A fractal of the seachange of reparations
We can see a fractal of this seachange, an emerging edge of possibility unfolding into day-to-day reality, in the fate of Charlottesville, Virginia’s Robert E. Lee monument. After much activism and pressure, the City decided to remove the statue. A local museum purchased the statue, and last summer shipped it to Florida to have it melted down and recast into ingots.
Our aim is not to destroy an object, it’s to transform it. It’s to use the very raw material of its original making and create something that is more representative of the alleged democratic values of this community, more inclusive of those voices that in 1920 had no ability to engage in the artistic process at all.
Andrea Douglas, Executive Director, Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
Lucy's friend Elizabeth lives in Charlottesville where she does quite a bit of community work. Elizabeth has been part of community-wide conversations hosted by the museum, where community members participate in imagining and deciding the future shape of the ingots that were just recently a persistent avatar of the legacy of slavery. So, we see that the seemingly indelible structures of historical oppression that live with us today can and are being rendered fluid, and cultivated into something newly beautiful. With this powerful reparative action, Charlottesville’s tactile act of reworlding, community serves as crucible and chrysalis for an as yet unknown possibility - to shift the built landscape toward justice.
Through reparations we have witnessed how mindsets promoting deeply shared power can disrupt and defang regimes fueled by power-over. We have seen systemic and structural change enacted through personal growth and development, and the understanding that change must occur first within the systems that are each of our bodies to energetically hold the vision of what we can create. We have seen that spiritual and material change are not independent phenomena, they are interwoven motions: holding them as binaries is holding onto a truncation that is just not true. We have seen that this work is accessible: that, yes, governmental accountability and action is needed, but also that small groups of folks can begin to do this work of both righting historical harm where the direct line of accountability can be identified [i.e. reparations], while also envisioning how to address broader and systemic harm where it’s harder to find fingerprints, but some folks are definitely being done dirty [i.e. reparative justice].
Energetics of reparations…
We perceive that there is an energetics of reparations, and we court it relentlessly in our work - in the experiences we design, the way we hold space for our clients and collaborators, and even our company’s business model and contracting practices. When power is freed and shifts, it releases energy that is available to fuel motivation, bravery, and love. This quality of being and being-with invites the vision and aspiration that we all have for Beloved community to manifest itself. We have seen that when folks have a tangible, embodied experience of acting in deeply co-created and mutually held space, it can upend oppressive power dynamics. This energy can propel and permeate action towards material reparations. And so, our intention is to weave reparations into every aspect of our company’s thought and action.