Thread by @elle_mccann

if you're looking for the magical toolkit that will help you solve the disconnect between your work and "the community", spoiler alert you're never gonna find it

why are we so resistant to the understanding, the old as time understanding, that to engage people, you have to engage them? that to involve people you have to involve them?

that to help people you need to actually work on what's wrong - and listen to THEM, the folks you want to help and serve) when they tell you what's wrong?

the GALL of institutions, of foundations, pumping this idea that social disconnection is an affiliation of "communities" and not of those who are disconnected from community. talk about item 1 under white savior bullshit.

there is no transformation, no change in denying the humanity of those you serve - their expertise in their own experiences, their agency in decision-making. folks aren't sitting around waiting for you to arrive or for you to perfect the perfect engagement

if you want to help people, connect with people, serve people, engage with people then you're going to have to talk with people. and you're going to have to deal with the history of what's happened before you arrive for that conversation

and you have to deal if folks don't want to talk to you

trust is earned. relationships grow over time. just because you have a crush on a stranger across from you on the bus, they're not automatically your girlfriend/boyfriend. just because you share a meal doesn't make someone family. we must remember this as we endeavor to "engage"

folks have perfectly robust lives without your institution. who are you to arrive and demand a relationship? who are you to claim relevance to folks who have been living without you? who might even be suffering because of you and the way your organization absorbs resources?

when we think about engagement, we have to understand it not as a noun, not as a thing you can acquire, buy, or checklist out.

engagement is a verb. engagement is an action, an ongoing form of connection and relationships.

to be "successful" at engagement is to put yourself in relationship, with other people, with history, with place, with time, with power. to be "successful" is to be present. to value human connection.

to do engagement, real communal engagement, is to de-automate. you can't fast track this. you can't hand this off to someone else. and you can't force this. you cannot force relationships. you cannot build connection without consent.

you can "market" a service til the cows come home, but marketing is not engagement. not what you mean when you ask how to better engage the folks you wanna work for. and you know it. every one I've ever worked with who has come to me for community engagement training has known

it's the quiet thing in the back of your mind/heart as you work, as you feel the DISconnection in your work: you FEEL the absence of needed connection, the absence of community, you feel when you're dropping in from the sky, when you're forcing it. you feel it. you know.

even if you don't have the words, you know. bc real engagement is relationships and human connection. and tho we may each hold different abilities and consciousness related to social connection, relationships and interdependence are central to our humanity, our animal, our person

modern Western institutions and foundations want to sell you on productized bullshit change, on scale & competition, but we have only made it to 2019 through community, through connection and finding locality (IRL and online)

this is the old knowledge. you know it in your bones

and you can see it. you have seen the work of organizations led by BIPOC, especially women and enbies, especially trans and queer people, you can see the spaces and places and people who think about engagement for accountability and collaboration, not from acquisition.

you see it and you want it, but you don't want to work for it.

tough shit.

engagement, communal weaving, relationship building is a skill & a craft & an investment that you cannot automate. you cannot throw a product at it to get it. there is no one size fits all "solution" for it. you cannot ask for it for Christmas. your buzzwords will never find it

foundations are literally out here reinventing their portfolios every yr to find a new buzzword for the "solution" for engagement and social change instead of doing the one thing folks on the ground have told them would make change for years: radically redistribute their wealth

nonprofits are dropping from the sky into communities, posing for pictures with white faces next to brown and black faces, totaling the number of participants at hackathons and meetings and have the audacity to say this innovation. but this isn't new: it's shit as old as time

we know better. we know, somewhere, when the problem is us, our own dislocation from community in our lives outside of work (lookin esp at my fellow white ppl here). we know when we don't actually know what community is, let alone how to engage. we know our own disconnection

we know what it's like when our own lives change because of connection. when we go from isolation to connection. I've heard from so many parents who lived isolated from families about what happened when their kids went to school and the adults started meeting.

when trans and queer people find each other (when we find each other, love you bbs) on the internet, or catch the queerdar across the room and get to give The Nod in a crowded space.

and we know, all of us, what it's like when we think we have connection, but it turns out to be shallow: when the people you drink with don't come to visit you at the hospital. when you have so many "friends" but no one to emotionally process with.

we have felt flimsy connection. we have been betrayed. lonely. we have assumed a closeness that wasn't returned. we have dealt with people assuming closeness. we have been in and ached for meaningful relationships and (hopefully) felt our standards change over time

and this matters because there is no you that gets to work on Engagement at work w/out bringing the rest of you with you. there is not you that gets to pretend that engaging "communities" with your "institution" isn't just figuring out how & whether groups of people will connect

there is no connection between institutions and communities that won't be a relationship. and if you don't know what a healthy relationship is, if you're not actively working on creating healthy, accountable relationships in your individual life, your "engagement" will show it

healthy relationships require consent, time, exchange, accountability, acknowledgement and addressing of power inequities, and a commitment to unlearning and learning. this is true whether we're talking about relationships between two ppl or relationships between groups of ppl

if you're not investing in creating healthy relationships with communities -- that is, in your life outside of work and in your work at work -- then you're not in the practice engagement. then YOU are not engaged

there is no engagement beyond us. us, in our many complicated identities and experiences, us in our various connections and disconnections to the land, to ideas, to each other, we are it. to engage is to be active in navigating this complexity to form healthy relationships

if you are not reconciling how your institutional and personal power inequities and resources impact the conditions necessary for communal or individual *~consent~* in connecting with you, you're not ready for a healthy relationship with a community.

translation: can people say no to your project and meaningfully change what thee project is?

If not, then you're not working on a engagement project and you have some work to do on what your org thinks a "relationship" with a "community" is

healthy relationships are rooted in consent & exchange. if you think what u are exchanging in you engagement is whatever tool u've decided this community needs, you're gonna need to hit pause there & put in the time to learn what the folks you want to serve actually want and need

you're gonna need to hit pause & spend time BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS with the folks you want to serve to see if they are even open to working w/you. i'm in so many gov tech spaces where ppl promise x or y thing will help "build trust". so i say again and again: TRUST. IS. EARNED.

who are you, who is your institution, to presume that the connections that will benefit you are yours for the taking? who are you, who is your institution, to presume that folks want to work with you?
what does working with you actually look like, feel like?

ask these questions, of yourself, of each other. and then ask more.

and, as you ask, do the work: respond, test, show UP, on your own, in YOUR communities that you connect with outside of your office...and do the work with your colleagues, your boss, your board, your partners..

if you want to invite your "communities" in to advise and guide, great (yes, you're starting to get it....) but be prepared to compensate folks & follow their lead on structure, and listen when folks say no, or offer radically different options

there is no toolkit because we are not trying to fix people, we are trying to change what hurts people, and our planet. there is no toolkit because what it means to work together and connect changes depending on WHO is involved.

there is no toolkit because you cannot acquire people or their favor.

And there is no toolkit bc tech won't solve it. Tech (dig & otherwise) can't connect u, can't do the humaning for u. Tech can't make you accountable. u do that, ur org does that. Or you don't, and you enjoy your irrelevance and the perpetuation of this exhausting age old cycle

the only way to change is to change.
the only way to connect is to connect.
the only way to engage is to be engaged.

we can do this. we can do differently.

we just have to DO it.