife. We will use multimedia to show the vision of all beings being free, such as the picture below of a rescued yellow-naped parrot chick that almost ended up as a pet but was released to fly free. Materials and resources will be available that highlight our slogans, "No Cage is Big Enough," "None are Free until All Are Free." and "Tu Casa No Es Mi Casa." 

 (photo by Christianna Martynowski)

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2. If you are Unitarian Universalist, join the First Principle Project and engage in the work of intersectionality.

An Animal World as One

An Animal World as One

Guest Author:  Christopher D. Sims
Spoken Word Artist
Unitarian Universalist

The following poem comes from me asking Christopher Sims how he experienced the First Principle Project and possible bylaw change to the First Principle (inherent worth and dignity of every being).  We added discussion questions below for your journaling or small group discussion.

In the inner city, the concrete jungle,
we are animals inside a cage surrounded
by hate and rage. We are engaged in
activities that call for peace, unity, civility.

The concrete jungle adjusts to
whoever is in office. I many ways,
it is just us. No real justice.

As a person of color in the concrete jungle
I am concerned about my sisters, my brothers.

My hermanas and my hombres just the same,
because the concrete jungle has us singing
a collective blues, feeling the same pain.

As we harmonize, there’s a jungle
with wildlife we are not connected to.
About this disconnection what should
we do?

I say we leave our lairs to go outside
and breathe deeply fresh air. Say a
universal prayer that recognizes
our collective worth and dignity. Under
our glorious sun that’s how it should be.

As the reflection in the mirror looks back
at me, I contemplate Black Lives Matter
and the plight to include other beings.
Possibly creating new language in complex
times when people of color find our voices
still not being heard.

The animals, our relatives, have feelings
too. A polluted and warming planet they share
with us. Imagine what they’re thinking
as we lose Gaia’s trust.

How do we take care of the oppressed
and protect the animals in their habitats?

The climate is changing fast so we need
to organize, react. We need to create
policies and solutions that benefit people
and our fellow beings.

 How about conversations that leads

to Unitarian Universalist legislation
that honors every being without creating
a segregation of life? I think we have it in
us if we crafted it right.

© Christopher D. Sims

February 4, 2017

Discussion Questions

  

1. Where do you feel in your life that you are caged and need liberation? What does liberation look like for you? How do you get there?

2. Where do you experience that others are caged and need liberation? What does liberation look like for others? How do they get there?

3. Where do you experience that many different kinds of people and animals are caged and need liberation? What are the oppressive forces that keep our society and biotic communities imprisoned?  What does liberation look like for all of us together?  How do we all get there?

4. Where do you feel disconnected from others, nature, and other beings? How can your congregation help you, and the many others with the profound sense of disconnection experienced by so many in modern life?

5. How might considering that all beings have inherent worth and dignity nurture you and help you connect to others, the earth, and life?

6. How do you live with tension that others are like you, and are not like you? How might erasing the line between those with worth and dignity, and those without (in human perception) help you live and care for others who are different from you? In other words, how might a First Principle Practice, as it is now, or when it is changed, help us build communities of justice and flourishing?

Resistance is Not Futile

Resistance is Not Futile
Rev. Dr. LoraKim Joyner

Everyone one of us is held in creation's hand - a part of the interdependent web. - Therefore, strangers need not be enemies, - no one is saved until we all are saved, - and all means the whole of creation.

Rev. William Schulz

The First Principle Project offers tools to address the urgency many of us feel to develop communities or resistance, resilience, and solidarity. We have much work to do, the very reweaving of our culture, to make it stronger, and to make it more beautiful and inclusive. Our evolved biology is a dangerous thing, and that is why we need to be as intentional as we can to guide our culture's evolution.

In Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, author Yuva Harari writes "Biology enables, Culture forbids." Biology provides for a vast repertoire of possible cultural expressions, and it is our cultures that can put the brakes on various possibilities, such as violence, sexual coercion, consumerism, etc. This is at once both liberating (we can overcome our biology) and daunting (it is up to us).  Harari goes on to write that in fact, though we have made progress in so many ways through various cultural revolutions, suffering seems to increase exponentially in each phase of human development.  This is because our cultural myths, which bind our cultures in ever advancing cooperation amongst more individuals, have allowed and thrived on oppression and domineering hierarchies. Each cultural shift appears to give us greater freedom, but really just lands us in a bigger cage with more room for suffering.

Ross Douthat in an opinion piece in the "New York Times" on February 4, 2017, Who Are We?,specifically refers to the myth of the USA being a land of divinely guided settlers and pioneers where the dream of prosperity, freedom, and equality could be achieved by all. The USA was built upon this and much good came of it, yet it is a story of untold suffering for Native Americans, Africans, and the wildlife on this continent. Because of this the myth is losing favor, though it is far from dead, such as seen in the upset election season of 2016 where it seemed there was a backlash against those who would throw away the human and white exceptional story of pioneer America, because so much harm came of it.  The problem is that we have no current myth that can both replace it and include it, even honor it, binding us all together, resulting in a political process in shambles.

What myth will work that transcends globalization, commerce, religions, politics, and ideologies, and at the same time recognizes the heritage that made both the American dream possible and deadly? We need a new story that takes into account that there is no beauty without tragedy, and that beauty and tragedy connects all individuals, each of which has inherent worth and dignity.

A story such as this allows us to forgive ourselves and one another. We could not have gotten here where we are, with the hope of mass cooperation diminishing suffering on a global level, without having gone through our imperialist, genocidal, racist, and extinction producing past. With forgiveness in our hearts for our kind, we can move forward, though with no guarantees.

Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature indicates that we are on a knife's edge - we could go any direction. Our biology can still enable the very worst that we can do to one another. We could lose all the gains over the millennia that though may not have reduced suffering, has reduced violence, and in recent decades, suffering seems possible to diminish with recent decreases in global poverty rates. His solution to what must be done is deluge the world with a story based on an empathetic and deep awareness of nature, human and otherwise. This is a story based on the inherent worth and dignity of each, and that every being strives to live, and live well. No ideology can trump that.

Such a story might allow us to move to the next stage of cultural evolution that actually opens the cage doors and liberates everyone.  We need a larger myth that does not give any space to oppression, and only accepts liberation if it is for all of us. And by all, I mean all of creation - all species, all individuals.

We don't know how to organize under this story politically, or what it looks like, but we do know that what we are doing now is not working. Maybe our new way will be that of a "vitacracy" - a way of organizing our communities that is based on life. The needs of all individuals matter within the biotic community.  Each individual of all species has a vote, and indeed does already vote by being part of the whole. We just need to acknowledge those silenced voices, tally their votes, and see where life leads us when we consider the needs of each and all.

In the meantime, how do we live with the tension of existing in a world of utopian dreams mixed with dystopian nightmares glaring at us through our social and news media? Let us tell the story far and wide of the inherent worth and dignity of all, and let that be our source of resistance, resilience, and solidarity.  Maybe hope will come out of that, and maybe not. But for one moment, when we speak of beauty and tragedy indivisible, we are inviting momentous change, and that out of our witnessing must come real political engagement. We persistently ask, "How do we live together, well, all of us?"   I don't know exactly, but when we testify, we are living it, and exerting our political selves that resists any way of life that does not accept and affirm all of nature, human nature, and otherwise. Each of us can do this at any moment - in conversation, in activity, and in thought. When we do it together, we are ever more greatly empowered and nurtured.

This is what our congregations are for - nurturing ourselves and all of nature, and the call is urgent to do both of these.  You can do so by getting involved in the First Principle Project. You can also get support and ideas through the Nurture Nature Program.  We are seeking to seed Nurture Nature Communities throughout the USA. To find out more of these communities go here, and to find out more about the Nurture Nature Program and One Earth Conservation, which facilitates it, go here.

Let our mantra be; "Biology enables life, Culture affirms life."

ON NOT EATING THAT TURKEY: RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM AND RELIGIOUS VEGANISM

Today's  Guest Author Rev. M. Lara Hoke

Minister, Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Andover, Massachusetts

Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry Board Member

“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” ― Paul Farmer

This Thanksgiving, I don’t know what will bother my friends around the table more—that I’m a democratic socialist or that I’m a vegan.

Some of my democratic socialist friends tell me that the problem with vegans is that we don’t care enough about people and the oppressions they face. I’ve had progressive friends who support the Black Lives Matter movement say that standing up for animal rights is alienating because it suggests that we care more about animals than about people of color. To me, this makes no more sense than my right-wing friends telling me that if I support Black Lives Matter it means that I am anti-police. I support the Black Lives Matter movement and I am grateful that the police – the good ones, who outnumber the bad – would risk their lives to keep me safe if it ever came to that.

Some of my vegan friends tell me that the problem with democratic socialists is that we don’t care enough about non-human animals. They point out that although democratic socialists and other political “lefties” think of ourselves as cutting edge and historically marginalized by the establishment, it is animal-rights activists and radical environmental activists who are targeted by the establishment. Just read Green Is the New Red by Will Potter, they say.

Both groups talk about intersectionality of justice issues, yet sometimes fail to see the connections between democratic socialism and veganism.

Article II of the DSA Constitution and Bylaws states, “We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on… non-oppressive relationships” (see: http://www.dsausa.org/constitution). The vast majority of meat and other animal products comes from factory farms, which create enormous suffering for animals and those who work there. Animals live in filth, packed together too tightly to move, with no access to the outdoors. When it comes time to kill them – which could be considered a mercy killing, given their living conditions – they are not killed mercifully. Although bludgeoned or crushed, some are still alive as they are skinned.

And factory farming involves human suffering, as well.  According to the Food Empowerment Project (seehttp://www.foodispower.org/factory-farm-workers/), “Factory farm workers are consistently exposed to a variety of harmful gases and particulate matter and also suffer from repetitive stress injuries. [They suffer from] chronic aches and pains, respiratory disorders, cardiovascular complications and premature death.” Many of the workers are undocumented and thus afraid to protest unsafe and unhealthy conditions. I would like to help my vegan friends make these connections between animal and human suffering and consider that unfettered capitalism is the common culprit.

Full disclosure: I have been a vegan for about one-and-a-half years. For 15 years before that, I was a vegetarian (with occasional lapses into pescatarianism). I did not become a vegetarian because of animals at all. I became a vegetarian because I read that four pounds of grain led to just one pound of meat. Thus, more humans would have food to eat if we grew more grain for human consumption. I became a vegetarian because I learned that factory farms create an enormous amount of pollution. As Jonathan Safran Foer points out in Eating Animals, factory farming is “the number one cause of global warming, it’s responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than everything else put together and the UN has said it's one of the top two or three causes of every single environmental problem on the planet.” My vegetarianism grew out of humanitarian concerns and a desire to care for the planet. I would like to help my democratic socialist comrades make the connections between not eating animals or animal products and ecology and humanitarian concerns.

Some omnivores will claim that a vegan diet is more expensive, adding another layer of elitism. For those of us who are middle class or wealthy and living in western industrial countries, being a vegan is not necessarily more expensive than eating animal products. For low-income people in the United States, the situation is both constrained and complex. We need to fight for low-income Americans to have increasing access to healthful food options; it should be a high priority for vegans. The situation is very different in other parts of the world, where some humans need to hunt and fish and use animal products to have enough to eat. Even in places with largely vegetarian diets, there is a need for access to more and better food.

A. Breeze Harper points out that “dietary habits and food production connect to … the dismantling or maintenance of environmental racism, speciesism, ecological devastation, health disparities, institutional racism, overconsumption, and other social injustices” (read more in Harper’s book, Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society). This, in a nutshell, is why I believe veganism and democratic socialism go hand in hand. As a person of faith, I feel called to be both a religious democratic socialist and a religious vegan.

Back to the first question: Which is more bothersome to my tablemates this holiday, my democratic socialism or my veganism?  I’m not sure, but I do know that it will be easier to get through Thanksgiving without mentioning that I’m a democratic socialist. (However, I wouldn’t bet against my mentioning both.)

Rev. M. Lara Hoke is the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Andover, Massachusetts. She believes, as Mahatma Gandhi said, "Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is." Lara discovered DSA when she was a student at Harvard Divinity School, taking a course with Cornel West. This Thanksgiving, she is grateful that her family,including her in-laws, have been so gracious about her veganism. Lara wants all the turkeys out there to know that although she became a vegetarian for humans and the environment, she became a vegan primarily because of her love for animals.