Hey y’all - this is Hannah here with you for Part II of the “Visioning the Radical Mapping Project” series. I want to talk about how we’re organizing support systems for RMP - on the road, interpersonally, and with our participating groups.
I spent this summer in Ithaca, NY learning about sustainability and collective living from a Religious and Environmental Studies professor from Cornell. Each summer she leads a trip to Japan for Cornell students to experience monastic life and learn about Japanese culture. This time around she took new initiative to encourage her students to take care of each other. Each person had a job - even as small as making sure everyone’s water bottles were filled or that the group’s suitcases were lined up in the hall before leaving a monastery. This way she found that everyone’s needs were taken care of and each person had a sense of responsibility to the group - gratitude and generosity in synchronicity!
This model of collective relationality inspired me to propose to the RMP Collective that we have “road jobs” - key tasks and responsibilities necessary for life on the road. We could each delve into a skill that we were interested in honing while making sure all our bases were covered and having the joy of taking care of others. I think it will also be a practice in giving up control and bestowing trust in others. We split up the major jobs as permanent roles for each person and then chose some smaller tasks that would rotate:
The Big Jobs: Naz will take care of lodging i.e. locating campsites, hostels and AirBnbs, booking and payment. Madeleine is handling budgeting - keeping receipts of all our expenses and helping us stay on budget. V is our project partner liaison and will be arranging times and dates for our visits. And I’ll be the intergroup meditator, holding space for daily meetings, sharing, and mediating any conflicts that arise.
Rotating roles are car cleaning and maintenance, laundry and gratitude point person (cards etc. for all the people who open their homes to us), hydration/food wizard and navigator.
The second layer of support on this trip will occur between our collective and the collectives, people, and organizations we meet with. This interaction has really been occupying my thoughts lately as difficult and sensitive terrain to travel - if anyone has feedback, thoughts or favorite resources on decolonial and mutually supportive research methods please send them our way!
When I reached out to a friend-of-a-friend in New Orleans she kindly offered me suggestions for people to reach out to and then directly asked me what we were doing to support the places we were visiting in return - an especially salient and vital point in NOLA where disaster capitalism, white savior complexes, and tourism have drained the community. Another friend echoed her inquiry - how would the people we visit benefit from our project?
I must be honest, at first I felt sensitive to these questions, they felt like criticism - we’ve worked so hard and been so thoughtful! Our project is good! But then I quickly saw that my sensitivity came from knowing that this was an important issue to address and think through. I think we will receive valuable feedback from our partners about this on our trip but so far I’ve thought of three ways to work with this vital issue of reciprocity. How do we decolonize an interaction (research/field study) that has roots in objectifying, other-ing, and extracting/exploiting the experiences of others for social, academic, or material gain?
Firstly, consent. We are giving a consent form to each participant, confirming that they know the nature of the discussion, have received our contact information, and acknowledging that they may choose to stop the discussion at any time or not answer any question. Further they can choose if they wish to go under a false name when/if the content of the discussion is reprinted, and decide if they do or do not want to be audio recorded, filmed, or photographed.
Second, offering assistance. We're offering assistance to our partners individually and to their work when in the area - whether it be weeding at a community garden, cleaning up after an event, or cooking a meal. We understand everyone’s time is sacred and precious, especially those managing their own spaces and/or self-employed, unemployed, and/or low-income, and want to return their generosity in any way we can.
Third, open ears. A central question we’re asking on our trip is, what is needed in activist communities, in their structures and by the people involved in order to realize their visions of a liberated future? What are the emotional, financial, structural, relational, ethical (etc) changes/conditions needed for paradigm-shifting transformation? One desire for this trip is that through our research and discussions we could facilitate or weave together a network that would help fulfill these needs, achieve these goals, or offer the resources to do so.
I am so excited to learn from our beautiful partners about how they support each other and their goals. I am eager to see how self and community care evolves within the RMP Collective on the road - and to share this all with you in hopes of inspiring more caring, sustainable, and accountable relationships.
Images of molecular structures:
First Image: https://www.hdwallpapers.net/previews/molecular-structure-739.jpg
Second Image: https://ak5.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/23011357/thumb/1.jpg