Category: Audio/Video
Sensemaking with Horizons: Shun Tucker-Allen, Senior Faith Partnerships Coordinator of Fair Count
The Horizons Project Director for Race & Democracy, Jarvis Williams, has a conversation with Shun Tucker-Allen, Senior Faith Partnerships Coordinator at Fair Count about her work organizing with faith communities in the South. As more pro-democracy organizers and funders seek to engage more deeply with faith communities around the country, Shun shares her experience of fostering trusting relationships that are not transactional; being creative about building on the existing infrastructure and activities already happening within communities; not assuming that you need to go to the largest churches or directly to the pastors to have an impact; and, the importance of taking a long-term perspective to this work even in the face of urgent electoral cycles.
The Brain on Authoritarianism
The Horizons Project and Beyond Conflict partnered to create this video on 'The Brain on Authoritarianism' to support broad-based "united front" organizing in response to the rising authoritarian threat in the US and globally. Better understanding the brain's response to fear, toxic othering, and threats to social identity will help pro-democracy organizers to confront the authoritarian playbook and come together across difference to work more effectively towards a multi-racial, pluralistic, and inclusive democracy.
Sensemaking with Horizons: What’s the Ask?
Chief Network Weaver, Julia Roig and Jarvis Williams, Director for Race & Democracy reflect on some of the natural tensions facing the work of organizers at the national and state levels within a "block, bridge, build" framework - the importance of applied history, attention to what voices and partnerships are privileged, and how specific asks for policies and institutional reforms are raised and prioritized. All this while also bringing in our "intermestic" lens of shared struggles with colleagues in other countries.
Sensemaking with Horizons: Dr. Jeanine Abrams McLean, President of Fair Count
As a part of Horizons' Sensemaking Series on Race & Democracy, we invited the President of Fair Count, Dr. Jeanine Abrams McLean, to discuss their work as a non-partisan, non-profit organization "dedicated to partnering with Historically Undercounted Populations (HUP) communities to achieve a fair and accurate count of all people in Georgia and the nation in the 2030 Census, and to strengthening the pathways to greater civic participation." Horizons' Director for Race & Democracy, Jarvis Williams, probes with Jeanine the question of defining this kind of work as "pro-democracy" and/or "racial justice" in service of building partnerships, securing funding and ultimately responding to the communities most in need of having their voices listened to and their votes count.
Find out more about Horizons' approach to Race & Democracy here.
How you can more effectively advance multi-racial democracy
On March 3, 2024, Maria J. Stephan, co-lead of the Horizons Project, discussed her work to strengthen multi-racial democracy in the US and globally to the Forum at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church. Since 1943 the Forum has served as a platform for discussing significant issues especially those involving ethical values in the Contemporary World. The full interview is embedded below. You can find and edited version with links to resources mentioned in the interview that was broadcast on 90.1 KKFI FM on their website as well as an exerpt on the Effectiveness of Nonviolence on Soundcloud.
Introducing Our Race and Democracy Portfolio
Chief Network Weaver, Julia Roig, and Director for Race & Democracy, Jarvis Williams, have a conversation about why the Horizons Project created this new role and portfolio of work and our goal of supporting partners to break down siloes to place racial equity and racial healing at the center of our pro-democracy organizing. To find out more check out these resources.
Understanding Pillars of Support
Horizons has been focusing on how various Pillars of Support, notably faith-based organizations, businesses, unions & professional associations, and veterans/military groups, have contributed to authoritarian systems and how they have supported pro-democracy movements in the US and globally.
To complement our pillars-focused research and organizing, we have developed this short, 5-min video focused on what pillars of support are, why they matter, and what it means to both engage and pressure key pillars as part of pro-democracy organizing that reaches beyond the base.
We hope that activists, organizers, trainers, educators, bridgers, funders, and other democracy practitioners will find this tool helpful in your daily work. Please feel free to share the video with interested folks.
Thanks, and we look forward to joining forces in this critical year for democracy in the US and around the world!
SENSEMAKING WITH HORIZONS: The Alabama Brawl, August 2023
Jarvis Williams, the Director of Applied Research and Julia Roig, the Chief Network Weaver at Horizons come together in this short video interview to reflect on the “Alabama Brawl” that occurred in August of 2023 and its implications for how we incorporate a racial justice lens into our pro-democracy organizing.
We look forward to sharing more of our sensemaking practices in this format. Let us know what you think!
What do we mean by “sensemaking”?
The following is taken from a previous Horizons’ blog that you can read here.
One of the three lines of work of The Horizons Project is “sensemaking.” As organizers who believe in the power of emergent strategy, the practice of sensemaking is something that we are continually reflecting upon: What is sensemaking? What is its purpose? How do we do it better? How can it drive our adaptation? How can we share what we’re learning and doing with diverse communities?
So, what exactly is “sensemaking” and why is it important to organizers? First and foremost, we acknowledge that we are operating in a world filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). Even if we weren’t such a small team, we could never hope to fully wrap our minds (and arms) around this VUCA world. If our goal at The Horizons Project is to provide value and help connect actors within the social change ecosystem, we must find ways to constantly scan and interpret what’s going on within the system to then strategize, act and adjust as needed. Sensemaking is one of those practices. While there are many methodologies and definitions of sensemaking, we are drawn to the approach of Brenda Dervin that is based on asking good questions to fill in gaps in understanding, to connect with others to jointly reflect on our context and then take action.
For additional resources on sensemaking practices, check out:
Horizons Presents (Our podcast, Season One focuses on sensemaking)
Facilitating Sensemaking in Uncertain Times
Welcome to Jarvis Williams, New Director of Applied Research at The Horizons Project!
Enjoy this short interview between our Chief Network Weaver Julia Roig and our new Director of Applied Research Jarvis Williams as he describes his excitement and motivation about joining the Horizons’ team.
Julia: Hi everyone, Julia Roig, the Chief Network Weaver at the Horizons Project, celebrating on this hot summer day, that we have a new team member who has joined us at Horizons, Jarvis Williams.
We just wanted to have a chance for you to be able to say hi to everybody because of course, since we’re so into working within a broad ecosystem of a lot of different partners, we wanted to give you a chance to tell us something about yourself.
Jarvis: Well, first of all, thank you. It’s so exciting to be with the team. I enjoyed the interview process, I think I told a friend of mine I held you captive for several hours when we were supposed to be talking for a short amount of time, but it’s just great conversations.
But I think that probably explains part of who I am. I really enjoy trying to be in community with people.
I think three things that would probably define who I am now is that I’m highly sensitive to the power of relationships to change people’s lives and that’s important to me.
It started growing up in a small community in Mississippi and watching my father be in relationship with patients, watching people in the church be in relationship. So I care about that and my work culture matters to the extent that I’m in relationship with great people.
I guess the other two things that really matter to me that I guess define who I am is that I have attempted to try to be attendant to what people believe.
Why their beliefs matter to them, not simply just to change their beliefs, but to appreciate how they have come to see the world the way they do.
And then I’ve really committed myself to trying to be a part of helping us to get better information about what we believe so we can actually act better. And that’s where scholarship and academia comes into play, trying to learn about the world we live in, in a reliable way.
Julia: Yeah, that’s great. And, you know, I failed to even describe the fact that you’re taking on the role of the Director of Applied Research.
So I’m really glad that you mentioned the power of, academic rigor and your experience with research. And so I’m really curious for you to share what you’re the most excited about with regards to this job, and the Horizons mission and what you’re going to be doing in this role?
Jarvis: Oh, absolutely. I think for me, the wording that really just fascinated me was this idea of connective tissue. What do we need to know to help us connect better? Or what beliefs do we have that may be prohibiting us from connecting? And so I know that to confront the moment I think we find ourselves in with all kinds of threats, we don’t have to just connect, but we have to have a certain depth to those connections. And in order to explain some of that, it requires… interrogation to those deep beliefs that complicate how we act. And so in Horizons Project, religion, the role of Christianity in democracy, I think it’s a deep conversation that we need to think about.
The challenge of race, I think those are deep conversations. There are moments where you have to try to have a polite conversation to move on, but to build great relationships, there needs to be great understanding. And sometimes it takes a kind of depth of understanding to get there.
And then this mystery we call democracy. What beliefs are essential to be able to hold on to what we have and what beliefs have complicated it? So Horizons gives me an opportunity to, think about not just, what we know about those beliefs, but how people are actually living out those beliefs currently, and to be in relationship with them and to push and to probe and to learn and I think I’m excited about being in a space where we’re not trying to pretend we don’t disagree, but we are curious how we can believe better about each other.
Julia: Yeah, that’s beautifully put, and folks are going to very quickly realize, why you were the right choice to join our team and all this “connective tissue-ing” that we’re trying to do.
So Jarvis, just to end, you are going to interact with a lot of different folks, it’s the joy of this work of being ecosystem organizers.
So for those partners or those collaborators who are going to have the opportunity to work with you, what would be something that you’d want them to know about you as you’re getting started?
Jarvis: Yeah, I think two things for me. One, I will absolutely listen to them. I will care to hear and to see the world through their eyes. And I think that is connected to the other thing, that they will absolutely be respected. And for me, if you know that you will be heard and that you will be treated with respect, I think that’s what I would want to offer.
And in the words of John Lewis, whatever good trouble we get into, we’ll be fine. As long as we respect each other and listen.
Julia: Well, wise words to end on. And you know, Jarvis, we really are just thrilled on behalf of Maria and Tabitha and Nilanka and the whole team, just we want to give you a big warm welcome .
We’ll look forward to a lot of good trouble coming next.
Well, I so appreciate it. And I’m so happy to be a part of this team.
Julia: Thanks Jarvis.
The Horizons Project Discusses Sensemaking
Get to know The Horizons Project team better, as our Chief Network Weaver Julia Roig and our Director of Partnerships and Outreach Tabatha Pilgrim Thompson share their own approaches to sensemaking in one of the episodes from our podcast Horizons Presents.