World Peace through Inclusion Tour

WPIT Summary

2010-12-30T23:15:00.001-05:00

WPIT - World Peace through Inclusive Transformation

A Summary of Who We Are

November 6, 2010

WPIT – World Peace through Inclusive Transformation
WPIT is a commitment to have people around the globe understand differences and develop skills so that peace is available to all. The sustainability of world peace will emerge when enough communities appreciate diversity as an asset and have the skills to build personal and social value from interacting effectively with differences.
In society, we often look at diversity as a source of problems – things to be fixed like gang conflicts or situations to be managed like sustaining mixed income neighbourhoods. We rarely look at diversity as a source of opportunity for everybody, except in relatively minimal ways like encouraging “ethnic” restaurants, funding mixed heritage cultural experiences or subsidizing an “alterative” movie industry.
If you ask a typical person how they would describe the community they are part of they would likely say it is a group of people who do the same thing – like my bridge club, or believe the same thing – like my church, or are attached geographically to the same place – my town. People haven’t been taught to look at how diversity is essential to community and every kind of interaction.
If we weren’t different from each other we wouldn’t have the need or capacity to interact. It is not just that interaction would be boring or useless. It would not be possible! It is differences that allow for the capacity to communicate. This is just one of the powerful gifts of diversity.
THE WPIT MISSION
Our mission is to have the concept of Giftedness appreciated everywhere. In addition we aim to have all peoples have the capacity to benefit from diversity so as to have social and economic abundance. This in turn will bring peace to communities everywhere – in other words – world peace.
Giftedness Defined
A gift is anything that you are, have or do which creates an opportunity for you to interact with someone else. Under favourable circumstances such interactions can then be built into sustainable relationships and social and economical opportunities.
Any difference is potentially a gift. If someone has black hair and they discover that some people have red hair, it may become for them an opportunity to dye their tresses. Out of many people acting to fulfill this desire an entire hairstyling industry can be built.
The diversities that get labelled as dangerous, awkward, socially incorrect and disabling, are also fundamentally simply differences and therefore potentially gifts.
In the Giftedness approach, the work of Inclusion is simply to create the circumstances under which people will see their differences as opportunities for each other and know how to fulfill these opportunities.
Interestingly and importantly, when people adopt a Gifted perspective they also become more peaceful. This is simply because they have developed the skills to be creative with diversity and they are also conscious of the social and economic benefits that are being made available. There is less impulse to fight and do harm when there is nothing to fear and everything to gain.
When the world has people experience the concept of Giftedness in everyday life the result will be Inclusion and this will foster peacefulness. This connection between Inclusion and peace is at the heart of what we stand for.
Integral to inclusion is the development of creative and unique social and economic opportunities in local communities. It is a fundamental part of our mission to have Inclusion experienced as a multidimensional set of interactions where creativity can be expressed and to foster sustainable social and economic experiments.
OBJECTIVES
The BMX Model of Inclusion
One of WPIT’s key objectives is to research the BMX Model of Inclusion and to have it taught as a practical model for social and economical development.
We propose that three distinct states of Inclusion co-exist. Neither is better than the other, but often there is an emergent pull to move from one state to another. We are calling these states B, M, and X:
 State B (Basic): Groups allow the presence of people with diverse characteristics. State B’s principal quality is that the includers share presence with diversity, but no other changes are anticipated or offered. The includers like their community as is, expect no major shifts, and the included are expected to adapt to the ways and means of the includers and to get along as best they can. Typically the included express gratitude for the opportunity and work hard to not cause difficulties.

 State M (Mechanical): Includers recognize that the included are struggling to get along, and are willing to make “accommodations”. The included move beyond simply being grateful for the opportunity to coexist and begin to advocate for support. For example, service providers currently tend to segregate individuals with cognitive challenges and the professionalization of supporters tends to turn citizens into helpers and volunteers instead of friends and colleagues.

 State X (Crossover): Both includers and the included recognize that another world is possible, one that benefits from the gifts and contributions available in the cultures, characteristics, and experiences of members of both the including and included groups. The perception fades that there are two sides and a distinct boundary.
Operationalizing the BMX Model:
State B (Basic) A teenager with autism and no speech is kept at the back of a regular classroom, with no attention paid to whether he is building friendships.
State M (Mechanical) All teenagers with “disability” labels are given opportunities to be in a homeroom for 1st period. The school has a resource room for tutoring, an “inclusive” lunchroom, and Special Olympics classes to replace regular gym.
State X (Crossover) Ninth grade students are invited to form a support circle with a teen who loves music, and who also has autism and no speech. Twenty-three students respond. They meet regularly and enthusiastically at different points in their day and week for the next four years. The teen who focuses the circle enjoys participating in the school band, gym and many more classes than anyone originally expected. The other teens express their appreciation at having an alternative to being “Nerds”, “Preps” or simply left out. The school administration notes a dramatic decrease in fights and vandalism.

The Peaceful Open Inclusive Spaces Alliance (POISA)
Another WPIT key objective is to see POISA projects grow communities locally and around the globe.
POISA arises from the experience that communities, work places, schools, etc. can become more peaceful when people of diverse backgrounds come together in ways that draw on diversity as a social asset rather than a liability, and where people are free and supported to create and shape their own activities. The future of POISA is to teach people that Inclusion makes peace possible, to foster the sustainable development of real examples of POISA and to have strategic buy-in around the world. People will come to expect their world to be made up of such spaces.

PEACEFUL  Having the capacity to resolve conflict to the benefit of all concerned
OPEN  Participants shape their own agendas and activities
INCLUSIVE  Diversities among participants are welcome and drawn on as valuable resources
SPACES  Locations, contexts, and rules and principles that give participants a safe and facilitative bounded area within which to generate their activities
ALLIANCE  Agreements between organizations and individuals to work together to create and preserve a valued experience

On the ground POISA is a complex process of community development consisting of:
 the development of a community’s principles of Open Space
 supporting the community’s invitation process to become more diverse
 capturing the learnings as the community becomes more peaceful
 facilitating story telling that deepens the community’s ability to be diverse and peaceful

WPIT HISTORY
Judith Snow has done groundbreaking work throughout her life to have people notice and appreciate the contributions of people who are labelled disabled. She has travelled and taught that, rather than being problems to fix or hide, the differences we call disabilities create a context for relationship and community building and for greater social and economic sustainability. Over time she developed a storehouse of examples of peace making through Inclusion drawn from fields such as education, health care, community development and economics.
In the mid ‘90’s, Judith Snow realized that Inclusion of diversities, if they are appreciated as gifts and contributions, creates the context for people to become peaceful.
WPIT was born when Judith Snow, Gabor Podor, Erin Socall and Jason Wiles toured several states for seven months, speaking with and learning from others who were transforming fear of differences into passion to build social and economic sustainability.
At this time WPIT is conceived as an umbrella organization, seeding and guiding other initiatives and projects that look very different from each other, but which have the common -characteristics of being able to teach people and have them build from their differences in ways that foster sustainable relationships, abundance and peacefulness.
PROJECTS
WPIT WORLD PEACE TOURS
In 2008, Judith Snow, Gabor Podor, Erin Socall and Jason Wiles began on an exploration throughout the United States and Canada. This 7 month journey took them deep into the heart of a learning and engagement experience. They worked together with many people who were creatively dealing with deep exclusion in their own lives. From the stories and experiences of the people met along the way, the BMX model of inclusion was developed.
This journey gave the evidence that peace really is available through Inclusion. To experience some of the stories for yourself, you can read the blog from the tour at http://peaceforinclusion.blogspot.com/
The World Peace Tour is scheduled to go back on the road in early 2011 officially launching WPIT’s 2011 projects and spreading Inclusion everywhere it goes. Locations on the current timeline range from Ontario, Minnesota, Georgia, New York and Arizona.
WPIT GAMES
The fastest growing sector in the entertainment industry is video games, surpassing both movies and music combined in 2008, and just like movies and music, the themes in games do not always provide the players with the very best social messages. Imagine the power of fostering peace and reinforcing it through game play!
WPIT Games is a project to do just that. By creating a series of fun, Inclusion themed video games we are generating a community of online gamers who come to a website on a daily basis and are reinforced with themes of diversity and Giftedness. We are expecting that this learning will play out in the rest of their lives, giving gamers a background to act in more Inclusive ways.
We are in the process of creating an alliance with several game development companies for this project, both upstart companies and big businesses. In this way we can tap into the large audience that bigger developers can offer while working with new, unshaped game creators.
Our first project is on track to be released online in early 2011, in time to be entered as part of the 2011 Games 4 Change Festival in New York City.

COMMUNITY POT-LUCKS – A POISA PROJECT
As a step in building community at the Robert Cooke Housing Co-operative, we are providing space for the members to meet for the purposes of making visible the gifts of everyone in the co-op community—families and singles, young and old, vulnerable people; in other words—everyone. This will support the elements of a satisfying life for all co-op members.
The concept is that each floor comes together for pot-lucks (a meal where everyone brings something to share) so that the residents on every floor in the high-rise and the townhouses can share a space together for socializing. Along with the space—drinks, food and help in facilitating the evening for both adults and children are provided by the people on the floor.
The first pot-luck gathering took place on October 30th 2010 for everyone on the 8th Floor and it was a great success.
Robert Cooke Housing Co-operative operates under the assumption that in community people turn to one another. Everyone has something to give. Together, we operate out of 5 core principles:
1: Assets: Everyone has something to give;
2: Work: Building home and community is real, important work,
3: Reciprocity: Giving is stronger when it’s more than a one-way street,
4: Community: We’re stronger together, and
5: Respect: We deserve it from others – and we owe it to others.

We are making no claims to change anything. What we are doing is setting up a means for people who live in a neighbourhood to come together to tell their personal story. Anybody can throw a party or arrange a pot-luck.. It is the design of this gathering that sets this project apart and makes it a POISA project. The goal of POISA and this project is to develop a model of gathering that educates the participants to the power of Inclusion.
LOOKING FORWARD
From the mid 90’s to 2010, one person’s (Judith Snow) realization that peace can be available through Inclusion has developed into an international collective of projects and activities. We have grown from discussion groups and celebrations into the beginnings of sustainable organization.
For this dream to stay alive, we must continue to put down deep roots into cultures everywhere, especially so that young people will see the opportunity and lend their energy and creativity to the work.
Now is the time for WPIT to emerge as “real”. This will happen as many people join the commitment and the efforts. The question that must be answered now is: “Are you – as an individual or a corporation – are you willing to build World Peace through Inclusion?” If so, please join us in whatever way makes sense to you.
CONTACT
Mike Skubic, 647-680-0990, skubic.mike@gmail.com
www.judithsnow.org

My 20 Minute Speech

2010-02-08T19:44:00.002-05:00

Last week I was asked to write a 15 minute speech, word for word, nothing off the cuff. Hopefully it will get me access to getting some corporate inspirational gigs. Good fund raising for WPIT.

It took about four hours to write and it's more like 20 minutes long. Let me know what you think.

Can World Peace Really Happen?

My name is Judith Snow. I am happy to be here. It gives me great pleasure to share a little bit of my life’s journey with people – with you. On top of this I have a burning question that I believe you can help me answer. My question is: “Can World Peace Really Happen”, or more accurately, “When and what will it take for people – people just like you – to get that World Peace can be created and that it will be people just like you and me who do the job to make it real?

This is how I got my burning question. Obviously I am a person with a severe disability. I was born in 1949, in Oshawa Ontario, to a very ordinary lower middle class family, third child of Ted and Rita Snow. By the time I was seven months old I had never tried to sit up or creep, and it was apparent that I was not developing in the usual ways. After months of trips into Toronto to see many doctors my parents were told I had Muscular Dystrophy and that I would not likely live past age four. Clearly they miscalculated. I am now over sixty.

What is true is that I have a very rare sort of body. I have the same muscle strength now that I had when I was born. I have a baby’s strength spread over an adult body, which means I can move everything a very tiny little bit, and nothing except my face very much. I do a lot with my face!

In our world we call this situation a disability. Disability as a concept means that an essential function is missing. In other words, if I say a bomb is disabled I mean it will no longer blow up – essentially it is no longer a bomb. If I say a disabled car is blocking the intersection of Highway 401 and Yonge Street I know that hunk of metal is now a barrier to traffic and not a vehicle any longer.

What I am saying is that I grew up knowing and being surrounded by people who knew that my essential functions were missing. There is a lot more to say about that, but for now what is important to understand is that what we think we know and what is really so can be very different things.

One day when I was six years old my Father was washing and dressing me. As I sat there he explained to me that some doctors in the United States were putting children with Down Syndrome to death because they believed that society should not have to bear the burden of the extra costs that caring for these children would bring.

Dad grew up in rural England, in a small community in the southwest of the island. The major economic activities there were raising cows and sheep, and digging rocks to plant potatoes.

He explained that as children with slower thinking grew up, they were able to grow potatoes along with everyone else. Such folks lived and worked along side of each other with no distinctions made. But in his boyhood, he said, children like me were killed because no one had enough food or other resources to support someone who would likely not be able to grow food.

I asked him why he and "they" were still keeping me alive. He replied that perhaps I would be the one to find the answer.

Being a very straight forward kind of kid I never asked him what was the question I was seeking an answer for. I simply believed that the question he meant me to answer was: “Why do people get Muscular Distrophy?” I decided I would be a research doctor and started to take a deeper interest in school. In my teens I felt the burden of isolation and rejection. The question I had to answer turned into: “Why is society so mean to people with disabilities?” By my early twenties I had become a prominent disability rights advocate. Now I am asking myself and you a different question, but I will get back to that in a few minutes!

By the time I was sixteen the medical prediction obviously had shifted and “they” said I would live until I was thirty. My parents were clear that I should have the same opportunities as my three siblings and my Mother spent two years finding a university that was sufficiently flat so that I could get into the essential courses. There was no mandate for accessibility in those days. I continued to enjoy my academics and in 1968 I entered an Honours BA program in Mathematics and Psychology at York University.

Still, underneath it all we knew I had no real future, and 1978 found me living in a chronic care hospital, gradually losing my little remaining muscular strength, bloating with oedema and struggling to breathe without coughing. My time was near!

However, at the same time the determined side of me was going back to York University four days a week to run Canada’s first Centre for Learning Support. As I had completed my BA, and then my MA, at York I had realized that there were many students or potential students, and even some staff and faculty members at the university, who would be empowered if there were somebody around to help them organize the accommodations they needed to do their work more effectively – the blind student who needed a Braille map to get oriented and some volunteers to read texts onto tape, the professor with newly acquired Multiple Sclerosis who needed to get registered for Wheeltrans, and so on. In 1976 with a seed grant from Atkinson Charitable Foundation I set up this campus support system. Now every university and college in Canada has one.

While on campus I met a professor of Graduate Studies in Education, Marsha Forest. She was researching the value of inclusive education – classrooms where students of diverse academic abilities study together. She and I became great friends and challenged each other as to how far this inclusive idea could go. I began to see myself through her eyes, as a vital, intense woman with good ideas, interesting questions and much more to give and take than a part-time job, a bed in a chronic care hospital and a medical death sentence could give me room for. Through Marsha and her husband Jack, President of Frontier College I met many more energetic and paradigm breaking people. I began to hope I could live.

The short version of a long struggle is that in late 1979 I found out my increasing ill health was due to an allergy and my sense of futility was due to being trapped in a service system dedicated to comfort dying people. I lived on others’ couches for a while, and by June 1, 1980, with the intense political and personal support of all sorts of people, I became Canada’s first person to have government funded individualized support – money to pay the wages of assistants who go with me throughout the day so I can work and live as a fully participating citizen.

I wanted to know how it was that Marsha and many of the people I met through her and Jack were able to see me not as a defective person with a dysfunctional body that could not meet the demands of life but as an interesting and resourceful colleague who lives with some unusual challenges and opportunities. Same evidence, different approach and extremely different personal and social outcomes!

As the blindfold of disability thinking gradually left my understand, and believe me it took me many years to be able to let go of the disability paradigm totally, I realized that people who are labelled disabled are always contributing something. I also gained evidence that we would contribute much more to the economy and to our communities if we were actually supported to make the contributions we are good at making, not the contributions others think we should have been able to make.

Let me give you some quick stories to illustrate what I mean by contribution. In 1993 fifty-two people moved into the thirty-six apartments of Courtyard Housing Cooperative in North Toronto. The coop is designed to be inclusive so people of a wide range of abilities, cultures and incomes were invited to become neighbours. Most of us had never met before moving in.

Imagine how long it would ordinarily take fifty-two strangers to get onto speaking terms and to know each other, especially in a busy, urban apartment block. It is predictable that we would never get to know each other well.

We all knew each other in three weeks. Here’s how it happened. A middle aged woman, an enthusiastic Special Olympic athlete by the name of Miriam, has the characteristic of walking into people’s apartments without knocking, asking people personal questions, like: ”Why is your nose crooked?”, then walking into the next apartment without knocking, telling everyone there what she has just learned about their neighbours and then asking them the same sort of questions. Soon we were all talking to each other, if only to gossip about how to handle Miriam and her questions.

Miriam is the perfect ice breaker and we made her head of the Social Committee. But here’s the not so obvious contribution, the powerful gift, that Miriam gave us. Through Miriam we learned that many of us had begun to feel ill soon after we moved in. Without Miriam I would have known only that I felt sick. With Miriam building a circle of story telling we discovered that “WE” feel sick! We formed a committee, took on the city who own the building and discovered that they had cut costs by putting in an inadequate air circulation system. There is a car park under the apartments and many were being slowly poisoned by the exhaust gases. Within six months we were able to get an individual air circulation system added to every apartment.

In those six months one person died. Without Miriam how many more would have died before we could meet ourselves and get organized to deal with the danger we were facing?

Another story – in 1993 I started an art guild called Laser Eagles. Twelve artists are part of this – I am one of them. One way or another none of us is able to create a painting by ourselves. In the beginning each artist would wear a laser pointer strapped to the head, arm or leg, some part of our body we can move with some reliability. With the laser light we would show our supporter, called a Tracker, what colour, what brush and how to create the painting. The Trackers have often been college students who need a community placement or a senior who has time on their hands. These days none of the artists uses a laser pointer anymore. We have all found other ways, often without words, to communicate with our Trackers.

One artist is a young man, Aaron, who has never spoken and whose body is tiny and very fragile. In the first two years of Laser Eagles we often had young men and women from a police training college program come in as Trackers. One police cadet would hold Aaron’s hand, one would hold the brush, and through subtle flickers of his fingers Aaron would indicate where to put the paint.

There is nothing to match the effect that supporting Aaron had on those cadets. Throughout quiet hours of patiently following the tiniest movements young men and women discovered their capacity to listen, to relate, to appreciate creativity, to stand up for the value of diversity and to be peaceful community citizens.

Young Aaron literally has the capacity to single-handedly gentle an army. What he needs to give his gift is a stable context to create his art and plenty of access to young men and women.

This is how I got my burning question: “What will it take for people to get that World Peace is available through including diversity in our lives and communities?” It seems like a very airy fairy idea until you spend time with Miriam and Aaron, and the hundreds of other people I have spent time with or whose stories I have heard.

It’s simple enough. First you decide to be inclusive and welcome someone who is very different from you into your life or your community’s life. Then that person or that group messes something up, either because they don’t like the rules, or they can’t understand the rules or they just simply can’t do it. Then there is a choice – re-establish the old rule or do what it takes to make a new one that works for everyone. Those who decide to take the journey to build a renewed context, a renewed community, find that along the way they not only got a beautiful painting or healthy air in their apartment building, they also became able to create peace along the way.

In my experience the work of making oneself ready and then actually receiving the gift of diversity and peace making looks very different than expected. It is easy to miss if you aren’t willing both to look for it and then see it. Many years ago I spent several days in a south western US desert. There are tiny flowers everywhere in that region, but I did not see them for nearly three days. My eyes were used to much bigger flowers, with very different colouration. It literally took days for my visual organizing system to prepare itself to interpret “flowers” even though the subtly hued blossoms were there all along.

I wrote the following story to talk about this journey of welcoming diversity and preparing ourselves to be peaceful.

The Bicycle

This is the context of the story:

The first character is David who is the dad. David is a city bureaucrat and a volunteer who visits a voiceless young man in a state run nursing home whose name is Chris.
Chris enjoys collecting small plastic toys.
The family consists of David's wife Joan and 3 kids. The third child is Joe who is 10, burly, egocentric and greedy.
They regularly attend a church that has a strong social committee.
Only David has met Chris.

At the beginning of our story, it is Christmas time. David, disturbed by the materialism of Christmas, decides to follow Chris’ example of enjoying simple pleasures. This idea turns out to be a hard sell with the family, especially Joe who has his heart set on a specific bicycle.

On Christmas day, the extended family gathers. Joan is cooking an extra fabulous dinner since she has ample time because she has not had to buy and wrap many gifts. When the time comes to open presents, each person gives each person a simple gift, costing 0 to 5 dollars, chosen with that person’s capacities and interests in mind.

As the thoughtfulness and creativity emerge, people become more and more excited. Unlike other Christmases, family members become interested in each others' gifts, and appreciative of the newly enjoyable interaction – except grumpy Joe.

Every one of Joe’s gifts is a coin or a bill, and as time passes others pass him some cash under the table. By the end of the day he has accumulated $21.53. Joe is confused. He loves the money and the attention but it is nowhere near enough for a bicycle. Nor does he actually want to be thought of as only a money grubber.

After dinner, to Joan’s shock, Joe offers to help with the dishes.

After Christmas, David is filled with curiosity about his son's confusion. David takes opportunities to talk to him and also invites him to his next visit with Chris. At the visit Joe is uncharacteristically silent and visibly uncomfortable, but offers to come on the next visit too. In the meantime, he gets excited by discussions about how to turn his $21.53 into enough for a bicycle.

Early in February, Joan and David are both shocked to discover that their credit cards have 0 balances!

Through a series of small investments and odd jobs, strong arming everyone who was present at Christmas dinner, Joe has raised his cash to $60.79. One day before spring break, on the way to a visit to Chris, Joe and David see the exact bicycle in a going out of business sale and buy it on the spot for $49.99. Joe proudly shows it off to Chris, riding it around and around the room. Chris beams with joy.

Some time after spring break, guys at school tease Joe about the time he spending with Chris. Joe is confused and starts a fist fight where another child ends up with a broken arm.

Fortunately the school uses restorative justice instead of zero tolerance. Joe and his parents find themselves facing the injured child, his parents, several other children and school officials. This gathering is led by a justice oriented listener. Each person explains the incident and its impact on them. It emerges how frightening teasing is to the children and how no one seems to know how to deal with it. Joe is nearly in tears. He turns to his parents and explains how he doesn’t know how to be both a person who likes and respects Chris and a regular boy who makes fun of “gays” and “retards”.

No one has ever seen Joe be so vulnerable and articulate.

The resolution of the meeting includes a decision to bring Chris to the school and have Joe and his classmates make a presentation about inclusion.

Next Christmas comes. The nursing home made less profit this year, so the executives decide to cut costs by closing it for the holidays. Chris has no place to go to over the holidays and the official decision is made to permanently move him to a bigger facility two states away. Upon hearing this, David and several people connected to the school and his church organize a ten day vacation for Chris at the church’s retreat house. They recruit paid and volunteer helpers, and secure his return to the same nursing home when it reopens. All goes well and Chris goes to Joan’ and David’s for Christmas dinner. Joe does not receive even one quarter and he doesn’t seem to even notice his gifts. He is too busy helping Chris open his plastic toys and eat his pureed ham and turkey dinner.

When Joe helps take Chris back to the nursing home on Jan. 3, he notices Chris longingly looking at the top drawer of his dressing table. Joe peeks into the drawer and sees the jumbled collection of old pictures and plastic figurines, some quite cheap but some complex and interesting He has an insight.

Joe takes his remaining $10 from last year’s bicycle fund. Working with the shop teacher and his classmates, he constructs a wall hung display cabinet and some picture frames. A few weeks later the entire class participates in putting Chris’ bedraggled family pictures back together with clear tape and into beautiful, simple frames. Chris chooses and organizes the plastic toys he wants in his display cabinet by eye blinks. The most prominent toy is the one Joe gave Chris for Christmas – a happy clown on a bicycle.

The End

My final point is that the gift of diversity is everywhere. Every stable country has its gypsies. Every faith group is one fence apart from people who believe something else. And certainly, very, very certainly every family has at least one member who physically, intellectually or emotionally is very different in some deeply challenging way.

What would it take for you to accept that these challenges are placed at your doorstep so that you can receive the gifts of more happiness, a more vital and stable economy, more creativity in your personal and community life, more accurate communication, deeper more trustworthy relationship, and best of all a planet-wide outbreak of peace? I am asking because I know that once you accept this truth about inclusion you will help me to build it.

Thank you.

WPIT Draft Business Plan

2010-01-31T22:56:00.003-05:00

Preliminary Business Plan for World Peace through Inclusive Transformation

Description
World Peace through Inclusive Transformation – (WPIT) – is a commitment to have people around the globe understand differences and develop skills so that peace is available to all. The sustainability of world peace will emerge when enough communities appreciate diversity as an asset and have the skills to build personal and community value from interacting skilfully with differences.

Judith Snow discovered this reality as she worked to have people notice and appreciate the contributions of people who are labelled disabled. She taught the world that, rather than being problems to fix or hide, the differences we call disabilities create a context for relationship and community building, and for greater social and economic sustainability. Over time she developed a store house of examples of peace making through inclusion drawn from fields such as education, health care, community development and economics.

In the mid ‘90’s, Judith Snow realized that inclusion of diversities, if they are appreciated as gifts and contributions, creates the context for people to become peaceful.

WPIT was born when Judith Snow, Gabor Podor and Jason Wiles toured several states for seven months, speaking with and learning from others who were transforming fear of differences into passion to build social and economic sustainability.

At this time WPIT is conceived as an umbrella organization, seeding and guiding other initiatives that look very different from each other, but which have the common characteristics of being able to teach people and have them build from their differences in ways that foster sustainable relationship, abundance and peacefulness.

WPIT Projects Currently Under Development

World Peace Conference

This initiative is in very early stages of development. The aim is to reach world leaders who have the capacity to put peace on the world’s political agenda. The strategy is to hold a conference for the friends and colleagues who have the ear of these leaders – the relationship and trust to pick up a phone at any time and get heard by the leader.

WPIT will be one of the offerings at the conference, teaching people how the capacity for greater peacefulness is available everywhere through inclusion.

Creating Inclusive, Person and Community Centered Support

WPIT is currently developing an international community action research project with the aim of learning better strategies for supporting individuals with significant differences to participate fully in communities of their choice.

Currently service providers tend to segregate individuals, and the presence of supporters tends to turn citizens into helpers and volunteers instead of friends and colleagues.

Likely partners in this initiative are the University of Minnesota, Brock University, WPIT and various service providing agencies.

This research will also emphasize creating measures for highlighting how inclusion makes communities more peaceful.

Inclusion in Condominiums

Condominiums are a popular housing format in most urban settings. Often they include both owners and sub-leasees who represent a full range of diversities. Condominiums also represent an enormous economic player in that their maintenance costs and legally required reserve funds add up to $100,000’s of resources in any one building or neighbourhood. Currently these resources usually get saved or spent without impacting favourably the social and economic assets of the buildings or the residents.

This initiative is working with the resident Boards of Directors to inspire leadership and teach strategies for economic and social inclusion. These asset based strategies build social networks, bring financial security, build appreciation and utilization of diversity, and increase the value of hard assets.

We expect to be able to clearly show that as condominium owners experience social and economic inclusion they will also experience more creativity, autonomy and security, and that greater peacefulness will be a natural outcome of these benefits.

Personal Economic Inclusion

Everywhere the physical, cognitive and emotional differences that are called disabilities are considered to be in the sphere of charitable activity. Consequently individuals who are labelled disabled, their families and friends, are caught up in efforts to help, rehabilitate and support. Although a great deal of money is expended on behalf of “the disabled”, the affected individuals and their networks generally experience deep poverty. This in turn reinforces their isolation, dependence and vulnerability.

Excellent work has been done and much more can be done to have individuals and their networks be included in the financial flow and in fact to generate abundance.

Efforts in this area will continue to focus on teaching individuals and communities how to use abundance generating strategies. A parallel focus is to change policies that are unnecessarily limiting. An example of a simple and inclusive strategy is to support an individual to file an independent income tax refund claim, instead of being claimed as a dependent by their parents, which can liberate tens of thousands of dollars over one lifetime, and make other income generating strategies more feasible.

This project under WPIT will require an extensive policy research and development capacity as well as a community outreach effort to continue to work with mainstream accountants, financial experts, etc.

POISA

The Peaceful Open Inclusive Spaces Alliance – POISA – arises from the experience that communities, work places, schools and in fact the world, can become more peaceful when people of diverse backgrounds come together in ways that draw on diversity as a social asset rather than a liability, and where people are free to create and shape their own activities.

Peaceful – having the capacity to resolve conflict to the benefit of all concerned
Open – participants shape their own agendas and activities
Inclusive – diversities among participants are welcome and drawn on as valuable resources
Spaces – locations, contexts, and rules and principles that give participants a safe and facilitative bounded area within which to generate their activities
Alliance – agreements between organizations and individuals to work together to create and preserve a valued experience

The future of POISA is to teach people that inclusion makes peace possible, to foster the sustainable development of real examples of POISA and to have strategic buy in around the world so that people will come to expect their world to be made up of such spaces.

On the ground POISA is community development:
- the development of a community’s principles of Open Space
- supporting the community’s invitation process to become more diverse
- capturing the learnings as the community becomes more peaceful
- facilitating the story telling that deepens the community’s ability to be diverse and peaceful

There are no current examples of POISA projects, although similar projects have been worked on it the past http://www.inclusion.com/iaic.html are anticipated. During this summer at the Toronto Summer Institute for Inclusion an international body of participants envisioned the creations of POISA principles and some initial projects. The truth is that this kind of community development is long term and intensive. Unless sustainable resources are committed this aspect of our work remains a dream.

WPIT Market Strategies

The work that led first to the understanding that diversity is a context for liberating contribution in communities, and then to that inclusion is a context for peace making, originated in decades of seminars, keynotes and other talks and conferences carried out by Judith Snow, herself a person with quadriplegia. It is apparent that especially in today’s environment of electronically facilitated social networking, the way to get the word out about peace is literally to get the word out!

WPIT aims to stimulate a multitude of self generated social experiments in diversity, inclusion and peace, and to do so must develop an energetic, sustainable presence on the web and beyond.

There also needs to be a sustainable, on the ground, connected network of young community leaders who learn as they experiment with making peace in their communities.

WPITs goals are to find and guide these leaders so that in a relatively short period of time there is a strong commitment to peace through inclusion, and to build initiatives with these leaders. Judith Snow’s goal is to be able to retire knowing her life’s work is nurtured and flourishing.

WPIT will be marketed through web, conferences, videos, written materials of all sorts, personal experience, education and any other word of mouth strategy possible.

A particularly powerful strategy is to use the millennium goals and the many professional and organized bodies that measure social and economic progress by engaging them in measuring the increase of peacefulness that arises from inclusion.

Other links to consider

Blog from research tour 08-09
http://www.peaceforinclusion.blogspot.com
Toronto Summer Institute
http://inclusionnetwork.ning.com/
Other work related to Inclusion
http://www.lasereagles.org/pages/default.asp
Projected WPIT Budget

WPIT’s long term budget anticipates the need to accomplish:
- seeding leadership and learning in each project
- creating and making sustainable each initiative, e.g. rerouting the already existing condominium expenditures so that they sustain social networks, which in turn generate social and economic assets that can sustain the condominium networks and seed other initiatives
- growing WPIT, the global initiative of building and sustaining peace, from the abundance of its projects

In the short term of two years WPIT itself needs to:
- sustain Judith Snow, some of her personal support assistants’ wages, and the costs of her doing work
- give WPIT an overall Project Manager, and the capacity to communicate, fund raise, and record and disseminate learnings
- give the early initiatives capacity to get grounded

Two Year Start-Up Budget Estimate

First Year Expenses Monthly Annually
Judith Snow, WPIT Leader
a) Personal Expenses $2500
b) Transportation 600
c) Personal Assistance 1250
Project Director
a) Personal Expenses 2500
b) Office/Communication Expenses 700
c) Fundraising Costs 300
Initial Project Seed Money
a) Project Leadership 3000
b) Seed Money: legal and accounting,
insurances, communication, etc. 200
c) Fundraising Costs 500
Total First Year Expenses $11550 $138,600 CND

First Year Revenues
General Fundraising $1000
Sales 100
Contract Revenue, Honoraria, Misc. Income 900
Income Return from WPIT Projects 300
Total First Year Income $2300 $27,600 CND

Excess of Expense over Revenue $111,000 CND

Second Year Expenses Monthly Annually
Judith Snow, WPIT Leader
d) Personal Expenses $2500
e) Transportation 600
f) Personal Assistance 1250
Project Director
d) Personal Expenses 3000
e) Office/Communication Expenses 700
f) Fundraising Costs 500
Initial Project Seed Money
d) Project Leadership 3000
e) Seed Money: legal and accounting,
insurances, communication, etc. 200
f) Fundraising Costs 500
Total Second Year Expenses $12250 $147,000 CND

Second Year Revenues
General Fundraising $3000
Sales 500
Contract Revenue, Honoraria, Misc. Income 3000
Income Return from WPIT Projects 3000
Total Second Year Income $9500 $114,000 CND

Second Year Excess of Expense over Revenue $33,000 CND

Two Year Projected Excess of Expenses over Revenue - $144,000 CND

Request for Seed Money for WPIT

Our estimate, admittedly rough, is that WPIT requires $144,000 CND start-up funding to create a solid base for doing work over the next two years.

Tentatively

2010-01-31T22:55:00.001-05:00

Yes, it has been eight months since I last wrote.

At that time the Tour was done, “The Book of Judith” – the play was underway, Avalanche was about to be parked at Camphill Nottawasaga, and Gabor and I – when together – were getting ready to invite people to the July Toronto Summer Institute. At the Institute we met and planned with participants from the OM Reunion, Camphill and various international participants interested in Asset Based Community Development. Coming out of the Institute we created POISA – Peaceful Open Inclusive Spaces Alliance. We closed this blog – I thought – in favour of creating a new chapter of world peace through inclusion in the form of “creative stops” and other community organizing initiatives.

It didn’t go that way.

At the close of Jan. 2010 POISA exists mainly in Google Docs and as a section of a business plan. Gabor has left working with me and with any peace projects as far as I know. Camphill will have nothing to do with me and I am living in South Etobicoke. Both Avalanche and Bronte sit in a semi-abandoned state, advertised for sale.

Other leaders and interested people are gathering – all is not lost. At the prompting of one woman I wrote a draft business plan, and in doing so realized that there are several threads that I had been working on for years, and that these impulses are close to coming together. Erin Socall re-emerged, and is gently keeping me on task! A new WPIT is being born.

This WPIT is not a tour. World Peace through Inclusive Transformation is a commitment. WPIT carries me like a swift canoe, with its own instinct of where to go next. I am a rider, giving voice and passion to a direction that wants to emerge in the world. WPIT is part of a human evolution toward a planet-wide culture were all people are interconnected, communicating, being and working in support of vibrant life for all beings in the universe.

The biggest obstacle to the realization of this dream is our own individual and cultural hopelessness. We have loved, believed and committed before and been crushed down by ridicule and failure. Who wants to go through that again!

I do.

I want it and I can sense that Inclusion is a genuine potential for people. We have held in our arms for brief moments in many, many times and places. It can and has been real. We can find ways to sustain inclusion until it becomes the starship that carries us.

In the next entry I am sharing the WPIT draft business plan.

Judith

Experiencing The Book of Judith

2009-05-29T20:10:00.000-04:00

I am writing this in response to several reviews of the play “The Book of Judith”. These reviews were published during the first week of the play’s run in the revival tent at 1001 Queen St. W. One review was on the CBC’s National Friday May 22, created by Sandra Abma. Other’s were published in Eye Magazine, Eye Weekly, National Post and more.

And then there are the members of the audiences who have been commenting and e-mailing in numbers at every performance. And the choir.

I cannot be objective. This play – my play? – has been and continues to be a wonderful, terrifying and funny journey, all at once. None of the reviews, even the ones like the National which took a real stab at doing more than simply describing the basics, have not come anywhere near the actual experience of creating, then living, The Book of Judith.

I am most surprised and moved by the stories that choir members have shared with me. Most members are volunteers who have been labelled with a “disability”. Throughout the performance they are the Greek chorus: speaking my words, directing the audience, supporting Rubenfeld’s character’s transformation. One by one, as they grew into their role, many choir members have told me tales of how this play is supporting their own transformation, deepening a personal sense of power, liberating sexuality, strengthening vision and dream.

This effect among cast members is in many ways an unexpected treasure for me. I have given my life to breaking open the cage that the myth of disabled and normal confines people in. Yet in this play, in this nearly messianic, religious revival, interactive and spoofy over-the-top musical, the cage is utterly evapourated!

Don’t get me wrong – audiences are being deeply moved as well. The journey is far from smooth. People are personally engaged – with each other as well as with the cast. Andrew Penner wrote original music for the play. His tunes are like a spider’s web. With Rubenfeld’s energy, Penner’s melodic seduction and the choir’s invitation there is no escaping the joy, annoyance and struggle of the engagement. Although some have complained, many are returning for a second experience, and several have spoken or written to me, Michael Rubenfeld, Sarah G. Stanley, Alex Bulmer, Andrew Penner and other cast members about how they were deeply connected and changed in the performance.

The Book of Judith is a miracle disguised as a play about miracles.

Judith

The Book of Judith

2009-05-22T12:30:00.002-04:00

Well, I am deeply immersed in the play: “The Book of Judith.” I wouldn’t have thought that the play and World Peace through Inclusion were related a mere three weeks ago. Now I understand that they truly are and so I am reporting on the play and my experience of it in this blog. Anyone who might have a chance to come and see the play in Toronto will really, really get something out of it, so don’t miss your chance!

“The Book of Judith” has mainly been created by Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Stanley. A subtext of the play is about my part in their co-creation, a part which seemed to end about April of 2008. It was at this point that I got sick and tired the advocacy flavour of the piece. I was also beginning to have serious thoughts about taking on World Peace through Inclusion as my main focus at that time, although it was several months before I would meet Gabor and we begin serious consideration about taking off for six months.

Some of you know how deeply I struggle with the concept of advocacy even though I am often thought of as an advocate. The root of the idea is to speak for someone else. It contains within it the ever present idea that people who are considered to be disabled require other people’s help in order to function as human beings. It is not so much that we need advocates, as we need listeners, since even those who have no voice are very good at communicating and even better at contributing. Given that, it is no great task to discover what their dreams are and to create ways for them to contribute even more fully in society. We do not need to advocate; we need to pay attention.

So I was burnt out, disgusted, and unwillingly to spend the time and energy it would take – or at least, so it seemed – to shift Michael and Sarah’s focus. In this play Michael reads the email where I clearly told him and Sarah that I was out of the picture.

Last January, when I had to come back to Toronto so that issues around the funding of my personal assistance could be resolved, I went to a reading of the play which at that time had minimal structure and was being formed as a musical with Alex Bulmar as choir leader and Andrew Penner as composer. It was evident that Michael, and no doubt along with him Sarah, had taken a major shift in focus, and that in fact Michael was prepared to express a vulnerable and moving shift in his understanding of me personally and the life experience of people who get excluded by being labeled.

Those who get to know this play will understand that I was conflicted at that moment. On the one hand it would require me to allow myself to be exposed and in some ways, deified, so that the play could be formed. In other words, every view that other people have of me would become fully expressed in public – odd, inspirational, wrongheaded, bullheaded, artistic, curtly articulate, and more. It was no small struggle to agree to have these images boldly displayed.

At the same time, Michael himself takes a personal beating in terms of his ego and reputation. I realized that he is not putting me through this wringer as some kind of sacrificial lamb to a great cause, but he and Sarah have uncovered a brilliant format to create the context that could blow all the stereotypes to the wind.
I agreed with some reluctance to participate in “The Book of Judith” and justified it to myself as necessary to make up for the fact that I had abandoned Michael and Sarah at a critical stage in their process and that I owed it to them, particularly Michael who had put so much of himself into creating our group in the first place. I came to the rehearsals with that attitude.

Two or three days into the rehearsals I began to realize the genius of the structure of the play. A few more days and I awakened to the brilliance of having it be a musical with a choir made up of volunteer men and women, many of them people with disability labels themselves. They are at times my voice and at times Michael’s voice and very much the voice of people whose voice and social presence is erased by the societal oppression we call disability. At times there are some very humourous moments where the choir affirms the amazing possibilities that lie within the personal experience of being someone whose abilities are considered “wrong”.

And so now I am having a bit of fun with the whole thing. I have also had a wonderful opportunity to meet many of the choir members on a personal level and have some moments of deep reflection on our common journey.

Perhaps the greatest learning for me has been how much I was, and probably still am, caught up in the mirage of disability. This play could never have come to be being if I had not thought that my current singleness was the “fault” of my being quadriplegic. I started and fuelled the entire cascade of errors and events by believing that it is my stillness that places an obstacle between myself and potential lovers, and not just the reality of my being busy, somewhat solitary, and Britishly inhibited! It’s an amazing thing to have a play open your eyes to your own foolishness.

But back to World Peace through Inclusion. “The Book of Judith” is an on-the-ground (or on-the-stage) exposition of the contributions that people can make when they are included. It is also a full exploration of the journey that it takes for people to go from seeing each other as strangers to having collegial and intimate relationships. It’s a full expression of how peace is created when people take on the struggle to work from diversity instead of from sameness. I will never have a better example of what I have been talking about than this play.

We are very much hoping to tour the show. Anybody who has some ideas about this, please let me know.

By the way it has been a long time since I told anybody how to get in touch with us and/or the World Peace through Inclusion Foundation. My email is: avalanche0809@gmail.com and my phone # is: 647-232-9344. Gabor Podor is at gaborpodor@gmail.com.

Videos and information about “The Book of Judith” can be found at: www.bookofjudithplay.blogspot.com. Enjoy!
Judith

A New Phase Has Begun

2009-05-08T22:02:00.000-04:00

(Written May 6, 2009)

As I am writing this I am waiting and wondering if the extremely intermittent internet service characteristic of Camphill Nottawasaga will come back on. It may be a day or two before I get to post this blog entry. I am sitting at my wall hung desk in the back of Avalanche, looking out at a pair of Camphill residents returning from work in the garden. It is nearly the exact experience from the days before Gabor and I left on the World Peace through Inclusion Tour during the week of Oct. 24, 2008 – a book end in time.

The World Peace through Inclusion Tour is finished. Well over but not entirely as there are bills to pay still. Essentially everyone involved has moved into a different mood and activity. Gabor will leave tomorrow to take up intensive preparation for the summer solstice festival, and to rest from his position as a personal assistant to me for seven weeks. Jason has been off for a week and will come back to work – double full time – tomorrow. I am establishing myself: hired a new staff person to spell off Jason, am completing the arrangements to hire my staff through CILT which will give me much greater flexibility, have made arrangements to live at Camphill Nottawasaga in Avalanche until October, and am preparing to move tomorrow to a campground in Toronto for three weeks to participate in the play “The Book of Judith” at the Workman Theatre until the end of May.

We came across the Canadian border on April 28. This moment culminated a truly intense three weeks of presentations given in and around Faribault, Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota. In a way the experience was like my giving the doctoral thesis defence that I have never untaken at a university. After decades of personal and professional research and reflection, and eight months of working with Gabor to discover and develop the model of Syncopated Transition we presented it to over twenty audiences. Our listeners were of very different groups, from city councillors and business leaders to musicians to school children. With one exception – a gathering of group home managers – Syncopated Transition sparked everything from interest to revelation – a true success.

Even at the very end two important realizations emerged. The first was that we knew what we were trying to learn at the very beginning. It was in awkwardly trying to describe the sort of process that with minimal resistance breaks down segregation
– what we are now calling a syncopated transition – that I first recognized what a valuable colleague Gabor Podor is. How archetypical is that – to only recognize that one has always known one’s home after a long journey away from its!

Secondly I realized how much in the presentations I was focusing on inclusion instead of peace. I had not freed myself from my identity as a professional advocate. In my last week in Minnesota I broke free of this and we focused our presentations on the potential of inclusion to create peaceful community.

A different sort of work lies ahead. We have decided to create the World Peace through Inclusion Foundation. Our next step is to invite a diverse working team to the Summer Inclusion Institute (www.inclusion.com/toronto2009.pdf) where participants will design the future of WPIF, expand our Syncopated Transition Model and map out its implementation. Out of this gathering will emerge an organization that will increase the body of research on Inclusion and Peace, create sustainable projects demonstrating Inclusion as a tool for peace and community making, and invent and pollinate a practical language of Inclusion to talk about community and diversity.

We are now inviting people and raising money for this July event.

I will also spend the bulk of the summer at Camphill Nottawasaga writing a book about this experience of nine months of preparation, travel and research. This blog will serve as notes in designing the themes of my next book.

We will continue this blog, but from this point on it is a body of work about the creation of the World Peace through Inclusion Foundation and the results of the work undertaken in this framework.
Judith

Maxed!

2009-04-19T22:48:00.000-04:00

Ten days since I last “blogged”! It’s hard to believe.

On top of being an amazing hostess, Barb Handahl is an unbeatable tour manager. Our team of three – Jason, Gabor and I – have completed more than a dozen interviews, presentations, workshops and even two minutes in front of City Council to have Tuesday, April 21, 2009 declared Judith Snow Day in Faribault.

During three of those days I was without a computer. Last February I received a supposedly indestructible laptop – built to military specifications – as part of my work in Savannah. On this Tour it acquired two holes in its casing and then suddenly the screen would not turn on. Fortunately Gabor has been frequently backing up my files and Barb and her family rounded up a spare monitor, then a donor of a brand new laptop, then some help installing some software.

Throughout much of the week I have had sores and inflammation in my mouth and jaw making chewing a challenge. Meanwhile my four year old wheelchair batteries packed it in, and Jason spent the best part of two days either pushing me around or rounding up some new ones. We couldn’t figure out a donor for these, but research revealed a local business who sold them for $300 less than the price quoted by “medical suppliers”.

Needless to say fulfilling an intense presentation schedule, resolving back-to-back crises and participating fully in the extended Handahl family life of birthday parties, breakfasts with Grandpa, etc. has kept us fascinated, rushed, entertained and close to exhausted. In ten days or so we return to Toronto and end the Tour, or at least this leg of it. I expect that reverting to a relatively less intense and more typically structured life is going to seem like some sort of major let down.

In many ways this last leg is like a final exam for us. Will the concept of “Syncopated Transition” carry the inclusion fostering message we intend? Have I, and we, really learned to reach both people who care about diversity and people who know nothing about the struggle for labelled citizens to be seen and supported as citizens?

The Faribault leg of our tour has brought us face-to-face with service providing managers who are running segregated demeaning programs that create huge barriers for communities to discover the contributions of citizens who have unusual abilities. We have interacted with many individuals who are themselves labelled. We have played and coloured with four year olds and gone into elementary school classes. We have been interviewed for radio and two newspaper articles. We have workshopped inclusion with city business leaders. We have sung, talked, argued, prayed and eaten endlessly with a huge variety of people. If it is ever going to “work” - that is if I, and we, are ever going to make an effective impact in shifting a community to see full inclusion as worthwhile and doable – then surely we will have good results emerge in Faribault, Minnesota.

We have three more intensive days in this location. If time and energy permit I will write more about the impact we are having.
Judith

A Five Star Spa

2009-04-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

After more van repairs we arrived at 11:50pm last Tuesday at the home of Barb and Harlan Handahl in Faribault, Minnesota. Since then we have been in heaven.

Barb has been keeping up with our blog. She has been touched both by the powerful intention of the tour and by the many large and small hardships we have lived through during the last five months. So on the one hand she, along with Dr. Angela Amato, have lined up nearly three weeks of close to two dozen opportunities for Gabor and I to present Inclusion and Peace in Minnesota. On the other she is hosting us like we are the embodiment of royalty.

We have moved in, each of us with our own room. We are being fed sumptuous meals with homemade cookies and brownies in constant supply day and night. Barb, and her extensive family and network, have lined up free haircuts, gym memberships, golf games, passes to restaurant breakfasts (of which we have NO need), hot tubs, and even access to an accessible bathtub for me at a local senior’s residence. We can do our laundry day or night, our clothes have been mended, and we are continuously being asked if there is anything else we might need or want.

Neither are we being treated as delicate guests. We get to participate in every aspect of this family’s rich life from changing a light bulb, searching for lost keys and resetting the wireless router to playing with the grandkids and taking afternoon naps.

In this wonderfully restorative environment Gabor and I have been improving our presentations, building toward the creation of the World Peace through Inclusion Foundation and having the tough conversations we need to complete the difficulties we experienced in the earlier parts of the Tour. Healing and new growth is emerging in this comforting space.

Meantime we are already hard at work, with an intense schedule facing us after Easter Sunday. So far I have given three media interviews and together we have done another four presentations in three days. My favourite so far was to a group hosted by the Faribault Chamber of Commerce to a group of business leaders. The interaction was lively over the two hours. I was appreciative of the opportunity to get the point across about how much Inclusion opens up economic possibilities and not just better supports. It is all about citizenship!

Happy Easter!
Judith

A Cincinnati Weekend by Gabor

2009-04-08T21:53:00.004-04:00

We sat in a circle.

[inclusion]

She started by saying: I am angry. You are not listening. The room went silent.

[syncopated]

She broke through by saying: I am the lucky one. Out of my three siblings, I inherited the genes that allowed me to live a life of deep connections, intimacy and adventure. The room gasped and buzzed with excitement.

[transition]

She ended by saying: we did this together. We created the space in which we can be the Gifts that we are for each other. The room laughed as we acknowledged the shared intimacy emerging from the intensity of the last seven hours.

[listen]

On Saturday we went to an Intensive hosted by Peter Block (www.asmallgroup.net) and Jo Krippenstapel. This is a group gathering of about forty citizens. Period. No agendas. No goals. No programs. Emergence, not emergency. Peter has been at the forefront of facilitating the creation of physical and theoretical spaces that foster citizenship. His last book talked to me about two immediate ideas: the way the structure of gatherings create the gathering itself, and that the gathering itself IS the future we are coming together to create. The future is now.

[to the space]

After a bit of getting lost on the grounds of Mount Saint Joseph University, we showed up to share breakfast and mingle with a wide variety of people in a green building called Earth Connection. We started by introducing ourselves and sharing the gift we brought to the gathering. Each and every one of us. We followed by two people singing songs and playing the guitar, all of us joining in on the refrains.

[between]

Then we got down to work. The work of creating citizenship. In the group, and in small groups we explored the sometimes painful and very personal subject of Protection being a barrier, as parents and stewards restrict and police their wards ("To Serve and Protect" is the motto painted on the side of police cruisers world wide) . Of disability as Slavery by another name, as people are bought, sold and oftentimes killed by the service provider organizations based on their attached funding money. Of the wider implications of being the authors of our own lives. Of the exhilarating possibilities latent in powerful listening. Of the power of creative collaboration between people whose voice is usually not heard. Together, we created conversations that transformed us and began to emanate out of the circle into our lives and the wider world. We confronted our own stereotypes and explored ways of being and action that challenge and transform the dominant discourses of oppression. We learned that this is dangerous and sometimes frightening work, but always rewarding. Starhawk says that "Magick is changing consciousness at will". This is exactly what happened on a group level. By Magick, we created each other as citizens. At will.
After lunch, Gary sang Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen and again we all sang the chorus.

[the beats]

Listen. To what is said. From a place of understanding and generosity. Listen to the gifts she brings in her words, actions, ideas, history and herstory. Pain and anger are also gifts expressed as they are energy that transform and are transformed in community. The conversations we took part in were healing because we listened deeply to each other. They brought us together, because in their peculiarity and specificity, they express the common struggles we all face. I asked a question at the end. In a small group, I asked a question about self organization and it's implications for political action. Jo and Ken and Gary, Brenda and I talked about locality, about neighbours, about autonomy and about citizenship. Ha. That word again. I walked away, energized that we are asking some really important questions. Before we left, Judith and I sat around talking to Peter Block. Since the first time I met him, what continues to strike me is his presence. Here is a man, I thought, who is there, wherever he is. He looks you right in the eye, always with a glint, and he poses more questions than gives answers. He really got what we were talking about, and pointed us towards some areas requiring emphasis and clarification regarding the concept of syncopated transition. For the last forty minutes at Earth Connection, we engaged each other in building the future Foundation. I felt like we arrived. Before we left, I thanked him for inviting us and grounding the Tour. This has been a real turning point. That moment for me was the real halfway point of the Tour, with five months passed and one left. Nothing is linear. We are now the community that sustains the real work of Inclusive Citizenship.

[listen]

Minnesota Is Expecting Us

2009-04-06T10:42:00.002-04:00

(a Minnesotan press release)

FARIBAULT — A woman who would like to wipe out the word “disabled” is making a stop in Faribault next week.

Judith Snow, 58, of Toronto, Canada, is making Minnesota a destination on her “World Peace Through Inclusion Tour.” She is spending the month of April visiting various places in Minnesota to advocate for those labeled “disabled” to be included as part of society, said Barb Handahl of Faribault.

Handahl got to know Snow through her own work with Minnesota’s State Operated Group Homes. Handahl led an effort to connect people with developmental disabilities with community groups and activities that they could benefit from being a part of. She met Snow at a inclusion conference.

“Judith is a very intelligent and remarkable woman,” Handahl said.

Snow has no use of her body below the neck except for the ability to move one thumb. The use of that thumb allows her to drive a motorized cart to get around. But, Handahl said, Snow depends on attendants for her personal care needs.

In spite of her physical mobility limitations, Snow has earned two master’s degrees and traveled to three continents advocating inclusion of people with disabilities in society.

So many barriers exist to keep those label “disabled” from fully being part of society, Handahl said.

“Judith envisions what the world would look like if everyone was included in it, and accepted for who they are,” Handahl said.

Snow has worked for more than 30 years throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, the Caribbean and Canada advocating for training and education programs for people with disabilities. Her models resulted in thousands of people with disabilities getting jobs, homes, new relationships and support systems that lead them to greater participation in their communities.

Snow will be speaking to the Faribault’s Future leadership group from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 9. From 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. that evening, a potluck to welcome her to town will be held at the Faribault Chamber of Commerce and Tourism office.

After her initial visit to Faribault, Snow will speak at a conference and events in St. Paul. But on April 19, she returns to Faribault for a special concert. From 2:30 to 4 p.m. that day at JavaLive coffee house, local folk signer Rafi Dworsky will be join Snow for a presentation for young children.

She will give presentations at Eagan, Rochester, Minneapolis and Duluth before returning to Canada on April 27.

Who: Judith Snow, international advocate for inclusion of people with disabilities.

Where: Faribault Chamber of Commerce office, 530 Wilson Ave.

When: 5:30 p.m. potluck, 6:30 p.m. conversation and desert, April 9

How: Call Barb Handahl, 507-210-0711 to register to attend

— Staff writer Pauline Schreiber may be reached at 333-3127.

In Two Voices

2009-03-29T13:36:00.004-04:00

It is a real pleasure that Gabor has taken to keeping up this blog with me. I don't feel as guilty when I don't post for a week or so!

As I write it is Sunday and I am sitting in "Derek's Cafe" at 15 Parkside, Barrie, in the arms of Sophia Creek, Camphill. Last night we had Bible Study - Camphill style - something like a Quaker friends gathering with readings from the Camphill story as well as scripture and room for each person present to be silent and to reflect publicly on how they feel the Spirit of Light is calling them as an individual and as a member of the community.

Our present reflections are filled with the wonderings of how we will find and afford housing for all those who want to be physically present in Sophia Creek. I am not the only one figuring that one out.

Gabor, Jason and I left River's End Campground last Wednesday. We have "gigs" coming up in Ohio and Minnesota, but the bulk of the World Peace through Inclusion Tour is now behind us.

For me this primarily means beginning the work of gathering up the stories and reflections of all I and we have experienced and learned over five months. It means building something unique, generative and valuable on the foundation of the work and experience that this period in my life made possible. It also means cleaning up the "messes" that this abrupt shift in my life created - hurt feelings, lost communications, anxieties and exhaustions that others experienced because I took such a dramatic direction last October.

Leaving Tybee and Savannah brought me several moments of real tears. As we drove through and away from the city I was nearly overwhelmed by the memories flooding from almost every corner, park and building. I have lived more intensely in these places than anywhere in my adult life. Tybee is my home in a unique way - not just because of the marshes and pelicans, the campground pot lucks and the windy beach walks, but also because I took and found the opportunity here to find my own roots - the place from which I can truly continue to build inclusion.

I have discovered that home is not necessarily where you like to be. There were many moments when it has been very difficult to be in Tybee and Savannah. Home is where for better and worse you can find your ground and discover who you can truly make yourself into. At 59 I am late coming to this place. But then it is said that Frank Lloyd Wright did his best work between ages 60 and 90.

This summer I will restabilize my home and personal assistance, finish my second book, and most importantly work with Gabor and others to create the World Peace through Inclusion Foundation. Our chief work is to research and develop the model of building inclusive community through syncopated transitions. An explanation I gave to Gabor one hot summer afternoon to describe how to approach developing community right in the midst of the "institution" has become the core of a promising model of inclusive transformations.

The end of the journey was present in its beginning.
Judith

Reflection at the Sentient Bean

2009-03-19T10:30:00.002-04:00

I am sitting in the Sentient Bean coffee shop, downtown Savannah. It is a cafe owned by Kristin Russell, a good friend and supporter of Judith and the Tour. Judith and I have given two workshops here called Nights of Inclusion (the third one got cancelled because of our sudden return to Toronto), and I have played music here several times. I biked for about 45 minutes from Susan Earl's late husband's condo where I am currently staying at until Wednesday, when we take our final leave of this beautiful city. I have been going through the pictures I took at the St Patrick's Day parade yesterday. Some of them turned out excellent, I posted about 30 of the on Facebook, but the compression algorithm they use really wash the vibrant colors out. Still, they look great, it was the first sunny and warm day after about a week of rain.

Tom Kohler came by and hung out by my table for half an hour, so I copied some of the pictures onto his hard drive. Tom is one of the few people that I have gotten to know well on this trip and he has become one of my heroes. He truly represents for me what inclusive community organizing is about. I met Tom last summer at the Toronto Summer Institute, which is a week long gathering of worldwide Inclusionists, organized by Jack Pearpoint of the Inclusion Network. He is the coordinator and ED of Chatham-Savannah Citizen Advocacy, and he is the ultimate pF* Social Networker. (*pre-Facebook) A native of Savannah, he has been at this since CA was invented, effectively growing and steering his organization through tides of change that constitute the modern history of his beloved city. I would hazard that he is truly one of the few individuals responsible for the city's amazing renaissance throughout the seventies and eighties, through his tireless efforts to connect and network, and his insatiable desire to create an engaged citizenry.

Tom knows everyone. This is not an exaggeration. By first and last name, where and when they met, what they do and who they know, who and how their spouses, children, pets...etc are. And he cares. Genuinely. This is what truly distinguishes Tom: he advances the radical notion that we are all connected, and this connection is really worth cultivating at every level, simply because this is who we truly are. Do you need to borrow a car in a short notice to get to a job interview out of town? He knows someone who will lend you one, simply because Tom will vouch for you. Is your sister organizing a discussion forum on Civil Rights and The Role of the Southern Church? Tom knows just the right key note speaker, here is her phone number. Are you interested in hiring a new parking attendant for your city department? He knows the disadvantaged black youth looking for a way to finance his college degree. But really, who are you? What turns your crank? That is what Tom is interested in finding out. What is your passion that makes you who you are? That is what makes you valuable if you take up his challenge to express yourself - not just for you and yours. Take a leap of faith and open it to the community. Whose community? Does it matter? just share it, dammit. With whoever cares. Funny, that this sharing of your gift is actually what creates the community in which you can share your gift.

I have learnt from Tom that there is a type of engagement that transcends the deepest divisions of class, race, history, religion and other dividers running through this beautiful city built on the swamp. Savannah, with its centuries old oak trees that have seen alligators, slavery, lynchings and SUVs is a city with real soul. This is where the meandering Savannah river meets the ocean and creates a unique wetland ecosystem that supports just about every type of sub-tropical flora and fauna you can think of. Pine trees, palm trees, wetland grasses and wild tropical flowers coexist and complement each other on the historic city streets; black oaks, covered in a type of symbiotic overhanging moss create a rich canopy of moody afternoons in many of the downtown parks frequented by students of the Savannah College of Art and Design (OCAD with a soul). I fell in love with Tom's vision of the Savannah that is possible through the passion and commitment to involve and include everyone of his fellow citizens in the process of the city creating itself.

In closing, I wanted to insert two entries here. First is a short bio of Tom from the SCSA website:

"Tom Kohler, Coordinator and Executive Director, is a native of Savannah. He attended the public schools in Chatham County and graduated in 1970 from Herschel V. Jenkins High School. After this, he attended Armstrong State College and the University of Georgia, where he received his degree in 1976.

Tom has been involved with people who have disabilities since he was 15 years old. His first involvement was through a volunteer experience at the Temple Youth Group at Mickve Israel Temple. Tom has been the Coordinator for the Chatham-Savannah Citizen Advocacy for the past 31 years.

In the early days, Tom was taught that the question was “In what ways is this person broken and how do we fix them?” It has taken thirty years to get to a better question, “The world has a deep crack in it;, how do we try and stitch it back together?” This question follows Buckminster Fuller’s maxim, “Life is long; pick something big and interesting and work on it.”

The second one is an e-mail that Judith and I received regarding the workshops we gave this weekend:

"Dear Judith and Gabor,

Thank you both for all that you did for citizen advocacy Sunday and Monday. We have had such positive feedback from both our Board members and the group of advocates and community members. Some of the comments are posted below:

“Provocative…more than provocative!”
“It was the best one I have been at, in literally years and years.”
“I heard things today that I never thought about before.”
“Every citizen advocate needs to hear her, those “trigger words” are now in my mind.”

I am personally challenged to move from the private to the public. I look forward to other opportunities to experience your gifts. Please let us know when you are returning to the Atlanta area.

Sincerely,

Derona King, Coordinator

Citizen Advocacy of Atlanta & DeKalb, Inc."

Written by Gabor, March 18

Explanation

2009-03-14T22:12:00.000-04:00

I just returned from a short walk to the beach. Lara is off to a job interview, Jason is in Tampa golfing, Gabor is hanging out in Atlanta. I am alone - or at least by myself – for two hours with Charlie, Lara’s dog.

It is a blustery, chilly day in Tybee. Although the campground is filling up and tourists were everywhere on my little journey to the beach no one is swimming today. The tide is coming in with real surf – the kind of waves that indicate the undertow so many signs on the north end of the island warn swimmers about.

Everywhere there are signs of both devastation and renewal. Parts of palms and trees are scattered about and last night, when I got back to Avalanche at 6:00 PM, it was clear that the electricity had been off for most of the two weeks I had been away. Likely a big storm had passed through.

With the electricity off the fridge had been off too. Neither Jason nor Lara could stomach the job of cleaning up the rot and mold, but once again the generous staff of River’s End Campground came through for me.

At the same time vigorous new palms are growing through the boardwalk that takes me to the beach and – glory be praised – the tides of Tybee have already reclaimed much of the new sand that was carefully dredged up and laid down by the City Council in December, to extend this tourist resource out into the ocean. This is a celebration for me because once again I can reach the water’s edge on the blue and white striped runner that has been laid out by the same City Council so that wheelchair users can reach the ocean. Next week I will be able to stroll on the hard packed sand at low tide.

The gulls were flying low today. Two young pelicans flew right over me, a mere twelve feet above my head. I felt welcomed back.

I can only stay now less than two weeks – including three days taken out to do workshops in Macon and Atlanta – before it’s on to Ohio and Minnesota to finish the Tour. This fact, along with all the effort and sacrifice required to rebuild the foundation so that Gabor could return and Jason could join us, puts me in mind of why I came in the first place to this magical place. Why did I leave my home, spend my money and body, endure cold, accidents and illness, risk my funding for support, and strain my relationships with family, friends and assistants? Was it only to be with palm trees and pelicans?

I know the answer – I always have. But I realize that I have rarely expressed it in public. Therein lies the heart of most of my difficulties. As public as I appear to be I still have secrets that I hold to myself.

There are people in the world who are currently called “developmentally delayed” – they still are often called “severely retarded” in private. In my childhood I was frequently put with them because my support requirements are the same. From that early age I continue to experience a great kinship and communication with people who do not speak. I know that some of my greatest gifts are from this side of my nature.

At the same time I have a great kinship with people who do speak – the so called “normal”. I know that some of my greatest gifts are from this side of my nature.

My drive to build inclusion is very much rooted in my personal desire to live in a world where I am not required to pretend to be either one or the other. What sort of world would permit me to freely and responsibly be both a partner in a number of relationships with deeply caring, skilled and responsive personal assistants – to live the publicly intimate and vulnerable nature my body holds me in - and, in one time and in one body, be an intelligent, articulate, passionate, spiritually and emotionally strong woman?

I came to Tybee after decades of groping toward a better way to both ask and answer the question. Everything I have tried until last summer has led me to dead ends. In a world where either one is disabled or one is normal, if I am to have any measure of public freedom and safety I had better play to my normal side every time.

Of course I’m stating it too baldly. There have always been ways that I could find to live fully. But just the same the barriers still snap back into place every time. I could get a job, buy a house, start and lead groups and projects, make friends and colleagues, but the “me” who does these things doesn’t openly also get to be the “me” who lives in the intimate space occupied by those who usually don’t speak and who live through the will and care of others, contributing in return a spiritual and emotional connectedness rarely available to folks with bodies that support the illusion of independence.

In the year of 1955 I became aware of my spiritual commission to create a world where the silent could be appreciated for their gifts, contributions and being. In the year of 2007 I cracked – in the sense that it became unbearable to me to live and work in a world of jobs, private homes and private lives. Two other people – like me also labeled and working as token advocates in a service agency – suffered heart attacks within a year of each other, and one died. I took it as writing on the wall, and retired.

After more than 50 years of living to create inclusive society I was disgusted and discouraged with my lack of success. Much has changed and some of that change is even attributed to me. But my aim is neither to be famous nor to have a movement of change based on my thinking. I both want to be “we” and I want for quiet, unusual people to be appreciated and supported to contribute as full citizens in a real world of community – just as they are – not having to pretend to be as normal as possible.

I need to find another way to open the doors. Advocating, meeting, lobbying, resisting, fighting – these either are unavailable or can’t work for quiet, unusual people. We need our own way to transform the world – a way as vulnerable and intimate as ourselves. I want to discover, perhaps create, that way.

With the entrance of Gabor, the techno DJ, community loving, party seeking, closet intellectual, into my life a new version of my dream became possible. Gabor entered into conversations about transformation. He understood what I meant – even led me further than I intended to go – when I explained that inclusion is like inserting a disruptive rhythm into a well established beat so that the music isn’t stopped but is altered so that suddenly a new dance is possible.

And so the World Peace through Inclusion Tour was born. Gabor was up for it even though he risked working for four months without pay. I was up for it, largely unconscious of what I was risking, but desperate for a road out of futility.

It has been much harder than I could have imagined. The details are in this blog.

It also has given me a vision of inclusion that can succeed. It has given me the answer to my constant question – “What do I want to do with my life?”

So, no – I am not bent on a permanent vacation with palms and pelicans and I am not dangerously naïve and stubborn. I am looking for a path for those of us with capacities unrecognized in the world to achieve our full human stature. I think I may have found it.

Judith

Third Leg

2009-03-08T22:56:00.000-04:00

Late tomorrow Gabor Podor, Jason Wiles and I will start back for Atlanta, Gabor to resume his Excellence Seminar and Jason and I to catch the Welcome Wednesday supper at First Presbyterian in Savannah.

Gabor and I are on the mend.

Jason is a new and enthusiastic personal assistant, strong and ready to work hard and to further the action of the World Peace through Inclusion Tour.

We will keep in touch.

Judith

The Foundation Collapsed

2009-03-04T23:22:00.000-05:00

I guess it’s easy to notice that my energy has been flagging lately. Originally I wrote three times a week in this blog. Right now I am down to less than once a week.

On another note, the flavour of the writing in this blog is very mixed. Mostly it’s me, Judith, posting. I welcome the participation of others and thank those who have been commenting. I have not yet figured out how to keep a dialogue going between myself and the followers, or between the followers themselves – someday I will figure that out! I started out with the intention of reporting on the events and results of the Tour, expecting to post several videos of talks and gatherings. Instead the majority of the posts have been more personal journal-like entries.

Am I OK? Yes, and No. Today I am “camping” in Barrie, in a house full of members of the Sophia Creek community. Gabor is in Ancaster, Ontario, with his parents. He has resigned as a personal assistant and is considering what further role he wants to have with the Tour.

The crucial roadblocks showed up early in January. A kingpin contract was canceled at the point it was supposed to begin. This ran us on the rocks in terms of finding the money both to create videos of the work and to find alternative ways to pay Gabor as a personal assistant and David as a back-up and a videographer, NABORS still refused to pay on the basis that the Ministry of Health policy is that I cannot receive funded services for this many weeks outside my province. At the same time we lost the capacity to join two or three other organizations, including youth initiatives, into this one project, creating something with lasting impact. We were stopped!

At the same time I was having migraine, anger and depression in reaction to a medication I was taking to handle the post-bronchitis asthma-like reactions to smokers, swamp smells and the local pulp and paper mill. I quit the medication!

Gabor started to develop a sore back.

Then it emerged that I had terminated my travel/medical insurance by going back to TO for 5 days in January. I looked around and discovered an alternative provider, but in the meantime, through Gabor’s urgings and Skype meetings of my support circle it became apparent that our circumstances were too insecure and we had better return home.

Of course, where’s home?

We left the trailer in Tybee and I returned to Camphill. I have also stayed several nights at the home of the Galati’s. They have an accessible bathtub, which has made a huge difference to my stress level!

Along the way I fell twice in two makeshift beds. The long drives and the falls served to worsen Gabor’s back.

Once here my circle and I went to work to restore the foundation so we can continue. Talks to sort out issues and refresh Gabor’s and my relationship. Conversations between leaders in several service providing and transfer payment agencies. Baths and massages. Hiring a new “roadie” and gathering a few back-up staff for my time running between Toronto and Barrie. Downtime with friends. Good meals.

A week and a half later some resolutions to the flow of funding seem to be brewing. But the foundation is far from solid. Gabor resigned.

I am far from my trailer. I have five commitments in Georgia that I would be a fool to drop or run back to do – a lose/lose situation for sure. I have no home. I have too little backing from the “service providing system” to give me the support I need to continue to be an international builder of World Peace through Inclusion.

Of course even this has taught me much. In the midst of the January bronchitis, medication headaches and deep discussions with Gabor to deal with our mutual stresses I had great insight - I realized that an incident when I was very young had scared me deeply. As part of that the little girl Judith became afraid that someday she would run into something that scared her SO BADLY she couldn't handle it. This paradoxically made me keep trying scarier things, unconsciously trying to vaccinate myself against my own fear. Now I have seen this I can stop doing this, because I now know what I actually want to do with my life and throughout all three plus months I've been scared enough to satisfy myself that I can handle fear. I am free to build from a much less risky place.

The brightest spot on the horizon is that Jason Wiles has been present and training with me for ten days, knows what is happening and is up for the challenge.

Any ideas – please be in touch.

Judith

The Bicycle - A Story

2009-02-08T23:52:00.000-05:00

I drafted this story in December. Its purpose is to illustrate how inclusion fundamentally arises from the contributions people are making, and not from designing a “better” world that someday, maybe we will let them be part of.

In subsequent blogs I will explain the three levels of inclusion that I hope are illustrated herein. This is very much a draft. Likely I will find that I need to rewrite parts of this story as we work on it together.

The Bicycle

INTRODUCTION
Dad – David – is a city bureaucrat and a citizen advocate for a voiceless young man in a state run nursing home – Chris

Chris enjoys collecting small plastic toys

The family consists of wife - Joan, David and 3 kids – Joe is 10, burly, egocentric and greedy

They regularly attend a church with a social conscience.

Only David has met Chris

BEGINNING
David, disturbed by the materialism of Christmas, decides to follow Chris’ example of enjoying simple pleasures. This idea turns out to be a hard sell with the family, especially Joe who has his heart set on a specific bicycle

CHRISTMAS
As their extended family gathers, Joan is cooking an extra fabulous dinner since she has extra time because she has not had to buy and wrap many gifts. Each person gives each person a simple gift, costing 0 to 5 dollars, chosen with that person’s capacities and interests in mind.

As the thoughtfulness and creativity emerge, people become more and more excited. They become uncharacteristically interested in each other’s gifts, and appreciative of the newly enjoyable interaction – except grumpy Joe.

Every one of Joe’s gifts is a coin or bill, and as time passes others sureptiously pass him some cash. By the end of the day he has accumulated $21.53. Joe is confused. He loves the money and the attention but it’s no where near enough for a bicycle. Nor does he actually want to be thought of as only a money grubber.

After dinner, to Joan’s shock, Joe offers to help with the dishes.

Post Christmas
Filled with curiousity about Joe’s confusion, David takes opportunities to talk to him and also invites him to his next visit with Chris. At the visit Joe is uncharacteristically silent and visibly uncomfortable, but offers to come on the next visit too. In the meantime he gets excited by discussions about how to turn his $21.53 into enough for a bicycle.

Early in February Joan and David are both shocked to discover that their credit cards have 0 balances!

Pre Spring Break
Through a series of small investments and odd jobs, strong arming everyone who was present at Christmas dinner, Joe has raised his cash to $60.79. On the way to a visit to Chris, Joe and David see the exact bicycle in a going out of business sale and buy it on the spot for $49.99. Joe proudly shows it off to Chris, riding it around and around the room. Chris beams with joy.

After Spring Break
Guys at school tease Joe about the time he spending with Chris. Joe is confused and starts a fist fight where another child ends up with a broken arm.

Fortunately the school uses restorative justice instead of zero tolerance and Joan, Joe and David find themselves facing the injured child, his parents and several other children plus school officials at a gathering led by a justice oriented listener. As each person explains the incident and its impact on them it emerges how frightening teasing is to the children and how no one seems to know how to deal with it. Joe, near tears, and talking mainly to his parents, explains how he doesn’t know how to be both a person who likes and respects Chris and a regular boy who makes fun of “gays” and “retards”.

No one has ever seen Joe be so vulnerable and articulate.

The resolution of the meeting includes a decision to bring Chris to the school and have Joe and his classmates make a presentation about inclusion.

Next Christmas
The nursing home made less profit this year, so the executives decide to cut costs by closing it and laying off staff for the holidays. Chris has no place to go and will be permanently moved to a bigger facility in North Carolina, two states away. Instead the church and several people connected to the school organize a ten day vacation for Chris at the church’s retreat house, with paid and volunteer helpers, and a return to the same nursing home when it reopens. All goes well and Chris goes to Joan’ and David’s for Christmas dinner. Joe does not receive even one quarter and he doesn’t seem to even notice the gifts he does get because he is too busy helping Chris open his plastic toys and eat his pureed ham and turkey dinner.

When Joe helps take Chris back to the nursing home on Jan. 3, he quietly notices Chris longingly looking at the top drawer of his dressing table. Joe peeks into the drawers and he has an insight.

Joe takes his remaining $10 from last year’s bicycle fund and, working with the shop teacher and his classmates, he constructs a wall hung display cabinet and some picture frames. A few weeks later the entire class participates in putting Chris’ bedraggled family pictures back together with clear tape and into beautiful, simple frames, and in organizing the plastic toys Chris chooses by eye blinks into the locked display cabinet. The most prominent toy is the one Joe gave Chris for Christmas – a happy clown on a bicycle.

The End

Judith

2009-02-04T09:31:00.002-05:00

Set Back Again

2009-01-29T23:20:00.002-05:00

I certainly get tired of running into these long gaps of time. It has been so many days since I have had the opportunity to write a new message on this blog. For me this is another reason why I am inviting people to post messages themselves. There are too many days that go by with no new information or inspiration!

Almost two weeks ago now I woke up to realize that I had a "perfect" opportunity to go back to Toronto and be present for some very important gatherings. SO I collected my frequent flyer points, and Gabor and I flew back to Toronto and Barrie last Friday and returned to Atlanta yesterday.

I won't drag on about the grueling details of aborted flights, having my wheelchair trashed twice by the airlines, bitter cold and white-out driving conditions, and very very very late nights. Suffice it to say that the experience was both worthwhile and nerve-stretching grueling for both Gabor and I.

We stayed at Aki Feseheye's place, and were warmly welcomed and supported. In addition, Katie and others helped Gabor get a well deserved break. I fit in as many friends as possible and held a circle meeting at my father's residence. It was so good to see him and them again. I took a quick visit to my cat's, and on seeing how much they love their new home and Ally their new mom, I gave them to Ally. It's a match made in Heaven. But I will always miss them.

The first thing that was accomplished was that I attended the Camphill Communities of Ontario board meeting, said goodbye to my God Daughter Annie Green as she moves back to a new life sharing community in Colorado, and took another step toward moving into Sophia Creek. I felt that My beloved Camphill friends needed my physical presence so that plans for my residence in the community would not once again go on the back burner. The severe doldrums of a Canadian winter can make you feel like very little is possible. It was good for us to rekindle the vision of my full membership in this wonderful gathering.

On a completely related mission I gathered my circle and we strategized about having my transfer payment agency see their way clear to pay Gabor and to support me in my move to Barrie. This required a meeting with a committee on that board. I think we made some progress, and we will have a better sense of that in about a month. It was good to have the full support of my circle. It was also good to realize that my taking a stand to do my life and work in a way that allows me to freely reach out to the world is important not just for me but for everyone else who uses personal assistance.

I also got to reconnect with my Toronto Wisdom Community, and realize how much I am appreciated and missed. I slipped in a meeting with my doctor and got myself on a new medication which seems to finally be lessening my bronchial symptoms. Last but not least, I got to reconnect with Ray Warren and the Ancilla Foundation. I realized that our efforts to create an economic support to building inclusion are finally beginning to take hold.

We had to come back to Atlanta rather quickly because Gabor is registered in the Landmark Advanced Course this weekend. It warms my heart to realize that he takes to this form of empowerment pretty much the same as I do. In a way I was sorry to leave Toronto so quickly, but at the same time, our work in Georgia is really just beginning.

On the flight back, my wheelchair was dropped by the baggage handlers and the damage was substantial. This is actually being typed by Lara Howell as I am lying in bed.
So once again, huge barriers to keeping up with the work have emerged. This leaves me a little discouraged and certainly very tired. But at the same time, I know that we will get through this and even while it is happening, the work will continue.

In the very near future, hopefully by mid-February, David, Lara, Gabor and I will be hard at work on an Inclusion, School-based project that will engage a wide variety of kids, teenagers, and faculty members. My hope is that in my next blog message I will be able to give you details of this potentially far-reaching initiative. It will make all the obstacles seem trivial relative to its huge potential.

In the meantime, it is time for a well deserved good-night's rest.

Judith

Things that Go “Clunk”

2009-01-21T23:01:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States.

Today I began to breathe normally for the first time in six weeks.

Monday I woke up to: “I ought to go back to Toronto for the Allocations Committee Meeting” of the agency that my personal assistance is attached to.

Today all the important pieces – reasonable flights, places to stay, insurance on and availability of the Dodge, etc. came together and Gabor and I will be in Camphill and Toronto from Friday night to Wednesday afternoon, meeting with my circle, and firming up arrangements to create a home base at Camphill Sophia Creek.

For three months the World Peace through Inclusion Tour has worked hard to (re)establish connection and energy so that inclusion work can flourish in this area with such rich potential.

Today, at dinner with the diversity team of the Savannah Country Day School, and based on previous connections with AWOL, Chatham-Savannah Citizen Advocacy, the Southern Collective for Inclusive Citizenship, and the First Presbyterian Church of Savannah, a multi-year project was drafted.

It’s like a slipping clutch engaged.

Judith

Describing Inclusion

2009-01-18T00:12:00.001-05:00

Inclusion
My getting better continues at a slow, uneven pace. Yesterday Gabor, David and I participated in a Citizen Advocacy luncheon – I didn’t eat anything. The talk and discussion went very well. We got our best video yet. Tomorrow I will be doing an open mike night at the Sentient Bean, along with a group named AWOL – a group aimed at using e-technology to get kids job skills, cash and positive entry to the economic aspects of their world.

In between I have been in bed mainly, still coughing but less, figuring out strategies to deal with chronic acid reflux and eating baby sized meals. It looks like we beat this one too.

As I have had lots of time to reflect, both consciously and in dream-like states. I have evolved a strategy for communicating the peace growing power of inclusion. I intend to share this strategy in the blog.

Tonight I want to share a 3 stage description of inclusion I have been working with. In later blogs, in the near future, I will share some stories that wrap around this.

Of course the concept “inclusion” is not related only to people who are labeled disabled. When women were first demanding and implementing their rights and abilities to participate in political and economic life, the social results were inclusion. When people from non-English or French speaking parts of the world move into Toronto, find their way in cultural, spiritual and economic ways in the city, and broadly influence the opportunities of that city, that is also inclusion.

In the past twenty years and more a great deal has been written and said about inclusion. I have sat on two consulting committees about this subject and have been amazed at how much can be said, written and researched. I am not one to favour making things more complex. Complex talk is one strategy that excludes many people who have disability labels. I have been working on ways to talk about how peace shows up at different stages of inclusion. I want to begin sharing more of this work here.

Let me know how the following writing strikes you.

It can be said that one person includes another. An example would be when a women invites a new friend who lives in a nursing home to regularly attend church with her. It can also be said that an organization includes individuals, as when a school makes all its classrooms welcoming to children who learn in non-academic ways. It can also be said that one group includes another, as when an “all white” baseball league and an “all black” baseball league become just a baseball league.

When people first talk about inclusion they usually mean something like: “You are welcome to be in my space but I will make no changes in my world because you showed up. You must act as if you are just like me, or leave.” When women first worked where men did, and when people in wheelchairs first went to university they often struggled to find a restroom they could use at work.

As inclusion progresses, the “including” person or group gets to the point where they recognize that changes in structure and policy would assist the “included” person or group to participate more effectively. This is the stage of “reasonable accommodation”. Ramps are built, ESL classes emerge and targeted housing subsidies are funded. The included are still mainly expected to fit in, keep up, and stop at “their level”.

The most creative and effective stage of inclusion is reached when everyone realizes that we are not all the same and that we don’t have to be. It is the stage when there is no longer anything to be “included into”. All sides recognize that their unique differences are real and are also opportunities for each other’s growth and enjoyment. Each is ready to explore what can be let go of and what can be enhanced so that a new world that works for all can be created. As an example, where classrooms have been inclusive at this level methods of teaching have been evolved, students have taken on more intimate and respectful roles and relationships among themselves and with their teachers, and the daily activities and interests have shifted across entire school boards.

It would be nice to think this progression came easily. In reality it is hard won in most cases, with many virtual and actual battles fought to keep the dialogue going.

Although I am primarily a champion of the most creative level of inclusion, greater peace can show up at all levels. I will write about this in subsequent entries.

Judith

Lara and Charley helping Judith get better

2009-01-14T14:34:00.002-05:00

Bronchitis, not Larangitis

2009-01-13T22:59:00.002-05:00

Gabor doesn't appreciate the difference, a difference which is life threatening for me. However, Gabor especially, and also David and Lara, have been present and fabulous - shaking, slapping, pushing, massaging (officially called assisted coughing) - whatever it takes to get the guck up so I can keep on breathing. Today has been a little better, and I have been up a few hours, breathing, eating, getting my hair washed and catching up on e-mail.

As Gabor wrote it has also been an intimate time of sharing and recreating our commitment to inclusion, the tour and to life itself. After a valiant and successful struggle to get one mucous clot up I told him I'd give him three more years!

It's clear this respite at the other end of the Rabbit Hole is time limited. The work and we need a base, a home, a strategy and resources. But I could not have planned for or imagined a more valuable research retreat than the past few months have been.

As always there is more to say but time and breath (for the puff/sip Morse Code) are limited.

Love; Judith

The Power of Stories

2009-01-13T11:30:00.002-05:00

This is the story of WPIT. This is my first blog. This is Gabor. The character in the background. The Personal Assistant. The muscle. In the story. We have been cooped up in the trailer for the last few days, on account of Judith being in bed with a severe case of laryngitis. Antibiotics, rest and lots of assisted coughing. So I was called on to write a blog this morning. I can’t hide any more. I’m a bit shy, stepping out of the shadows, still blinking from the spotlight. But don’t let that fool you. I just need to get used to it a bit.
Judith thinks she is getting better today. We have been engaged in a conversation about health and vitality over the last few days, naturally. We have been telling stories about peace and inclusion. In contrast, the story of our Tour has been one of the Maverick setting out to conquer that Monolithic Codex of Disability. A valuable heroic and romantic tale, only serving to reinforce the discourse of individual. The true power of the Tour lies in living and spreading inclusion in community. We are creating the possibility of shifting the story today. Our health and vitality restored to new powerful heights through the story that you and I and we all create. I invite you all to share your stories about Peace and Inclusion, and I will continue to bring some of our stories from my perspective from now on. Love and Light.

Gabor

Near the Point of Having a Plan

2009-01-08T12:31:00.002-05:00

We are very close to having a plan!

This may sound strange considering that about 35% of our allotted time to be out of Ontario has passed. Just the same I feel that this is hard won real progress.

Before I left on this Tour I was deeply frustrated by what seemed to me to be a general failure on my part to get traction with the idea that there is no such thing as a disabled person. Other concepts that I have been instrumental in rooting in practice are more accepted, such as support circles. The idea has generally caught on that planning supports for the fuller participation of a vulnerable person ought to be centered on that person and their gifts. However the understanding of both “gifts” and “participation” is not sufficiently grounded in the related concepts of capacity and citizenship, and so the widely adopted use of person centred planning generally fails to allow labeled people to escape the disability paradigm.

And so my deep mission remains unfulfilled. Unusual people still get categorized as disabled, still are streamed into a segregated world where they have the role of “being helped” or worse, and still are vulnerable to being murdered to get rid of the “burden” on family, the economy and society.

In addition I have an intuitive grasp on a possibility that inclusion can lead to transformation in social and economic relationships. But making that possibility present and engaging to others continues to elude me.

The deepest reason for the Tour was to get me close enough to people on their home territory that I could have person-to-person dialogue about inclusion and what opens up for people who struggle to build it – in particular about how inclusion leads people to become more peaceful.

On Tuesday Gabor and I had lunch with a woman who has not met me before. She has over 30 years experience as a citizen advocate. She has had close relationship with two people who are considered to be disabled, one of whom became a friend and one of whom she considers challenging to know and relate to. As I talked about inclusion and how people report great personal benefits from it, in particular that they become more peaceful, her face lit up in recognition. She understood when I pointed out that this knowledge is understood on a personal, private level, but is not recognized or acknowledged on a public, policy or political level. I got my point across!

One on one strategies of engagement are a time honoured organizing practice invented I believe by Saul Alinsky and his colleagues. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I am experiencing some effectiveness. But the effectiveness is short lived if it is not followed up with founding a team or organization committed to building the insights and enthusiasm into strategies that will ground the energy into everyday practice.

While I was on the Year End Cruise I was confronted with how I have not yet fully stood behind my own mission. In other words, for all good reasons, I have been collecting the bricks and wood, the tools and the site, but I have not truly begun to build the house.

Beyond this I also have not yet fully taken up the leadership which can create a space for inclusion and peace to thrive and be fully adopted in the world. Instead I have been getting ready.

I think I am ready.

Several elements of a plan of action are emerging and over the next week or so, along with Gabor and others, I will flesh them out into a detailed project. This plan will include further research, reframing inclusion and personal assistance, and organizational building. I am imagining that I will be able to come home – wherever home turns out to be – with a new and effective capacity to bring the space of full citizenship for everyone to the world.

Judith

A Prosperous New Year for All!

2009-01-05T21:04:00.001-05:00

(Written Jan. 1)

Happy New Year!

As hoped, being on the cruise and in the course “Simple Pleasures” has opened a space for me to learn about better ways for me to fulfill on the World Peace through Inclusion Tour and to spread the message. But first, the details of the cruise.

We are on the Adventure of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean ship. We sailed out of San Juan, Puerto Rico for a day and a half and on Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008 docked in Aruba. I went shopping and found a discount mall where I bought a swim suit, sports bra and some panties.

Next day, in Curacao, Aaron and a Landmark friend Brad Grandbouche, took me swimming in the ocean. It was perfect!

Later I had my make-up done for the New Year’s Eve party and I have to admit I was pretty stunning. The Landmark Education group (about 350) had its own big band party in the Imperial Lounge, and after midnight Aaron and I danced and strolled along the Royal Promenade before retiring early this morning.

Today ii a sea day and tomorrow we will have a day in the port of Philipsburg, St. Maarten.

In between I have been at work developing my strategies for the tour which in Landmark language I call “my impossible promise”. This phrase is a jargony term used by graduates of the Wisdom Unlimited course who have also completed or are interested in a higher level course called Power and Contribution.

I took this course about 3 ½ years ago and realized in it that nothing could make me happier or more fulfilled than focusing my life on creating inclusion. This means to me creating a stable group of people who work successfully at having diversity become welcome and invited into our communities and societies. Diversity is a powerful source of economic and social opportunity. Every opportunity can only exist if there is a difference that makes it possible for people to form relationship and mutual action. Inclusion can be a benefit no matter what diversity is at stake, but I have the most interest and personal experiences with the diversities that get labeled “disabilities”

The phrase “Impossible Promise” refers to a mission to transform something far beyond our own personal lives. The “impossible” part is the reality that some missions require a transformation in society to make the outcome possible. In the present world understanding that certain characteristics are “disabilities” and that these characteristics must be viewed as “impairments” and be reduced, eliminated or accommodated as much as possible full inclusion is not possible because the opportunity creating capacity of these differences is not appreciated for their community, relationship and economy creating potential.

A part of my mission to create inclusion is that in the late ‘80’s I began to notice that people became more peaceful when they took on becoming inclusive. I decided that people need to know that this road to peace is available to them particularly since other pathways to peace seem closed to most societies.

Nevertheless after my Power and Contribution course I mostly avoided having anything very constructive to do with my Impossible Promise of World Peace through Inclusion. After all I don’t want to be a world leader – it’s too much trouble and potentially dangerous!

I worked on and off at getting someone to measure the peace making nature of inclusion. The idea behind this was that since lots of people pay closer attention to results that are publically measured and reported like projects designed around the Millennium Goals then if the peace building capacity of inclusion were measured it would eventually enter into public consciousness.

Two lengthy efforts at building such a measurement project failed and I was pretty much ready to give up on the whole idea when I also became aware in the summer of 2007 of how much I hated working for a government funded agency as a support circle builder. By October 2007 I “retired” and took off to Savannah in January 2008 to write an autobiography.

The ensuing months did not lead to a book but they did lead to an understanding that I could redesign my life so that I could reach people in their homes and intimate places where they would listen to me and engage me in conversations about how inclusion had touched their lives and how inclusion could lead to peace.

And so I dived down the rabbit hole.

I have been deeply engaged in many, many conversations since Aaron and I joined the cruise. I have come to understand that the nature of the other side of the rabbit hole is that it is a closed, complete world in itself and that typically no one enters or leaves it. For most people there is no reason to shift “worlds”, and there are strong, if invisible, structures in place that make shifting worlds difficult and possibly dangerous.

“Disability” and “inclusion” are like two mutually exclusive worlds. Inclusion itself is about bridging from one world to others. My disorientation is a natural consequence of entering, in a fully participatory way, into a completely unfamiliar world. My loss of funding for personal assistance is a natural consequence of leaving the world of concepts and structures to which it is firmly attached.

I have also realized that personal assistance itself is currently attached to the world of disability and that it can be redefined as a bridge that creates a way for people to move with support from one world of participation to another.

Along the way the Tour has been given a magnificent gift of $10,000. I have learned so much about how important inclusion is to others and how valuable people consider my work.

I am looking forward to a prosperous and effective 2009 indeed!

Judith

Last Entry of 2008

2009-01-02T22:46:00.003-05:00

I am in San Juan, Puerto Rico, writing in a hotel room, what I expect will be my last blog entry of 2008. Gabor is somewhere in the Keys and I am with Aaron Richmond who has been my Year End Cruise personal assistant for four years now.

Many people have been generous in giving money for the World Peace through Inclusion Tour since October. I want to be quick to write that the cruise was paid for before I left on the Tour. Your fund raised dollars are not supporting my participation in a Landmark Education course on a Caribbean cruise.

Personal assistance has become very much of a subtext of the Tour. I define personal assistance as a relationship between two individuals where one is willingly and intentionally using their bodily, emotional and mindful capacities to support another to fulfill their intentions. In general personal assistants provide support in the areas of mobility, bodily well being, communication and a very difficult to define area I might call guidance. In the area of guidance the assistant takes part in structuring the environment so that the supported individual can best use their own abilities and be best received by others. I have written an article about personal assistance which is available for free at www.ancilla.tv.

Their have been several challenges to my personal assistance since mid-October when Gabor, Erin and I formally launched this Tour. Not the least has been the breakdown in the financing that pays Gabor’s and other’s wages. It is nothing short of miraculous that Gabor has stepped into supporting me facing the uncertainty of when and where the money will emerge to pay him. His capacity to sustain willingness is even more enormous than his physical strength, upon which I also rely continuously!

This other side of the rabbit hole is marked by how much more obvious is my own responsibility to sustain the relationship through which I receive the support that sustains me and creates my capacity to accomplish my intentions. More than ever I must take an active interest in ensuring that Gabor, and now Aaron, and others who come and go, understand and have enough agreement with my intentions and strategies in order not to feel either confused, abused or abandoned and that their needs and concerns are heard and addressed.

My current fatigue on the matter is not that there is a problem either with Aaron or Gabor, but that the last week of finishing up Christmas related activities and getting ready to come to Fort Lauderdale, meet up with Gabor, and fly to San Juan, Puerto Rico to pick up the Year End Cruise have been complicated by the sudden illness of another assistant who had come from Canada to relieve Gabor. Between her inability to work and her own need for our support we have been using all the capacity we have. This of course is not the problem – the worry is that we are so close to breakdown in my support relationships that it has become difficult to decide what to do, what not to do and which problem to solve next. If I cannot reliably set the context, direction and provide the resources to sustain the structure of my support, my personal assistants lose a considerable part of the stability they need to support me well. The dynamic dance breaks down.

As it happens we made Fort Lauderdale and Puerto Rico and no further hitches were encountered. May the course “Simple Pleasures” and the cruise itself bring me some insight on ensuring that the stresses of the last few months are firmly behind us.

Judith

The Other End of the Rabbit Hole

2008-12-24T00:21:00.000-05:00

I started this five days ago and it was overdue then. I apologize to the regular readers. I hope this entry helps you realize just how chaotic life gets.

The Other End of the Rabbit Hole
Sometime around Dec. 15 I began to think that it was if I had fallen through the rabbit hole, and had come out the other side. (see Alice in Wonderland.) The thought gave me some comfort in that the image describes my impression that explaining life as it is now to people from my pre-Oct. 24 life is futile. The rules, context, landscape, relationships, expectations are qualitatively different and the Red Queen just has no time or inclination to orient me or anyone else to this very different world.

Being on the other side does not confer any great sense that I can bridge two worlds and act as some ambassador or interpreter, Quite the contrary I can barely remember how I used to understand the world I came from. Memory fades for what having a home was, or what having a relatively ordered, predictably scheduled life was like. Although I can distinctly remember that I used to have certain concerns such as “how to create a professionally adequate Power Point presentation”, such things seem somewhat fabulous now as genuine pursuits.

Gabor completed the Landmark Forum last Tuesday, in Atlanta. As part of the process I travelled to Atlanta, a journey almost as mythic for me as travelling from Nazareth to Jerusalem in order to be registered by the Romans for tax collection purposes – the journey that brought the Christ child to his manger. Atlanta is a modern, crime infested, inhuman, racist city, yet through the set of people Gabor shared with and the requests I put out for an inexpensive place to stay and some money to pay expenses, David, Gabor and I lived for 5 days in a communal land based, child centred, car free community. As days progressed I found myself surrounded by happy, helpful, diverse and spiritual people who live to give each other a hand when needed, share their resources and carefully, intentionally interface with the bleak modern world within which they are imbedded.

It is practically obvious that women – even women of my age – gain a certain power, centredness and grace in such an environment. But I was most struck by how the men all seemed to have gained the space to be peaceful, creative and vulnerable in a very simple manner. I saw three men at work building a house with tools no more sophisticated than a battery powered hand drill. I watched as they constructed solid scaffolding out of simple pieces, figured ways to paint and assemble complex geometries, and communicate and move around each other’s different thinking/building processes apparently without the need for bosses, regulations or power struggles. The resulting house is immeasurably more beautiful than the ubiquitous urban architecture.

I was stranded one afternoon with work to do on my computer, a failed puff/sip interface, and no familiar personal assistant with me. I requested the assistance of one of the young residents of the house and quickly realized that his eyes were weak enough that he had to hold his face within two inches of the laptop screen. Yet he calmly followed my words and expressed no frustration, doubt or ego as we went through the minutely detailed process of accessing where the failure lay in the interface and then rebuilt the required code set. Within 15 minutes we had the interface working and he went about his business as if he had done nothing more complex than make a cup of tea. I met another man who simply did not hide that nearly continuous consumption of alcohol is a part of his life. On the one hand he can not sit or stand with others in a typical conversation more than a few seconds; on the other he keeps the history of the community alive, keeps the art and meeting spaces vibrant and functional, and has a knack of being present when a particular word or task is required.

Gabor and I were welcomed to present in this space and although we had only 3 days to set up and advertise about 14 people came and the level of listening and discussion was quite deep. It was exactly the sort of encounter where from beginning of the thought through production and inviting, to presenting the vision of world peace through inclusion and receiving the feedback and moving into dialogue and thoughts of future actions, the entire process was marked in respectful responsive engagement.

I practically moved to Atlanta on the spot. Cooler thought of course revealed that we are not in an either/or situation. There is room in the World Peace through Inclusion Tour for activity in Tybee, Savannah and Atlanta. Life gains complexity!

Back in Avalanche, the near Christmas season brought Gabor and I the opportunity to present to three members of the First Presbyterian Church and five college students who are at US universities, but originate from China or Japan. These young women are living over winter break at the retreat house attached to the church building and run by the congregation.

We finally got a good video of a presentation, marred only by the fact that I have a sore throat and went through two coughing fits. The girls were unprepared for our conversation but seemed to warm to the stories and dreams. Once again I felt that we “on the ground” and that everyone present would take some meaningful appreciation for inclusion and diversity away with them after the afternoon.

In the meantime there have been other dramatic moments in the personal assistance, financing and team work of the Tour. More in a soon to come posting.

Judith

Tonight!

2008-12-17T08:13:00.001-05:00

Presenting an open forum led by
Judith Snow and Gabor Podor
in partnership with SoulShine and the Hearth Community

We are from Toronto Canada on a journey to host conversations about inclusion and diversity

Participate in an opportunity to expand
peace making capacity in our communities

Wednesday December 17th, 7pm
317 Nelms Avenue at the Hearth
(for map go to: www.thehearthcommunitycenter.com)

Donations at the Door

Judith Snow is an internationally renowned community developer and inclusion activist. Gabor Podor is a community festival organizer and DJ extraordinaire. For details of the World Peace through Inclusion Tour see:
www.peaceforinclusion.blogspot.com

A Weepy Moment

2008-12-15T18:47:00.000-05:00

Perhaps this isn’t the best moment to write in the blog. I’m hungry, there’s someone’s sentimental music playing nearby and – I’m not cold! (We’re in Atlanta where there is an unusual warm spell happening!)

Gabor participated in the Landmark Forum this weekend. Many of my stresses have melted as I realize what a strong foundation I have in his renewed, now fully intentional commitment to BE my personal assistant. I am tired with the tired that comes from relief after a long, hard march. And I am joyful.

As can only ultimately be explained as a mystery, but yet has happened again and again to me when I or a friend of mine has participated in the Landmark Forum, the tide of my future and present has turned forcefully. Many have joined “the cause” – a Facebook fundraising strategy, while I have been promised an early honorarium cheque from Chatham Savannah Citizen Advocacy.

Gabor shared in the Landmark Forum about the World Peace through Inclusion Tour, and now we are preparing over 200 cards to hand out to willing recipients tomorrow night as he completes his final session.

Gabor met a woman, Sharon, in the Landmark Forum who has offered us free accommodations in Atlanta, in the heart of an intentional community that offers peace generating education to children and refuge to animals, artists and aging hippies. This community – The Hearth, (http://www.thehearthcommunitycenter.com) – feels like home!

Over the weekend Erin and Bill Worrell, coordinator of my circle, took on the transfer payment agency, and actually have worked out a mutual strategy that may get the wage money flowing again.

DeKalb Atlanta Citizen Advocacy coordinator and her assistant also offered shelter, and are participating in inviting participants to a discussion led by Gabor and I about creating peace in community, organized today, and to be held this Wednesday evening.

So in a matter of five days the finances are turning around, hundreds have heard or soon will hear the message of world peace through inclusion, my own circle is stepping up and I am back in the bosom of Landmark Education graduates, the only community in which I have ever felt free.

I am experiencing a sense of power that has been missing for many, many weeks.

Judith

Playing My Own Script

2008-12-13T23:23:00.001-05:00

First, I will write about what’s been accomplished this week lest any readers are getting bored with my personal reflections and angst.

Wednesday David got me up early and Gabor and I set out for the Equal Opportunities facility, near Ogeechee and Anderson, in Savannah. By now we are getting reasonably familiar with the roads and we arrived on time, at 9:00 AM. I was tempted to call Tom Kohler, who has never seen me show my face before 11:00 AM just to tell him that miracles do happen, but we were quickly caught up in creating Plan B and Plan C, and the thought slipped my mind.

The event was advertised as a day to honour grandparents who were raising their grandchildren because the birth parents were absent, working or incapacitated in some way. I was working for free, or at least for breakfast, as a way to get the World Peace through Inclusion message out and because the main organizer, Gladys Cohen, has invited me to do a paid gig in March.

Breakfast was late in arriving, there was no coffee, no LED projector until the last moment, and the volunteers who were giving hand massages and manicures were in the same room as breakfast and the caroling – and the presentations - so when it came time for me to speak I definitely felt that I was working uphill.

Gladys cut me off before the end of my presentation but I didn’t really mind because I felt I had made my points as best as possible anyway in that chaotic space. Soon afterward a woman sought me out, gave me her contact information and took our card, and expressed how much she had gotten from my talk. Once again I realized that one never really knows what one is doing!

Since a beauty salon was represented that morning among the spa volunteers I requested and received a coupon for a free hair cut. It’s something I badly need and can’t afford right now. At the end of the morning Gladys asked me how much my presentation was worth. I set a lower fee but she insisted it was worth $5,000. It seems that her program needs to report a certain value of time and services contributed “in-kind” to keep their state funding. I was amused to realize that I am about to receive a $5,000 hair cut, and that Gladys has now told me how much I should charge for my conference presentation in March!

A few hours later I joined a small group of citizen advocates (see http://www.savannahcitizenadvocacy.org/index.htm) to reflect on the recent death of a young man who passed away under compromised circumstances at a local nursing home. People had asked me to think through with them how they could be better prepared to notice that active negligence could be taking place, realize they had noticed, then act powerfully to curb the harm that is evident.

I was happy to support them, but in truth it required little input from me. They were eager to have the opportunity to share their experience, their regrets, their questions and resources. It really only required of me that I had been present about 10 days ago when one of the four sat down informally with me at “The Bean” and in the course of opening up to me realized how valuable it could be to get people together to talk – breaking the silence.

I am encouraged in my sense that where I want to be on this Tour is present.

This week Gabor also went to Atlanta to participate in the Landmark Forum. As many reading this blog know I have been a participant in and assistant with Landmark Education courses since May 1990. I remembered this week that the last time I was hospitalized with life threatening bronchitis was 2 ½ years after I took my first Landmark course. I credit my Landmark participation as a main source of mental and physical health, and an environment within which I have been able to hone my vision, intention and skills as a world peace activist and inclusive community developer.

Gabor has noticed and admired the strength that being a Landmartian (my term!) has given me and decided to have a go himself at the Landmark Forum. I am totally excited by this and will travel myself tomorrow to Atlanta to participate in the “graduate evening”. This is the part of the Landmark Forum where participants invite their graduated friends to share in the course with them for a few hours.

As thrilled as I am for Gabor, his absence put me as close to the edge of serious breakdown as I have been for years. Erin went home to be with her kids last Monday due to their support collapsing. Lara who said she could be here by Friday (yesterday) got stuck in Toronto. Chris, who was hired on the fly to replace David who got another gig that took him out of town Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon, called to back out at 2:00 PM on Thursday. But Chris was persuaded to hang in there for just enough time and with both of our hearts in our mouths I put Gabor on the bus at 6:30 PM Thursday. Tom Kohler stood by to be called in case Chris baled or David didn’t show.

It is now Saturday evening and Lara made it across the border and is due anytime between now and Sunday morning. Tom has been taken off emergency alert. Erin has been busily and successfully guiding from Toronto the emergency fundraising to pay for the assistance that my transfer payment agency won’t cover. Chris and I both went with David to his second gig, which was to video tape a stage performance of Aladdin put on by youngsters and teenagers at a well funded prep school in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

The production cost $30,000. The director used to be on Broadway and some of the theatrical effects were created by specially contracted Cirque du Soleil producers.

Maybe I’m just bent and jaded but I couldn’t help notice that there were only 3 black people in an audience of nearly 500, and one of them came with me. There was one kid in a motorized wheelchair in the cast, and his role was to zoom across the stage once. He didn’t show again, even for the last bow
.
(In case you wonder just how to authentically fit a kid in a motorized wheelchair into an Arabian Nights tale, they had an elephant on wheels built to escort the princess in at one point, and I can imagine that he could have driven it around quite effectively!)

This morning I awoke to lie staring at the ceiling of my trailer – Avalanche – which is little more than a large tin can lined with Styrofoam and whose thin walls and propane furnace protect me from the chilly, windy nights of Tybee Island. I was struck by how I had achieved exactly what I seek for others. Full, naked inclusion!

Now, at least temporarily abandoned by my transfer payment agency, I have no services in my life. Apart from the very real burden of having to raise a lot of money to cover staff salaries I am also free of agencies trying to create an unreal protective prison around me. I have been stripped both intentionally and by unexpected circumstances down to what I can create for myself and what those who believe in me and/or who care about me are willing and able to provide in order that I may continue to create my vision in the world. There is no pretense, no protection, no coddling, no barrier – and no limit to how far this message can reach!

I am standing up to the privilege and the challenge. I will be present at the final bow of this so much more ragged and so infinitely more interesting production. Cirque du Soleil, eat your heart out!

Judith

Donation Request

2008-12-11T21:48:00.002-05:00

I posted the message below on Facebook tonight. Readers who are not on Facebook can respond by going to CAVE - www.communitycave.com, and following the links for the World Peace through Inclusion Tour.

"Erin has done a wonderful job of setting up a Facebook "cause" for our group, and our friends. I thought I would throw in my words as well, to set a context that I realize some may not know.

First, what is this World Peace through Inclusion thing?!?

I notice lately that there are many peace initiatives and that is GREAT. More and more people realize you can't fight for peace. They are creating different pathways to that goal. That's important because peace is wholistic, inner and social, experienced in mind, body, heart and relationships. Certainly peace is created and certainly there is more than one way to make it present.

For over twenty years I grew in understanding that when people take on the challenge of being inclusive - building relationships and community from diverse ability - they became more peaceful, almost as a by-product.

For most of that time I ignored what I was learning. Afterall I am an inclusionist, not a peace activist!

Finally, I have been confronted with what I know, what I want in the world, and my ultimate responsibility to say what I see. Inclusion can lead to World Peace.

And so I have sold my house, bought a trailer and accessible van, and set off to figure out how to get this simple, important vision planted in the world.

First stop is Savannah, and there we have stayed for complex reasons. Please read the blog for details.

In the meantime - and here comes message #2 - various potential sources of income to sustain Erin - the publicist, Gabor - the personal assistant/roadie, and myself - the spokesperson - the $$ sources are slow to come through. Chief of these is the source of Gabor's wages, and he is currently working for nothing while I am paying people who give him a break from 24/7 from my credit card.

As Erin recently posted, the transfer payment agency who receives about $1800 a week from the Ministry of Health in Ontario in order to pay my personal assistants is refusing to pay Gabor. I have met the conditions but the agency has not yet restarted his wages.

We are broke. Going home is not an easy alternative because it would interrupt the ground work that I have spent weeks and months putting in place.

On top of that, I have no home to go back to. I needed to make a complete shift to make the Tour happen and so there is no house and there are no personal assistants in place either in Toronto where I lived for 37 years or Barrie where I will eventually live in the Sophia Creek Camphill community.

We have an urgent need for $3000 to meet upcoming personal assistance costs. Thereafter this will not be an ongoing expense if the transfer agency is persuaded to keep its commitment. After that I will have more income from work, but there will still likely be unmet expenses associated with Erin's work and with other daily costs of keeping going.

Please donate if you can, and pass the word along. Someone out there will think this is an exciting fulfilling way to spend the abundance they have!"

Warmly; Judith Snow

Sad Note

2008-12-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note:

I intended to write more, but my heart’s not in it. Erin had to return to Toronto today. The supports around her children broke down.

We can do lots of stuff by e-mail and Skype, so by no means is “all lost”. Also, as things get sorted out and her circle gets stronger, she will rejoin Gabor and me.

Just the same, I miss her.

Missing stuff has been a theme! Space, my cats, back-up personal assistants, a steady income, etc. I don’t want to drag on – or make the blog only into a personal diary! Still it’s remarkable how emotional this journey is continuing to be.

Tomorrow, I will give a more “professional” report, and maybe post some pictures.

Love; Judith

Dark Thoughts and Blind Men

2008-12-06T23:58:00.003-05:00

Somehow time gets away. (That leaves an image of me crazily chasing after time with a butterfly net – unsuccessfully!) It’s already three days since the last post. How does that happen?

Relatively speaking there was quite a response to my last post, and ALL of it was to tell me that prisons are not something to like. Funny – I don’t think I said I like or agree with the existence of prisons. My point is there IS stuff in the world I don’t agree with and wouldn’t create or actively support, yet, if I am honest about my feelings, fears or even about what I observe in life, I know that I am sometimes attracted to what I consider to be violent and also that I have sometimes seen good results emerge from what I consider to be “bad”.

Why am I writing about this? Mostly because I am faced with what seems to be a reality that I am limited by my own judgment of good/bad. I came to be an “inclusionist” out of my reaction at six years old to some information my Father gave me about doctors killing children with Down Syndrome and our subsequent conversation about why he was keeping me alive. It was one of the most pivotal moments in my life. But in my life long zeal to fix this problem in the world and to permanently impart value to the people who are labeled disabled I have become a sort of one trick pony, and on top of that, I don’t consider myself to be particularly successful. Doctors continue to kill children with Down Syndrome, albeit in a much more scientifically justified and sanitized way.

One thing I have come to understand in my life is that to attempt to fix something is to empower that thing to reoccur in a stronger form. Use of antibiotics kills off weaker bacteria leaving the stronger ones optimal space to thrive. Closing institutions for “the disabled” led to the proliferation of group homes so that now every town, large or small, in North America and Europe, has houses where the labeled ones are isolated and hidden in the name of “being cared for”.

Does this mean I never use an antibiotic or that I want a return to institutions? No, it means I want to “love my enemies” to use a Christian teaching, or in Landmartian terms, (I am a Landmark Education graduate and an avid participant in their programs), I seek the path to transformation, where my unique perspective on the opportunity that is made available by diversity becomes understood in our shared world as part of bigger conversations about peace, abundance and responsibility for a healthy planet.

Back at the Life Ministries church this evening I came to some peace for myself about my mixed background of values and interpretations, callings and missions, and musings and confusions about what I am doing and why I am doing it. I realized that I don’t have to figure it out – I don’t have to understand myself, at least not altogether. There is no necessity to neatly wrap up my rich life experience, my love for my labeled fellow travelers or my intense drive to impart a different vision of the possibility of diversity.

It is enough that I have lived and am living a blessed life, that I have been richly afforded occasions to see beyond the “normal” cast of perceptions that our societies call the way it is, and that I have deeply experienced and am now exploring the abundance that is made possible by welcoming diversities that challenge us into vital networks of relationship and opportunity.

I simply want to share it, build it and as much as possible secure this way of being into our everyday structures.

On a related note, at the gracious invitation of Tom and Betsy Kohler, Erin, David, David’s brother Jamie and I went to a concert of gospel and Christmas music performed by the Blind Boys of Alabama, at a cozy bar called the Café Loco on Tybee Island. Gabor had already agreed to DJ at the Sentient Bean, so he MISSED IT.

The four principal Grammy winning performers are men in their 80’s who were raised at the Negro School for Blind Boys, where they first performed together in 1939, ten years before I was born.

Let’s just say the place rocked. Quite literally at some points the group, the audience, the entire building were jumping!

At one point the main singer, (I think he said his name is Jim Carter), was led out into the middle of the rocking, dancing audience by the tour manager Chuck. People reached out to touch him as he sang, danced and reached out to them. At points Chuck would start to lead Jim back up the steep step to the stage, and Jim would get part way up and turn around and practically drag Chuck back down into the joyful jumping crowd.

Although it initially looked like Chuck was trying to make Jim stop and return to the safety of the stage to end the concert at a time appropriate for a nearly 90 year old man, it was soon obvious that the two were playing a game, likely well practiced, and designed to give Jim full contact with his unseen listeners and their exquisite pleasure in the group’s performance. The two men were having a lot of fun.

Beyond the memorable performance I reveled in this demonstration of personal assistance at it’s best. Chuck facilitated Jim’s joyful, humorous play, and his full quality performance while making it safe without minimizing the risk or making a big deal of the “extra” work he was called to take on. We all had the chance to see team work at it’s finest but I suspect few will appreciate as much as I do that this demonstration of superb facilitation was brought about by men, some of whom started their lives in the deepest dual segregation, both racist and ablist, and that they are people who started the creation of the dance called personal assistance decades before the Independent Living Movement started in Berkley, California in the mid-60’s.

Chuck took our card from Erin. I am hopeful that Chuck is as good as his word and that the Blind Boys of Alabama will do a gig with the World Peace through Inclusion Tour when the gentlemen return from their European tour.

Judith

Building and Breaking Down Community

2008-12-04T00:49:00.001-05:00

Both progress and serious stress showed themselves in the last few days.

I am proud to report that Team Avalanche - Erin, Gabor and myself - have the makings of real activities with goals, timelines, and partners, we have the beginnings of a fundraising strategy and a budget, and we have much of the required infrastructure - a part time personal assistant, David, to relieve Gabor’s 24/7 schedule, another, Lara, on her way, an office set up in Avalanche, most of the equipment working, at least most of the time, good video equipment, functioning internet and e-mail accounts, and a growing Facebook group.

On the “down” side Erin’s home situation, with kids being supported by her circle, is rocky and we almost had to send her home today, and issues that smack of “scarcity” dog our energy, focus and effectiveness. This morning, after Gabor tripped twice and I ran into part of my desk turning around to have breakfast, and Erin and I met yet again in the van which sometimes doubles as our “office”, I recognized that I was – jealous - as two bus sized RV’s drove in tandem into River’s End, each towing a full sized SUV, and out jumped – 3 people!

Of course I have never spent any time in my life pursuing lots of money and “things”. In general I have tended to prefer a life less focused on material things. I could have - and still could - justify my tendency to avoid the materialistic! This morning I got in touch with how I hold it as either/or when it possibly could be both/and.

I have been living in that I am not wealthy because I am pursuing higher values!!! But, would the World Peace through Inclusion Tour have been any less valid if I had sought ways to afford a bus (or even two!) that easily accommodated 3 or 4, and an office, and was accessible, and towed a truly comfortable, accessible car?

Of course we still can!

My other reflection was even messier. One of Erin’s children frequently displaces an utter lack of respect for adults, particularly those who are charged with the responsibility of educating him and giving him a home. Gabor and I had a long conversation about discipline this morning, and I, somewhat uncharacteristically for me, was considering the possible value of corporal punishment, at least as one of a few – rather extreme – strategies that sometimes, when used within proper limits, actually work. For example I am in a long term friendship with a young woman who, when she was a teenager, after years of careful attention by many people, got herself into prison for three years. There she benefited greatly physically, emotionally and educationally. It isn’t what I wanted to believe. There were times when I almost hoped things would break down so that I could say: “See, prisons are bad.” – but in her case prison saved her life.

On my afternoon stroll I was more thinking about why I was caught up in such dark thoughts. I realized that for a few weeks I have been hearing stories like the Wallmart employee who was trampled to death by early morning Thanksgiving shoppers and a young man in a nearby nursing home who was starved to death.

My own story and my own mission are founded in the story my father told me when I was six about doctors who were killing children with Down Syndrome. In short, from that moment I drew a life long intention to alter the “value” that “the disabled” have in society’s perception so that the desire to kill us would be muted.

Simply, it is a general pattern that shows up in all societies at some points and more or less often that people will kill even a member of their own family if they perceive that that person cannot or will not participate in sustaining the other members of the group/family. The other side of this pattern is that people will go to great length to sustain a member who is seen to be contributing typical or extraordinary value to them.

For me this has sparked an intention to deeply root the perception that people who are labeled disabled, and especially people who are not speaking, are contributing in both ordinary and often unusual and very valuable ways. One of these ways is by helping to make people more peaceful.

I don’t think I have turned into an abuser of children. I do think I fear for the retribution that the young man’s behaviour may draw on him in his childish waywardness, and so instinctively I am triggered to want to limit him and “get his attention”. The instinct runs deep and I am as capable of feeling it as anyone, even justifying it!

As a alternative, I think I and others need to admit that the instinct is there, and that it comes up when we feel threatened in our own survival. Then, perhaps, we can create effective, peaceful ways to sustain and nurture each other so that our threat levels can subside.

Judith

A Response!

2008-12-01T23:25:00.001-05:00

On Nov. 25, my Georgian colleague wrote the following e-mail, and subsequently agreed I can post it with my reply:

Thank you for staying in touch. I would like to work and play
with you, as well. However, what I would like and what I can
realistically do are sometimes very far apart! I have several
"projects" on my plate right now, and have been trying to monitor
myself so that I don't take on any more until I get a few of them
completed. I just don't have any more time in any given day -
actually I could use a few extra hours every day if you know of
someone who could spare theirs!

I am enjoying reading your blog - learning how you think;
attempting to get my thinking inside of yours to understand the
point you are making. I really enjoy the way you think, but I
confess that I have to take time to absorb, interpret, engage -
and time is short for me right now. (Back to the previous paragraph!)

As a Christian theologian, I do think the conversation about World
Peace through Inclusion can be approached through a religious
context. (Of course, as a theologian, I think every topic can be
approached in some way through a religious context.) But,
further, I think a case could be made for the consideration that
world peace (or maybe more specifically, conflict) is currently
centered in a religious context, so that if we could engage
religion with inclusion, we would widen the audience and the
process. (Check out Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel, and the peace
conversation he is engaging through the Interfaith Youth Corps.)

I spoke with our associate pastor, Chris Henry, about bringing
your Tour to our congregation here in Atlanta. We have not had a
chance to follow up. The Christian community is entering the time
of Advent, which has lost much of it's reflective, introspective
practice in recent history. We now spend much time in the
Christian church at this time of the year busying ourselves with
celebrating the birth of Jesus, versus recognizing the impact of
being "incarnate" beings.

Your blog about being normate, and your exploration of physical
and etheral self touches on the Christian understanding of
"incarnation" - which is what Christmas is really about -
recognizing the experience of "God" becoming "human." That the
"spiritual" self is embodied in a physical "self" is the
touchstone of Christianity - in my estimation. So, you see, you
do have much to say to a Christian audience - maybe you didn't
realize that?

I responded:
Thank you so much for getting right back to me, for reading the blog, and for reflecting on what I say and responding to me!

Yes, I do realize the Christian context and connection, even the significance of "my" message considering how often the message of "love" has been watered down to "be good and help out the less fortunate". I was born an Anglican and deeply influenced when I was four by a theologian and and priest who came to town for six months. Ordinarily I have little opportunity to give the thoughts a religious contextualization, but in many ways this is also part of my "mission".

Warmly; Judith

Last Day of November

2008-12-01T00:32:00.001-05:00

The Tour is down to five more months. Or maybe not! It has been emerging that a number of opportunities are possible toward August and later. Clearly I need to be in Toronto in May and July, and I want to spend lots of time with Camphill in Barrie and Angus during the summer months. Just the same the future of the Tour is unfolding and I am loath to push it or cut it off.

Right now it looks like we can do good things if we stick around Tybee and Savannah until mid or end of April, head back to Toronto picking up Madison and/or Chicago and/or Indianapolis along the way, then head west picking up Denver and others, spend quality time in and near Duncan and BC, etc. I hope to have made these decisions in the next three weeks.

By the end of Thanksgiving weekend we have leads but no commitments. Conversations are underway about working at two conferences, doing several meetings, fulfilling two or three writing projects, starting and/or demonstrating Laser Eagles in two areas, doing some support around advocates who face life and death crises with their labeled friends, and working with two to four youth groups. It would be impossible to do much deep work if we left by the end of February but, on the other hand, there are as of yet no firm commitments and all of the initial could still easily dissipate.

Erin has sequestered herself for rest, reflection and writing at Kristin’ and Brad’s Tybee house. Gabor and I attended service at First Presbyterian on Washington this morning. This is the church where Gloria, Jean, Franziska, Paula and I started our January sojourn in Savannah earlier this year. Neel Foster is chair of the social concerns committee there, and we have been to dinner at the church twice since we got here. It seemed important to show up as a way of indicating our seriousness about deepening possibilities to get the Peace through Inclusion vision on the table in this well established network of Savannahians.

Today is the first day of the Christian church year, the first Sunday of advent, the time when the church prepares for the incarnation of God through the birth of the baby Jesus. Advent has always been my favourite season. However you find the Christian message, it seems powerful to me, and very much in line with Inclusion. It is awesome to reflect on the message that the powerful and organized oppressors were utterly turned upside down, and that the discontinuities in our human natures can be reconciled by the utter vulnerability of an infant. The “authentic” Christian message is that ultimately power lies not in strength, ability, resources or organization but in love, intimacy and forgiveness.

The service was powerful, bringing me once again to question how much of my desire to take on this Tour comes out of my political commitment to Inclusion, and how much out of my Christian-shaped spirituality. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter, but it leaves me with questions about what to write, what to say and how to approach people with what I believe will inspire them.

Tonight the rain stopped and it was warm enough to go for a walk. I am stiff and uncomfortable from sitting still too long, in front of the computer, in the close quarters of Avalanche or Bronte, or even in church. There is a brand new moon and so not much light, and even though I was wearing Gabor’s head lamp and my eyes are trained to see in the dark of the country roads after two months of living at Camphill Nottawasaga, I noticed how nervous and tentative I was as I rolled along.

I reflected on how similar this is to my approach to this Tour. If I were out in broad daylight I would zip down the bike path, avoiding the sidewalk which is generally sound but has occasional gaps and drops. I would easily notice large vistas of marsh or artists’ displays, and generally enjoy the intriguing and sometimes humorous landscape of Tybee.

In the dark, the shadow of a large tree makes me lose sight of the road’s edge, I stick to the sidewalk when possible because drivers do not necessarily pay much attention to my white coat and head lamp, and a barking dog on a balcony makes me cautious. In fact I turned back when I dropped a few inches between some uneven sidewalk sections, and on the way back mistook another trailer for ours and was disoriented for awhile.

It’s the same space, there is just as much beauty and the same compelling reasons to be out exploring and taking it all in exist in the day or by night. The risks are pretty much the same. However the lack of capacity to see clearly beyond a few centimeters changes everything - curiousity into timidity, grace into creeping, accomplishment into survival.

I know that it is always important to approach the future with a certainty based on nothing but faith – whether it be faith in dream or Holy Spirit, however you see it. It is easy to know that but not so easy to do it when there is no way to know what’s in the future. And mostly there is no way to know what will be in the future and so faith – especially my faith right now - must stand on nothing.

It seems that I chose to spend my life, my resources, my relationships and my reputation traveling and creating the World Peace through Inclusion Tour based on the faith that my life and the richness of the blessings I have received are not for nothing and won’t be wasted. I continue to believe that, in some manner that remains too dark for me to see yet, we who are called disabled have a rightful and important role in history and that we can take a full place in every community.

I just can’t see how – yet.
Judith

Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T23:13:00.000-05:00

In the United States yesterday was Thanksgiving Day. For us it was been both a working day and a day of celebration.

Since before I left Toronto it has been on my agenda to do a video conference at an Alberta Government sponsored conference designed for front line service providers in their “developmental disabilities” sector. I made the conference developer aware quite awhile ago that I would not come to the physical location of the presentation – somewhere in Edmonton – but would broadcast myself by video hook-up to the participants. It has long been my dream to be able to take the message anywhere without always having to subject my body, my equipment and my personal assistants to the stress, fatigue and disruption that goes with touring conferences.

Over a year ago I began to develop the resources I would need to fulfill on occasions such as today. However – to cut a LONG story short – Wednesday evening Gabor and I, and even on Thanksgiving morning, I was putting the finishing touches on both the presentation and the steps needed to get Skype, the wireless headset, the air card and the webcam working with Erin and I, and the conference venue and organizers in a seamless way.

On top of ALL that, who knew, especially in Canada and so many months in advance, that Thursday, Nov. 27 would be Thanksgiving Day in the United States?!? Here the celebration is not like in Ontario. In Ontario the celebration is literally a movable feast. People line up their invitations and events so that they may go to a friend’s place on Saturday, a family on Sunday and another relative or friend on Monday. Here you have one shot, and everybody pretty much is organized to be gorging themselves, somewhere, with somebody at 6:00pm.

At River’s End a steady stream of RV’s of all sorts arrived on Wednesday, some even on Thursday morning. Sharon, a campground host, had been cooking since Wednesday afternoon. All campers were invited to a Thanksgiving feast, and expected to provide a dish from their own trailer’s kitchen. On Thursday morning I could easily observe a variety of culinary preparations underway on BBQ’s and under awnings sheltering portable tables.

However, in my eagerness to be “included”, and before I realized that I had in effect double booked myself, I had wheedled us an invitation to dine at the Stubers. Chloe Stubers and other members of the First Presbyterian Church were very helpful last January in getting our then team of five moved in and out of the three places we stayed that trip. In addition, Neel Foster, her mother, is a renown cook, an intriguing artist, and a warm funny companion. When we showed up to dinner two Wednesdays ago at the church I practically twisted her arm to invite us to HER house for Thanksgiving dinner. I think she was momentarily taken back by my boldness but politely and warmly acknowledged that we were invited.

Neither was Neel nonplused when I called her to ask if her house could be the venue for my video conference which would end a mere 15 minutes before dinner would be served.

So there we were, plugged into the family internet in the master bedroom, hiding away from the growing hub bub of large family Thanksgiving preparations, attempting to give a live video presentation to an unknown Albertan audience on the subject of Person Centred Planning. Sometimes my life seems surreal even to me!

I don’t know if I will ever know how it really went. I hope someone sends me the session feedback. Everything worked reasonably well on our side, except that when I put up slides apparently people could not hear my voice. So Erin and I put them up for 30 seconds each, then took them down as I continued my talk.

The really unfortunate part was that the media company we were working with were unable to give me return sound or video. It may have been some difficulty on our side – I am too new to Skype to know that yet. In any case the media representative left soon after my session. There was no one on the Alberta side left to set up some other sort of feedback for me to know how my audience (was there an audience) was receiving and responding to my talk, if they could read the slides or if there were questions and comments.

After a grueling hour the long anticipated video conference was over. Erin and I joined the extended Stubin/Foster family where the food and laughter were anything but grueling. We actually got to eat road kill! I will gladly tell you how that happened IF I get some comments and questions on this blog!!!

There is so much more that could be said. Let it suffice for now to write that tonight four of the young people we were with last night, on their way to a party, dropped into Avalanche, stayed for a cup of tea and some of Gabor’s techno music, took our business cards, shared Obama campaign stories, and promised to look into ways that we could talk at their peace groups, schools or clubs. Concern about my impact in Alberta faded in the certainty that yesterday we made a difference with some young people who are active and looking to make connections and bring a brighter future to our planet.

Judith

Video Conferencing Now Up and Running

2008-11-25T23:34:00.000-05:00

Get Ready, Get Set, SPLAT

2008-11-23T22:32:00.000-05:00

Just as things seemed to be getting sorted out, another wrench got tossed into the wheel. I use a computer program called Darci USB to type on and do the mouse controls of my computer. To access Darci I use a puff/sip control which gives me a “dot” when I suck (sip) and a “dash” when I blow (puff). I have used Morse Code since I was first introduced to a keyboard emulator that accepted it in 1986. It truly liberated me in that it made it practical and fairly fast for me to do my own input and writing. As e-mail and the internet became the primary tools of work life I was able to get into and keep up with the world of communication and influence in ways I could never have imagined even when I was dictating essays to willing volunteers at university.

I certainly could never have imagined the impact that mobile, trailer living is having on my daily life. Early last week I could no longer ignore that my puff/sip interface was sluggish and requiring ever greater effort to deliver the required sucks and blows. By Friday first Gabor, then David, spent hours with me cleaning old saliva out of ever deeper parts of the interface, and in the process, breaking part of the casing and discovering more and more both about how it actually works and how broken down it had become – a wire stripped here, a part of the breath pipe cracked there, etc. Nothing seemed to keep it working more than a few minutes before it again slowed down and became difficult to activate. Eventually I began to notice that the “dot” producing part was much improved, but the “dash” producing mechanism finally failed completely on Saturday.

In the meantime I had connected up with Skype, and just as I was finally able to make independent phone calls, (not having been able to do so since leaving Toronto on Oct. 24), I lost the capacity to do this AND keep up the blog AND keep up with Facebook and e-mail all in the same failure of a single switch. This was an unanticipated blow although the device itself is about eight years old. Somehow I never thought that continuous setting up and dismantling of a device that had been stationery for years could lead to its rapid deterioration!

A few hours later I remembered that Darci can run from a single switch. Erin confirmed with me that the second switch really is not functional, then we set out to discover if we could get me back to functionality with just one. Of course single switch puff/sip is just sip. I began to retrain myself in the required, quite different, mouth movements while both Erin and I tried to work out figure out what settings would make the device most workable for me. About two hours later after typing a page of gibberish I put out two sensible words – Hello, Erin. – and went to bed.

Sometime mid-morning today I realized that the third switch I have in my possession, the interface for my Tykkriphone – a puff/sip telephone dialer – is now redundant because I am not going to need a land line phone with Skype even when I do return to living in a house. I thought that perhaps we could combine the one functional switch from the Darci set up with the only switch from the Tykkriphone interface to make a new dual switch for Darci that would work like my now broken device.

At first we seemed defeated because, as luck would have, it both switches seemed to be suck ones. Trial and error revealed that the “A” tip could become the “B” tip, and finally I was back in dual switch mode, this time with two tubes in my mouth, but happily typing away at my usual 35+ words/minute and managing Skype, Facebook and Freecell all at the same time!

Thank god for willing assistants, ingenuity and duct tape.

Speaking of God, we have been to church 5 times since the Tour began – not something I could ever have imagined as part of our ongoing itinerary. Two Sundays ago I was invited to speak at the chapel of Erin’s former boarding school. Since then we have twice attended the mid-week church suppers at the First Presbyterian Church in Savannah, at whose retreat house I stayed for ten days last January.

Through a connection made at the Sentient Bean we were invited to attend yesterday’s service at Life Ministry in Chatham, next to Savannah. The singing was moving and the principal minister emerged as a very intuitive, energetically healing person. I went up for the laying on of hands, soon followed by Erin. I am not one to push the vision of World Peace through Inclusion as a religious message. Just the same the minister’s warm touch, empathic understanding and encouraging words raised my energy and spirit in the face of our uncertainty about exactly what we are doing or where the money is going to come from.

This morning we followed through on an invitation to go to the Eucharistic service at All Saints Episcopal Church on Jones St. in Tybee. Certainly not charismatic in nature, the service was still warm and energetic, and it was very familiar to me as I was raised an Anglican. The sermon was about inclusion and the importance of serving the “least” as much as the “greatest”. I partook of the Eucharist, and so did Gabor who, raised in a Communist European country, has never experienced this ritual before.

At coffee hour afterwards I had the opportunity to speak for a few minutes about the Tour. Our video camera worked and we caught it on tape, and several people took cards and suggested possible places where I can speak about Inclusion.

Later this afternoon we met with Tom and Betsy Kohler and they took the 30 second tour of Avalanche. Tom and I mapped out a strategy to spend time this week creating three or four opportunities that can lead to real results soon and in January.

All in all, a week that seemed fraught with energy and time draining difficulties has also led to several exciting potentials for fulfilling our commitment to the vision of World Peace through Inclusion.

Judith

Our New Home

2008-11-21T13:35:00.000-05:00

Wednesday was moving day. I decided to roll down Jones Ave. while Gabor and Erin packed up Avalanche and drove to the River’s End Campground. We left with some regret because Kristin and Brad have been wonderful hosts, including in their hospitality full access to their hot tub and latte maker.

My personal trip from the south end to the north end of the island was engaging! Not being sure when I will get back I took an intentional side trip to the Back River Fisherman’s Pier. Yesterday was brilliantly sunny and very cold so I was bundled in a woolen hat, scarf and Columbian woolen poncho. I was a solitary visitor to the pier. It is impressive to be the only human observer to the power of the steady, almost relentless, flow of the river meeting the very different rhythm of the equally steady ebb and flow of the incoming tide. The sea water spreads over, the river flows under, slowly a four inch bore, almost lazily, creeps toward the shore. As I continued my journey northward a few minutes later I reflected on my own duel nature of apparent stillness and persistent drive.

In my reverie I failed to recognize that I had continued up Chatham Ave. and not up Jones. Fortunately over my last few visits to Tybee I have familiarized myself with the layout of the south end and I got myself back on track with no great anxiety or loss of time.

The nature of the town changes a lot going north. Within five or six blocks the traffic had picked up to such an extent that I frequently pulled off the road to ensure that drivers had plenty of room to go by me. There were no sidewalks until I reached 1st street (I started at 17th). After this there was a choice between bike lane and sidewalk, not all of which was in good repair.

Even as the urbanness of the environment increased it continued to be obvious that about 25 % of Tybee is up for sale and another 20 % is for rent. We have been checking out prices for a friend and it’s clear that everything is high priced, even ridiculously expensive. I wondered why people wouldn’t bring down their rents, encourage a lot more people of more modest means to come to the island and so renew the range of economic opportunities available to them. Then I considered that as much as I wish Tybeans were more generous I, myself, was developing an ungenerous attitude towards them, and that my real work, at least for the moment, is to sustain an open heart toward my neighbours.

As I passed 4th street I saw Bronte and Avalanche cross the intersection of Jones and 1st. About 15 minutes later I arrived at the campground where two camp staff people were assisting Gabor to take his second pass at parking Avalanche. That accomplished we purchased an extra length of sewer hose and with the cheerful and helpful advice of the man we now call Trailer Tom (we know several Toms!) we are now fully hooked in to a “proper” RV campsite for the first time since I purchased Avalanche on August 11.

Trailer Tom informed us that the Mayor of Tybee had called the owner of River’s End and requested that we be given a complementary place until February. I have a new sense of the generousity of the citizens of Tybee Island.

Judith

Belated Thank You

2008-11-18T22:30:00.000-05:00

Just a short post tonight. Scott Mills, a pro-youth and community cop in Toronto, attended our fund raiser on Oct. 23, and then posted these videos and photos. Thank you Scott!

Videos at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPGpe81N8xs&feature=related

and pictures at:

http://picasaweb.google.ca/scotmills/WorldPeaceThroughInclusionTour#

Time to Move On

2008-11-18T10:45:00.000-05:00

(Originally written Monday, Nov. 17)
The Tybee Island City Manager came by today trailed by her assistant. A no nonsense middle-aged woman, she had a look around Avalanche then told us in a “brook no argument” way that it is not in her power to extend our 7 day permit and that getting a variance to the by-law stipulating that people can park their trailers next to houses but not live in them more than 7 days in a row 3 times a year would cost a minimum of $250 and take a month longer than we plan to be in Georgia. To her credit she promised that she would put in a good word for us with the owner of the trailer park at the north end of the island because she likes our Tour, and she did so. When Erin checked back with him a few hours later he had a spot for us and it has been left to Wednesday, when we must move, for us to find out if there will be a charge and if it will be less than the usual Tybee rate of $1000/mn.

The three of us met and about an hour later we were joined by Kristin Russell, the owner of the Sentient Bean and the partner of the man who owns the house where we are currently parked. We were engaged in frank discussion of how we are doing, how we can work together better and in what activities we can set up and/or join that will forward the objectives of the Tour more powerfully. I definitely feel that we made progress.

The idea that I feel the most excited about is for us to work with some active youth groups to create a local currency initiative. This would be different from other barter systems in that its intention would be to create exchange, inclusion and relationship more than to be a strict barter system. I think such a “game” could be powerful because it could give people a way to acknowledge and appreciate contributions that rarely get noticed in our typical economic system. Such a contribution is like when a person with Down Syndrome is very good at making people feel happy, or a child with learning challenges stimulates greater academic learning in other students. We quickly slipped into calling the potential medium of the currency “happy dollars”. This also reflects that it seems that creating such a game might help pull people out of the gloom that current economic difficulties have spread all over Savannah, and Tybee where ¼ of the properties are up for sale.

Now it is up to us both to get things underway and to find the necessary funding ourselves to keep us on the Tour and at the Task. It is clearly time for us to be intentional and to create from the amazing opportunities that we have been given.

Judith

Incarnation

2008-11-18T10:38:00.000-05:00

(Originally written Sun., Nov. 16)

Merriam-Webster Dictionary
CARNAL
- Having to do with life on earth especially as opposed to that in heaven
- Pleasing to the physical senses

After yesterday’s post about my frustration with the lack of apparent progress toward achieving the intended goal of this tour, I had a rather lurid dream and awoke to reflect for much of the day on both what IS the significant difference of my current experience and also about how I would know if I were achieving the goal of this tour.

I have long had the question: “What is it like to be a “normate?”” By this I mean – to myself – what is it like to live with the experience that one’s body moves relatively freely at one’s will. I have this question after a lifetime of experience that typical people do not easily understand what it is like to be me, a woman who at 59 years of age has the muscular strength of a 7 month old human child. People think I cannot move. In actuality I can move almost every part of my body to a tiny degree but these movements are mostly imperceptible to anyone but me.

I have led a life that includes many of the same trials and successes of any middle class Canadian single woman and so I easily discount the gulf of experience between me and a similar but walking woman. However my mission is to establish a valued position in society for those of us with atypical bodies, emotions, perceptions and cognitions – those of us labeled disabled – and so I struggle to communicate to “normates” what our experiences and contributions are.

A few years ago it dawned on me that I spoke to typical people as if they were like me and that perhaps I was discounting a perceptual difference that so skewed the interpretations of what I was saying that I could not be understood if I did not fundamentally shift my message. So my question was born – “What is it like to be a “normate””?

I fully acknowledge that the question cannot lead to a valid conclusion, at least as long as I keep on trying to answer it centred in my own biases. Just the same, I feel enticed by it, perhaps out of a semi-suppressed annoyance at the hegemony of thought, organization and control of resources enjoyed by “able-bodied” people at this time. Let me objectify “them” as much as “they” objectify me!

Back to yesterday’s post – I awoke today to the thought that the last ten days of trailer travel, living and working with Gabor and Erin have given me a “carnal” experience that has previously be unattainable for me. To repeat some of yesterday’s thoughts:
- we live in a small space, in a semi-tropical marshy location, and so are continuously exposed to the physical stimulations of smell, dirt, various alarms for propane, electricity, etc., bodies in contact, flies and bugs of all sorts, warmth and cold, unusual accents, and more;
- Erin and Gabor express their relationship in a physical and teasing way, not just in the trailer but at any time in public, beyond the typical boundaries I am accustomed to;
- Gabor, as my chief and often only personal assistant, has unusual strength. This is of course a very important gift considering all he has to accomplish everyday for the next six months. For example he can sit me up from lying flat in bed by simply grasping the back of my neck and lifting. On the one hand this is giving me an unusual capacity. On the other it throws off every rhythm and routine I have established since I first started having personal assistants 40 years ago. As a result I am frequently on edge, just as I was when I was six and my four year old brother drew extreme pleasure from creeping up behind me and screaming in my ear.

I realized over the last few days that I am utterly unused to so much stimulation in and from my body. I am also unfamiliar with the distraction of so much physicality. Just getting through a day of washing, dressing, eating, warming up or cooling down, going to the bathroom, being enthralled by wondrous birds and beaches, and engaging and disengaging from the personal dynamics is as much as I can and want to do.

Steiner and Anthroposophists, the spiritual group that gave rise to Camphill, talk of the incarnation of the etheric body as a significant developmental stage that occurs when we are about 7 years old. They say that a person who has a large head relative to their body, as I do, may have an incompletely incarnated etheric body. I googled the etheric and physical bodies, to discover that some believe that while the physical body is not the source of thought, emotion and experience, being in the physical body is required to fully grow from these processes.

In this model being a person such as myself would give me a clear sense that thought, emotion and experience are not individual, but I would struggle to fully “incorporate” my understanding into my own development and into the world’s evolution. Being a “normate” would give one an edge on development and evolution but could give one the misimpression that one is alone and is the centre and driver of one’s thought, emotion and experience.

So that’s what’s going on – perhaps! I have a mission, but I need to both incarnate more myself in order to get the lessons I am looking for at this time and I am learning to have understanding and compassion for those who are so much in the “carnal” circumstance that they are in a sense fascinated by it and do not fully realize how much more they are than their own physical bodies.

As to the other question I have been reflecting on: “How will I know when the conversation about the peace engendering capacity of Inclusion is permanently rooted in our culture?” – after speaking about it today with Gabor, I realize that the first step is to ask it of other people than myself. As long as it is my question only it isn’t going to get answered!

So at least today I am more willing to believe and feel that the World Peace through Inclusion Tour is still on track. I am learning and experiencing and being prepared to do this work with more effect.

Judith

Being on Tybee Island

2008-11-15T23:54:00.000-05:00

First the weather – Google Weather is not a good source to get information on how to dress around here! Although Savannah and Tybee are so close and it’s easy for us to think of them as the same “location”, in fact they are very different communities, even in matters of temperature and precipitation. I am beginning to anticipate that the island general pattern is cool and clear at dawn, warm and clear mid- to late morning, warm and damp to drizzly by late afternoon, then an evening of heavy downpour. Near midnight it will be cool enough for a fall coat and misty over the river as it meets the still surging ocean. At this time of the just past full moon the bright mist on moonlit beach and dark waters is truly beautiful.

My body and my will are in conflict. Physically I am engaged, excited and enthralled. In the abrasive stimulation of living in cramped quarters with a young couple, very much in love and tease with each other, in a near tropical environment where sweat and flies are part of every day, where every daily ritual of bathing, using the toilet, cooking and eating still require careful management because everything is new and in strange places and every personal assistant and helpful friend is as yet unfamiliar with how my body works – in this abundant and often uncomfortable sensuality I am more in touch with how I physically and emotionally feel than I have been in years.

But the intention – the deep desire to start an unstoppable conversation that Inclusion can make people and the world more peaceful – at this level I feel off the rails, even thwarted. There are no traces currently of the Southern Collective for Inclusive Citizenship, a small collective that formed in March in Savannah and took on shape and action in April and June. The effort may be dead or just suppressed. It is difficult to tell as I am very welcome everywhere but few return e-mails and fewer initiate the conversation: “How has it been going since you were last here?”

In addition the economic downturn has hit this region strongly. It seems like a third of Tybee Island is up for sale and nearly every young person I meet is looking for more work or just some work.

It continues to be difficult for our team of three to get all the necessary equipment to work and to set up a good productive rhythm. I would have thought we would have at least one video up on our website or at least on YouTube, or some good pictures on Facebook, but some how either some fire wire is missing, or a program doesn’t work on the computer, or some other obstacle emerges. Certainly we will get it together soon – in the meantime my patience is thin. I want real evidence that we are actually DOING something!

Just the same, in reality things are percolating. Last night we were participating in the audience as two women and two teenagers sang songs and read poetry and stories from the Civil Rights movement. We caught some of it on video, along with an interview with the performers and the event organizer. Several leads were also created, and I have several leads to follow up – perhaps persistently – with some church connections and at least two opportunities to meet with active youth organizations.

We are broke. As yet this is not a crisis as I had anticipated digging into the liquidated equity of selling my Toronto home, so I have room to move in this area. Still it’s difficult for us - like anyone - to be unsure of the next source of income. There are no familiar contractors leaping forward to hire my time and no obvious grant sources. We must dig deeper, work harder – or certainly hold the faith that this is good work and the means to do it will emerge. This has always been so in my life. Still my certainty is wavering.

I look forward to a day soon to come I hope where I can add pictures and video to my words and I can tell stories of young southern folk taking on Inclusion as a means to liberate their productiveness, happiness and community.

Judith

A Great Day!

2008-11-11T23:56:00.000-05:00

For much of the time I have been living in Avalanche we have been inundated in our own disorder. Perhaps “inundated” is an unusual way to think of chaotic living, but I have often felt emotionally buried by things like:
- nearly everything from getting up to making a coffee taking a few minutes to several hours longer than I anticipated;
- moving from 3 full-time and 4 part-time personal assistants to one personal assistant and one videographer/office assistant;
- consciously not putting things like receipts away in an orderly way because there was no fixed place to put them;
- being unable for a both technical and support reasons to answer e-mails or make phone calls in a timely reliable fashion;
- having my wardrobe and other familiar and essential items divided in two places, or in storage for an anticipated move to Barrie; and,
- having the immediate environment change in size, shape and/or location, e.g. switching from my Dodge which had a ramp and wherein I sat beside the driver to my Ford (which has enough horsepower to tow Avalanche) which has a lift and wherein I sit behind the driver.

Today we made real progress in restoring an environment wherein I can become reliable once again. Not that everything is in place, but today we set up a mini-office in Avalanche and hired a back-up assistant to relieve Gabor.

All three of us noticeably relaxed!

Our first 36 hours or so on Tybee have been magical. I can hardly wait until we can post pictures. This place is truly beautiful, and though I am heartily glad that it has not been discovered by the uppity tourist class, I can’t understand why there aren’t private clubs and hotels on every square inch of the beach. The environment is shaped by the Atlantic Ocean mingling with verdant marsh mingling with the Bull and Savannah Rivers plus other minor waterways. I expect this bioregion is unique, or at least it is like nothing I have ever encountered or imagined before I first truly met it last January.

Last night our hosts threw an oyster roast for us and two other out-of-town guests. Like Tybee itself an oyster roast combines a number of cooking styles and the mix is unexpectedly interesting. I must say though it would take many hours and many oysters to truly get a full meal so I was very happy that the pot luck included sausages, corn bread and other delicacies.

My calendar is beginning to fill up. I have meetings and performances to attend on each of the next three evenings, and I also have a new assistant to train. I begin to feel more like my “normal” busy self!

Warmly; Judith

Mountain Driving

2008-11-10T17:08:00.000-05:00

After cleaning the trailer, disinfecting the storage tank for the first time, filling it, then packing up, we did not get away from Huntington Woods until 3:30pm. Our destination was Erin’s former boarding school, Oakhill Academy, in Virginia. She visited there last Tuesday, and voted there, and they offered us hospitality in turn for a short speech to be given in church tomorrow, Sunday. We did not expect to get there in one day’s trip, and indeed we didn’t. After struggling through rush hour, construction traffic in Detroit, we ultimately pulled up near the Ohio/West Virginia boarder outside of a museum/gift shop/tourist centre.

I spent part of the morning taping my thoughts about Micah and his impact on his community for Janice, Micah’s mother. Later, while still in the van, I did another interview for an internet radio show. The interviewer focused on topics she had picked up from my bio, and various articles she found on the internet. We had a great chat, interrupted only once when we lost cell signal in a rural area. Soon we will be able to tell you where to find both interviews.

It didn’t exactly say “no parking” so we took the liberty of hitching our power cord to the external outlet of the gift shop. So with a full storage tank we were set for water and with a “borrowed” electric power source we did not have to depend on our back-up battery to run Bradley, my nighttime ventilator. We were all set – we thought.

Three things were not exactly in our favour. Unbeknownst to Gabor he had left the black water exhaust valve open when he had emptied the body waste tank at the Flying “J”. Secondly our pad was on a distinct lateral slant. Thirdly, in an effort to level the trailer, Gabor had lowered the trailer legs as usual but one had broken at the tip where the crank is inserted and so he had not been able to get it down fully.

About 3/4 way through our already shortened morning routine a state trouper knocked on our door. He asked us to move on in a very friendly way, and then both he and Gabor discovered the gaff. About the volume of 4 trips to the john had run out onto the pavement. Its presence was made obvious by the green foam which results from the chemical that one puts down the toilet to promote breakdown of solids.

Gabor scrambled apologetically to wash away the dump, and struggled in vain for a good while to get the broken leg retracted. In the meantime the trooper called CAA to see if help could be found and looked around for a vice grip to see if we could turn the broken shaft. Ultimately Erin and Gabor figured out how to get the weight of the leg and then Gabor could be turned by hand and raised into travelling position.

While all this was going on the trooper took an interest in my chair and other things and revealed that he has a 14 year old son with Spina Bifita. We told him about our tour and our blog and he was quite interested.

The rest of the trip went smoothly albeit the driving became more and more challenging as Oakhill Academy is deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. We arrived in time for dinner, and are going to get to bed at a decent hour!

I have been able to share 3 times in 24 hours about inclusion and world peace. Each opportunity arose in an unexpected way. This makes me feel even more certainty that travelling slowly, near people, in a way that allows for personal conversation is indeed a powerful way to get this important message across.

Judith

2008-11-07T10:32:00.000-05:00

Late One Night
It's after 11:00 PM – again. It always seems like I don't get around to the most important things until late. Long nights make for later starts in the morning, and the day drags on and then it's late again when I get to write the blog.

We are sitting around catching up, trying to store hours of video, kibitzing with Micah and comfortably hanging out. Tomorrow we will leave from Detroit and continue to Oak Hill Academy, Virginia where Erin went to high school. We will hook-up for a night, then continue to Tybee Beach.

Yesterday's meeting in front of Oakland's Board of Trustees was moving, disturbing and hopeful. The Trustees were as insensitive as any group of fascists could muster. People who had been given 5 minutes to speak were told they had 2. The meeting was slated for 2 hours and was abruptly adjourned after 90 minutes. The last speaker, who was given as much time as she wanted, as head of university housing clearly articulated the deeply held prejudice against Micah and all students similarly classified as "cognitively impaired". They are welcome to come and socialize, participate in activities that benefited them, even pay tuition for courses. They are NOT welcome to be students, and as such – second class participants – they are NOT welcome in the dormitories.

This statement came on the heels of dozens of heartfelt if truncated statements. The room was packed. The security guards had opened an overflow room and it was packed too. Remarkably each speaker expressed a unique perspective. It was not that several students got up to say similar things. Dozens of people spoke representing the issue from the perspective of fellow day students, more mature night students, international students who had been allowed in the dorm, student politicians, politically active people with disabilities, social workers who had followed Micah and his family for years, others who supported inclusion on other campuses, and on. Gradually it dawned on me that together the statement represented a uniquely wholistic community – a community built by Micah's many contributions to the people around him.
Afterwards 35 students, and others, gathered to debrief. The atmosphere was jovial and spirited. I was left with no doubt that the student body of Oakland U would have no other outcome then that Micah and other labeled students would be fully welcomed. Some students encouraged Micah to pack his stuff because he would soon be moving in.

I was once again privileged to witness the kind of peaceful energy that emerges in a truly inclusive situation. People were angry annd they were inspired and energized by each other and the clear discrimination they had witnessed and faced. Yet this anger and this energy were being expressed and lived in deepening relationships, humour and mutual support, and creative and thoughtful commitments to get the changes Micah needs.

Today has been a quieter, more reflective day. I am encouraged by these hopeful beginnings – Obama's victory and Micah's day of witness. We have drawn close to the Fialka-Feldman family. We have been nurtured in hospitality.

The World Peace through Inclusion is off to a blessed beginning.

Warmly;

Judith Snow

An Historic Moment

2008-11-05T00:48:00.000-05:00

Gabor and I are sitting in a cozy house in Huntington Heights, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Actually, Gabor isn’t sitting. He is ironing a shirt for me to wear at Oakland U., Michigan. I will be one of about 20 people speaking tomorrow to the Board of Trustees on behalf of Micah Fialka-Feldman.

Micah is a student who is an avid and active Democratic student leader. His parents are both community and political activists so perhaps it’s in his blood. Tonight we attended the Democratic party to celebrate with them and Michigan as the USA both elected its first Afro-American President and put in a breakthrough number of women senators and congress(wo)men. I feel extraordinarily privileged to be witness and participant. My participation consisted of assisting Erin to return to her home state so she could vote Democratic in a swing state, Virginia. It made a difference.

At the moment I am writing this crowds are chanting “Yes we can”. The world is at an extremely low ebb, but there is nothing people cannot do. Finally, it seems that we have not just a leader but also grassroot energy arising everywhere in the world to organize ourselves as gifted people and communities in order to make great lives available to all alive now and in the future on this planet.

Micah has been refused entrance to the dormitory of Oakland U. The excuse is that he is not following a degree program. He is following an adjusted schedule so that he can accommodate his learning challenges.

Since the refusal students, politicians, and many others have written and rallied to Micah’s support. This has been Micah’s victory. He has rallied and raised the consciousness of countless young students. Regardless of how the Trustees respond Micah knows he has made a difference.

When I heard of the opportunity to speak to the Trustees tomorrow I couldn’t imagine a better beginning to the World Peace through Inclusion Tour than to come and speak on behalf and beside my brother in gifted citizenship.

Well it has already been better than I could imagine. Today we visited a burnt out area of Detroit, called the Heidelberg Project, that has been reclaimed by artists and urban farmers who are also part of a regeneration of economy and community led by ordinary people in this city. One of the original leader artists, Tyree Guyton, spoke with me and we shared our visions. In response he painted one of his famous spots, a white circle reminiscent of a moon, on my van.

This gave me an idea for an organizing principle for the Tour. At each encounter I will ask local artists to paint an image of community or peace on Bronte or Avalanche.

I must keep this short – it’s well past midnight. It has been truly an historic and marvelous day.

Love; Judith

The Day after my 59th Birthday

2008-10-30T23:21:00.000-04:00

It was very sunny and warmed a little today. This is in steep contrast to the two previous days which were marked by blustery winds, 3 inches of snow and below freezing temperatures at night. As I went to bed last night we noticed that there were large strips of condensation on the ceiling and patches of moisture in some of the side wall cupboards. My supposition is that the outside skin of Avalanche is thin or there are seams in these places, creating an extra cold line or patch, thus encouraging moisture to condense just in these areas. These trailers are not really designed for winter use - all the more reason to get south as soon as possible. And, yes, as soon as feasible, Gabor or some other willing person will get on top of Avalanche and see if some extra sealant is required.

Speaking of willing helpers, there has been a gradual and significant “warming” to us and our needs on the part of Camphillers at Nottawasaga. At first we were treated very differently in the two communities, yet it seemed difficult in both to ask for much in either place.

People at Sophia Creek have always been very generous in many ways, and at the same time their capacity to offer direct personal support remains limited. This is not a complaint. People are enormously generous and at the same time everyone in both communities is networked into a complex set of tasks and relationships that ensure everyone can live interesting and valuable social and work lives. They are very busy indeed.

Camphill Nottawasaga is both a farming establishment and heavily overlaid with a structure for “serving” the “handicapped” which is typical of agencies receiving government funding. Unlike Sophia Creek people have more rigid job descriptions and reporting structures. It is worthy of exploration as to how the one group can be so much more flexible than the other!

Anyway, when we arrived in August many people in Camphill Nottawasaga just didn’t know where and how to fit us in. We were welcomed and along with this welcome came a request that is typical of institutionalized settings for me to affirm that Gabor had been police checked and CPR trained, and to give a date by which I would be leaving. It has been a continuous source of amusement and leverage for me to be both a “companion” and a “volunteer” – in Camphill parlance - making it impossible for forks to “peg” either Gabor or I and giving people a chance to truly meet us.

Within the last ten days or so people have been warming to us on a personal level. Basically this means it is much easier both to ask for and to give support. The warming process started with Leah and Christos, who in August were the first to visit the trailer, asking respectively to come to dinner and to share coffee. Now we have been invited to dinner and lunch several times in the houses, consulted on local issues, invited to evening ping pong and given considerable help in shopping and renovation, even some personal assistance. All this is wonderful for me, and for Gabor. I am certain it is also wonderful for community members, as we all find our way around the more rigid structures.

Yesterday’s birthday party was magical. Weather had been awful and many people sick in Camphill Sophia Creek. Ken had come up around noon, bringing Erin who could only stay less than a day. No other Toronto friends could come. It seemed like it would be a small party.

In the midst of shifting things around to make more room in Avalanche, to stabilize the bed and to create a small working office, Erin and I made rice pudding for the potluck and Gabor set up his sound system and mixer. When we returned to Novalis for dinner it had been transformed into a Halloween setting with candles and pumpkins. The dinner was sumptuous and many “companions” came dressed as bunnies, princesses, devils and ghosts. Speeches and presents flowed and I was warmly gifted and honoured.

Though many went on to another party that had been scheduled by their usual bowling league, a few stayed and as Gabor cranked up the mixer the dancing began. “Companions” dance in their own way, to an inner rhythm, as do I within the possibilities of a powerful wheelchair and a smooth floor in a large room with exceptional acoustics. The scene took on the presence that I have been longing for since my early years. Here I could dance in my own way, and be both the “normal” and “crippled” me, perfectly myself. Here I am home where the strange and usual are all appreciated.

Towards 8 pm there were only 3 of us left, and Ken, who had missed the potluck, showed up with his dog Max. Erin napped, Gabor mixed and Ken, Max and I danced.

Later I returned to Avalanche to find that Ken had transformed even the “smaller” details of my space. Together we hung decorations, hid wires and cleaned things up until, in the morning, when I awoke at 6:30 to Ken getting up to return to Toronto, my little trailer felt like my true, luxurious, travelling home.

As I lay awake for awhile longer I became aware of a strong sense of grief. Having been immersed now for several weeks in the intimate soup made of living closely with 26 “companions”, and the stress, disruptions and rearrangements coming from the three of us – Gabor, Erin and I – establishing our own relationships and leaving our homes, I looked to see if this sense of grief was truly my own or a reflection from others. It is mine.

I am not unhappy. I am present to the disconnection I have brought onto myself in order to follow a vision. I have given up the city that I thought would be my address for all my adult life. I have left the reliable connection of a home phone and stable internet. I have left my familiar assistants, and the back-up list of those I can count on, and the third layer of those I would reach out to when things got weird. I have left my aged father, in so many ways my friend, mentor and support, for at least six months and possibly forever. I have left the empowering discipline of regular assisting with the Landmark Wisdom City Team. And I have left so many friends who have wished me well in following my dream, and who, like Ken, in the last moment have shown in so many little and big ways that they want me in their lives.

This is a strange and lovely grief. It makes me feel very real and solid. It lets me know that I have a task ahead of me that I want to carry out well, so that the whole sacrifice - my own and so many others - will be worth the cost.

Judith

The Day Before My 59th Birthday

2008-10-28T22:21:00.000-04:00

I have not left Avalanche today. It was a “rest day” which means I intentionally stay in bed until mid-to-late afternoon in order to give my body a horizontal break. Beyond that snow fell in the morning and it has been blustery all day. Staying wrapped in blankets and shawls made a lot of sense.

Gabor and I spent lots of time talking. Erin will join us tomorrow. We have been encountering no end of minor to significant difficulties – everything from two of the camping chairs breaking through to Erin’s new landlord selling the house out from under her son and his live-in supporter less than two months after she signed a year’s lease. We can replace the chairs and no doubt Erin will find a way to keep her son’s home in place for the duration of the tour. But to some extent each obstacle causes us to reevaluate why we are doing this and what would make us stop or turn back.

Not the least irritant has been the intermittent availability of the internet. Camphill Nottawasaga has wireless that is set up in the office and networked to various houses on the property. We are next to Raventree, in the parking lot of Novalis Hall, and can easily pick up wireless from either the main office or two of the houses. However connecting to wireless does not necessarily mean that you are connected to the internet, it seems. Who knew? Storms knock out the internet around here, and one has to wait until someone resets things in the morning. Since Friday I have been able to get online only twice, and for limited periods. I don’t know when I will actually get to post this to the blog.

Yesterday I held a conversation with a group of about fifteen people in Novalis Hall. The topic was Social Intimacy. Soon I will write an essay on the topic, so I will not go into detail at this time. Basically I talked about the gift that many people who are considered to be disabled bring which is making present a level of intimacy that increases the whole community’s capacity to accomplish its intentions. In an era where whole societies are trying to move away from hierarchical and institutional structures of organization, social intimacy is essential in having people able to work cooperatively. Certain people are not gifted in the areas of thinking and doing and so do not shine in typical societal structures. However their capacity to raise others‘ effectiveness makes their presence and participation fundamentally important.

This sort of contribution is the heart of the message that World Peace is available through Inclusion. One of the frequently reported outcomes of intentional inclusion is a greater capacity for peace and cooperation.

I will be giving a similar presentation and holding a follow-up discussion on Friday, after lunch at Derek’s Café, 15 Parkside in Barrie. If you can make it, you are welcome!

Tomorrow, Wednesday October 29, is my 59th birthday. We are having a potluck and dance at Novalis Hall, starting at 5 PM. Come if you can.

Love; Judith

Very First Days

2008-10-26T23:39:00.000-04:00

This is my first blog and I am unsure about the “how to’s”. If I don’t post this correctly I am sure Erin Socall, who set this up for me and for the World Peace through Inclusion, will sort me out.

Gabor Podor, my personal assistant for the Tour, and I are now in Avalanche for 6 to 7 months. Avalanche is the “toy hauler” type of trailer we will be traveling in. We are currently parked at Camphill Nottawasaga, http://www.camphill.on.ca/Nottawasaga, north of Alliston, ON. It's supposed to snow on Tuesday. That will be a new adventure for us. I packed a snow shovel. Also they offered us a room at 15 Parkside in Barrie if it gets too bleak!

Erin Socall, tour videographer, blogger and Gabor’s partner, arrives on Wednesday. We leave Camphill on Sunday. We will will go to Detroit and be present for this historic US election.

The following Wednesday I am speaking at Oakland U, Michigan, in support of Micha Fialka-Feldman, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tjtkcV4n2k, who has been refused entrance to the dorm because he needs support to attend class and is taking a reduced load and is not currently trying to get a degree. Micah will have dozens speaking on his behalf, once again showing the powerful relationship and community building capacity that supported individuals often exemplify.

After that we will head straight to Savannah and Tybee Beach. By Nov. 10 I will be beginning my talks and community meetings there. I will keep people posted throught this blog.

If you are up to celebrating my birthday on Wednesday evening with me we are having a potluck and Gabor, known in the music world as Spazzmonk, will be DJ'ing until the wee hours in Novalis Hall, at Camphill Nottawasaga. RSVP

Love; Judith

Fundraiser

2008-10-10T13:18:00.000-04:00

You are cordially invited

to attend

World Peace through Inclusion Tour Fund Raiser

23 October, 2008

Oro Cafe

171 East Liberty St

Toronto, Ontario

Doors open at 7:00 pm

$20 per person at the door

Appetizers for all to enjoy

cash bar

entertainment includes:

House of David Gang

The Stables

spazzmonk

DJ Apricot

Please bring your friends and family to this event – a great time for a great cause!

Silent auction will commence with art from Ken Gangbar Studio (www.kengangbar.com), weekend getaway with Village Inn of Lakefield (www.villageinn.ca), Toy Basket from POP! Events, massages from The Sage Clinic (www.sageclinic.ca) and much, much more.

Donation information to the silent auction or the World Peace through Inclusion Tour, please read the attached .pdf or contact Erin Socall (details below).

other donations accepted through www.communitycave.com and www.lasereagles.org

For more information, press release or media please contact Erin Socall erinsocall@hotmail.com or 647 822 2523

by Judith Snow

2008-09-30T13:44:00.000-04:00

I have been deeply interested since my childhood in the reality that people who are considered to be “disabled” are vulnerable to being treated as if they are not really citizens, and often as if they are not really human. My interest was born from my own experience with life long quadriplegia. It has been nurtured by decades of experience in hearing stories of the rich contributions that people who are labeled with developmental disability and autism are making.

In short, in the mid-‘90’s I realized that educational research, and other more anecdotal evidence, points to a connection between full inclusion of people of all abilities and communities becoming more peaceful. I gradually decided that I am in the unique position of fostering a world peace discussion based on the social contribution that people with disabilities make – in a very unrecognized way.

I have spent a lot of my adult life working to sustain a stable life in Toronto, and be the inclusion gypsy, travelling from place to place, on weekends and holidays. About two years ago it became clear to me that the job part of that scenario exhausted and limited me and that primarily I was working to keep a house and a job when I really want to “get the word out”. I began to dream about living in a trailer and traveling slowly from community to community throughout North America, talking to and working with people who were excited about living in a world that loves diversity. This crazy idea kept meeting with the sort of respect that let me know others could imagine it too. In time I began to research and put the many pieces and people in place.

In August I bought an old wheelchair accessible van – Bronte, that has the capacity to tow a ton and I moved into my new to me trailer – Avalanche.

My intention is to park Avalanche in Savannah early in November. I will stay for at least a month, hopefully three. My general plan is to work with the Southern Collective for Inclusive Citizenship (SCIC) along with doing some traveling and speaking in and around Georgia. The SCIC was formed in February of 2008 in response to a number of talks I gave in Georgia about valuable contributions people who are labeled make toward making us peaceful.

In the spring I will go west and north, connecting to other groups in Arizona, Oregon, British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba. I intend to be in Toronto by the end of May.

The World Peace through Inclusion tour will be documented through video and other media.