MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968
I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here. MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago. I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago. The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course. When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay. The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels. After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city. I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building. There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon. At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay. As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off. On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home. The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight. During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later. Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference. -- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8 Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype “jofacilitator” Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller”
Thank you, Jo. I loved reading this and living through your telling of it. Diann McCabe, San Marcos, TX From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net>> on behalf of Jo Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> Reply-To: Jo Nelson <jnelson@ica-associates.ca<mailto:jnelson@ica-associates.ca>>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> Date: Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM To: Dialogue List <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here. MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago. I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago. The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course. When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay. The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels. After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city. I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building. There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon. At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay. As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off. On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home. The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight. During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later. Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference. -- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fassociates.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=rnEkbWREC%2BXCUf9awbfV9%2B0kxvzyBguSdRAx71rm5Zs%3D&reserved=0>> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8 Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fica-associates.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=w4oCAZvi%2FGO6qwi1dfMwzB2rAN0tNqEINUkdmA%2BVP0s%3D&reserved=0> Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype “jofacilitator” [cid:97050457-42B6-4301-8BE2-3E12099A7A16] Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller”
That is a beautiful retelling of the story of how we got where we are. Thank you Jo. You tell it well. You say how that moment has shaped and informed your life. I have just arrived in Jerusalem with Christine and Josh on a family trip. Today is the day of the Passover - when the youngest person in the family asks the elder: so, how did we get where we are today? And the elder tells the story of where it all started. Not the story of Genesis, but the story of Exodus, the decision to be free. And it is told around each table. We are doing a home exchange with an Israeli family. We just got here, cooked ourselves a bit of food. Our dinner was interrupted rather delightfully by a neighbour with “Shalom -Can I borrow one of your chairs? We have one more guest." We could see the large group of an extended family around the table through their front door. We can hear their singing through the walls. A delight. So, they too, retell the story of how they got here. A good thing to do. My purpose here this week is to try and figure out what Jewish identity entails. It seems to be a unique thing. Do any of you have any good articles I should read to begin to get clear on that? Paul
On 10 Apr 2017, at 18:01, McCabe, Diann A via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
Thank you, Jo. I loved reading this and living through your telling of it. Diann McCabe, San Marcos, TX
From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net>> on behalf of Jo Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> Reply-To: Jo Nelson <jnelson@ica-associates.ca <mailto:jnelson@ica-associates.ca>>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> Date: Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM To: Dialogue List <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968
I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here.
MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago. I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago. The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course. When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay. The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels. After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city. I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building. There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon. At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay. As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off. On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home. The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight. During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later. Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference.
-- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fassociates.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=rnEkbWREC%2BXCUf9awbfV9%2B0kxvzyBguSdRAx71rm5Zs%3D&reserved=0>> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8
Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fica-associates.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=w4oCAZvi%2FGO6qwi1dfMwzB2rAN0tNqEINUkdmA%2BVP0s%3D&reserved=0> Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype “jofacilitator”
<IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg>
Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller”
<IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg>_______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
Yes Jo Very appreciative of your telling of the story Mary Sent from my iPhone
On 10-Apr-2017, at 10:31 PM, McCabe, Diann A via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
Thank you, Jo. I loved reading this and living through your telling of it. Diann McCabe, San Marcos, TX
From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of Jo Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Reply-To: Jo Nelson <jnelson@ica-associates.ca>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM To: Dialogue List <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968
I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here.
MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago.
I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago.
The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course.
When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay.
The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels.
After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city.
I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building.
There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon.
At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay.
As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off.
On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home.
The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight.
During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later.
Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference.
-- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8
Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype “jofacilitator”
<IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg>
Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller”
<IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg> _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
Dear Jo, I appreciate reading your story, remembering that those times were frightening and did change our lives.. What more can we ask for? With love and gratitude, Nancy On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 9:09 PM, Mary Kurian DSouza via Dialogue < dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
Yes Jo Very appreciative of your telling of the story
Mary
Sent from my iPhone
On 10-Apr-2017, at 10:31 PM, McCabe, Diann A via Dialogue < dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
Thank you, Jo. I loved reading this and living through your telling of it. Diann McCabe, San Marcos, TX
From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of Jo Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Reply-To: Jo Nelson <jnelson@ica-associates.ca>, Colleague Dialogue < dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM To: Dialogue List <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968
I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here.
MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968
49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago.
I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago.
The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course.
When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay.
The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels.
After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city.
I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building.
There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon.
At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay.
As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off.
On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home.
The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight.
During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later.
Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference.
-- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fassociates.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=rnEkbWREC%2BXCUf9awbfV9%2B0kxvzyBguSdRAx71rm5Zs%3D&reserved=0>
Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8
Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 <(416)%20691-2316> Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 <(877)%20691-1422> Fax 1 416-691-2491 <(416)%20691-2491> Website http://ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fica-associates.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=w4oCAZvi%2FGO6qwi1dfMwzB2rAN0tNqEINUkdmA%2BVP0s%3D&reserved=0> Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype “jofacilitator”
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Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List
*“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller”*
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I remember the night!! We were escorted to a car by the Vice Lords in order to get out of 5th City. We headed “west” and just kept driving Much later that night someone suggest we call the Institute. Although we didn’t think anyone would answer, we called! To our surprise someone answered (can’t remember who). They said they were hiding under the desk but the National Guard was there. The next morning, Bill and I took a taxi to the Institute the others never returned to the Institute. Marianna
On Apr 10, 2017, at 1:01 PM, McCabe, Diann A via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
Thank you, Jo. I loved reading this and living through your telling of it. Diann McCabe, San Marcos, TX
From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net>> on behalf of Jo Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> Reply-To: Jo Nelson <jnelson@ica-associates.ca <mailto:jnelson@ica-associates.ca>>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> Date: Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM To: Dialogue List <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968
I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here.
MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago. I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago. The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course. When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay. The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels. After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city. I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building. There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon. At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay. As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off. On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home. The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight. During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later. Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference.
-- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fassociates.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=rnEkbWREC%2BXCUf9awbfV9%2B0kxvzyBguSdRAx71rm5Zs%3D&reserved=0>> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8
Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fica-associates.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=w4oCAZvi%2FGO6qwi1dfMwzB2rAN0tNqEINUkdmA%2BVP0s%3D&reserved=0> Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype “jofacilitator”
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Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller”
<IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg>_______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
I was on switchboard when we came back into the building - smoke around us and everything. Tony had followed the gang folk around putting out the fires they had started. Bill Schlesinger From: Dialogue [mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Marianna Bailey via Dialogue Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2017 11:35 AM To: Diann A McCabe; George Holcombe via Dialogue Subject: Re: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I remember the night!! We were escorted to a car by the Vice Lords in order to get out of 5th City. We headed "west" and just kept driving Much later that night someone suggest we call the Institute. Although we didn't think anyone would answer, we called! To our surprise someone answered (can't remember who). They said they were hiding under the desk but the National Guard was there. The next morning, Bill and I took a taxi to the Institute the others never returned to the Institute. Marianna On Apr 10, 2017, at 1:01 PM, McCabe, Diann A via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Thank you, Jo. I loved reading this and living through your telling of it. Diann McCabe, San Marcos, TX From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of Jo Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Reply-To: Jo Nelson <jnelson@ica-associates.ca>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM To: Dialogue List <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here. MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago. I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called "Cultural Studies I" at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago. The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course. When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn't clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren't fleeing, so I decided to stay. The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking "there is no generation gap", because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels. After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city. I went to my brother's apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn't want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building. There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon. At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute's board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay. As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the "refugee" kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off. On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home. The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn't make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight. During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It's a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later. Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA's mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn't thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference. -- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fassociates. ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb1 9c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=rnEkbWREC%2BXCUf9awbfV9%2B0kxvzyBgu SdRAx71rm5Zs%3D&reserved=0> > Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToPT Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8 Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fica-associa tes.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c% 7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=w4oCAZvi%2FGO6qwi1dfMwzB2rAN0tN qEINUkdmA%2BVP0s%3D&reserved=0> Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype "jofacilitator" <IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg> Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller" <IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg>_______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
Bill, As I remember, about that time you were chased doown the street, (you'll remember the riot police) and chimbed up into our first floor apartment, where you stayed a day or so. Ann Harrison Avery had helped me take our four kids across the street to the hospital basement. Later Brad escaped (being five years old) and snuck back to his bed. Bill Grow was off teaching somewhere. Police wouldn't let me cross the street to find him in spite of my screaming. He was safely in bed and asleep when we did get the other three kids back to their rooms. God bless Ann! I think she saved us all! Nan Grow ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Schlesinger via Dialogue To: 'Marianna Bailey' ; 'Colleague Dialogue' ; 'Diann A McCabe' Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2017 6:30 PM Subject: Re: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I was on switchboard when we came back into the building - smoke around us and everything. Tony had followed the gang folk around putting out the fires they had started. Bill Schlesinger From: Dialogue [mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Marianna Bailey via Dialogue Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2017 11:35 AM To: Diann A McCabe; George Holcombe via Dialogue Subject: Re: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I remember the night!! We were escorted to a car by the Vice Lords in order to get out of 5th City. We headed "west" and just kept driving Much later that night someone suggest we call the Institute. Although we didn't think anyone would answer, we called! To our surprise someone answered (can't remember who). They said they were hiding under the desk but the National Guard was there. The next morning, Bill and I took a taxi to the Institute the others never returned to the Institute. Marianna On Apr 10, 2017, at 1:01 PM, McCabe, Diann A via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Thank you, Jo. I loved reading this and living through your telling of it. Diann McCabe, San Marcos, TX From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of Jo Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Reply-To: Jo Nelson <jnelson@ica-associates.ca>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM To: Dialogue List <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here. MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago. I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called "Cultural Studies I" at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago. The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course. When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn't clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren't fleeing, so I decided to stay. The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking "there is no generation gap", because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels. After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city. I went to my brother's apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn't want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building. There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon. At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute's board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay. As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the "refugee" kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off. On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home. The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn't make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight. During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It's a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later. Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA's mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn't thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference. -- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToPT Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8 Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype "jofacilitator" <IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg> Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller" <IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg>_______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
It's hard to think of Bill S., always abundantly "consciously confident," hiding under the switchboard desk - but I think it was a smart move. My memory of that milestone weekend was that Joe and I were hosting a Chicago pedagogue who was teaching an advanced course at Rolling Ridge in North Andover, MA. I'm thinking it was Bob Vance, but I'm not sure, and Joe can't remember. The course in MA went off just fine, but the EI Chicago staff person needed to stay with us a few days longer as return to the West Side was uncertain. Joe and I were still relative "newly-weds", having been married in June 1967. Bishop Jim had appointed Joe full time to EI Boston (without benefit of pension), and I was teaching at a local college. We were living "in community" with Movement colleagues (7 families) in New England who had decided to live corporately in a common apartment building with separate units per family and one common unit we all supported for the work of EI Boston. This was the precursor to the Boston Religious House. The month before the riots - March 1968 - at the Presidium Meeting, JWM had laid the claim on many regional colleagues across the nation to move to Chicago to enable the "expansion of our work" - which we later learned was the establishment of Religious Houses in the US. In June 1968 the Crockers and the Moores moved in one truck from Longwood Drive, Andover, MA to 3444 West Congress Parkway, Chicago, IL - and the rest is history. Ah, the memories. Marilyn From: Dialogue [mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Nancy Grow via Dialogue Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2017 3:36 PM To: Bill Schlesinger; Colleague Dialogue Subject: Re: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 Bill, As I remember, about that time you were chased doown the street, (you'll remember the riot police) and chimbed up into our first floor apartment, where you stayed a day or so. Ann Harrison Avery had helped me take our four kids across the street to the hospital basement. Later Brad escaped (being five years old) and snuck back to his bed. Bill Grow was off teaching somewhere. Police wouldn't let me cross the street to find him in spite of my screaming. He was safely in bed and asleep when we did get the other three kids back to their rooms. God bless Ann! I think she saved us all! Nan Grow ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Schlesinger via Dialogue <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> To: 'Marianna Bailey' <mailto:wmbailey@charter.net> ; 'Colleague Dialogue' <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> ; 'Diann A McCabe' <mailto:dm14@txstate.edu> Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2017 6:30 PM Subject: Re: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I was on switchboard when we came back into the building - smoke around us and everything. Tony had followed the gang folk around putting out the fires they had started. Bill Schlesinger From: Dialogue [mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Marianna Bailey via Dialogue Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2017 11:35 AM To: Diann A McCabe; George Holcombe via Dialogue Subject: Re: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I remember the night!! We were escorted to a car by the Vice Lords in order to get out of 5th City. We headed "west" and just kept driving Much later that night someone suggest we call the Institute. Although we didn't think anyone would answer, we called! To our surprise someone answered (can't remember who). They said they were hiding under the desk but the National Guard was there. The next morning, Bill and I took a taxi to the Institute the others never returned to the Institute. Marianna On Apr 10, 2017, at 1:01 PM, McCabe, Diann A via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Thank you, Jo. I loved reading this and living through your telling of it. Diann McCabe, San Marcos, TX From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of Jo Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Reply-To: Jo Nelson <jnelson@ica-associates.ca>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM To: Dialogue List <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here. MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago. I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called "Cultural Studies I" at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago. The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course. When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn't clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren't fleeing, so I decided to stay. The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking "there is no generation gap", because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels. After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city. I went to my brother's apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn't want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building. There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon. At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute's board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay. As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the "refugee" kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off. On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home. The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn't make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight. During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It's a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later. Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA's mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn't thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference. -- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fassociates. ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c%7Cb1 9c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=rnEkbWREC%2BXCUf9awbfV9%2B0kxvzyBgu SdRAx71rm5Zs%3D&reserved=0> > Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToPT Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8 Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fica-associa tes.ca&data=01%7C01%7Cdm14%40txstate.edu%7Cbaf6ff05101743bd584208d47fb47c4c% 7Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb%7C0&sdata=w4oCAZvi%2FGO6qwi1dfMwzB2rAN0tN qEINUkdmA%2BVP0s%3D&reserved=0> Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype "jofacilitator" <IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg> Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller" <IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg>_______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net _____ _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
Thank you for sharing this foundational EI/ICA story, Jo! We look forward to sharing it appropriately with our "Climate Action" Colleagues here in Denver. Best to you and David and all of you, with love, Jim (& OliveAnn) Slotta On Apr 9, 2017, at 7:54 PM, Jo Nelson via Dialogue wrote:
I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here.
MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago.
I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago.
The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course.
When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay.
The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels.
After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city.
I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building.
There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister- in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon.
At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay.
As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off.
On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home.
The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight.
During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later.
Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do- gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference.
-- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8
Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype “jofacilitator”
<IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg>
Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller”
_______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
A parallel story of that weekend. The Cleveland Metro was gathered to decide who would be willing to move and establish a Religious House. This was before the first four houses were designated that coming summer. We also were holding an RS-I. I believe Bob Fishel was consulting with the Metro Cadre. I think Frank Hilliard was also with us that weekend. There were riots in Cleveland as well but we were at a suburban church basement for the two programs. All the news we heard was that EI Chicago had been burned and that the Headquarters had been moved to Boston. It was a very frightening and sober time together. Jack Gilles
On Apr 10, 2017, at 13:49, Jim & OliveAnn Slotta via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
Thank you for sharing this foundational EI/ICA story, Jo! We look forward to sharing it appropriately with our "Climate Action" Colleagues here in Denver.
Best to you and David and all of you, with love,
Jim (& OliveAnn) Slotta
On Apr 9, 2017, at 7:54 PM, Jo Nelson via Dialogue wrote:
I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here.
MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago.
I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago.
The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course.
When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay.
The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels.
After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city.
I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building.
There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon.
At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay.
As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off.
On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home.
The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight.
During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later.
Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference.
-- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca <http://associates.ca/>> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8
Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca <http://ica-associates.ca/> Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype “jofacilitator”
<IAF-CPF-Logo-email.jpeg>
Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller”
_______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
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Jo, What an incredible, living-changing story! -- thank you for sharing it with us. --Joyce On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM, Jo Nelson via Dialogue < dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here.
MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968
49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago.
I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago.
The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course.
When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay.
The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels.
After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city.
I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building.
There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon.
At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay.
As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off.
On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home.
The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight.
During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later.
Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference.
-- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8
Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 <(416)%20691-2316> Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 <(877)%20691-1422> Fax 1 416-691-2491 <(416)%20691-2491> Website http://ica-associates.ca Cellphone 647 233 6910 <(647)%20233-6910> Skype “jofacilitator”
Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List
*“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.Richard Buckminster Fuller”*
_______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
Thanks, Jo, for your witness and continuing leadership and commitment to facilitating and partnership with local people's leading local communities. Ellie elliestock@aol.com -----Original Message----- From: Jo Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> To: Dialogue List <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Sent: Sun, Apr 9, 2017 8:54 pm Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here. MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968 49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changingevent on the West Side of Chicago. I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University ofIowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a coursecalled “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side ofChicago. The day before the course was scheduled to begin, MartinLuther King was assassinated. From oursmall-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago forthe course. When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday,it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clearwhat was going to happen. The others inthe car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and LindaZahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing,so I decided to stay. The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in alower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to meto be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”,because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shoutingout on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels. After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room andlooked out. I could see fires burningwithin a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was theEisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city. I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hangout with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I wasstranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were toldeveryone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried tostart a fire in the building. There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campusand a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospitalbasement. By this time almost everyparticipant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple ofparticipants and Institute staff. Mybrother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who werewild with the energy around us. Atvarious points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke wouldroll in with them. Someone had a radio,and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon. At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted andit was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gatheredin Room A to decide what to do. Thechildren were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff,one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profoundcommitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying therewould have. In the end, they decided byconsensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they hadmade a commitment. They also decided tosend out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supportersin the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decisionto risk their lives to stay. As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I wasalso sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who wasmobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids tostay. I was then sent to a home in LakeForest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in theworld, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2years old. I had no idea of how to takecare of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after theyhad rolled off. On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brotherand tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was astudent from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home. The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t makeit through. I came back to the dorm, andslept for 24 hours straight. During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people decidingby consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with thecommunity. That is a rareexperience. I realized that this groupof people were no ordinary group. Theircare was profound. It’s a big part ofthe reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into theInstitute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and whyI am still with it all these years later. Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst thatcreated ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communitiesdidn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that theychange deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, butthe lead comes from the community. Thefacilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make adifference. -- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8 Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491 Website http://ica-associates.ca Cellphone 647 233 6910 Skype “jofacilitator” Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Richard Buckminster Fuller” _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
Thank you Jo, somehow this is especially meaningful this week and as our community, churches, dioceses, and other concerned citizens, in Cincinnati area seeks to support Maribel Trujillo, a migrant who is being held for deportation. She is a mother of four, has no criminal record, and is a lay leader in her church. Our congregation has chosen to stand with such individuals after careful study . These are the times and we are the people. Grace and Peace, Judy and Norm Lindblad On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 9:54 PM, Jo Nelson via Dialogue < dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook page. Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no longer on it, so I chose to put it here.
MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968
49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the West Side of Chicago.
I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called “Cultural Studies I” at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of Chicago.
The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was assassinated. From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no reason not to go to Chicago for the course.
When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen. The others in the car decided to turn around and go home, just in case. My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren’t fleeing, so I decided to stay.
The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor room with windows at ground level. I remember sitting next to what seemed to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking “there is no generation gap”, because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding. As the session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running by with gun barrels.
After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out. I could see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out of the city.
I went to my brother’s apartment to talk with him and hang out with family. I didn’t want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire in the building.
There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital across the street. Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to the hospital basement. By this time almost every participant had escaped via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and Institute staff. My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two small children, who were wild with the energy around us. At various points the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with them. Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all over America. It felt like Armegeddon.
At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute. The entire staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do. The children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers. There were only 3 of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute’s board. I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have. In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to support the community, since they had made a commitment. They also decided to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a conscious decision to risk their lives to stay.
As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her entire network to find places for all the “refugee” kids to stay. I was then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1 and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old. I had no idea of how to take care of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had rolled off.
On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him where his kids were, and where I was. The one other stranded participant was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her. By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home.
The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn’t make it through. I came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight.
During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the community. That is a rare experience. I realized that this group of people were no ordinary group. Their care was profound. It’s a big part of the reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and why I am still with it all these years later.
Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA’s mode of radical participation in development: it became very obvious that communities didn’t thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership working collaboratively. Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the lead comes from the community. The facilitative approach as an equal partner is the only way to make a difference.
-- Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca> Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator ICA Associates, Inc. 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #405, Toronto, Canada. M5V 3A8
Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x2230 <(416)%20691-2316> Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 <(877)%20691-1422> Fax 1 416-691-2491 <(416)%20691-2491> Website http://ica-associates.ca Cellphone 647 233 6910 <(647)%20233-6910> Skype “jofacilitator”
Vendor of Record: Government of Ontario Learning and Training Services #OSS00536903 Vendor of Record: ProServices Canada E60ZT-120001/826/ZT Business Consulting/Change Management Pre-qualified Vendor, Alberta Education Resource List
*“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.Richard Buckminster Fuller”*
_______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
participants (14)
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Bill Schlesinger via Dialogue -
Ellie Stock via Dialogue
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Jack Gilles via Dialogue
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Jim & OliveAnn Slotta via Dialogue
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Jo Nelson via Dialogue
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Joy Bonafield via Dialogue
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Judy Lindblad via Dialogue
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Marianna Bailey via Dialogue
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Marilyn Crocker via Dialogue
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Mary Kurian DSouza via Dialogue
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McCabe, Diann A via Dialogue
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Nancy Grow via Dialogue
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Nancy Lanphear via Dialogue
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Paul Schrijnen via Dialogue