The Move Podcast S1E10: Season 1 Recap
In Episode 10, The Move Podcast hosts Ceasar McDowell and Ayushi Roy reflect on learnings, takeaways and a-ha moments from the entire season. Our special guest — sound engineer Dave Lishansky — has recorded and edited every episode, and joins us today from behind the curtains.
It’s been a wild and beautiful ride beyond what any of us had imagined, and we hope you’ve enjoyed this journey as much as we have. See you all again soon in February for Season 2!
Transcript
Ceasar: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] I’m Ceasar McDowell.
Ayushi: [00:00:03] I’m Ayushi Roy.
Ceasar: [00:00:05] And you’re listening to …
Ayushi: [00:00:06] The Move.
Ceasar: [00:00:13] I get to start out every week saying, “Hi, Ayushi.”
Ayushi: [00:00:16] Are you getting tired of it yet, Cesar?
Ceasar: [00:00:18] I’m not getting tired of it. You know what, you’re going to have to share the space because with us today we also have …
Ayushi: [00:00:24] Our favorite.
Ceasar: [00:00:25] … our wonderful producing engineer Dave.
Dave: [00:00:28] Hello, hello.
Ceasar: [00:00:29] Dave, how you doing?
Dave: [00:00:29] I’m doing so good. It’s so good to be on mic with you guys. I’m usually sitting quietly in the corner just sitting with my mouth open totally in awe. This is fun.
Ayushi: [00:00:38] Nobody puts Dave in the corner.
Dave: [00:00:40] Dave puts Dave in the corner usually.
Ceasar: [00:00:42] Dave puts himself in the corner. This has been a ride for us.
Ayushi: [00:00:47] What a season.
Ceasar: [00:00:48] Yeah. Our first season out the box, it’s been incredible.
Ayushi: [00:00:52] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar: [00:00:53] Lots of really fascinating people.
Dave: [00:00:56] Amazing people.
Ceasar: [00:00:57] It really is amazing. I think if [00:01:00] there’s one regret I have is that we couldn’t have them all in the room at the same time. I just think that would be pretty amazing.
Ayushi: [00:01:09] Mm-hmm (affirmative). Got to throw a gala or something.
Dave: [00:01:12] It’d be the ultimate panel right there.
Ceasar: [00:01:14] The ultimate panel, the ultimate panel. You know what else? Which is really interesting … I have our website up right now kind of looking at it. I’m looking at all the index. This is a good looking crew.
Ayushi: [00:01:26] That’s not why we picked them.
Ceasar: [00:01:27] I’m looking at all [crosstalk 00:01:28]-
Ayushi: [00:01:27] I promise that’s not why we picked them.
Ceasar: [00:01:29] I’m glad they don’t have my folder up there. I would have messed up everything.
Ayushi: [00:01:33] Stop it.
Ceasar: [00:01:37] It’s great. It’s great. Yeah. How you doing, Ayushi?
Ayushi: [00:01:40] I’m very well. I’m very excited about this.
Ceasar: [00:01:44] I’m excited, but I’m also, wow, it’s an ending in some sense.
Ayushi: [00:01:48] Yeah.
Ceasar: [00:01:48] Or a transition.
Ayushi: [00:01:49] A transition.
Ceasar: [00:01:50] I shouldn’t say an ending. A transition.
Dave: [00:01:51] A transition.
Ayushi: [00:01:51] Yeah.
Ceasar: [00:01:53] We started out this whole idea that we would bring these folks on to talk about all these different design principles. I think I’ve learned a [00:02:00] lot actually about something that I put out there in the world, this whole notion of these eight ways of thinking about designing public spaces and civic engagement.
Ayushi: [00:02:10] How does it feel to put this information out in the world and all of a sudden receive this amazing group of people that are working on these things and hearing from them? How does that feel for you?
Ceasar: [00:02:21] A lot of it is just so affirming and then the other part of it is it’s not until you really put stuff out and see the people who are working with it on the ground to see how they reflect that back. Then you realize there’s just so many nuances, so much nuance to this work. I may have this concept of design for the margins, which was our first show, and really thinking about how important it is when we’re creating these public spaces to first think about people in the margins and make it work for them. Then Sasha just comes in and starts talking about you’ve got to [00:03:00] design for justice.
Ayushi: [00:03:01] Right.
Ceasar: [00:03:02] If you’re designing for the margins, then you’ve got to put justice at the front end of it.
Ayushi: [00:03:06] Right.
Ceasar: [00:03:08] I hadn’t thought about it that way.
Ayushi: [00:03:09] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar: [00:03:10] Just that piece. I think the other part for me is just realizing I’ve been holding these eight categories, knowing that they all kind of work together, but what you’ve got I think from everybody we talked to is nobody is working on one of these things. They’re working on all of them, three or four of them, different combinations of them, trying to make things work.
Ayushi: [00:03:31] Yeah. No, I think some of my takeaways were definitely about the collective nature of these design values. I think it’s really helpful to think about them as being separate just for the sake of understanding that are all of these, eight aspects to this concern that we tackle. But once you begin diving into the way that each of these design values are approached or worked with, worked against, you begin to realize how [00:04:00] much of it is not only collective in nature, but actually depends on this human under current. I think that’s something that really struck me across the episodes was the very intentional almost relationship building and trust building aspect of each of these values that is necessary to be able to tackle what’s at the margins, what healing means, what systemic change means, etc., etc. I think that was just very eye opening for me, as someone coming in with not being the author of all these design values, but more sort of the student perspective, the student voice. It was really eye opening for me.
Dave: [00:04:36] Totally. I kind of saw myself as the double student here because I’m sitting here listening to the two planning, in my eyes you guys are the planning experts. It goes so much deeper than planning. I love what you just, Ayushi, about how it comes back to human relationships and that human aspect. I keep coming back to Dasjon’s episode and what kept getting in the way for him, and his way of getting around that [00:05:00] was just being present with people. That just rang so true for me. It made me re-jigger my entire perspective on what this season was about. It’s about human relationships. How do you bring in that aspect of justice? You build that. You build those human relationships.
Ayushi: [00:05:16] Yeah. One thing that I will never forget from talking to Dasjon was his story about how he sat in that bookstore for six hours.
Dave: [00:05:24] Exactly.
Ayushi: [00:05:25] Do you guys remember that? Six hours of no conversation, of no interaction with the bookstore owner who was sort of this head honcho community leader. He just literally sat there, watched her deal with her customers and build these relationships. I actually pulled up this quote because I was so excited after hearing him. He says this thing, “We need to learn how to be a different type of family and how to open our minds about where we stand and what we think we know and be open to learning everything new.” I think that’s so beautiful. A different type of family, a different type of learning. [00:06:00] I think just the presence, like you pointed out, Dave, was the biggest first step in building these new kinds of families and relationships and learnings.
Ceasar: [00:06:08] Yeah. This notion of presence and being present for people cut across all of these. Maybe that is the overall design principle, design for presence.
Ayushi: [00:06:19] Design for presence. I like that.
Ceasar: [00:06:20] Yeah. You got to be there with people. That’s what people are … I guess what we’re trying to do in all this is kind of highlight the things we have to disrupt. We disrupt them by intentionally designing for something else that actually increases the possibility of us being able to be present for the other. In some sense, I think that’s what all this does, if we pay attention to these.
Some of you may just be joining us for the first time. We’re talking as if you’ve been with us for the whole ride. If you are just with us for the first time, we really appreciate it. Maybe I [00:07:00] should just give a little recap. We keep talking about these principles and people may not know what we’re talking about.
Ayushi: [00:07:05] Yeah, let’s run through them.
Dave: [00:07:06] Totally.
Ceasar: [00:07:06] The whole idea that we’ve been grounded on in this show is that realizing how complex our societies are now and how we actually really need to design and build new infrastructures for our society, civic infrastructures, and processes. In order to do that in a way that really moves us forward and moves us to being more collective and connected together, we actually have to think of it as a purposeful design. What we’ve been working on is this set of eight design principles that we think people should work with and apply as they’re designing public engagement processes, as they’re designing town halls, whatever they’re doing, so they’re able to help us stitch together a new kind of civic infrastructure. The idea is that what we have now is broken and we actually have to [00:08:00] design something new. We’re not going to do it a master of design. We’re going to do it because people are going to be experimenting in big and small ways. If they adhere to a set of principles, it might help us get to a better system.
There are these eight principles that we explored on this show. We had a guest around each one. The first one was design for the margins. Then there was design for healing-
Ayushi: [00:08:25] Analog versus digital.
Ceasar: [00:08:27] Right, design for collaboration, for network based solutions. Designing for equity and designing for multiple forms of expression. Those are all part of what we need to pay attention to as we’re designing and creating new public engagement opportunities. We brought people who are doing this work from really different perspectives to talk about their work and then to see how their work connects with those principles. We weren’t bringing people in because they do design for the [00:09:00] margins. We brought them in because they were doing really powerful work of really creating spaces for people to be present. We would listen to them and then they would engage with us about how what they were doing connects with what we’re doing.
Ayushi: [00:09:14] Yeah. I think, something you brought up, Cesar, a lot of people don’t see that the work that they’re doing is designing for the margins or designing for healing, etc. because I think the nature of redesigning or rethinking community structures or participatory mechanisms is so different across industries and sectors and job descriptions. I think a really powerful part of the experience of even naming this work is showing our listeners, showing each other almost, that there is such a range of people that take on these kinds of issues every single day that don’t have a fancy title like civic designer. The reality is that they are doing this really important work and [00:10:00] slowly shifting the ways that we allow people to be present, to be authentic, to show their whole self in a space, and the way we create spaces that allow for struggle, allow for tension, as opposed to isolating tension and removing it from the rest of the population and dividing and splintering our societies today.
Yeah. I’m just so excited to have these eight principles to think off of and work off of, especially as we recap today.
Ceasar: [00:10:27] In the midst of all that’s going on in society right now, we hear this kind of media narrative out here about how bad things are, how divisive things are, and how we need to be working to pull things together. I think what you see, what is really constant in listening to our guests over this period of time, is there are people doing this work, there are people that are holding this society together. Despite all that stuff up there, there are folks doing really on the ground work in [00:11:00] lots of different ways that are finding those ways to connect us. Each one may not be connecting everyone, but the people they’re working with, the events that they’re doing, the meetings they’re holding are really demonstrating that it is possible. It’s possible if you pay attention to everything. That’s the thing I think that’s so wonderful about some of the things that people have said.
I remember Window talking about this whole notion about, this whole idea, a town hall for venting. Just the notion that paying attention to the fact that in order for people to show up and bring their full self, sometimes people need to be able to scream and holler and be mad and be seen that they’re mad. If we can do that, then it can join us in finding solutions. If we keep asking them to shut down their emotions, which as I’m sitting here saying this, Dave, this is really a male thing.
Dave: [00:11:56] Yeah, totally.
Ceasar: [00:11:57] This is a-
Ayushi: [00:11:57] To shut down emotions?
Dave: [00:11:58] Yeah.
Ayushi: [00:11:59] Yeah. [00:12:00] Tell me about it.
Ceasar: [00:12:02] We built into all of our public participation stuff.
Dave: [00:12:04] Right, right.
Ceasar: [00:12:05] It’s like keep that stuff out of here.
Dave: [00:12:07] Right. It’s also really interesting, I think, who’s being asked to bring their emotions right now, too. If you look at the Charlottesville, those crazy protests from last year, those people are bringing their emotions. They feel great coming to vent because they’ve been welcomed into that space to vent. We don’t have any other space for any other group. It’s just white men, come, get angry, because your freedoms are being oppressed. That’s it.
Ceasar: [00:12:34] Yeah, it’s interesting you say that. This actually connects a lot to what Kenny says.
Ayushi: [00:12:39] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar: [00:12:40] Because Kenny talked about this notion, these whole things [SERC 00:12:43], that we’re in this social emergency, we need to create these spaces that allow us to bring all of who we are together and actually create and design … What does he call them? Social emergency response centers.
Ayushi: [00:12:57] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dave: [00:12:57] Yes.
Ceasar: [00:12:57] Things that can pop up in neighborhoods that can [00:13:00] contain the emotions and the rawness that people are feeling and, at the same time, feed them and provide spaces for them to heal their body and learn new things and that you can do all that together and with people of all different types in the same space.
I think it’s not so much about do people feel free to say what they want to say and vent. It’s do they have a way of opening up that space in a way that people can say and emote what they’re feeling and be heard and then move forward. It’s not to emote to shut down other people, but emote to express. That’s kind of the difference between what happened with all that stuff in Charlottesville. That was emoting to shut down as opposed to emoting to say, “This is how I’m feeling. I’m going to own it. It’s me. I have it. There may be others who feel differently.”
Ayushi: [00:13:59] I [00:14:00] don’t think … That’s so beautifully put. It’s interesting because, to your point, emoting is a form of construction. I think emoting, you can emote to construct and to be constructive.
Ceasar: [00:14:13] Yes.
Ayushi: [00:14:13] Unfortunately, I can say only with my woman hat on, that I often don’t get that feedback. My emotions are often seen as frivolous or peripheral or besides the point or a deviation from the point, rather than constructing or validating the point. I wonder, kind of thinking about Wendell’s idea of a town hall for healing and thinking about Kenny’s idea of this social emergency response centers and how we would deal with this community that’s facing a state of social emergency, a state of splintered social infrastructure, what does it look like to construct out of emotion. What does it look like to tell someone … [00:15:00] This is hitting close to home for me … What does it look like to tell someone, “You’re not being dramatic. You’re not being ‘over emotional’, whatever that means. What you’re saying is a reflection of all that you’ve seen and all that you’ve had to process. Thank you for taking the courage to express these things. Let’s move forward together in a way that doesn’t allow either of us to have to constantly negotiate this internal turmoil.” I think about the day to day practice of that, what that might look like, what it might feel like.
Ceasar: [00:15:36] Yeah, it’s so hard. In some sense, we are trying to construct a set of behaviors or moods and instances and places for society that’s out of community, that’s out of relationship. We’re trying to figure out how do we do that. Sometimes we’re even out of family.
Ayushi: [00:15:56] Right.
Ceasar: [00:15:59] We’ve had [00:16:00] thousands and thousands and thousands of years to know how to do it in community and family, but we haven’t had that many years to figure out how to do it disconnected and how to reconnect. It’s something we’re learning how to do.
Ayushi: [00:16:15] Yeah. I feel like these design values are actually, in some way, an unlearning of a lot of the ways we’ve been taught, myself included, to love within our spheres of care. Once you step outside, like you said, out of community, and you’re all of a sudden flesh against, shoulder to shoulder with people that are from a completely different background and mindset, how do you still not only allow and invite them to be authentic but keep authentic yourself and honor the space together? I feel like a lot of these design values are getting to the root of that.
Ceasar: [00:16:53] That’s a real challenge. I think that’s exactly the challenge we’re facing in this country, for real. I think it’s [00:17:00] true in other places in the world, too, but I think it’s overly dramatic and real here in urban areas for sure.
It’s so funny, though, when we talk about the emotions thing. I was thinking about Sabrina.
Dave: [00:17:11] Yes.
Ceasar: [00:17:12] Because Sabrina talks about this notion of delight.
Ayushi: [00:17:15] Yes.
Ceasar: [00:17:15] How do we actually create spaces of delight and let people connect to that emotional part of who they are. I just love this notion of thinking about planning and the engagement with the city and the tough things that are out there, but doing it from a space of delight. It’s almost like what.
Ayushi: [00:17:36] What.
Ceasar: [00:17:36] It doesn’t even make any sense.
Ayushi: [00:17:37] Is that the word that you really meant to use?
Ceasar: [00:17:38] Yeah, those things don’t work together. But they’re making it work together. That’s one of the things that’s really powerful about her episode because she talks about how they’re making that actually work.
Dave: [00:17:47] I love that. So much of I feel like the dialogue around planning and these kinds of topics that we’re so often talking about, it’s just about how can we make it functional, how can we make it just functional period. That’s our highest [00:18:00] goal. When she brought in that concept of delight, it was like, this is real. There’s a foundation here for something actually really hopeful and beautiful and positive beyond just function.
Ayushi: [00:18:13] Right. Like, oh, we’re not trying to get a bare pass? We’re trying to aim for the A here? Oh, wow. I didn’t realize we were that kind of student ever. Here we’ve been trying to scrape along the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, no. I think the way that she thinks about bringing delight as allowing there to be different types of ways of engagement, different types of listening, different types of communication, is really cool.
I don’t know, when I think of what it means to bring delight as a government agency, if I were in her shoes, without having met her I would thought it looks kind of like being more friendly, wearing less suits. I don’t know. I feel like it [00:19:00] would be more humanizing the agency. I think that they did achieve that humanization, so to speak, but they did it in such a different way by bringing housing structures and creating them inside the community to help people feel what it might look like to have this new development. They engaged and listened in so many different ways, which is just such a powerful concept, that as a better listener you can actually bring delight to the people around you.
Dave: [00:19:26] Yeah.
Ceasar: [00:19:27] Oh yeah?
Dave: [00:19:27] Oh, yeah.
Ceasar: [00:19:30] I can tell you really liked that one.
Ayushi: [00:19:32] I’m so curious, Dave. What did you think you were getting into when you …
Ceasar: [00:19:38] Yeah.
Ayushi: [00:19:38] Before these episodes started and then after they kept rolling out.
Dave: [00:19:42] Yeah. I feel like I started off … When we were having our meetings before we began this show, I think our first one we talked about how do we build a better democracy. I walked out of that meeting just flying high. I was like, this is it, this is how we fix everything. [00:20:00] As we started going through it, it was like, oh, we need to start way back. Before we start fixing what we have, we need to start retraining our minds. At least I did. When we progressed onward, for me, it was like, so this work starts with me. 100%, this work starts with my internal view of how I enter into spaces, how other people are entering into spaces, and what I need to do to actually bring the best out of myself and others at the same time.
Ayushi: [00:20:33] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dave: [00:20:34] I think every single guest had done that work. Every single guest that we had in is, not only they’re in the process of still doing that work for themselves, but they’re showing other people how to do it in such different and really profound ways. I love the diversity of thought and the diversity of areas where people are working on this. For me, I started off flying high, we’re going to fix everything, and now [00:21:00] it’s like, oh, I have this really deep, really grounded foundation for hope. That’s what these principles have come to mean to me. This is my foundation for hope that we can improve these systems that are so utterly broken and frustratingly so. There’s hope there.
Ayushi: [00:21:18] Wow.
Ceasar: [00:21:18] That’s really amazing to hear.
Ayushi: [00:21:19] That’s amazing to hear.
Ceasar: [00:21:20] Yeah. It’s really so … I don’t even know what the right word is … affirming to hear you say that. The last couple of weeks we’ve been talking in our production meetings, the staff meetings, about how goal being to bring hope. That’s what we’re interested in. We’re interested in how do you spread hope. That’s what we need. You have been part of those conversations. To have you say that’s what you got, that’s pretty cool.
Ayushi: [00:21:51] Right.
Dave: [00:21:51] You brought it. You brought the hope. I really hope I’m representing a lot of listeners here, too, because it’s always what I [00:22:00] walked out of the room feeling. I got to sit in the corner for all these amazing conversations. It was just such a pleasure to be in that room, I have to say. Can I turn that question back on you both and say, where have you come after this season? Because I think we all started off on different pages on what we had hoped to achieve in this season. I want to know where you’re coming out.
Ayushi: [00:22:19] Yeah. I think walking into the season … I kind of want to contextualize, too. I was a first semester grad student, had come from the working world from local government in Oakland, California, and I think a lot of my interest in doing this work was how to better understand what the front lines of democracy, like we used to call … Maybe you’re three to eight years into government, you feel like you don’t really have much power in this behemoth, very red taped organization, but you really hold close your personal values and you want to understand how to bridge that personal value set with your professional work [00:23:00] opportunities.
Coming in, I felt a tad disillusioned, I felt a tad in need of hope, but I also felt at a loss of what the sort of day to day implementation, if you will, of personal values looks like. How do you implement personal values in the work setting? It’s a very difficult question to answer. I’ve walked away with a very … The word humbled comes to mind. I feel very humbled. I feel very humbled because I think that what I’ve taken away from this season, from all these hours of recording and editing and talking to our team that’s amazing and talking to obviously, Cesar, you and Dave, is just that it’s actually so much simpler than we make it out to be. It’s so much easier than we think.
I think I’m someone to hatch grand plans and vision boards and God knows what other kinds of design thinking nonsense. I [00:24:00] actually think I’ve been humbled that the work I can do is really just sometimes as simple as making sure that everyone in the meeting feels at ease. Can everyone see each other? How is everyone feeling right now? Is this the best language for us to communicate in? Is the temperature okay? Should we move to a different location where there’s more sunlight? It’s honestly the simplest things to make people feel heard, feel comfortable, and as a result create a space where people don’t walk around with their fists up to their face in defense, with boxing gloves on. The arms sort of lower and real conversations can begin to happen. That starting point for me, which I really do feel like is a starting point at the end of all these amazing hours of interviews, has just been really incredibly powerful.
Ceasar: [00:24:56] Wow. I’m going to take a deep breath and kind of meditate for a moment on [00:25:00] this question because there’s a lot swirling around. I’m also realizing, truth be told, I’m feeling a little weird as subject. It’s comfortable to sit here and talk with other people about what they’re doing, but, wow, to sit here and turn that mic on myself or have it turned on me … It’s a little bit different.
Dave: [00:25:25] We’re going to have to do this more often then.
Ceasar: [00:25:26] No. Please, don’t. Please, don’t. Spare me. Spare the world. I guess for me, we stumbled onto this idea of doing this podcast. It was actually not what we set out to do. I’m really glad that we did because by saying we’re going to do this, it really was, as you opened up, Ayushi, saying, it was a way for us to ground these ideas, to really see what happens when you put them out there … Not just put them out there and say, “Oh, [00:26:00] so-and-so kind of liked it,” and stuff, but to be in deep conversation with people about it and have them bring what they know works and what they struggle with in relationship to those things. For me, these principles were a starting point for something much bigger. It’s really just opening up a set of conversations and relationships.
I think I came into it with a lot of uncertainty. I was really excited about some of the, not some, all of the people who were going to be able to talk to me … You don’t know what it’s like to say, “Hey, would you like to come on our podcast series?” People said, “Sure.” We go, “Really?”
Ayushi: [00:26:44] Wait, really, you want to hang with me?
Ceasar: [00:26:45] Really? Can we find a time to do it? We know you’re really busy? Yeah, when? Well, we have this slot. Sure, I’ll be there. Wow.
What that’s a signal to me is how much people who [00:27:00] are engaged in this work don’t have a platform to talk about what they’re doing. A platform that’s generous for that. One that’s about, as you said, holding what they’re doing and the work that they’re doing.
Yeah, for me, I think that’s it. Just being able to know by creating this space and offer this opportunity we’ve created this new kind of space.
The other part of it is it’s made me really rethink and think deeply about what we’re trying to do in this work. Is it really the larger thing of bringing hope and the skill of presence, of a design for presence? Is that what we’re doing? Are we really able to say that we’re looking at structures that actually are going to make it possible for people to build their muscle for democracy? We have a lot more in the future that we’re planning on working on to get at these questions and get at them in different ways. [00:28:00] Because we have one way of thinking about this. Ayushi and I have one interaction of how to work with people. Some people are working with a different set of people and trying to get at those questions. I think what it’s really set up for me is that there’s a need and a desire for people who are doing the work out there to hear from each other, because they want to listen to each other and they want to learn from each other, and that we might be able to facilitate some of that happening in a way that is easy and hopefully fun for people, fun for the people who are here that we’re talking with and also for the people who are listening in.
I guess coming out of this I’ve gotten some intention that this is not just, oh, we’re doing a podcast series, but, no, we’re actually … I think we have the possibility of opening up some new space.
Ayushi: [00:28:57] Creating spaces for others to be present.
Ceasar: [00:28:59] Yeah.
Ayushi: [00:28:59] [00:29:00] Yeah.
Ceasar: [00:29:00] Exactly.
Ayushi: [00:29:01] It’s about amplifying all of this amazing work that people are already taking on, but, to your point, Caesar, aren’t able to take on in a way that they can hear the others that are taking it on, in other companies nextdoor to them, other industries and sectors nextdoor. What does it look like to all the sudden have this learning hub, this community of people that are able to discuss the way that they’ve been able to bring this unlearning, this presence, this designing for all kinds of equity and margins and healing in their own work, sharing it with those around them. We can create a culture. That’s the, I think, ultimate goal, is to create this culture of … I don’t even … authenticity and presence and other ways of welcoming others.
Dave: [00:29:47] Yeah.
Ceasar: [00:29:48] Yeah. Really just checking and challenging each other in some ways, too. I love, when Tau was here and we were talking with him, and we talked about the origins of our work and our name, The Move, and [00:30:00] how this is going to be the civic design network. He just went off on us about the word network …
Ayushi: [00:30:04] Network.
Ceasar: [00:30:05] … and the problems with that. Here’s a guy from South Africa who’s in a totally different context thinking about these issues. Words that we easily sit with … He basically interrogated that word for us and what it means and what it doesn’t mean and how we need to think about these connections between human beings in a very different way. We scrapped the word network.
It was interesting because that was until Curtis came back on. Then Curtis brought the word back. I think what you realize is Curtis has a very specific way of thinking about network. He doesn’t just use the word. He’s using it as a way to talk about the efforts of people to come together across really [00:31:00] different viewpoints and different positions around an issues. Like food systems, he’s working in. To do the work of understanding each other, to do the work of clarifying some set of values, and then supporting each other to act in the way they need to act to make that real. That’s a very specific notion of what he means by network.
What Tau was reacting to was not that specific notion, but about this idea of how we think networks themselves will solve something without dealing with the underlying structures …
Ayushi: [00:31:36] Exactly.
Ceasar: [00:31:36] … and things that are in place.
Ayushi: [00:31:38] Exactly. I think that’s the key for me, is that underlying nature of it. I don’t think it’s often that we take a word like network, for example, and begin to deconstruct and peel away onion layers and figure out, but what’s the first order question here, what’s the underlying root of this. In the case of networks, for Curtis, it [00:32:00] was this sort of root structure. It was this permaculture. It was sustainable agriculture. It was relating human networks to other kinds of biological flora and fauna networks that help contextualize the ways in which human communities, like plant communities, base themselves in specific ways that need to be respected and amplified and watered and given sunlight, etc., and can’t be just uprooted.
Ceasar: [00:32:29] Yes.
Ayushi: [00:32:29] Whether it be via urban renewal or whether it be other kinds of interactions and interventions.
I think the underlying question … I actually remember distinctly in Danielle’s work as well. Danielle had this amazing conversation about working in equity, racial planning for the SF Urban Planning Commission. She brought up this really interesting example of a coworker’s conversation about why she doesn’t bike to work.
Ceasar: [00:32:56] Yes.
Ayushi: [00:32:58] I thought it was so fascinating [00:33:00] because it’s really easy to jump to quick responses, whether it be race or gender or safety or whatnot, medical, etc. Instead Danielle decided to take a step back, sit down with her coworker, and actually talk about ways that people express themselves. That was so powerful to me because it’s not just throwing out simple words, whether it be race or equity or network or whatever, but actually digging into the first order nature of what these issues and concerns that we’ve simplified linguistically really mean.
Ceasar: [00:33:40] Yeah, that example is a great one, too, because what it also illustrated how sometimes even people who are working on these issues to try to improve the society and they’re working on a set of core values kind of latch onto particular ideas without really thinking about what blocks they put in for other people, why other people may [00:34:00] not be responding, and then start to make judgments about these other people. You have a sense that biking is good for the environment, less cars are good. You’re not biking? Does that mean you don’t care?
Ayushi: [00:34:14] About the environment?
Ceasar: [00:34:15] The environment. That’s not the equation. The equation is biking works under certain circumstances for certain people under certain conditions at certain times, and not all. If you’re not that, what do you have? What do you do? What are the ways in which you’re acting in?
I was in this meeting the other day and I actually said this to people. I said, “If there’s a way, I wish we could bring a sense of grace back to our public life.”
Ayushi: [00:34:38] Wow. Wow.
Ceasar: [00:34:40] That we could just relax with each other a little bit and not take everything so serious, that we could just step back, as Danielle did in that conversation, and then open up in another way …
Ayushi: [00:34:52] Yeah.
Dave: [00:34:52] Yeah.
Ceasar: [00:34:53] … to people and open them up in another way. That takes time. It takes commitment to do [00:35:00] that. That sense of being able to let me show you how what you’ve done or what you’ve said or what you’re proposing, what it means to me. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m not saying it’s right. I just want you to understand it from here.
Ayushi: [00:35:15] Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, the question that comes to mind is, how do you get to know what you don’t know. Right?
Dave: [00:35:24] The ultimate question.
Ayushi: [00:35:25] It’s effectively … It sometimes to me feels like the impossible burden. I’m not going to know who I’m hurting until it might be too late.
Dave: [00:35:34] Right.
Ayushi: [00:35:37] It’s hard to sit with that ugly reality of each of our behavior, of my own behavior. At the same time, there is a sense of, well, if we’ve come to accept that, if we recognize that, then there are ways that we can open the door for each other.
Ceasar: [00:35:56] Yes.
Ayushi: [00:35:57] Right? I [00:36:00] find, from these conversations, that digging into these underlying roots of commonly thrown out words like gentrification or whatnot, equity, diving into the roots of them really helps solve half that problem. Because it opens the door where people are more willing to listen …
Ceasar: [00:36:21] Yes.
Ayushi: [00:36:21] … and more willing to respond and have a healthy conversation, as opposed to throw up their guard.
Ceasar: [00:36:28] Yeah. Really, really true. Really true.
For those of you who are just joining us, I hope you have some opportunity over the next month or so, as we’re preparing the next season, to go back and listen to the other shows. I think you’ll find them really exciting and heart warming. They’re really profound and really good stuff. We’d just love to get your feedback anytime.
Ayushi: [00:36:52] Yes. Send us your thoughts.
Ceasar: [00:36:55] Send us your thoughts.
Ayushi: [00:36:55] Your concerns, your feedback, your love.
Ceasar: [00:36:55] If you can jump on our website at [00:37:00] themove.mit.edu, you can send us a tweet at …
Ayushi: [00:37:04] TheMoveMIT.
Ceasar: [00:37:05] Yeah. Dave, I just want to say thank you so much for guiding us through this.
Dave: [00:37:11] Thank you guys both for being my favorite co-hosts. I’m sorry if any of my other clients are listening, but …
Ayushi: [00:37:21] We won’t tell them.
Ceasar: [00:37:21] Ayushi, thank you so much for this show. It’s been great …
Ayushi: [00:37:26] Thank you, Caesar.
Ceasar: [00:37:27] … jumping into this as an experiment together.
Ayushi: [00:37:29] It really has been amazing.
Ceasar: [00:37:30] Trying to co-host.
Ayushi: [00:37:31] Thank you for finding me out of the blue and trusting me with being your co-host. It’s been amazing, an amazing experience.
Ceasar: [00:37:39] Yeah, this has been great. I’m Caesar McDowell and signing off for this season of The Move.
Ayushi: [00:37:46] It’s been a pleasure to speak with you all. Please keep following us at TheMoveMIT on all of our various channels. I’m Ayushi Roy. Thanks for [00:38:00] listening.
Originally published at https://themove.mit.edu on October 30, 2018.
