Speakout: A Spiritual History

I first heard the germ of the idea that became SPEAKOUT when it was nothing more than "a gleam in Jonathan's eye." Late in 1994 someone called out of the blue, asking me to host a house party for Maine Won't Discriminate. In the course of the conversation Jonathan (for of course it was him) talked about the hope that some of the money raised would be used to train "ordinary" people (i.e. people who would not ordinarily see themselves as public speakers) not only to speak in public but to speak non-confrontationally in their local communities.

Though it wasn't clear for a long time when this non-confrontational approach was going to manifest itself in the midst of the usual mud-slinging of partisan politics, from that night on I was hooked on the idea that something new might actually happen in this campaign.

And it did.

For me it happened at the first planning meeting with the Boston trainers. Jim Vetter, introducing himself as he went around the table, did quite literally have a twinkle in his eye when he said, "You will find that if you simply tell your story, a miracle
will happen. You will change the world."

I sat there with tears in my eyes. I had finally found my niche--a place where people were working for a change without having to blame "the bad guys" to do it.

As you know better than anyone else, the road wasn't always smooth. We talked about whether SPEAKOUT should be about persuasion or not or specific issues or not or law and government or not. We talked about whether SPEAKOUT is education or politics or both or neither. We talked about whether the training model really made sense, especially the question of what we were supposed to do with our own hurt and anger as we tried to stay pre sent in the face of other people's hostility. But through it all, I think we basically had the same underlying sense that there was a great need for something new and different to supplement the "same old same old" of us-and-them politics.

SPEAKOUT TRAINING

The heart of SPEAKOUT, shaping the project and embodying its spirit, is the training. The day-long workshop is structured around two parts of a formal speaking engagement: telling your story and fielding questions. There is material about how to deal with stage fright, how to choose a story that's appropriate for a particular audience, and how to let your speaking partner handle a question that's too hot for you at the moment. Woven into the work on speaking to groups are constant reminders that there are many opportunities to speak up in the course of daily life: in the checkout at the grocery store, at the town beach, or at the post office.

But the overriding emphasis, regardless of context, is on tone: on being friendly, open, and accessible rather than confrontational, persuasive, and "right." It is training in meeting hostility .with grace. We were taught not to debate, not to model ourselves as experts, not to assume we are enlightening the ignorant. We were taught to listen to hostile questions respectfully, to honor the truth of the questioners' feelings (which is not the same as agreeing with their opinions) within their own frames of reference, and, when possible, to respectfully hand questions back to the questioners. We were shown how to do all this without being judgmental but rather with an openness to the ongoing process.

SPEAKOUT training is based on a deep faith that if we make ourselves available to other people, even "enemies," simply as fellow human beings, the way is opened for them to respond in kind. It may take years for that kind of change to happen, and we may never see the flowering of some of the seeds we sow. But there is inherent in the training a faith that even seeds that land in dark or rocky places may flower someday.

The power of this model for deep-down change is impossible to put into words. You have to feel it. You have to role-play (or live through, as speakers sometimes do) an encounter in which you stay calm while someone asks you a question like the one I fielded in the training, when I was asked venomously, "How many times have you had sex with children?" You have to know how it feels to stay centered, to own your own hurt and anger without dumping it back at the questioner, and to watch your speaking partner gracefully carry the ball when the force of the hostility throws you off-balance.

This is not "politics" as usual, nor, for that matter, is it much like anything we commonly know as "education." If it is world-changing, it seeks to change the world by the novel method of honoring individual people and their need to change from the inside out rather than the outside in. If it is "education," it is educating people's awareness and their hearts more than their minds. Not that their minds might not change, but if they do it will be because their hearts have changed first. And if their hearts have changed, it will not be because we have persuaded, manipulated, cajoled, bullied, begged, demanded, or guilt-tripped them into changing. It will be because we ourselves have been willing to take the risk of being present with open hearts. This, I believe, is a great gift to be giving the world.

POLITICS? EDUCATION?

As SPEAKOUT evolves into a more permanent mode, it is important that we be clear about what our job is. For me it is precisely because SPEAKOUT is not "politics" that it is such a treasure and such a sign of .hope. It occupies--practically alone to my knowledge--a particular niche in the "world of world-changing" that is not only not political but can almost be defined by way in which it departs from the assumptions and practices of conventional politics.

Politics" in the sense in which I am using the word too often reduces the richness, complexity, and diversity of real life to "us" and "them" --two sharply divided groups locked into ever. more polarized positions and looking beneath their overt messages, dismayingly like mirror images of each other. Republican. vs. Democrat. Pro-choice vs. pro-life. labor vs.' management. Yes on 1 vs. No on 1. Yes vs. no, period. This kind of politics is about good guys and bad guys and winning and losing, about making gray areas and common ground into endangered species, about the silencing of voices that decline to take a simple yes or no stand on a complex issue. It is about right and wrong--"us" (good and right), "them" (bad and wrong). It doesn't bring people on opposite sides together, it drives them apart, except when there's a debate--which is just another context for proving who's right and who's wrong.

SPEAKOUT, for a miracle, brings people on opposite sides together. It encourages and empowers people to talk together face to face and it specifically and emphatically eschews debate. It teaches people to facilitate changes in awareness rather than demand changes of opinion. It makes space for people to change in their own fashion instead of trying to force them to change in ways prescribed ahead of time. And the biggest miracle of all, perhaps, is that it opens the way to change not only in "them," but also in "us." As one speaker wrote in the newsletter after an engagement that had started with her worried vision of a parking lot full of pickup trucks, "It's easy to go somewhere and expect to be stereotyped, but it's pretty weird to realize that you've done the same to them."

That's something that doesn't happen often in "politics" either--that both sides change. Not in the sense of simply switching sides, but rather in the creative evolution of a new context entirely, one in which the "sides" don't seem to matter as much any more as people start to find common ground and a basis for mutual respect.

Before I get too many people mad at me, let me say that I am well aware that I'm caricaturing conventional politics. I am grateful for the work that was done to defeat the referendum, and I am acutely aware that the battles fought in the political arena buy time and keep doors open for the longer term, deeper work of changing hearts.

It is that longer term work that is SPEAKOUT's job. The distinction came home to me the day after the referendum last November, when we had a brief worship service at church. Don Macomber from the Steering Committee made a speech about how this was a great victory, but we couldn't afford to rest on our laurels. It was necessary, he said, always to keep our eyes on the prize, which was the enhancement of a law to protect the rights of non-heterosexuals in the state of Maine.

I sat there imagining the real prize, which I believe is a world where a civil right law isn't necessary because we have learned to remember the common humanity that underlies our miraculous diversity. Despite the fact that SPEAKOUT started out with the phrase "Equal Rights" in its very name, I believe that underneath it all SPEAKOUT not only nurtures but embodies a vision of a world where people's rights come not from the top down but from the ground up. Isn't that what grass roots really ought to mean?

FINALLY

I know very well that I am as guilty of the mental leap toward "us and them" as anyone else. My own tendency in that direction manifests itself on a regular basis, most notably in the need to make "them" out of people who see the world in terms of "us and them" and "us" out of us virtuous souls who are full of idealism about "us and us." But even beneath that final polarization, I believe that we truly are all in this together. There is nobody here but "us" --and it is SPEAKOUT's mission to help us all remember that.

--JANIE MATRISCIANO

The original version of this essay was a personal letter to Jonathan Lee, written in May of 1996 after the first meeting of the Maine SPEAKOUT Project Leadership Council. Jonathan Lee is SPEAKOUT's founder and former Executive Director. Janie Matrisciano served on the original Steering Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church in Augusta.