Glenn's blog

Headlines Theatre is looking for participants for their upcoming presentation of Us and Them, an interactive 6-day workshop which will then lead to a theatrical performance of the play created by the workshop participants. It sounds like an amazing experience.

A while back I wrote about after homelessness, a forum theatre play presented by Headlines Theatre.

Forum theatre is a particular theatrical form that includes audience participation to re-write the story of the play. It's essentially a form of acted (experienced) dialogue.

Here is their description of Us and Them:

Have you ever found yourself ‘on the outside' in terms of identity? Have you ever experienced a deep division between 'yourself' and 'them'? Have you ever been struck by the violence of 'absolute truth'? Do you understand how the personal becomes political?

If your answer to these questions is "yes", then you have knowledge and a perspective that is valuable to this production. Having a living knowledge of the issue is an essential criteria for participation. We need a diversity of perspectives to enrich this work.

We are looking for up to twenty people to participate in a 6-­‐day Theatre for Living Workshop, exploring issues of “us and them”. No theatre experience necessary – but Come with a willingness to be open about your experiences and a desire to play! We invite YOU to join us in developing this exciting project! (We're also looking for possible cast members...)

• THE COMMUNITY WORKSHOP (AUG 29 – SEPT 3, 2011). It is very important that you are able to commit to coming to every day all day of the workshop (6 days). Each workshop participant will be paid $600 for the week and lunch will be provided daily. Being in the workshop is employment in a project with the purpose to create an artistic focal point for community dialogue and transformation.
• ARE YOU INTERESTED IN BEING A CAST MEMBER? (AUG 29 – NOV 12, 2011) Six members of the community workshop will create the Forum Theatre/Dance production along with Headlines' Artistic Director David Diamond and Motionhouse Dance/Theatre (UK) Artistic Director Kevin Finnan, and a professional design team. The community workshop will not be an audition. If you want to be considered for the cast, you will be asked to do some improvisation work with David during the initial interview. Please note, you don't have to be a professional dancer or actor to speak the physical language of dance and theatre. But you do need to be willing to "play”. Let us know if you are interested! Cast will be paid $650 per week from August 29, 2011 to November 12, 2011.

WHAT IS INTERACTIVE FORUM THEATRE?

In Forum Theatre, we show the audience the play all the way through, and then start playing it a second time. Audience members can then stop the play and enter the stage themselves, by replacing characters with whom they identify and try to solve problems or issues inside the story. The theatre becomes a creative rehearsal for transforming the world. Headlines is a global leader in Forum Theatre. Come play with us and contribute to an important exploration about "us" and "them".

This really does sound like it would be an amazing experience (although I think I will be too busy to go). I know that a lot of us have experienced being outsiders for various reasons (being gay, vegan, a person of colour, a particular gender, etc) and we each have a unique and valuable perspective on these sorts of issues.

For more information, download the full information PDF. Application deadlines are June 15 so do it soon!

For those of you who are interested in studying dialogue, I highly recommend that you check out SFU's Certificate in Dialogue and Civic Engagement. They're holding a free information session on June 2nd. It's a great program – I really enjoyed it and learned a lot.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how vegan and animal rights activists treat each other. We seem to have this tendency to forget that we are each sensitive, feeling beings who can be hurt.

Those of us who are more theoretical and appreciate a good "debate" (I'm raising my hand here) are prone to call into question the tactical and strategic decisions of others. While we may regard our "critiques" as constructive, are we actually causing harm by ignoring any psychological effects our words may have?

In certain environments debate of ideas seems to be standard and expected, but outside of academia, courtrooms, and political campaigns, how much bad feeling, resentment, and anger might it generate?

For the past 40 years or so, Royal Dutch Shell has been using "scenarios" to plan and better react to world events. In the time since they developed their first scenarios, they moved from one of the smallest energy companies in the world to one of the largest, if not the largest.

I don't know much about them as a company beyond this, so I can't speak to any of their other business practices.

I've read a few books by former members of scenario planning teams at Royal Dutch Shell. The scenario teams they put together include some of the smartest people in the world. They've made a great deal of their scenario information available to the public on their website, too.

I wonder if animal rights activists could use this process to evaluate possible scenarios and guide ourselves to a future that we want to create? Shell's scenarios involved years of research and a great deal of resources, but there must be ways we could put together less detailed and simpler scenarios that would still be useful and help to guide us.

I think that even the act of getting a group together and working on a project like this would help us all — if for nothing more than helping the people involved learn how to look at and evaluate complex systems.

What do you think?

Some resources

Scenario Planning on Wikipedia
Shell's scenarios
Scenarios: An Explorer's Guide

Do you want to see fun and exciting outreach events happen in Vancouver? Do you have ideas for music, theater, poetry, or art performances or shows that promote compassion for animals?

I am organizing another animal rights community dialogue event through Liberation BC. It's happening in July and will be focused on the topic of using entertainment (and even "fun") for outreach.

I'm still trying to sort out the exact format of the event. Some people will hopefully be coming with ideas for actual events they want to put together. Others will likely be coming to brainstorm about ideas. And other people may be there for conversation or to help other people with their ideas.

The format needs to give people space and permission to organize their own discussions – in such a way that people have a chance to hear what other people are there to work on.

I'm thinking that Open Space will likely be the best format for the event. At just 3 hours long, it will be quite compressed. Probably a half hour for the welcome and agenda setting, and four 30-minute sessions, with another half hour for a closing wrap-up. This will be a very full, but hopefully productive, afternoon.

This is the second of this series of animal rights community dialogues hosted by Liberation BC. The first event produced many ideas for ways we can work together to achieve our goals. At the conclusion of that event we determined the topics for the next 4 events. The 3 events happening later this year will be:

• Developing a local information hub: who, what, why, and how?
• Educating ourselves: becoming better activists through education and practice
• What is our message?

Register now at http://apowerfulvoice.eventbrite.com. If you have any ideas about the event, please leave them in the comments. I'd love to hear what you have to say!

I'm volunteering some of my time this year to help organize the second Vancouver ChangeCamp. It's happening on June 12.

Photo by Reading Is My Heroin

I attended last year's event and it inspired me to learn more about these kinds of events, which led me to organize Animal Advocacy Camp. It also inspired me to take the SFU Certificate in Dialogue and Civic Engagement.

I'm really looking forward to ChangeCamp this year. It's going to be held at the W2's temporary Storyeum location – which is an amazing space.

Here's the info on ChangeCamp from the event signup. If you register by May 15, registration is only $15!

WHAT IS VANCHANGECAMP: A participatory, web-enabled event to imagine and build new ways to collaborate for social change in the digital age. 

WHY: Change Camp is a collaborative, participatory and web-enabled event that is meant to explore the following questions:

• How can we help our governments be more open and responsive?
• How do we as citizens organize to get better outcomes ourselves?

WHO: Changemakers! Including but not limited to:
People making change at the ground level - community workers, non-profits, social enterprise, CED, foundations, activists, advocates, government employees
Decision-makers and government leaders
Technologists, developers, communicators, designers, other professions

Low income free entry

If the $20 fee presents a real barrier to you, don't let it! Simply email our Event Coordinator Elijah van der Giessen at eli@vandergiessen.ca to register for free. But be warned: he may try to recruit you as a volunteer! :-)

To me, collaboration has meant working closely together on project or forming coalitions to get work done and to achieve goals.

I wonder, though, if there might be more ways to collaborate? Ways that are less time and resource intensive and that let us do our own work while still fitting in with larger projects and goals?

Liberation BC is organizing a dialogue event around the topic of "How can we best work together to achieve animal rights?" We are hoping that a roomful of passionate animal rights activists can come up with some interesting and novel ways of working together that actually lighten our workloads. No one wants to work together if it just means more work, right?

Through collaborative thinking we may be able to rethink collaboration.

If you are interested in attending the event, you can register at apowerfulvoice.eventbrite.com. There is a small registration fee. The event is being held in Radha's beautiful dining room on April 10th, from 1:30 to 4:30pm.

Last week, when I was looking at the requirements for charitable status for Liberation BC, a friend of mine who works for a charity passed along some documents written by IMPACS (Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society). I can't link to their website because they folded a few years ago, in 2007, which was unfortunate.

Dissenting voices are vital to any strong democracy.

They were "committed to the protection and expansion of democracy and to strengthening civil society" (Source), which led them into a project to assess and improve Canada's charity regulations about advocacy activities by registered charities.

In 2000, IMPACS released a report, "The Law of Advocacy by Charitable Organizations" written by Richard Bridge. This report is one of the most concise and easy-to-understand outlines of the current law and regulations governing advocacy by charities, in my opinion.

This document outlines the difficulties in administering these rules, which are based on three different sources:

i) decisions of the courts (the common law); ii) the federal Income Tax Act; and iii) the administrative policies of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (Revenue Canada).

A major reason for reform would be to reduce the amount of time spent (wasted) on interpreting vague and poorly-written regulations.

More importantly though:

In addition, the advocacy rules impede critical public policy debates by preventing the full participation of charitable organizations, which often possess great expertise and understanding in their fields of endeavour. This loss of informed voices is particularly problematic at a time when the relationships between public, private, and voluntary sectors are in fundamental change. It can be argued that these rules in effect impede the freedom of expression of charitable organizations – a freedom enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Under the current system, an organization can offer services that treat the symptoms of a particular issue. They provide the example of an organization that provides assistance to people with Hepatitis C. They might support the creation a needle exchange in order to stop the spread of the disease, but if they were to lobby government to change laws so that a needle exchange could be set up, they would risk loss of their charitable status – even though they would be more effectively and directly helping to solve the problem.

The same problems exist for organizations dedicated to protecting the environment for future generations. If, for example, their activities include attempting to influence public opinion, legislation or government policy in relation to habitat or species protection, pollution standards and enforcement or other basic issues, they could violate the current charity rules and lose or be denied charitable status. Indeed, these problems exist for organizations in all areas of charitable activity.

There's a lot more fascinating information in the report, and it's only about 30 pages long, so I'd recommend reading it if you are interested in these issues.

The report concludes:

It is clear from a review of the issue of advocacy by charitable organizations that the current Canadian approach is inadequate and in need of significant change. Improvements should include:

• a clear legal definition of permissible advocacy;
• clear quantifiable spending rules for advocacy activities to replace the 10 percent rule;
• flexible regulatory options for the enforcement of the new rules;
• greater transparency on the part of the federal regulators of this field; and
• increased financial disclosure requirements concerning advocacy activities by charities.

Following up from this report, IMPACS (in conjunction with the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy – who merged with the Coalition of National Voluntary Organizations to form Imagine Canada in 2006) conducted a series of dialogues in cities across Canada focused on this particular topic. The results were published in "Let Charities Speak: Report of the Charities and Advocacy Dialogue."

In the late summer and fall of 2001, IMPACS launched the National Dialogue on Charities and Advocacy – a cross-Canada consultation process with voluntary sector leaders on this subject. It consisted of 17 day- long consultation sessions in the following cities: St John’s, Halifax, Fredericton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto (4 sessions), Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, Yellowknife, and Whitehorse.

The purposes of the consultation sessions were: 1) to educate participants on the law; 2) to determine whether participants view the current law as a problem; and 3) to seek their guidance on the best option or options for reform.

The results from the process are detailed in the report, but the basic outcome was:

The National Dialogue revealed a deeply felt desire among voluntary sector organizations for change in this field. There is agreement across the country that the current restriction on advocacy by charities is an anachronism. If the restriction ever had validity and meaning, there is very strong opinion now that it has no place in modern Canada, for it is an impediment to democracy where informed and unfettered debate is essential.

There is also strong support for high standards of disclosure, transparency, and accountability to ensure virtuous practices by charities.

I just love the title. I work with a number of charities as part of my job, and this limit on advocacy and the vagueness of definition of advocacy are a fairly constant frustration.

The opening paragraphs of their later paper, "Charities: Enhancing Democracy in Canada" presents the case for advocacy by charities somewhat more strongly:

Canada's 80,000 charities form the core of the voluntary sector, and they are indeed essential to our collective well being. Unfortunately, Canada's charities face a limitation on their ability to give voice to shared concerns that is more restrictive than practices in virtually any other developed democracy.

This discussion paper is based on the assumption that vibrant, informed, and genuinely open debate, and greater civic engagement on all issues of public importance will lead to innovation, better public policy decisions, more efficient use of public resources, and a healthier, stronger democracy in Canada.

This paper argues that the impediment to charities adding their voices to the public debate adversely impacts the ability of charities to advance their charitable causes, and weakens the public policy debate and public policy development. This, in turn, ultimately weakens democracy in Canada. Removing the existing impediment to participation by charities, therefore, would be an important and achievable step in enhancing Canadian democracy.

Charities provide vital and beneficial services to their communities, but they also work to protect those who cannot speak for themselves: the marginalized, the environment, and animals. In a section entitled "Voices from the margin" the authors write:

Another related reason to encourage the participation of charities in public policy debate is that they very often speak on behalf of marginalized citizens who are unable to effectively engage in democratic processes on their own....

Allowing charities to advocate on behalf of those they serve brings voices to public policy debate that would otherwise not be heard. This, in turn, would help move toward a balance between those who are privileged and those who are not in terms of participation in public policy debates and influence on the decision-making.

A similar argument can be made for organizations that work on behalf of public causes such as protection of the environment or animal welfare. The natural environment, endangered species, and domestic animals have no voice of their own. Charities that work in these fields can enrich the public debate on such matters.

In the United States, organizations that would not be considered charitable in Canada are able to be charities, such as organizations working to protect animals and environmental organizations. Animal protection groups in Canada must devote 90% of their resources to services like veterinary care, running shelters or rescues, or spay and neuter clinics. They are only allowed to use 10% of their resources to do any work to change the systems that cause these problems.

In France, charity laws allow for organizations to advocate for their cause with whatever amount of resources they want.

With the demise of IMPACS it seems like this effort to "let charities speak" has fizzled away. Empowering charities to work to solve real problems would be beneficial to each of our causes and Canadian democracy in general. Poverty, drug addiction, animal welfare, the environment – all of these causes would be greatly benefited if our charities were able to openly enter the public debate without fearing the loss of their
charitable status.

There is a lot more to these papers than I have covered here, and I would really encourage you to read through them.

• The Law of Advocacy by Charitable Organizations
• Let Charities Speak: Report of the Charities and Advocacy Dialogue
• Charities: Enhancing Democracy in Canada

Photo by Leona Shanana

Here's a crazy idea: What if the city of Vancouver and VANOC had officially sanctioned dissenting views and activist events?

It would be a pretty strange and delicate move to make, but I wonder what it would look like if activist events had been included in the Olympic plans. Delicate because they would need to legitimately give the activists the space and respect to reach a real audience, without being deliberately pushed off into a corner somewhere.

Just imagine if VANOC had listened to protest groups and sat down with them to coordinate promotion and safety for their events. They could have included the protests and other activist events in the official event listings, bringing a bigger audience to the events, legitimized them, and made them a safer and more fun time.

I definitely don't mean an allowance for dissent through the use of "free-speech zones" or other schemes that hide protests so far away from the rest of the event that the activists are only talking to themselves. That's what usually happens, and only exacerbates the frustration felt by activists. I also don't mean a government-sanctioned PR presentation of some of these issues.

This idea is probably crazy, and neither group would have likely agreed to it, but sometimes crazy ideas work.

Communities that exist because of geographic boundaries (like a city or neighborhood) are composed of many different people who think and feel many different ways. The residents of Vancouver are not all patriotic sports fans who drink Coke and eat at McDonald's. Even making the slightest effort to present the fullness of Vancouver would have gone a long way to making the Olympics more interesting and true to who and what we really are.

I mean, the protests and events are going to happen anyway. Couldn't we make something more positive out of them?

Photo by NevynNoir

Today I took part for a while in a march to try to being some attention to the tragedy that is the Canadian Seal Slaughter. When the march turned into a vandalism spree by kids in masks, we rolled up our banners and went home.

I don't see much point in destructive protests. They don't really convince anyone of anything, except that you're willing to break things to be heard.

But what I'm interested in is why people become destructive as a means of protest.

There are probably quite a few reasons why marches like this turn violent. One quite obvious one would be that it's fun. The rush of adrenaline is exciting. It's the same as doing anything physical and dangerous, like playing hockey or football.

Quite probably many of the people who knocked over newspaper boxes and smashed windows today did it because it was exciting. They may have felt like they were doing something and standing up against a greater power. Many of us have respect for the underdog who takes on the mighty, against all odds. It's what most action movies are based on, not to mention sports movies and even a whole lot of our favorite history stories.

It's important to note here that I am not trying to justify anyone's actions or excuse them. I feel strongly that we are all personally responsible for the choices we make. I have had trouble trying to discuss this issue because people appear to feel that I am justifying the protesters' actions, but I'm not.

Calling their actions "infantile" is counter-productive, I think, because it simply continues what I see as a real root cause of the violence: not being heard.

There is a huge difference between being allowed to speak and being listened to. We have a great deal of freedom to speak our mind here in Canada, but what we don't have as ordinary citizens is much of a way to ensure that we are heard.

From the local level to the federal level, politics dismisses a great range of perspectives and voices. We are allowed to send our petition to the government, we are allowed to speak at city council meetings, but we are not made to feel that what are saying is truly heard or considered.

It would be strange for protesters to risk arrest for such large amounts of property damage, so I would assume they are acting out of personal conviction (unless they were planted by the police or VANOC to instigate confrontation, which is somewhat doubtful, although possible).

They may have been trying to intimidate people into agreeing with them, but considering the scale of the Olympics I would more readily think that they were trying to get their message out, and chose tactics that would send a message to the Olympic sponsors and organizers that would be heard. If you want to reach the heads of corporations, what is more effective than a message that costs money?

Again, I don't agree with the tactics, and I have nothing to say about the goals or objectives of the protesters. What I am interested in here is seeing some real discussion of the reasons for such actions. How are we all complicit in the vandalism and threats of violence? How are we complicit in systems which let people speak but don't give them a real voice to be heard?

Here are some links to coverage of today's madness:

• Miss604: Vancouver 2010 Protests on Day Two
• Straight: 2010 Heart Attack disrupts Vancouver on day two of Winter Olympics
• NowPublic: Vancouver Olympic Protest February 13 2010 Turns Violent
• Vancouver Sun: Seven people arrested in police protests

The circle (photo by Amanda Daniell)

Last Saturday I hosted my first Open Space event. It was a gathering of people from the Vancouver-area animal advocacy community. I've also written about the event on the Liberation BC blog.

Looking back after a week, the event seems to have been a success. I suppose the real success of the event will be if it has made the community stronger and if any benefits to the community come out of it. A big challenge will be developing from this single, possibly quite isolated event into a culture of collaboration.

It's nice to come together and be in a room with lots of people you pretty much agree with. You can talk openly about what you believe, you can really "talk shop" without boring anyone, and you feel understood.

Even if that's all this event did was let people feel good for a day, that itself is valuable. People working in this area often don't feel supported by friends, family, and co-workers, and coming together with like-minded people can serve as an important reminder that we are a community, that there are other people working on and caring about these issues.

But, an event like this becomes really valuable when new connections are made that carry on into the future. It becomes valuable if it opens up the web of connections and enables us to more easily and readily work together for common goals.

Looking over the feedback from the people who attended (about half of the people who attended responded to the online survey asking for feedback), they seem to have liked the Open Space format and being empowered to choose and lead their own discussions. I think that doesn't happen enough in any part of the animal advocacy movement. So often we go to conferences and hear from experts, we get asked to take action as part of some big organization's campaign, we are enlisted as supporters and we don't "own" any of the decisions.

If we can build collaboration into our local activist community, can it potentially make us stronger and more able to respond to the complex challenges that working on behalf of animals presents?

Many of the issues people had with the event had to do with logistical elements of the event, such as the level of noise in the room and the length of breaks. The next time I plan one of these, I think I will make sure that there are breakout rooms, rather than having multiple small circles in the one large room. Also, I hadn't set aside an actual lunch break, but I think a break from intense discussion midway through the day would have helped everyone relax and renew their energy for the afternoon.

Some people expressed concern that the people leading the sessions may not have been experts or "qualified" to lead a discussion. My only answer to that would be that with complex questions, often passion and willingness to take the lead can be more important than expertise or knowledge.

Some of the attendee comments about what could be improved for next time included finding a solution to the noise level of the room, more breaks so that the day is less hectic and there is more time to absorb what was just discussed, more efforts to include minority communities, a shorter time frame, and putting attendees in contact with each other through a shared contact list or online forum. (A forum has been set up on the event website for anyone to use.)

I think that there were some people who were uncomfortable with the dispersion of control over the event. We all come to these sorts of events with our own ideas about what should happen, about what we want to get from it. But, not everyone is going to see it the same way as us. With a "normal" conference, we go to listen to people speak and we know the agenda before-hand. It has been set for us. Being uncomfortable with that normalcy being pulled away is completely normal – and actually healthy. Getting through the discomfort to where we are comfortable with being open to what happens, to exploring and listening, leads to a healthier and more vibrant community. And a stronger one too. But it is uncomfortable.

Of course I had my own agenda in organizing this event. I wanted to empower people to take the lead in their own activism and in working together towards becoming more effective individually and together, as a community. I deliberately framed the event as "animal advocacy" because I wanted it to be inclusive of all people working for animals – whether or not they agree on everything. My goal is not to get us all to agree, but to know and understand each other better and, if possible, find ways to work together.

One of the really interesting aspects of organizing this event was finding a way to create an open and inclusive event that empowers people to find their own voice and learn from each other while still meeting my own goals. It is difficult to resist the urge to control the event, to influence the sessions posted by the attendees, to exert some sort of structure to the agenda, to move sessions around to fit in with my own ideas of categories.

Now, going forward, how can we keep building community while working to become more effective and powerful? Many people want to do more events like this, and I'm going to be meeting with people in the next couple of weeks to talk about what they need and want. Some smaller, more focused events around specific issues might be interesting, or possibly a world cafe focused on animal rights and visions of goals. Really, the next steps should form out of what the community wants and needs, and the community really just means all of us.

If you have ideas or suggestions, please feel free to post them in the comments.