Into Liberation: A podcast about transformative change, inclusion, and building a more just and compassionate world
Into Liberation is a production of VISIONS, Inc, a non-profit organization that offers effective tools to help individuals and organizations communicate across differences and forge connections that drive collective success.
Since 1984, we’ve offered research-based, time-tested approaches to cross-cultural learning that invite participants to engage in equity and inclusion work, starting at the personal and interpersonal levels and expanding to include changes toward institutional and cultural levels.
Whether it’s a book club, around the family dinner table, a school board meeting, or within your company — VISIONS provides actionable approaches that empower people to identify actions, explore their motivations, and effectively move through sometimes complex situations with respect and humanity for others and their differences.
Learn more about our work at www.visions-inc.org.
Into Liberation: A podcast about transformative change, inclusion, and building a more just and compassionate world
Navigating Complexities in Liberatory work with Terry Berman
Today I’m excited to introduce you to Terry Berman, a senior VISIONS consultant, elder, and mentor to many of newer VISIONS consultants as they have come into this work.
Terry grew up in a politically active Jewish family in South Africa, witnessing firsthand the courageous activism of her parents, whose anti-apartheid work forced the family into exile. Terry shares her story, reflecting on the complexities around her white identity and how her early experiences informed a lifetime dedicated to social justice and activism.
In this conversation, we talk about Terry's movement from apartheid-era South Africa to the challenges of navigating life in the UK, where she faced deep antisemitism and sexism, to the San Francisco Bay Area where she became deeply involved in women's rights and the LGBTQ community, organizing against police violence and doing solidarity work in Central America before connecting with VISIONS.
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About us
Into Liberation: A podcast about transformative change, equity, and liberation is a production of VISIONS, Inc, a non-profit that offers effective tools that help individuals and organizations communicate and forge connections across differences that drive collective success.
Since 1984, we’ve offered research-based, time-tested approaches to cross-cultural learning that invite participants to engage in equity and inclusion work, starting at the personal and interpersonal levels and expanding to include changes toward institutional and cultural levels.
VISIONS offers actionable approaches that empower people to identify actions, explore their motivations, and effectively move through complex situations with respect and humanity for others and their differences.
Any opinions and views expressed by the speakers are their own and do not reflect the positions of VISIONS, Inc.
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Music credit: Tim Hall @tv_hall
Hello, you're listening to Into Liberation, a podcast about transformative change, equity and working against oppression. I'm Lina Achter, director of Programs with Visions Inc. Welcome. Today I'm excited to introduce you to Terry Berman, a senior Visions consultant and elder who has also been a mentor to many of the newer consultants who've come into this work in the last few years. Terry is originally from South Africa, where she spent her formative years before her family went into political exile in the UK because of their anti-apartheid activism, after which she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has been ever since. Terry was key to establishing Vision's presence on the West Coast in the late 80s and 90s and has also been a vital part of ensuring that our model and curriculum are being passed on to the next generation of Visions consultants.
Speaker 1:In this conversation, we talk about her growing up in South Africa and how her consciousness about liberatory work developed as she moved across the globe and engaged in various forms of activism and social justice work, and then how she connected with Visions. I learned a great deal about Terry in this conversation that I didn't know before, including that this work, which she is extraordinarily good at, was an interesting shift in career for her. That and more coming up. Hi everybody, I'm very excited to be here with a mentor and friend and colleague, terry Berman. Hi, terry, hi, thank you so much for agreeing to do this. I've been very much looking forward to this conversation. So, for people who aren't familiar with you, your work, who you are, who you are to Visions, would you introduce yourself briefly?
Speaker 2:Sure, I am, I guess, considered a senior consultant, lead consultant with Visions, and I've been with the organization about 35 years working in different capacities Beautiful.
Speaker 1:I mean, I first got to know you as a mentor to my cohort as we were coming in and I'd love to hear a little bit about how you think about mentorship a little bit later in this conversation and to the extent that you're willing to share. I know that you've had and this is a similarity we have experiences growing up in a number of different countries before deciding to settle in the states, starting with growing up in Pretoria, if I remember correctly no, no, I grew up in.
Speaker 1:Johannesburg. Yeah, will you tell us a little bit about your early story?
Speaker 2:Sure. So my parents were first-generation immigrants, jewish, from Eastern Europe and various other parts. I won't get into all the details of their origins. They were radical, they were involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, they were part of the Communist Party and then subsequently left. With the invasion of Hungary they actually formed an underground movement and were involved in sabotage and other forms of resistance.
Speaker 2:So just to sort of contextualize their history, because their commitment, I feel like, was formative for me, it was complex, you know, because I felt like I got a really early education about the realities of South Africa. My parents were in the townships. I was in the townships. We had contact, a lot of African people coming through our house, even though it was illegal, and living with us etc. And I feel like that very early on I had a profound sense of the injustice because I saw it, that was going on, and my parents would talk about it, you know, very openly and I don't think kind of tried to protect me from the realities of what was happening. And so I think my sense of justice was was formed very, very, very soon in my life.
Speaker 2:I mean, I can remember at four years old being with my nanny and seeing the mistreatment she experienced and this is someone I loved, you know and being outraged, and I think one of the things that I came to understand was that I I had deep shame about the fact that I was white, even as my parents were sort of struggling and I had pride in what they were doing. I. So the way I managed that was to sort of like, get into I'm better, they're better and we're better, you know, than the white people who support apartheid Right. So it's complicated, like that child mind.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm not only child, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I'm just saying that was sort of how I managed the contradictions in my experience and I think one of the things that was also interesting is that that position that we sat in, you know, in our community was that I was very othered. My parents when they were in prison, their names were printed in the paper and people would you know, like your, your parents are criminals. You know, oh, wow, yeah. And you know, when I was younger, I wanted to invite a friend from this is I'm talking like preschool to come and play and their family wouldn't let them come and play with me because you know of who my parents were, wow, okay, so your parents fled europe during world war ii.
Speaker 2:My grandparents, grandparents okay, my grandparents fled europe during the pogroms, and then my father actually did, did fight in the war. Okay, okay, yeah, so no, my parents are. You know, they they're their first generation who were born. Got it okay. Got it, got it, got it okay. Yeah, so I'm second generation born in south africa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for people who aren't necessarily familiar with the details of how apartheid work, would you describe like how the spatial segregation worked in terms of?
Speaker 2:your neighborhood. Oh yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think it was deliberately geographically designed to isolate people from one another and that the only way in which black people could come into white space, which was wealthy space relative to where they lived, you know, they concentrated them, you know, essentially in sort of like ghettos that were called townships, and then the way it was constructed was that black people's role was to serve white people, basically, and to service the system, but they had no rights. And you know, this idea that it was sort of separate, equal, was a total fallacy and it was just a way to sort of exploit. So people had to have passes in order to come into the white space and prove that they were there legally to work. That was the only, and if they weren't working, they were sent to Bantustans, you know, or families couldn't live with each other, because if they weren't being so co-productive, working, then they were isolated in these very arid areas that had been identified townships.
Speaker 2:What I got to witness was the different quality of of life, you know, even for the educated black people that were around us. You know, I know my mother worked with like the leadership of the ANC, you know was sort of an educator and we were with some of the elite and the way, you know, the conditions under which they were living was so different from how we were living and we were with some of the elite and the way you know the conditions under which they were living was so different from how we were living and we were not wealthy you know, but relatively, we were extremely, you know, compared to.
Speaker 2:And so I saw that and I mean, I remember being a little girl in the township with my dad going to some event, and it was winter time, and this little girl was said to me oh I like a black kid, oh I like your coat. And she didn't have a coat on and it was really cold. And so I started to take my coat off and give it to her. My father was no, no, you know, because I think I had that sense of unfairness, you know, and I already had that feeling of wanting to change it.
Speaker 1:And the kids you were going to school with? Was it other Jewish?
Speaker 2:kids Dominantly white. I wasn't in a strong Jewish community. My circle of friends, my family circle of friends, were family and other Jews. My family circle of friends were family and other Jews, and particularly you know, yeah, I would say that a considerable number of the white people involved in the struggle were Jewish. It was my experience when I started getting involved in activism as well. That's like we didn't talk about it that much a little bit, but we were predominantly Jewish, All the white people that I was working with. That's the sort of pride I have for that part of my Jewish heritage is the Jewish socialist arm of the Jewish experience, if you will.
Speaker 1:I know that your family moved to the UK. Yeah.
Speaker 2:How old were you? I was almost nine, so I was young. My parents, you know, like I said, they'd been incarcerated and then they were in hiding and then I guess my dad had been arrested again and he was let off on a technicality. But the special branch officer told him look, we have enough on you to put the two of you under house arrest for a long time. And you know, my parents were talking about it. I was about seven years old and my parents said that they were talking about it and apparently I said I don't know that I said this, but this is what my mom tells me is that they were talking about it. And I said are you't know that? I said this? But this is what my mom tells me is that they were talking about it. And I said are you going to get arrested again? And they said very likely. I said, then we should leave. And they said when I said that that clinched it for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. Yeah, I can imagine it becomes different when you have kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so they felt like a response. I think they kind of caught the profound impact it was having on us. It was pretty intense.
Speaker 1:Out of curiosity, what kind of activities were they engaging in?
Speaker 2:Well, you know they were part of ARM and they were involved in. Well, I know my dad was involved in sort of moving people across the border. They did sabotage and helped organize and they were doing that in south africa yeah okay, okay got it.
Speaker 1:Okay. That kind of thing that was happening okay. Thank you, I'm sorry I got the timeline a little bit mixed up, okay oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And they continued to support the struggle in England, you know. So it took a while for us to get out of the country. We got out of the country and we went to Israel, first because my mother has family there and I think they were considering living in Israel. But when we looked at the picture there, my parents were like, yeah, from the frying pan into the fire. I don't think so. You know, I felt like my parents. It was very hard to leave South Africa. I mean, even though I said that to my parents, I don't remember it, but I do know that it was a profoundly difficult move for me, and the way they sold it was that, you know, britain was better. They had tried to come to the States but they couldn't because they had been members of the Communist Party. Was this?
Speaker 1:still on the immigration. Oh, wow Okay.
Speaker 2:And so they decided on England and they said you know well, england has anti-discrimination laws, it's so much better. You know, said you know well, england has anti-discrimination laws, it's so much better you know, so I expected a very different world than I found it was very depressing.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was very depressed. Where did you move to? So we moved to London. So there was actually a large South African community there, many of them also, you know, activists, and so that community kind of held us. You know, they found a flat for us and we were living in a very small flat or you know, I have three sisters and the six of us were living in a two room flat and then we did a sort of sublet type situation where a family was traveling for a while and we lived in their house until my parents could get work and get settled.
Speaker 2:And it was a huge culture shock for me. One would think it's an English speaking country and England had such a large part of colonizing South Africa. You know that it would not be as intense as it was, but it was very intense and I had, I was very shocked by the level of racism I experienced and saw there and also the level of antisemitism and it was so overt and out there in some ways, in ways I hadn't experienced in South Africa, that level of antisemitism.
Speaker 1:Interesting Was that, like the big part of the culture, shock just how the people were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. Yes, it was just the climate, I have to say. I mean I remember this time, you know, my family had a sort of like practice of going for walks together, like on Sunday, and I remember standing at the windows Sunday morning and looking at the weather and starting to cry because Very different climate.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, you know, I mean, I acculturated but it was hard. I was bullied. I was pretty severely bullied in elementary school. It was stuff around gender. It was like the boys were very jealous of me. I was very physical, I was fast, I was like you know, could do, I could swim really well. You know, it's like I come from a I come from a physical culture, right, you know, I was outside all the time riding my bike, playing, and I was strong, you know, and and yeah, the boys kind of like went after me and I had a very profound I mean this is just a little side a very profound gender lesson in that experience.
Speaker 2:In that one time it got so bad. The boys were like throwing stones at me on my way home and you know, they hit me. I was bleeding, I was like terrified, you know, and I ran into someone's house and refused to leave until someone came to pick me up. I was so scared, you know. So then the cow was out the bag and so my parents, you know, got involved, which was one of my fears that it was going to get way worse, if right.
Speaker 2:I snitched and the head mistress called in all the boys and had a chat with them. And then she called me in and had a chat with me separately and I said to one of the boys I didn't, I didn't say anything, you know, they're like, we know, we know, you know. Then the headmistress said to me well, you know, you know, when you're a girl, you need to kind of play it down. You don't never want to be better than a boy, because they can't handle it, you know. Oh, wow, so you know, you just really need to to pull it back a little.
Speaker 2:Wow, right, I was so angry, I was so angry and I couldn't say anything wow, wow this was age, what it must have been 10, 11, 10, 10, because then I 11, I went to to secondary school. Yeah, such a trip, yeah, the stuff that in my life around gender particularly, it got very explicit in britain was I had a teacher who said you know, boys were smarter than girls in the classroom now, I suspect that that was different from messaging you were getting at home.
Speaker 2:Totally. I think part of why, you know, the transition was difficult for me was because I was very different and my mom, you know my mom was a feminist, but you know, I will say you know. My mom would say you know, I think a couple of things that exemplify her sort of experience of being a woman in the world, in the world of work, you know, that was dominated by men, was you've got to be 10 times better than a man, was one message, and the other message was never learn to type or you'll get stuck.
Speaker 1:I mean probably very good advice.
Speaker 2:Although I regret not learning to type Fair enough. Yeah, but a couple of things just to exemplify that. Yeah, so she here was this of like, and yet you know I had a pretty kind of patriarchal father, so it was a both end, yeah kind of patriarchal father.
Speaker 1:So it was a both end. Yeah, so you mentioned that you went to dance school out of British equivalent of high school. Tell me a little bit about that what that was like.
Speaker 2:So it was like it was like stepping back into the Victorian era. It was a tiny little school and it had no heating, and we would. It was a dance school it was. I got I got a scholarship to go there. It was a little private school dance school and you know, I had studied dance since I was four and we would, you know, there was one little heater and we'd kind of stand there in our little leotards trying to warm up before we had to do ballet first thing in the morning and then we were like all ages in one classroom with one teacher. It really was a whole profoundly weird experience. Interesting. And how long were you there? I was there till I was 15. Oh, wow, okay, okay, yeah from 11 to 15.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, okay, and was this like the?
Speaker 2:residential sort of situation. No, no, no, I, I lived with my family and it was a day school. Yeah, yeah, they didn't have a boarding school aspect to it. It was very tiny. I think at one point there was only about 20 students, you know. Okay, and then, following that, so then I went to Kingsway College for further education and that was a day release school for working people who didn't have an education and then people who hadn't been successful through the public school system. So there were day release students and full-time students like myself, and I went there to try and finish the O-levels that I needed, because that's the British system.
Speaker 2:You do O-levels around 15, 16, and then 17, 18,. You do your A-levels, which essentially you do. Three that you know usually determine what you're going to study in university. You need at least a minimum of five to six O-levels and three A-levels in order to get into university, and the more you have, the more chance you have of getting into, the more elite. You know, and I was wanting to really go to university. I was.
Speaker 2:That was the trajectory I sort of had for myself, but because of my dyslexia and because my dyslexia didn't get recognized I mean, it didn't dyslexia didn't get recognized until much later. There were no, there were no accommodations. So when I wrote my exams I was always at a disadvantage, because you know the British system is that everything is essay. You know it doesn't matter. British system is that everything is essay. You know, it doesn't matter what it is, everything is essay, and so geography is essay form. You know everything other than math, obviously, which I passed math. And so, because it was a progressive school, they actually had a different system. So not everything counted on your exams and that's how I got through, except for the A-levels. A-levels, the exam weighted very heavily and, of course, without accommodation, I performed poorly. So I ended up going. I got a scholarship to the London School of Contemporary Dance, okay, after Kingsway College, that's where I went.
Speaker 1:London School of Contemporary Dance, and how long were you there?
Speaker 2:I was there for four years. It was kind of like my university experience, you know, without it being a full university experience because it was primarily a dance theatre focus and it was both a wonderful experience and also very, very awful, in that that world is really awful. I had a lot of challenges and I saw some of my friends, like you know, just I was struggling and there's, you know, a lot, of, a lot of food disorder stuff. I had it. You know, most of the girls did that. I was around. So there was that side of it. It just the oppressive nature of that world, the competitive nature of that world, and then there was also, like this, incredibly, like camaraderie, creative. You know, I got to do some fabulous creative stuff. You know I got to choreograph stuff and perform all over the place and I was in this sort of circus theater group that our theater teacher put together for the summer and we toured England with it and it was beautiful, it was total fun.
Speaker 1:I imagine that that's a very gendered world too.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Absolutely and very controlled by men, and the sort of aesthetic was sort of a male aesthetic in terms of what was okay. And when I was there I was like I want to start a fat dance group because I've gotten so much flack about being fat. Meanwhile I was like the size I am now and I was told I was that.
Speaker 1:You know, I get a little anxious when you put space up like that and I was told I was that you know.
Speaker 2:I get a little anxious when you put space up like that. I became a super rad after that man, that experience.
Speaker 1:I can imagine. And then, how did you end up in the Bay Area?
Speaker 2:So my sister was living here and I decided that I wanted to. I wanted to leave Britain. I needed to. I needed to get out of Britain. I think I needed to get away from my family. I was in a relationship and I didn't know how to get out of that. I needed to get out of that, so I just left and came here that's very early 20s of you leave the country the man I was involved with followed me.
Speaker 2:So I had to actually deal in the end. But and yeah, I came out here and I was theoretically only coming for a year, but I came out and I got stuck and you know, I know I was working in London, I was working in a refuge for battered women, okay, yeah, and I was also very much involved in Essex Road Women's Center doing a lot of work around women's health, abortion rights, you know just that whole movement. I was very involved in that. And so when I came here, the very first thing I did I think I'd been two weeks here and went to this violence against women conference and met up with some folks and got involved in forming a network of in this country they called refuges, I think, shelters. No, they were refuge in Britain.
Speaker 2:I can't remember now the language, but anyway, yeah, yeah so we sort of formed a network across the west coast of organizations working in an attempt to do more advocacy around violence against women.
Speaker 2:So that was sort of, like you know, my first step into my, my sort of continued radical work. Because when I was in Britain I was a squatter and I was, I was organizing in my area as I lived in Islington, and so we had a huge organization in Islington that myself and my friend were helping lead. I realized I just had sort of a natural affinity for facilitation, I guess, because I just stepped up into leadership and that was a very empowering experience to be involved in that movement, engaged in doing grassroots organizing and and actually that also, I think, was where I started learning some of the sort of carpentry and plumbing and electric skills that I learned because you had to do that in order to kind of get your house up and running. Pretty I did some pretty terrible things. I mean like I'm, like I can't believe I did that, like stealing the huge fuse out of you know, like really dangerous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you got involved in the basically women's anti-violence movement in San Francisco and then building and things like that, and I want to ask you about that in a moment what was your experience around being gay in that movement when you intersected with it? I imagine it was a particular thing out in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2:One of the reasons I think I was attracted to the Bay Area was because there was such a strong presence and I came out when I was here. Like I have sort of officially came out here, and I think part of my draw here was because that's the trajectory I was on. I had been on quite early in my life but sort of like hadn't been able to sort of find my way there. And as I got more involved in women's liberation movement, that became more of a possibility and so when I came here I came out and I mean it took a little while but I found myself there and so that was liberating for me. And so I did do work directly, you know, involved in like I was in a group, I was in several groups and one of them was like organizing against police violence, against the LGBTQ community, and I sort of like pulled my theater experience. We did these little skits and you know education skits and I mean it was creative, it was fun, it was interesting. What I was saying about being Jewish is that predominant there were Jewish lesbians in these groups that I was in, you know. So that was potent for me.
Speaker 2:And then I got involved in the African People's Solidarity Committee, and that was a different experience about being queer, because then it was like it was just all about being white solidarity workers and there was no room to talk about intersectionality and when we did like at one point we had a whole conversation about class and gender differences.
Speaker 2:You know how that was playing out in the movement and that got squished by the leadership, the Black leadership at the time, and part of what had drawn me to it was that I'd gone to a sort of study group that they organized. You know which was one of the ways that they pulled people into the movement. And actually I do want to just say that I think that it was a cult. I don't think it was a cult. It was a cult because of some of the things that I now come to understand. Unfortunately, my best friend got in it heavy and that's why I say it was a cult, because of what I saw, her experience, and you know I was more on the periphery because I'm not very good at sort of people like oh, no, no yeah, I.
Speaker 2:I went to the study group and they talked about intersectionality. There I was very excited because I was interested in navigating all my different experiences and I think, if I'm honest, my focus had been up until that point on my own target experience. I was really navigating what it meant to be a woman, particularly to be Jewish, even though I feel like I didn't always have a language for how much anti-Semitism had been impacting me About being an immigrant, even though I understood that I had relative privilege by virtue of my class and race. But my focus was really on my target level. You know what it? Growing up with a learning disability, all of those things that I had felt other than targeted. That was sort of a driver. And yet as I got involved in the solidarity movement, then I was getting pushed to kind of look at my privilege and I knew that from South Africa. You know I understood where I sat, knew that from South Africa. You know I understood where I sat. You know it wasn't like it was new for me, but I don't think I. I was very interested in how do we navigate all those differences, the ways in which we're complex beings, and so when I was working in the solidarity, particularly the African People's Solidarity Committee that experience of being shut down around talking about intersectionality and experience of being shut down around talking about intersectionality and sort of being told essentially that if we talked about any other issue we were really like minimizing, we were detracting from the importance of race and anti-racism and I felt like that was something wrong. That was really not working for me.
Speaker 2:And then I subsequently got involved in doing more solidarity work for Central America and I went to Nicaragua and helped build houses there. And that experience, both working, you know, in the solidarity movement, working in the left, seeing the ways the left were fighting with each other and I think I told you before that I like had this feeling, like I don't know if it would be good if these people came into a power, because I I was like I'd be scared if these people came into power, because I really felt like we weren't living what we were talking about theoretically, like we were like reproducing the very things that we were talking about wanting to change and we didn't have a language or a practice to be different. And I think, my experience building houses in Nicaragua the first time I went with a mixed group of people. And the second time, at ORC, I was close with a Nicaraguan woman who was a mover and groover in Nicaragua and we worked together and formed a women's brigade and the idea was to teach women construction skills. So we, like, brought down toolkits for everyone and you know, we fundraised so we could build houses there and In the experience of building those houses we ran into some real cultural differences.
Speaker 2:So it was actually around gender, like the men wanted to help the women and help us build and then they took over and we were very reactive about that. All the North American women I think there was eight of us and there were eight Nicaraguan women and we were like no, no, no, this is terrible. And we were trying to push back and the women were like, no, let them do it. And so we stopped production, you know, and we had to have because the women were angry ass about our response, you know the Nicaraguan women and so they were like, look, we live with these men, this is our really, this is our community and this is how we roll, not the language they use. But you know, essentially they were like, look, we live with these men, this is our community and this is how we roll, not the language they use. But you know, essentially they were saying you can't dictate to us how this has to look Right and we have to find another way, because in that moment it would not have been okay to tell them to stop doing what they were doing. So we were like, yeah, we heard that, you know, we had to account for the way in which we had managed it. And then I was like but we came here to give you the skills and if you let them do it, you're never going to learn the skills. So we need to convey that to the men in the community that while we appreciate their help, we actually want them to help us by stepping out, you know.
Speaker 2:And so the last two houses that we built because you know, we built them one at a time we laid the foundation and then we did brick buildings and put the structures on it. The women agreed. We talked to the men in the community, they backed off and we ended up building the houses all by ourselves. And they were like well, we can't mix the cement like the men do. I was like no, you can't mix the cement like the men do, because we just don't have the upper body strength like they have, but we have strength, and so we're going to mix them in wheelbarrows and do it in a relay, one bag at a time, so that we can do it in a way that works for us.
Speaker 2:And so we poured that whole foundation, one bag at a time, mixing and pouring, mixing and pouring in a little kind of relay, and we built, you know, carried these heavy-ass posts for the frame of the house, pure concrete, all of us, all eight of us, popping these up. I mean, it was so empowering. It was empowering for me and it was empowering for them. And that experience taught me about the level of assumption and sort of like our privilege and the ways in which we had approached it. I was like I want to figure out a way how to do things differently and in a way that experience helped me see the possibility of being in collaboration rather than like doing it my way, doing it our way right, and like hearing the difference and navigating the difference. And I think it was soon after that that I decided that I wanted to get into At that time it was like I heard about it as cross-cultural communication Interesting.
Speaker 1:So you said. When we talked before we met for this recording, you told me that you transitioned to consulting from building.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I came to this country, I worked at the People's Cultural Center. I had already been a squatter, right, so I'd already got a little bit of knowledge around. I had, like, run electricity in my house, you know, I'd done plumbing, and the squatters we like had conferences where we would teach each other, you know. I mean first you have to know how to change a lock, because you have to break in and then change the lock, and then you can like, yeah, you know you prove occupancy, right, that's the first thing you do. To prove occupancy, you change the lock. And so I learned how to do. I had to in order to get the house functional, and so when I came here, I started volunteering at the People's Cultural Center, which was like a community center that they were starting that had cultural events. They were going to have a cafe that was very similar to what is in the East Bay called La Peña. The group of Chilean exiles started, and so the organizers had raised funds and we were fixing up this building, and so I volunteered, and then the group of people who were doing that work formed a little like little company and we were doing renovation work, and so I subsequently decided to continue.
Speaker 2:After many other things that I did, from being a bike messenger to working in a hospital, you know I mean I just did whatever I could to survive working in a hospital. You know, I mean I just did whatever I could to survive I decided to join the union and so I was a union carpenter and I left I mean not like I left the union, but I started doing just more remodeling with a friend and that was primarily how I had taken a little hiatus and I tried to learn to do printing and I ran a printing press for a while and then I went back to carpentry and worked as an independent not contractor, but an independent person and did a lot of renovation, mostly, yeah.
Speaker 2:So then I was like, okay, this is really hard on the body and all this time I was doing all this other stuff. I was, you know, I was doing all my political work and I was very interested in how do we do this differently. So I studied neurolinguistics programming. First I had done re-evaluation counseling. Then I studied neurolinguistics programming, then I did therapeutic hypnosis. I studied that independently. And then I did therapeutic hypnosis. I studied that independently. And then I did community mediation.
Speaker 2:All of this was like I think I'm trying to sort of find a place to kind of navigate what I was experiencing in my political life. So I'm working as a carpenter and doing all these other things. And then I realized that I needed to get out of carpentry. I couldn't sustain it physically. It's very demanding. And I also wanted to in a way marry my political life with my survival, because I didn't feel like I could sustain the output that I was. It was a lot. Yeah, output that I was, it was a lot.
Speaker 2:And so a friend of mine had talked about cross-cultural communication and I was like, oh yeah, that's what I want to do, you know, and I didn't know what it was, but I, I went to the Summer Institute for Cross-Cultural Communication. I went to every workshop I could and that's sort of how I started, you know, went to new bridges, a bunch of different things. And in 89, a friend of mine, who was then called Ildugudieres Valdakin, said, oh, you have to look at this video, and she shared a video about talking about modern oppression, oppression, internalized oppression. She, I was like, wow, that's great. She's like, yeah, well, come, you know, you should take a workshop. Then it was called changing racism, a personal approach to multiculturalism. Oh, okay, so in 89 I went to that workshop and I was, yes, after all the things I had tried, I was like, yes, this is it.
Speaker 2:And I, you know, I was in an interracial relationship at the time. It was very transformative for me to so understand give me a language for understanding some of the dynamics that were challenging in our relationship. At a very personal level. It was profound. And then it was also very transformative for me to sort of like process some of the, I think, unhealed places that I was carrying from my growing up in South Africa, in particular around the complexity of my relationship as a white person, as a white child in that environment, and so it was very healing for me and I thought, yeah, this is what I want to do. I told Val, I want to do this. So here I am, 35 years later.
Speaker 1:Amazing and you connected with visions right when well, I think it's hard to say a particular tipping point in in terms of south african history, and I know that things were extremely intense and chaotic in the 80s oh yeah, yeah, I mean that, yes, and, and I think things were pretty intense in here too.
Speaker 2:you know, yes, of course, and you know the the sort of Reagan era and just some of the consequences of that and, like I said, and in my personal life, I think, the ways in which I don't think I had really brought sufficient attention to what it meant to sit where I sat as a in my privilege, like I think I had primarily focused on my, you know, places of being disenfranchised and I wasn't attending the same way.
Speaker 2:I mean, I knew it intellectually but I don't think in my practice or having a really fully developed language it was there and it wasn't does. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:It absolutely makes sense. Yeah, I mean in our approach, the way that we scaffold for people the affective part of unlearning and leaning into different ways of being. I think it's one of the things that differentiates our approach from so many others. And to what you're saying there's a huge difference between an intellectual understanding of privilege or lack of disadvantage and an emotionally worked through understanding. I can certainly feel the difference when I'm interacting with somebody who's done that uncomfortable affective work and come to a certain place with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yes, and so that was, and actually it was interesting because Sarah was the, was the white facilitator with Bell and some of us connected afterwards and continued meeting as white people. You know that was great. I mean I had been in a group early on in the 80s, early in the 80s, with a group of women and we were meeting as white women, as Jewish women, as people of color and working class, and so that was sort of the criteria of you know our focus to look at sort of intersectionality and it just went haywire.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't like the first time I had been in white space and then, also being talking about what it means to be white and Jewish, I'd been in Jewish space and talking about our own internalized oppression, so I'd done some of that work, but I don't think I it was was powerful for me about. You know, what you're saying is that there was an affective piece to vision's frame and it had an analysis around our practice, like how does it actually manifest and giving language to the practice of how we perpetuate these dynamics. You're talking about the modern oppression behaviors, yeah, and how to, and then what the options are for you know, noticing it and interrupting it, and for me that was like liberating, because it helped me see my own dysfunction, you know, and the ways out of my awareness I was perpetuating, the things I wanted to change, I mean the starting framework of no blame shame is also very helpful when I teach modern oppression behaviors.
Speaker 1:That's one of the things I emphasize no blame, no shame Right. We, as facilitators, are mining our lives for cringy examples to bring to the table.
Speaker 2:That's so true, that's so true, so true, so true, yeah, yeah, that's so true, so true, yeah, yeah, and you know, I, if I'm honest, I kind of learned on the job, you know, and I also. I also do just want to sort of shout out to the people that I feel like provided me with. It was a fairly new organization and I was, you know, newer when I stepped in, and so people definitely helped my development. I had the opportunity to work with a lot of the elders that are in our community and some who have gone. So I would say you know my experience of working with Ilda Gutierrez, who later became a Zen priest and is now called Rimon. It's absolutely profound in terms of my learning and my experience working with Waikesa as well. He was pretty extraordinary in his style and approach and you know, I'm profoundly grateful to have had the experience of working with him.
Speaker 2:I just want to shout out, and then I'd say you know, jean Washington was another person that I grew deeply from being in contact with Mark Wise when I started working, he was working. And of course, joe Lewis is just like the queen and, needless to say, you know the opportunity to work with Val, both as a facilitator and then later sort of working a little with her. We didn't do that much, but I feel like she's an absolute master and it's just. You know, like I said, sarah and Joan I've worked with Joan and Countess Joan.
Speaker 1:I'm just thinking, you know, of all the, of all the elders that I had the opportunity to work with, and how how much I grew from the experience and we and I realized now we were growing together so I came to know you as a mentor and you know speak of you as you were speaking of your colleagues and people who were elders to you in the Visions org and you know you were so key to bringing my cohort in. I'm curious what that process has been like for you and also about what is it that you want to make sure to pass along as people are getting into this work or continuing with the work.
Speaker 2:I feel deeply grateful that I had the opportunity. So again, I sort of like I'm very grateful to Val for bringing me in. You know, we were working together and talking about what our future looked like, told her that I had always wanted to do a training institute and she was like, wow, we've been talking about the same thing. And so, you know, I want to say that the legacy, the issue of building legacy in the organization, really was driven by Val, was driven by Val.
Speaker 2:I had been thinking more about, like us, creating it, or I had originally not necessarily with visions and thought about doing a training Institute. And then our desires sort of aligned and she said, well, we need to build our team of consultants younger consultants, you know and do some legacy planning. And I was like, okay, I'm in, you know, and so I'm very grateful for the experience because it was something I have wanted to do and felt like was really important to do. And actually I realized I had been doing Throughout my career. Yes, I had been doing it throughout my career and I had had a role to play in bringing in some of the consultants that are with us today, especially from the side of the coast. So in a way, it was sort of like a continuation of that, and some of it was just that I was very turned on to this model and I was into proselytizing.
Speaker 1:I hear that. Yes, I understand.
Speaker 2:And also because I think there was growing interest and you know we needed more people. So, and I remember Val saying we need more people, so and I remember Val saying we need more men and we had a meeting at Jane Ariel's house and that's how Jimmy and Alec came to be, you know, by inviting various men into. They stuck, you know. So I had that experience and then this was a much more formalized process of involvement and I think one of the things that it was like what I've really recognized is that when I said to you I learned on the job, I think that's what happens is you learn on the job? So there's ways that you can learn the frame, but the practice is very difficult to teach and that is the part that I mean. I feel like it was. It's been a learning experience for me.
Speaker 2:I don't think I knew how to be an educator really. You know I was feeling my way, trying to figure out the importance of being able to give people the content as a frame, a base, work with folks around, application, understand that everybody has their own understanding and interpretation and makes meaning differently. Also, that teaching process skills takes time. It takes much longer than I think we anticipate right and some of us come in more. You know our life experience, like I said, you know I had a kind of penchant for facilitation.
Speaker 2:Early in my life I was running stuff kind of organically. But some folks don't have that experience. So the sort of range of capacity for doing this work is different, based on your own lived experience and where your skill base is. So I think some people intuitively have it, some people it's a little harder, and so navigating that and trying to, I think I hit up against you know my own expectations of like there's some things I think came to me more organically.
Speaker 2:It's hard to figure out how to teach that, and so I I had to really work hard around how to sort of sit with people's process, let them go through the process they had to go through in order to to get where they needed to go. I want to say it's been a huge learning curve journey for me, as well as of like the beauty of supporting people. I mean it's so rewarding for me when I feel like we've gone on this journey together and then I see people doing the work and I'm like, wow, how fabulous is that? You know what I mean when I see their brilliance showing up and it's like it's really different from my brilliance, but it's their brilliance.
Speaker 1:You know you get me yeah, I can imagine that trying to teach this and teach all the skills that go with it is interesting to what you're saying about teaching the process, skills obviously very much resonates. There was learning the frame and the model and learning to teach everything, et cetera. And then I feel like when I was first in consulting rooms, I felt really relieved because, honestly, the way that I phrased it was like thank God there's an adult in here for when stuff comes up. Because one of the way that I phrased it was like thank God there's an adult in here for when stuff comes up, because one of the things that I had to very deeply unlearn, and unlearn through my visions, work, the internal work and also the external work is severe conflict aversion.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh, big time. And it's tracked with unlearning it in my personal life and stuff like that. And now, five years in, I'm finally at the point where, when something comes up in the room, instead of wanting to, you know, have a hole open up in the floor and swallow me up so I don't have to deal with it, I'm like okay, great, this is here, let's move towards it. Let's like name the awkward thing and work with it and that is a shift that's only really happened in, like the last year and a half.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I think that piece is very is is just practice. It is a piece around unlearning. I definitely, you know, can notice, like when I get triggered. You know, I'm much more skilled now at noticing when I'm triggered, and of course I still get triggered, you know. And then I love it sometimes when it happens, because then it's like, oh, the next teaching opportunity. I say, oh, just the other day I was in this meeting and I got triggered and this is what happened and I was so quick to notice and clean it right.
Speaker 2:That's where I'm inviting for people because, especially in my work with white people feel like they're so caught in perfectionism and not making mistakes. And I'm really about this is not about not making mistakes. There's no way, as human beings, we don't make mistakes. This is about being able to notice and clean it and address it, either in the moment or as soon as possible afterwards, you know, because that's what the work is. That is how human relationships operate, that's what makes us deepen our relationships, and conflict is part of it. So, yes, I absolutely agree with you and I think one of the things that I've had to learn too is try on. You know, I have my way of doing things and when I've worked with newer consultants and they want to try something different, I was like, no, I know Hideko really called me on that and it was really instructive, because it was like, yep, you're right, I'm totally not trying stuff on oh, how beautiful.
Speaker 2:I definitely feel like I love. I love mentoring, because you know this might sound I don't know, but I mean it's taken me a long time to actually appreciate how much, how good I am at what I do.
Speaker 1:That is a good self-awareness in there.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know, it's like it's been very hard for me because I think I didn't recognize and for a long time I didn't get like like you're good at what you do, you know, and you know that has come just with lived experience. It's not like because it's something special about me, it's just like I've been doing it a long time, like I remember someone talking about the difference between a teacher and a student is that the teacher has just been doing it longer. So I appreciate that I have come to the place in my life where it's like I'm good at what I do and I really want to be able to support other people to be good at what they do, of have some of the knowledge and experience that I can say to someone ah, have you tried this? Or Mike, what about this, you know, as an option, right? And that's why I like coaching as well.
Speaker 1:So, what would you say to people who are in this work, want to do this work? What is it that you would say from the perspective of having done it this long? What is something you want to pass on or something you would want to highlight?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the thing that has been most important for me is my commitment to living what I teach, and I think that for me, if I didn't live what I teach, then I don't think I would be as effective.
Speaker 2:But I really have been committed to the practice in my life and then I feel like I'm authentic and genuine and I'm not fronting, you know when I'm in the room and I think people see that, and so I think that's for me one of the most important things that I would convey beautiful, and then you've seen a lot of things change and also a lot of things arguably regress.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you want to see in the world?
Speaker 2:you know, I think right now I am. I love the way Val talks about we don't want to be bigots to bigots, and one of the things that I'm recognizing in this current moment is my own reactivity, my own emotional responses of scare and anger that bring me to a place of judgment, shame and blame of other people and the sort of discounting of their humanity. And so you know, my commitment, like when I said, you know, I want to live what I teach, my commitment to myself is to do the work, whatever it is that I need to do, in order to shift what's happening in me internally and my responses to what's happening in the world. You know, and that I realized I got caught in the divisive discourse that is happening. I got caught, I've gotten caught, and my commitment is to detach myself from that and to practice what I know.
Speaker 2:And so my desire is for us to figure out ways to come together and actually discount the people who are obviously angry and scared about what's happening in the world and how, why, how is it they've been impacted that we don't understand. So that's my desire, because I think that's the only way we're going to make, we're going to get some traction and make change. But but as long as we're divided, so effectively divided, we're not going to be effective. It doesn't help talking to the converted, if you will. You know we have to find ways to be in dialogue across differences.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I find to be very well interesting thinking about the history of South Africa, thinking about US history and also thinking about certain history of South Africa, thinking about US history and also thinking about certain pieces of our model is how key separation and, as much as possible, blocking and preventing the development of authentic relationships across difference, how key that is to maintaining oppressive systems. Yeah, exactly so. The emphasis that we put on being in relationship across difference, on self-management affect, on repair skills, all of that is deeply important to that. So, circling back to the beginning of our conversation, do you come back to South Africa much? When was the last time you were here?
Speaker 2:You know I came back to South Africa a lot when my mom was alive. She lived in Cape Town and I would come back on a regular basis to be with her, but it's been seven years since I've been here. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I miss it and I also made the decision that you know, I spent a lot of time there and if I have the opportunity to travel, I want to go and explore some other places. Now, sometimes I think about moving back there, but I don't know, I think that might be very difficult. Thank you, this was delightful.
Speaker 1:I just appreciate how much more of you I have the privilege of knowing.
Speaker 2:So it makes me want to know a little bit more about you, girl. I feel like I should interview you next.
Speaker 1:I'm like weirdly microphone shy, believe it or not.
Speaker 2:I read that about you.
Speaker 1:Between, like the dance and the carpentry and the squatting, like just amazing and wonderful, and thank you Really. Thank you for taking the time and for sharing your story, absolutely. If you've been with Visions for a long time or if you're just discovering us now, we welcome you. Our work is many things and, first and foremost, it is an invitation into deep culture change. Our podcast is a powerful way to connect with the organization's history and its present and, frankly, we would love more people to know about our story and our work. If you found this useful, we'd be grateful if you would leave us a review on whichever platform you're listening. If you'd like to keep up with what we have going on at Visions, please follow us on our socials. Links are in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.