5 Minute Ted Talks

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​Geri Kennedy

I’m sure that many of you have had a leader, minister, teacher or professor who left an impression or impact on your life. For me that was Joanna Macy. Many of you may know of Joanna Macy. She is a student of Buddhism, systems thinking and deep ecology in addition to being a well respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology.
When my husband was attending Starr King School for the Ministry, they offered partners the opportunity to take one class each semester without any additional fees (other than books or supplies). I had the distinct privilege of attending 2 classes with Joanna along with a separate workshop presented at the Berkeley UU Fellowship. She is an amazing woman in person and I learned a great deal.

One of the classes was taking place when 9/11 happened. She tossed the planned lesson for the day and helped us to express our feelings – fear, anger, grief, powerlessness, unsettled and so many other emotions brought out by that day. We were able to shout, cry, whisper, pound on the floor. When each person was done, the group said “we hear you, we acknowledge your feelings”. It was a good release for all of us and during the discussions afterward we were able to sort out some of those feelings. Joanna calls this despair work. This exercise of Joanna’s is a way to uncover our pain for the world and to honor it by bringing awareness to our deep inner responses. These are usually blocked by the pressures of daily life and the fear of being overwhelmed. We were able to express our feelings without shame or apology.

I have used another of her exercises which has stayed with me at other workshops. It is an interesting way to explore ideas to make the world a better place. We break into groups of 4 –presenter, past, present and future roles. Each person speaks in turn, without interruption. First the presenter explains their idea. I’m going to use the East Shore Black Lives Matter Flash Stance as an example and considers it as a “new” idea. The presenter explains what they have in mind, a bit of how it would be done and the goals. Standing on the corner every Sunday to bring awareness not just to the many black lives that have been lost and affected by continued police brutality, but also to remind people that systemic racism remains a problem in our country and each of us has a responsibility to help eradicate it.
The past person responds with what was happening that might have caused the presenter to come up with this idea – in this instance, so many of the issues around Black Lives Matter and systemic racism.

The present person looks at what is being done now, before the presenter’s project begins. It might be marches, general protests, talking sessions, letter writing etc. The future person looks 5 – 10 or more years into the future after the project has been completed or has been in place for a while, to envision how it may have changed the world. For the flash stances, all of the people whose minds may have been changed or new ideas received and what good things they did in the world as a result. A brief discussion is then held and the group switches positions so everyone has a chance to experience each role. This exercise is especially relevant to Macy’s work on The Great Turning. The long process of making the world a better place. Joanna attended many of David Korten’s Positive Futures Network retreats and he liked her term Great Turning and adopted it for his book of that same name.

My experiences with Joanna stay with me and continue to guide many of my daily decisions. I try to look as issues from a systems perspective, become a better listener and to do my best to leave a better world behind. In my research for this talk, I found that I have 2 copies of Macy’s book, Active Hope, How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy. I will donate one to the church library.

I’ll close with a quote from Macy’s book, Coming Back to Life – Practices to Reconnect our Lives, our World:
We have received an inestimable gift. To be alone in this beautiful, self-organizing universe – to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it – it is a wonder beyond words. And it is, moreover, an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with this self-reflexive consciousness which brings awareness of our own actions and the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world.

Jeanne Gardiner

Hello, my name is Jeanne Gardiner, and I’d like to tell you about myself, my life and what I like to do to take time for myself and keep calm.

I was born in Tonasket Hospital, Okanagon, in north-eastern Washington. We moved to Everett when I was 2 years old, and my sister Janice was born there a few years later. We moved to Bellevue in 1965 when I was 8 years old, and it was then that we joined East Shore Unitarian Church and I started attending Sunday School. I lived with my parents until 2003, when my mother helped me get my own apartment in Bellevue. I worked at McDonalds for 17 years in total cleaning tables, sweeping and mopping the floors and cleaning up messes. I enjoyed the work, but found it hard to deal with people who were drunk or high, or homeless people who spent a long time in the bathrooms. I had to call the manager when I couldn’t understand people who didn’t speak good English.

When Covid happened, I decided to retire. The pandemic has been a very challenging time for me, and I found it very painful. I did not like using Zoom – initially I went to Janice’s house to zoom into the services, but then she moved to Bend, Oregon, so she bought me an iPad that I can use for email and zoom. I’m very grateful that I got to know Missy Poirier who lives near me, because I was able to visit with her at her home once a month. Initially I stayed 6ft apart but now we meet inside and don’t worry about masks.

My main hobby is sewing. I love to create embroideries or cross stitch designs for people I care about. Sometimes I make pillowcases, or a quilt with birds and flowers. I’ve also knitted some baby blankets. I always offer an embroidered pillow or picture for the church auction, to help the church make some money. I’ve made pillows for each of the staff, making sure to include pictures of their lives. For example, when I made one for our music director, Eric, I included a microphone, a keyboard and a Gay Pride flag. Right now, I’m working on a pillow for Reverend Maria Cristina. I don’t know very much about her yet, but I will include a picture of her and her mother.

When I’m doing a large project like a full keepsake pillow or quilt, I need to take breaks to help me keep calm. I like to use my iPad to play jigsaw puzzles and other games. I find listening to 98.1 King FM to be very calming. I take 2 walks every day. In the morning I take the left turn loop, and in the afternoon I take longer walks. I have a routine of different walks on different days to keep it interesting. I meet with friends at Crossroads from time to time and I like to always go to church on Sundays to see friends.

I also take time to write notes to people in the church about issues I care about. I like to send birthday cards and sympathy cards to church members who I have a good connection to. I start working on my Christmas Letter in November, and send it to a list of 112 people. It takes me quite a bit of time to send out all those letters, as I can only do about three each day. I love to watch game shows on TV, such as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. I also like the Antiques Roadshow and Midsummer Mysteries.

The most challenging part of my life is my own limitations. Not being able to drive means that I’m dependent on others to give me rides, and I’m grateful for those who give me rides to medical appointments and to church on Sundays. I like to keep very organized to help me keep calm. I struggle with handwriting, so I’m grateful to use a laptop and printer so that I can type everything. I don’t like email – it’s too immediate. Sending notes through the mail seems more meaningful to me, though I do like to text with people on my phone, since it can be hard to talk on the phone.
I love the East Shore community. I find it to be a place of peace, with people who care. I have many friends at East Shore who I care about. I also love the music and seeing Eric’s dog each week. I look forward to building a new connection with Reverend Maria Cristina, and to my 65th birthday in October.

Amanda Strombom

In 1996, my husband Doug and I were living in Malaysia. We loved the variety of cultures we were exposed to there, especially the many different types of food that were new to us, but unfortunately we found that we kept getting sick from eating meat that had been cooked and served from market stalls in 90 degree heat. The food was always delicious, but they had no refrigeration in such stalls and the bacteria loved the food too! Several of my friends were already vegetarian and they suggested that it might be worth a try. It quickly solved our problem, and we found that eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables was just what we needed in that hot climate.

By the time we moved to Seattle a year later, we were committed to being vegetarian, and eating as healthfully as possible. At the time, it was not so easy to find foods such as almond milk and tofu, and meat substitutes at that time had a tendency to taste like cardboard. But with the help of a vegetable delivery service, I gradually found ingredients and recipes we loved, and started to feel more confident about going out to restaurants and being able to find something we wanted to eat.

I looked around for something I could do while raising two young kids, and discovered a nonprofit organization that was running a vegetarian food festival and looking for volunteers to help. I was hooked. Three years later, two of us split off from that organization and formed our own. We have run Vegetarians of Washington, and the food festival Vegfest every year for the past 20 years, until the pandemic put the event on hold.

So why am I so hooked? First and foremost, I’ve heard story after story of people recovering from chronic diseases by cutting out animal products. Health was my first passion, and to know that a vegetarian diet, and especially a vegan diet, which includes no animal products at all, can help unclog your arteries, prevent several forms of cancer, and often reverse Type 2 diabetes, was enough for me. I have since learned about other diseases such as Crohn’s disease, chronic kidney disease, both rheumatoid and osteo-arthritis, and even cataracts that it can also help prevent. I’ve met people who have had their angina clear up, their diabetic peripheral neuropathy or arthritis go away, and they’ve wondered why their doctor never told them about this.

Some people don’t believe that a change in diet can have such a dramatic effect, but when you stop to think about it, it makes perfect sense. Science tells us that we are herbivores by nature, that 35 million years of primate evolution have made our bodies the way they are, and that that can’t be undone by a few thousand years of meat eating. Our bodies were designed to eat plants, just like the apes and other primates. We can get away with eating animal products for short periods of time, but over a lifetime the negative effects catch up with us, and our body starts to complain with symptoms of disease.

As I started to get more involved with the vegetarian movement, I learned about benefits other than just health. I learned that animal agriculture is a major culprit behind global warming, and with more than 60 billion farm animals being raised in the world today, 9 times the human population, that huge impact makes a lot of sense. Animals emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas, throughout their lives, and then there’s the carbon dioxide from fossil fuels used to grow, fertilize, harvest and transport of all the crops needed to feed those animals. Water pollution from manure and fertilizers is a huge issue, and ecological destruction, such as burning the rainforests to clear land to raise cattle, is devastating. I’ve always cared about the environment, and I love to get outdoors and hike. So this 2nd benefit of my dietary choice made perfect sense.

Then there’s the benefit to the animals as well. While I’ve loved our own cats and dogs, I hadn’t really thought about the farm animals that are just as lovable. They are not typically treated with compassion, but as commodities for our consumption. They are crammed into cages, transported in unbearable conditions, and slaughtered without compassion, all to serve our desire for meat. As Paul McCartney famously said “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarian!”

I learned that in addition to the animals themselves, there are humans affected by this industry who also deserve justice, equity and compassion. Working in a slaughterhouse is miserable work, often done by people trapped in impossible situations, such as illegal immigrants. All of this combined to make it a passion of mine to work to inspire people to go vegetarian, but don’t worry, I’m not the food police and I don’t judge what you eat. I only ask that next time you eat, you pause and take a moment to think about what you’re putting on your plate.

Ron Douglas

When I walked up to this pulpit, some of you who don’t really know me, didn’t
know that I am gay. However, ALL of you knew that I was black.

And whether you realized it or not, your brain mentally began pulling and pushing all those social pulleys and levers we’ve been exposed to over our lives that provided you with the supportive information needed to function as a human being – to be simply – AWARE. Aware of your surroundings. Aware of your current situation and preparing for a satisfactory outcome. This happens thousands of times throughout the day. And it’s fueled by our very own life experiences and exposures. This is Subconscious Bias.

Whether you like it or not, stereotypes of a black man in the United States were conjured up. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a human being acting on what you have been exposed to all your life. Sadly, those stereotypes are just that: widely held, but fixed and oversimplified images or ideas of a particular type of person or thing.

Subconcsious bias is right now preparing you for this Talk. As a white person, your Subconcsious biases have begun to prepare you for some possible discomfort due to the subject matter. It is not a fun, feel-good topic. It’s tiring and often overwhelming. And who wants to talk about this on a Sunday morning? Well, I do. Because I don’t have the luxury to turn away from it. I live with it every single day, hour, and minute of my life. So let’s do this, shall we? Oh, and one more thing – it’s going to take more than 5 minutes.

• Subconcsious bias is a neutralizing term that dilutes the negative connotations of racism.
• Conscious bias is awareness of color and understanding of how the color of someone else affects a person.
• Conscious awareness means perpetually transcending how one was taught to view differences.

Today, I’m going to do my part and demonstrate how subconscious bias and conscious hate have brought this country where it is today. These terms are at the crux of the social justice and racism dialogue permeating our lives today. I will give you just a few examples demonstrating how conscious hate was built into the fabric of the world and, more importantly, the United States of America – the Land of the Free. And I’ll also give you some very easy homework to further bolster your knowledge and continue your participation in the discussion of social justice.

Conscious Hate in America’s History

As the saying goes, history is written by the victor. History is often not grounded in facts; rather, the winner’s interpretation of them prevails. The victors can provide the details from their perspective, forcing their narrative down on the people. In America, that victor is the white man.

Many middle-class white people like to think that they got to where they are today by virtue of their merit – hard work, intelligence, pluck, and maybe a little luck. And while they may be sympathetic to the plight of others, you close down when you hear the words “affirmative action” or “racial preferences.” You worked hard; you made it on your own – why don’t ‘they’? After all, it’s been over 50 years since the Civil Rights Act was passed.

What is often not acknowledged is that racial preferences have a long, institutional history in this country – a white history. Here are a few ways in which government programs and practices have channeled wealth and opportunities to white people at the expense of others.

Early Racial Preferences

Affirmative action in the American “workplace” began in the late 17th century when European indentured servants – the source of unfree labor on the new tobacco plantations of Virginia and Maryland – were replaced by enslaved Africans. In exchange for their support and their policing of the growing slave population, lower-class Europeans won new rights, entitlements, and opportunities from the planter elite.

White Americans were also given a head start with the help of the U.S. Army. The 1830 Indian Removal Act, for example, forcibly relocated Cherokee, Creeks, and other eastern Indians west of the Mississippi River to make room for white settlers. The 1862 Homestead Act followed suit, giving away millions of acres – for free – of what had been Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. Ultimately, 270 million acres were converted to private hands of overwhelmingly white settlers under Homestead Act provisions.

The 1790 Naturalization Act permitted only “free white persons” to become naturalized citizens, thus opening the doors to European immigrants but not others. Only citizens could vote, serve on juries, hold office, and hold property. In this century, Alien Land Laws passed in California and other states reserved farm land for white growers by preventing Asian or Mexican immigrants, ineligible to become citizens, from owning or leasing land. Racial barriers to naturalized U.S. citizenship weren’t removed until the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952, and white racial preferences in immigration remained until 1965.

When slavery ended, its legacy lived on not only in the impoverished condition of Black people but in the wealth and prosperity that accrued to white slaveowners and their descendants. Economists who try to place a dollar value on how much white Americans have profited from 200 years of unpaid slave labor, including interest, begin their estimates at $1 trillion.

Jim Crow laws, instituted in the late 19th and early 20th century and not overturned in many states until the 1960s, reserved the best jobs, neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals for white people.

The Advantages Grow, Generation to Generation

Less known are more recent government racial preferences, first enacted during the New Deal in 1933 by President Franklin D Roosevelt, which aimed to restore prosperity to Americans. In other words, wealth was directed to white families that continue to shape life opportunities and chances today.

The landmark Social Security Act of 1935 provided a safety net for millions of workers, guaranteeing them an income after retirement. But the act specifically excluded two occupations: agricultural workers and domestic servants, who were predominately African American, Mexican, and Asian. As low-income workers, they also had the least opportunity to save for retirement. As a result, they couldn’t pass wealth on to their children. It was just the opposite. Instead, their children had to support them.

Like Social Security, the 1935 Wagner Act helped establish an important new right for white people. Gaining unions the power of collective bargaining helped millions of white workers gain entry into the middle class over the next 30 years. But the Wagner Act permitted unions to exclude non-whites and deny them access to better-paid jobs and union protections and benefits such as health care, job security, and pensions.

But another racialized New Deal program, the Federal Housing Administration, helped generate much of the wealth that so many white families enjoy today.
These revolutionary programs made it possible for millions of average white Americans – but not others – to own a home for the first time. The government set up a national neighborhood appraisal system, explicitly tying mortgage eligibility to race. Integrated communities were ipso facto deemed a financial risk and made ineligible for home loans, a policy known today as “redlining.” Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government-backed $120 billion of home loans – of which more than 98% went to whites. Of the 350,000 new homes built with federal support in northern California between 1946 and 1960, fewer than 100 went to African Americans.

These government programs made possible the new segregated white suburbs that sprang up around the country after World War II. Moreover, government subsidies for municipal services helped develop and enhance these suburbs further, fueling commercial investments.

According to the Census, whites are more likely to be segregated than any other group. In 1993, 86% of suburban whites still lived in neighborhoods with a black population of less than 1%. By 2018, 79% of suburban whites lived in communities with less than 8% black population. FYI, Seattle is the sixth “whitest” big city in the country, with 60% of its population being white.

Reaping the Rewards of Racial Preference

One result of the generations of preferential treatment for whites is that a typical white family today has on average eight times the assets, or net worth, of a typical African American family. Even when families of the same income are compared, white families have more than twice the wealth of Black families.
Much of that wealth difference can be attributed to the value of one’s home and how much one inherited from parents.

Those with wealth pass their assets on to their children – by financing a college education, lending a hand during hard times, or assisting with the down payment for a home. Some economists estimate that up to 80 percent of lifetime wealth accumulation depends on these intergenerational transfers. The white advantage is passed down from parent to child to grandchild. As a result, the racial wealth gap – and the head start enjoyed by whites – appears to have grown since the civil rights days.

In 1865, just after Emancipation, it is not surprising that African Americans owned only 0.5 percent of the total worth of the United States. But by 1990, a full 125 years after the abolition of slavery, Black Americans still possessed only a meager 1 percent of national wealth. As legal scholar John Powell (sic) says in the documentary Race – The Power of an Illusion, “The slick thing about whiteness is that whites are getting the spoils of a racist system even if they are not personally racist.”

But rather than recognize how “racial preferences” have tilted the playing field and given whites a head start in life, many whites continue to believe that race does not affect our lives – when the truth is “race does not affect YOUR LIFE.” Instead, you chastise others for not achieving what you have; you even invert the situation and accuse non-whites of using “the race card” to advance themselves.

Sociologist Dalton Conley’s research shows that a fascinating thing happens when we compare the performance of families across racial lines who make not just the same income but also hold similar net worth. Many racial disparities in education, graduation rates, welfare usage, and other outcomes disappear. The “performance gap” between whites and non-whites is a product not of nature but of unequal circumstances.

Often, many have fallen on the seemingly safe – yet tired byline – “I don’t see color.” As a way of demonstrating how you aren’t prejudiced, and you embrace diversity. How can you possibly fix something you don’t believe you see?
Dammit, I NEED YOU TO SEE ME! Black Lives Matter! And yes, All Lives Matter. No one refutes that. But right now, today, we’re talking about BLACK LIVES!

Homework
So how can you learn more and better prepare yourself to become an ally for change? Check out these documentaries:

13th: Netflix: This documentary explored the ways this system of slavery contributed to the racism that exists in America today. The 13th amendment keeps the provision of legal slavery; that is, slavery is legal as a form of criminal punishment. The southern states of America highly criminalized petty offenses, using this as an excuse to arrest freemen and force them to work. The south is blamed for often depriving the blacks of all forms of political participation.

Race: The Power of an Illusion: PBS, On Demand: Vimeo.com: A 3-part, 3-hour PBS Documentary, is available for rent on-demand on VIMEO.com for $4.99 or $2.99 per episode. If you watch any of this documentary, focus on “Part 2: The Story We Tell.”

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