Principles of Partnership, Collaboration, and the Struggle for Justice
Principles of Partnership, Collaboration, and the Struggle for Justice
An aboriginal activist said it best: "If you have come to help me, you are
wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up
with mine, then let us struggle together."
Our community needs the solidarity, action and support of people and
institutions from local, regional, national and international areas and all
walks of life in our struggle for justice. New people and organizations can
bring our community much needed new ideas, new resources, and new ways of
looking at issues. Our justice struggles bind us together and we must
proceed in ways that respect all of the participants.
Solidarity, action and support must be based on respect of the dignity and
ongoing history of the people and work that has already occurred in our
community. It is an unfortunate fact that there are numerous examples of
people and organizations from outside the community who come to local
justice efforts and, despite their very best intentions, make mistakes that
actually harm the ongoing local justice work. Those who made the mistakes
then leave the community and return to their own communities. The difficult
work left behind, the work of reconstruction and reconciliation and dealing
with unmet promises or unachievable expectations, adds to the ongoing work
which must be done by local justice workers.
In order to minimize mistakes and mis-steps by volunteers, short-term
workers, or newly arrived or newly engaged people and organizations, we ask
each partner to respect the work that has already gone on and the history
that has occurred.
In order to respect this work and history, people must first learn it.
Practically, this respect means that for newcomers to the community,
listening is more important than speaking, learning must be prized over
teaching, and
reflection with the community must precede action. Most importantly,
people
should not take actions or make verbal commitments or raise expectations in
the community that are not achievable. Unmet promises and unfilled
expectations seriously undermine and discourage local organizing and justice
work.
We ask our partners to agree to struggle with us in a principled way. The
principles that should guide our partnership include that every person and
organization starts out with a presumption of respect. New people or
organizations joining this work agree to learn the local people, the local
history of our justice struggles, and the local community justice situation
before taking independent action. People or organizations who join this
work agree to engage in real dialogue on all issues before taking
independent action.
Once new people and organizations have spent the time and energy to begin to
learn about local issues and our community, real partnership then means
mutual accountability with the other partners and mutual supervision and
mutual discussion about plans, resources, people, and work before, during
and after steps are taken.
We expect to learn from our new volunteers and partners. We expect our
partners will learn from us. We hope these principles will guide us in
creating mutual and meaningful partnerships which can help all of us join in
advancing the struggles for justice in our community.