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Entering the Flow of a Community or an Organization

Entering the Flow of the Community/Organization is about understanding how to draw from a community's identity and traditions - seeing them not just as problems to be fixed or overcome but as strengths on which to build. National, regional and local trends also offer opportunities if we can anticipate them and build strategies into our plans to take advantage of them. We do not always have to stay stuck in what is, if we can envision what will be and jump on the opportunities that are transformative.

In doing so, however, we need to be particularly careful about whose vision drives our work - that is, who defines the success of our efforts where some trade-offs might be necessary. This section will help community groups and others who are planning for racial equity and social justice address the following questions:

• What is already going on in terms of the issues we are working on?
• What are the multiple "realities" of the issue(s), for different groups of people with different relationships to formal and informal power?
• Who are our likely allies? Who are our unlikely allies? On what issues can we "agree to disagree?"
• Who are we going to upset by what is changed and how can we manage teair reactions as well as possible for all concerned?
• What are the consequences of our planned actions and contributions - positive and negative? Who or what groups will be labeled "failures" if our plans do not succeed? How will we mitigate the negative effects of that, particularly if some groups are able to move on and others are not?