By Dr. Sará King and Julia Rhodes Davis
The Mobius core team– Julia Rhodes Davis, Meagan Mitchell, Dr. Sará King, Davion “Zi” Ziere, and Aden Van Noppen– gathered in person for the first time at Commonweal in Bolinas, CA last December, 2021 to joyfully plant the seeds of Mobius 2.0.
As a multiracial team holding different lived experiences and intersectional identities, we began our retreat with a focus on “how we be” together in order to foster trust among one another, prevent harm to one another, and establish our Living Agreements. These agreements are practices that support the embodiment of Mobius’ core values: justice and equity, compassion, wholeness, embodiment, joy, emergence, and co-creation with Spirit. They have helped to establish a foundation of healing and trust that has felt fundamentally different from other multiractial spaces to which we have been connected. We hope that our blog can be a venue to share what we’re learning in service of others who are working to transform their organizations and collaborations to be aligned with values of justice and co-liberation. We also wish to be transparent about our process to build trust and alignments with the Mobius community we are building.
It was an extraordinary experience to gather in this historical moment in time. In spite of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and devastation across the globe, we collectively understood that it would be of great benefit for us and the future of Mobius to safely gather in person. After over two years of meeting online with colleagues, family, and friends to support one another’s health and well-being, the feeling of being physically proximate created a potent container of collaborative energy. It was important to the Core Team to be intentional about how we approached the creation of a new type of organization, re-founded together through our mutual efforts to embody the relational and spiritual conditions required to create a home for Liberatory Technology.
Our December retreat marked a refounding moment for the organization: Mobius was originally established by Aden Van Noppen, alongside meditation teachers, scholars, scientists, and philanthropists like Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Dr. Dan Siegel, Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, and others, to support senior tech leaders with community and advising to shift towards a more compassionate and responsible tech sector. We call this a refounding moment because Mobius is aligning itself to a new strategy that is enabling an alternative paradigm. One that lifts up diverse perspectives and visions, in particular from Black, Latinx, Indigenous, women, LGBTIQA+, and youth voices who have lived with and are working to transform their experiences of violence, inequity, oppression, and trauma that are exacerbated by technology. We have embarked on a transformation to Mobius 2.0, dedicated to supporting the transition to Liberatory Technology, technology that enables all people and communities to obtain freedom, thriving, and greater access to our aliveness.
We see ourselves and our work together as a contribution to a long history of multiracial organizing for liberation, a lineage that includes Sojourner Truth, John Brown, Mab Segrest Grace Lee Boggs, SNCC and CORE organizers, and the Black Panther Party. In the dominant U.S. culture that prides itself on firsts and innovation, it is radical to claim a lineage at all. And yet we do because it is the blood and chosen ancestors at our backs that organize our spirits to enable a new paradigm for a liberated future. As Mobius co-director Dr. Sará King says, “we live at the nexus of the dreams of our ancestors and the memories of our descendants,” and so we orient around the Living Agreements in order to make a loving contribution to the future we wish to live in, for the benefit of the next seven generations, just like the lineage-holders that came before us.
The Core Team co-created the Living Agreements as an accountability structure that supports the psychological, emotional, and physical safety of each member of our team, no matter their social location. These agreements guide us in moments of rupture to name what arises in a nonviolent way and identify what needs to be repaired. In contrast to the relational violence we see in cancel culture, we seek to support generative conflict that ultimately contributes to healing, learning, and evolution. Instead of responding to rupture punitively, the Living Agreements allow everyone to maintain their dignity, safety, and belonging. At a time when we feel in our bones the fierce urgency of now, we are called to practice slowing down, breathing, and feeling into our somatic reality in order to name the quality of what is happening in our bodies and speak from the heart. As our collaborator Bayo Akomolafe reminds us, “these times are urgent; let us slow down.” This embodied process of relationality and organizational development supports our collective transformation from how we have internalized systems of oppression and extraction to systems that are rooted in love, justice, and spirit.
We call our practices Living Agreements to honor emergence and to recognize that they may change over time and are meant to be embodied in support of our “aliveness.” The word “living” points to ways of being in the present and behaving towards one another that is life affirming. Importantly, the Living Agreements are also designed to be responsive to power in relationship to oneself and to one another, all informed by an awareness of social location, the intersectionalities of identity, and how these relate to the question of how power is being redistributed throughout the organization. Along these lines, we are also working through the ways in which our compensation structure, mutual aid, and shared leadership agreements support our team to reckon with and repair societal and generational harm.
Mobius’ Living Agreements are the means by which we embody our core values. The Living Agreements are as follows:
Healing, Justice, and Equity: Living in a culture of domination means that we have a lot of healing to do from the ways we have been harmed by white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and heteronormativity. We practice embodying these qualities because they live in, and are expressed through the body. We conscientiously explore what it means to heal ourselves; to prioritize individual and collective well-being; to redistribute power amongst ourselves, and to continually develop an understanding of what it means to show up with integrity to these principles.
- Tell the truth while acknowledging positionality
- Be curious about intent, acknowledge impact and practice “oops/ouch”
- Practice self-awareness and take responsibility for your actions and choices
- Give self and others permission to be quiet, pause, and slow down
- Name what we are grateful for, especially in times of struggle
- White bodied people practice accountability through caucus work and somatics
- Practice grace with one another
- Compassionately hold each other accountable to practicing the Living Agreements
Spirit is an integral force: We hold that Spirit is present in however we wish to connect to and honor that which is greater than ourselves. Spirit is a collaborative force behind everything that we do. There are many ways in which a person can make meaning of connecting with Spirit, and we affirm the vast diversity of peoples’ experiences.
- We are in relationship with; co-creating with; and protected by Spirit
- Acknowledge the unseen and invisible forces of life that are guiding us
- Practice calling in our ancestors and future generations
- Trust that it is not up to us to “know” everything — practice leaning into the discomfort and uncertainty of the unknown as a guiding force
Wholeness and Embodiment: In contrast to the dominant culture’s emphasis on the thinking mind, we honor the whole person and the wisdom held in the body. We believe that slowing down to notice sensation enables us to avoid harm and promote healing.
- Honor and name what arises in the body; remember to breathe and feel your feet
- Hold reverence for the whole self and full integration of identities
- Welcome the inner child and tap into wonder and awe
- Practice full-body listening
Acknowledge Trauma and Emotions: All bodies carry stress and a legacy of intergenerational trauma. Emotions are one of the primary means by which we express what has meaning to us, how we wish to be seen, and what we need from those around us. Emotional reactivity is a normal result of stress and the pressure to “perform” or “produce”, especially in organizational contexts. At Mobius, we recognize that it is very important to create a safe and brave space where people can have their emotions and/or trauma recognized when they arise. By slowing down and naming what is arising, we can intentionally practice cultivating presence. This allows us to see and hear one another more fully and supports our holistic wellbeing.
- Maintain a trauma informed space by naming when we are speaking from wound or from scar
- Distinguish between “I am experiencing” versus being identified by that experience, “I am”
- Create a safe and brave space– vulnerability is strength
- Practice radical honesty when fear is present, offer compassion in response, and turn towards how we can move forward
- Recognize that grief and pain are often present. They are important to pay attention to and honor when they arise.
Emergence and Engagement with Time: “Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.” In order to notice these patterns and co-create with each other and with Spirit, we honor emergence. This requires us to hold relationships with time differently: some meetings require more fluidity and spaciousness while others need to be time fixed. And doing all of this requires a good dose of grace and humor.
- Co-creation: our journey, the space we inhabit, the labor we express, and the leadership we share
- Trust the process
- Be explicit about when we are in time fixed and time fluid spaces
- Be aware of how much time we take when speaking in order to make room for others to add their perspectives and feel valued in their contributions
