Martha Awojobi, Natalie Armitage and Kennedy Walker explore why conflict is so hard and how to develop a healthier relationship to conflict.
No matter our approach to change, anyone seeking to build a life-affirming future that centres equity, justice and liberation recognises that we need each other. We need to build people power to the scale of the challenges we face, and that means being in real relationship with one another in all its complexity.
Our movements are full of genius, creativity, and hope. There are also emotional wounds and trauma caused by systems of oppression that encourage us to recreate harmful dynamics between us ultimately weakening our fight for justice. Conflict has fractured relationships between movement actors, weakened our movements and leaves us more vulnerable to attack at precisely the moment we need to be connected and strong.
In relationships, conflict is inevitable. So how do we do it lovingly?
Punishment, avoidance, shame, violence and exclusion are normalised within capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy, and are the reason we can act out in violent, manipulative or coercive ways to one another during a conflict; we mirror the dominant culture.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can transform our understanding of conflict as a site of intimacy, vulnerability, growth and connection. We can develop conflict frameworks that centre dignity, connection, belonging and safety. We can use conflict as a way to learn more about ourselves, others and transform the conditions that create harm.
Martha Awojobi, Natalie Armitage and Kennedy Walker are joining forces to transform our understanding of conflict and accountability. JMB has spent three years working through conflict openly and creatively, whilst also developing organisational structures that embrace healthy conflict as an opportunity to create more joy and more life!
At our next Uncharitable event, they will be sharing some of the learning from three years of working on conflict and accountability together, and giving a sneak peak at the decolonial approaches to conflict frameworks that they are developing. We will be discussing:
Why conflict is so hard
Understanding the difference between conflict, disagreement, hurt, harm and abuse
Complicating our understanding of power, and how to honestly analyse power dynamics within conflicts
What we think the root causes of conflict are in our movements
What a genuine apology looks like and feels like
How to embed a health approach to conflict into your organisational culture, operations and governance
We will be running the event on Zoom and will share the recording with all ticket holders for three months post event. We have tickets to buy, free tickets, and the opportunity for you to pay for the price of someone else.
If you want to see more from Uncharitable you can check out our full event collection on Uncharitable TV