Welcome to the Party
Well, it’s not exactly a party. It’s the end of U.S. foreign aid as we know it. Isolationist and nationalistic foreign policy is now the norm with the return of the criminal-in-chief and that means that this regime’s offensive — enacted on people who are vulnerable in the U.S. — will be painfully extended to other nations as well.
As the news of the USAID “stop work” directive, leaves and disciplinary measures for senior leadership, and website shutdown hit last week, I braced myself. This will have severe implications from major aid institutions to the grassroots — by design — including the immediate loss of livelihoods for a confirmed 17,000 employees so far, and an estimated 152,000 jobs expected to be lost in total. With a first go at it in 2017, this latest attempt at “feeding USAID “to the wood chipper” is part of an intentional “shock and awe” strategy intended to create stress and confusion and stupor, and ensure extraction, greed, and accumulation are the law of the land. Since, USAID represents less than 1% of the overall federal budget, we need to be asking: what other strategies are afoot?
Meanwhile, many aid professionals are existentially asking…what now? I humbly offer a few questions and some previous writing to help people orient to what may seem like a new, unknown reality:
Have you paused long enough for the grief to arrive?
Grief can be our teacher, and we can remember that it’s a regular part of our work. In this moment, our humanity and our professionalism need not be at odds.
“We must find different ways. But first we need to sit with what hurts in our own souls. Touch inward for just a moment. What’s there? What fear, anger, and disbelief resides? Name it, even wordlessly. Allow it some hallowed ground.” My friend Katherine Daniels wrote on her LinkedIn post last week that shared the news of her first cancelled contract.
In the midst of crisis, it’s important to pause and remember that it’s in our hearts that we become first aware that we are capable of taking better care of each other on this planet, even as the structures we thought could help are being taken down. It’s important to not erase ourselves and our own needs, and to resist our performances of goodness. Let’s be present for ourselves and to each other first.Can you release yourself from having to jump to action?
Can you release yourself from having to jump to action?
As part of institutionalized professional lives, we are always meant to be taking action, moving forward — rarely connecting, reflecting, or resting — which ultimately serves the powers that be. When do we build vision?
Sitting in the unknown is so uncomfortable, and our ways of working can reflect a severe aversion to it in the #GlobalDevelopment and #HumanitarianAid sector. Far too often, our “doing” has been more important than our direction. There is a price to rushing and fixing, and we don’t have to jump to the next “opportunity” or “the good” that can come from this.
What assumptions can be up for review?
Our allegiance to the sector obscures our ability to see situations fully. Our deepest intentions will be tested. Amidst new rhythms and routines of this new reality, we have an opportunity to concretize — in practice — our notions of interdependence, of care and consent, and of trust in our workplaces. The glimmer of optimism that I cling to right now for our sector is this: we can no longer go on pretending that we’re not interdependent nor denying that those in the Global North have a lot to learn. Learn from people for whom the world has ended many times over. Learn from people for whom the stakes are higher.
How are you making meaning of this moment?
I am sensing that the “solutions” we as aid professionals were are taught to find and pursue can be a subtle or not-so-subtle way of detaching from ourselves and each other, in addition to all the other ways oppressive systems disconnect us. So many of the most powerful “solutions” I’ve witnessed lately have been rooted in and are a result of ancient technologies — sitting around a kitchen table or a fire with old and new friends, honoring ancestors, lineages, and teachers, singing together, breathing and being together in silence. Each of these ancient technologies give us a firmer place to stand — for whatever comes.
How are you accessing your imagination right now?
We’ve known for a long time now, the old ways aren’t working. In fact they are harmful. In a sector obsessed(!) with innovation, we do very little to actually cultivate new ways of thinking or developing our own capacities. We rarely practice working within any variables save “budget amounts.” We need radical, new, practical ideas of how to enact solidarity and transform systems — not dream-y, vision-y, utopian ideals but concrete shifts in our ways of working.
How do you know who you can trust?
Unfortunately, there are insincere, self-interest-motivated actors completely lacking in self-awareness in institutions and workplaces everywhere. (Look up the acronym DARVO, if you’re not familiar.) As people throw around the words associated with trauma responses (e.g. fight, freeze, flee), let’s not forget “fawn”, those who cozy up to the abusers-in-chief, validate their whims and anticipate their every need, assuming that as safety. While some of us are unmoored by shock and awe, sycophants may function very well, positioning themselves for reward. This is a chance to do the inner work that you may have been avoiding — to understand why you can’t breathe when you have to be in a meeting with someone, or why you are avoiding finishing a report, why you assume your colleagues will disappoint you, or why you seem unable to break repeated cycles of burnout.
We must hold tight to our collective vision of liberation, and quickly become more skilled and savvy about navigating around those who benefit from the chaos — including those in positions of power in our own organizations. Let’s build new structures into our everyday ways of working so that there are less places for power-hoarding, evil, and greed to hide…including within ourselves.
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