By: Sandra Criswell, Field Organizer
 | Is someone already doing this? What kind of work are other folks doing? Where do we even begin? These were the questions that kept coming up in our brainstorming session at our March Oklahoma City Breakthrough Conversation on challenges to organizing in red states and, more specifically, difficulties that we have organizing in Oklahoma. Participants fired off idea after idea of ways they’d like to see our community grow together and it became perfectly clear that one of our problems was not a shortage of great ideas! It seemed like a major barrier to collaboration was knowledge of who is doing the work and what resources we have access to. |
Living in the heart of what is referred to (alternatively in a loving and disgusted way, depending on who you talk to) as the reddest state in the country, these are not questions that can be cleared up with a Google search or a quick email; the answers to these questions exist, but to even begin down this long, winding road of rejuvenating our local movement, we will have to tap into the most overlooked resource of all: ourselves.
It occurred to me that mapping is a way we can build and harness our collective power. In the past, mapping was something that always sounded so intimidating to me; mapping was something that experts did, with lots of training, resources, and tools at their disposal. But through CoreAlign I’ve learned that mapping, at its heart, is just a visual way of recording information about institutions, relationships, and even ourselves! So I planned a series of two events around mapping in OKC.
At our first mapping event in June, I could tell that folks were curious but relatively unsure about what we were doing and why we were doing it. It was clear that I was not the only person who had been intimidated by mapping. As we began the activity in earnest, there was still some hesitation, but by the time we got moving and interacting with each other, it was actually really difficult to get people to stop!
Caption: “We have so much more than we thought we did.”
When we took a step back and looked at all the clusters of relationships we had generated, I heard the same comment quite a few times: “We have so much more than I thought we did.” And although we all recognized that this was the first step in a much longer process, there was so much hope in those small utterances of gratitude.
It was encouraging to see people get as fired up about mapping as I was once we got in the groove of things, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the intimidation factor of mapping was a barrier to more people attending the event. It seemed, like others, my community in OKC was suffering from the dreaded Imposter Syndrome, that nagging feeling that you’re not talented enough or important enough to contribute in a meaningful way! Could words like “resources”and “institutions”be blocking people from participation simply because they don’t feel like they have access to either? To find out, I designed our next mapping event as a short and sweet activity during the relatively new monthly OKC Repro Happy Hour. This time, instead of asking participants to map their resources, I asked them to map their passions.
It was encouraging to see people get as fired up about mapping as I was once we got in the groove of things, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the intimidation factor of mapping was a barrier to more people attending the event. It seemed, like others, my community in OKC was suffering from the dreaded Imposter Syndrome, that nagging feeling that you’re not talented enough or important enough to contribute in a meaningful way! Could words like “resources”and “institutions”be blocking people from participation simply because they don’t feel like they have access to either? To find out, I designed our next mapping event as a short and sweet activity during the relatively new monthly OKC Repro Happy Hour. This time, instead of asking participants to map their resources, I asked them to map their passions.
I noticed some of the telltale hesitancy I had seen at the last mapping event, but when it came time to share our maps with the group, people started to really open up about what got them excited in their personal, professional, and activist lives. It was a nice change from the usual ice-breakers that consist of listing affiliations and issues we’re interested in; we got to learn things about each other that we normally wouldn’t have talked about in this setting and opened up paths for collaborating with each other in new and innovative ways. What if we combined our love of raising money and cooking to do a supper club fundraiser? What if we did a storytelling workshop? What if we did a community skillshare? The possibilities could go on and on…
This is why I am passionate about facilitating mapping events in Oklahoma. Not only are these events necessary to lay the foundation for a flourishing, more collaborative reproductive health, rights, and justice movement in our community, it is also important to recognize the power and beauty that already exists in Oklahoma.
This is why I am passionate about facilitating mapping events in Oklahoma. Not only are these events necessary to lay the foundation for a flourishing, more collaborative reproductive health, rights, and justice movement in our community, it is also important to recognize the power and beauty that already exists in Oklahoma.