PIE Update: A milestone!

Even as chaos reigns supreme around us: be that in the form of Omicron or in the many ways we are challenged by the many conflicts challenging our individual societies, I draw tremendous hope as PIE surges forward in 2022. Our first meeting of the year was on January 21, 2022. Our circle grew a little smaller with Jill Langhus-Griffin and Karen Axalan having stepped out of PIE – but we definitely carry their energies and legacies with us as we move forward with this work.

Over the course of two hours, I personally found myself in a powerful exhibition of intersectional feminism and gentle dialogue toward meaningful changemaking. Our meeting brought together Ana, Arrey, Busayo, Dawn, Jeanine, me, Sally, Sherna, Tam, and Zulma. Paulina was unfortunately not able to be online with us because of the huge setback that a typhoon in December has posed to her internet connectivity. We started out with a moment’s silence and prayer for all those we lost last year, the most recent of whom was our powerful sister, Feka Parchibel. By drawing on an image of women sitting together in a circle and the incomparable kindness that Maya Angelou brings to the grieving through her poem, When Great Trees Fall.

Our first action item was to check in with the group on the Inclusivity Statement that the sub-group had put together before 2021 closed out, and determine whether to vote on it. We agreed as a group that we were ready to vote on it, with the important understanding that we would continue to engage in meaningful dialogue around the statement and its implications. At this point, Sally and Dawn beautifully pointed out the fact that we must acknowledge the role of nuance in language, and how different terms could mean different things to different people – and that we need to prove the words through our actions and regularly review if we are demonstrating our meaning through the way we act in our community. Overall, our endeavour would always remain to stay engaged, and to discuss and deliberate our language and actions alike.

Using the Fist of Five voting method through Mentimeter, we arrived at a decision: the statement was adopted! Take a look at what it looks like below:

“Our community is not only a safe space but an incubator where thunder voices are hatched or harnessed.” - Sally Maforchi Mboumien World Pulse strives to be a safe, supportive, and brave space for women and for all who support gender justice to catalyse our mission. We celebrate the unique attributes, characteristics, and perspectives of every person. At the same time, we are facilitating space to amplify women’s voices and build a community that values, respects, and cares for every individual.

Next, we checked in with the group on setting a few procedural points in place for the group to discuss and agree on, to help our meetings flow. Ahead of the meeting, Rangineh and I (as co-facilitators), drew up a loose list of “by-laws” to help PIE in the months ahead. In facilitating this segment, I started out by reading out the by-laws, one at a time, and opening up the space for questions, oppositions, alterations and suggested edits, and thoughts. One thing that stood out for me personally was the depth with which women show up to both hold themselves and one another accountable, and to hold space and receive candid, unfettered shares of one’s truth. It was a beautiful exercise to observe what it is to speak one’s truth, to speak one’s truth to relative power within a room, and to invite the collective to examine the impacts of particular approaches on individuals constituting the collective. The resounding sense of respect for agency, for one’s voice, and for one’s capacity to present their truth came alive in Sally’s powerful words: “As the sister wishes, so shall it be done.”

In the months ahead of us, we have a lot of work to do together both through our collective action as PIE and through our individual sub-groups. Here is to a whole year of creating feminist herstory, change-making, and building legacies through sisterhood and solidarity!