Update From the Foundation
What We Are Reading
September 1, 2011
At the Compton Foundation we are engaged in a strategic planning process. We are looking both inside and outside the organization: we are looking at the special history, relationships, successes, and challenges we have had and assessing the resources we have been entrusted with to accomplish our mission. We are also looking at the world around us and thinking about the context in which we operate and how that influences our efforts moving forward.
One of the ways we are doing this is reading. We are reading about philanthropy, this moment in history, stories about other change efforts, and new ideas about how to support social change and transformation. We are also reading poems – recognizing that we need to speak to our hearts as well as our heads, and to work in both an analytical and critical thinking mode as well as be open to the wisdom of our intuition and senses.
Here are a few of things that have caught our attention recently:
Bill Moyers remarks on the 40th Anniversary of Common Cause
Akaya Winwood on Strange Times
http://www.rockwoodfund.org/article.php?id=284
Cynthia Chavez and Hugh Vazquez on Conversation Labs
http://www.thewhitmaninstitute.org/newsletter.html – prenups
Eric Friedenwald-Fishman on the interrelationship of art, social change, and innovation
http://www.ssireview.org/opinion/entry/no_art_no_social_change._no_innovation_economy/
Joy Harjo on what we are reaching for in our work
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179781
One of the poems that has inspired us, too, is Judy Brown’s Fire:
What makes a fire burn
Is space between the logs,
A breathing space.
Too much of a good thing.
Too many logs
Packed in too tight
Can douse the flames
Almost as surely
As a pail of water would.
So building fires
Requires attention
To the spaces in between
As much as to the wood.
We only need to lay a log
Lightly from time to time.
A fire
Grows
Simply because the space is there.
With openings
In which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
Can find its way.
At the Compton Foundation, we are attending to the spaces between the logs, and to the wood, creating a breathing space for our organization.
What are you reading? What space are you building? Let us know!
Ellen
Hi Ellen and all you other Compton folks,
I am reading a lot about the settlements involving Indigenous Native water rights in the western US that have been ongoing since an initiative by Native American Rights Fund and Western Governors Association in the 80s that convinced the feds to fund settlements of Indigenous (tribal) unperfected water rights.
There’s a good book on this by McCool from U of Utah, articles, etc. and the settlements themselves (recently Navajo, Nez Perce, Blackfeet) and more in the pipeline (Klamath).
I have become convinced that history will look back on this as the second great swindle of Indigenous Americans by white society. White lawyers are getting cash strapped tribes to give away massive water rights for what is essentially a pittance.
And yet this is mostly passing under the radar screen of progressives, the press, etc.
I’d like to change that; would the CF like to help?
I’m also reading Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko which is in a strange way related. There are so many ways American Culture continues to oppress and exploit Indigenous natives!
WATER. I think all aspects of this seminal western issue – cultural, aesthetic, economic, political – should be a focus for CF. Integrating art into activism seems to be a way forward.
el poema es muy interesante, muchas veces nosotros somos como el FUEGO ya que podemos hacer que el mundo nos odio o nos consuele el fuego puede lastimar mucho pero también acabar con nuestro sufrimiento, con los poemas nos podemos expresar mucho, y muchas veces dicen todo lo que sentimos sin necesidad de hablar o de gritar seamos libres sin importar el que dirán.
English Translation:
The poem is very interesting, sometimes we are like fire and we can make the world hate us or comfort us. Fire can hurt a lot but to end our suffering, we can express the poems a lot, and often say all we feel, with no need to talk or scream, no matter we are free to say.
Hi Friends at Compton -
I have to recommend the book “Imperial San Francisco” by Grey Brechin. Grey’s book is beautifully written with amazing photos, drawings and graphics which help build an understanding of the root causes of much of California’s long term environmental problems. His story spans many centuries as well as continents. His approach gives us hope here at The Sierra Fund where we are trying to bring attention and solutions to what we call “mining’s toxic legacy” — the lasting impact of California’s Gold Rush. We are working to address the long term environmental, health and cultural impacts of mining — I agree with the comment above about the need to address the ongoing injustice meted out to native peoples of this place.