Northwest Institute for Social Change: The Blog

Portland: Connection, Change

One of the things about this program that most strongly affected me at the beginning, and has been a continuing theme throughout (not excluding my last post), is the rather embarrassingly simple idea that human connection leads to change. I remember interviewing Amy as one of the first exercises we did at camp and listening to her talk about how much she loves theater and acting and that to her, the human body is an object, a medium through which experiences and ideas can be conveyed. It seems kind of simple, but I had never really thought about acting that way before: the body as a vessel for all the un-sharable aspects of being human – feelings, thought processes, ways of understanding – all of these are things we can describe to each other, but never really feel in the same way that the describer experiences them, but are rather felt through one’s own experiential lens. Inspired by Amy, I now see theater as the playwright describing his/her experience through real, animated people – a medium that makes the gap between experienced and described a little bit closer. And that’s what’s really incredible about this whole documentary-making process (and actually, just being a person in general): through interviewing Amy, a connection was made, and I was changed for it.

When I think about all the people I’ve met in these few weeks, whether they be the other NWISC fellows and staff, the guest lecturers and instructors we’ve met with, the people we’ve interviewed for our documentaries, or even just the people I’ve met socially here in Portland, I’ve seen and heard an incredible diversity in the human experience, and have been changed for it. I think that people tend to think of “connection” only in the sense of recognizing a commonality, but a connection can be so much more: something that makes you challenge your own assumptions about people, or even something that you vehemently disagree with. A connection is a joining of two live wires that can electrocute or cozily illuminate. Either way, the situation is changed.

Forgive me the philosophizing, but I really believe that connection is the power in documentary-making, and it’s a beautiful thing to make connections with people as the radio/film-maker, and then to reconstruct it in a medium that describes those connections that have been made. I’m going to quote from something I wrote for this program earlier in the hopes that it better explains what I’m getting at:

“Looking through old journals, I’ve had a few ideas about how I want to be remembered, including one embarrassing account from 2006 in which I wrote, ‘I want to meet people – millions of people. And affect their lives in some way just by being me and appreciating.’ Although I always re-read that with somewhat of a cringe, I think that a fundamental truth nevertheless lies beneath this naïve egotism: human connection can truly be a force for empowerment and social change. I want to be remembered for revolutionizing the way that people think about their daily interactions with each other; for empowering communities by publicly projecting the beauty, pain, intensity, and intelligence of their experiences, thoughts, and innovations to a new community – ’speaking Truth to power,’ whether that power be one family in their living room, a community organization grappling with similar struggles, or a global institutional body.”

I love the access that this program and working in media give to making new connections. If not for making these documentaries, I probably wouldn’t have ever had the opportunity to speak with Jose, an eighteen-year-old from East County, about what kind of car he wants to buy and why he “messed up” in high school (while driving around in a big pink van that sells VooDoo donuts), or talk with Sherry, an Executive Director, about the house her father built and how she applies a program model she developed for the church to a secular neighborhood agency. And now you have the opportunity to “speak” with them through the social meta-narratives that our project groups weave them into, and be changed for it, whether you know it or not.

-Emily