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Let’s Say a Little Bit More About: Joy in Changemaking - Tulaine Montgomery
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- [00:01]
Talaine Montgomery
Hey We Are For Good fam. Today, instead of our regular episode, we wanted to share an episode from a podcast hosted by Talaine Montgomery, the CEO of the Venture Philanthropy New Profit. She's also a dear friend, a We Are For Good podcast alum, and a brilliant thought leader that we trust and follow to lead with conviction and heart. In say More with Tulane Montgomery, she talks to people who are dedicated to making the world a better place, all while taking care of themselves and supporting each other. If you like what you hear, please make sure to visit the link in the episode description to subscribe to say More and listen to more of her episodes there. You'll also find a link to our conversation with her from a couple of years ago on unlocking the impact of proximate leadership. Okay, hope you enjoy this incredible episode.
- [00:56]
Unknown Host
Hey say More Family. I'm so excited to introduce something new to all of you. Let's say A Little Bit More is a three part miniseries where I will deep dive into a few recurring themes that I've been thinking about and discussing with previous say More guests in seasons one and two of this podcast. What does joy look like for change makers? That's a question that has been on my mind a lot lately, especially amidst all the fragmentation and divisiveness that we're constantly being fed these days. As we kick off the first episode of this miniseries, I thought it would be fitting to dive into this idea of joy and explore what it really means in the context of our work. Here in the say More Community, we believe that we can strive to make things better while also savoring the beauty of relationships, laughter and joy. This doesn't make our work any less meaningful. In fact, it can be a powerful form of resistance. So today let's talk about how we can find and sustain joy in the difficult work that we do. How can we keep our spirits high and our hearts light even when the challenges seem overwhelming? Let's dive in and say a little Bit More about Joy So I've been thinking a lot these days about the role of joy in social impact. You know, like how can joy be an engine for social change work? Instead of an afterthought or something, you get to have a little bit of if you're lucky, right? So I've been thinking a lot about how are we going to make it through this season? What's going to enable longevity, impact, and even delight? And I believe it's the capacity to hold a spirit and mindset of joy even when the circumstance or context is surprising, disheartening unjust. And I think one of the biggest lies that we've been told as a society is that if you access joy as a regular come from place, as my mother would say, that you're somehow naive or you're not being real, or you're not willing to face the hard things, we even have a term for it now. We talk now about toxic positivity, right? And look, there is something to be said for delusion, right? I am not advocating that we delude ourselves that everything is peachy, easy and straightforward. We are in quite a state right now as a society here in the US and also globally. So I'm not suggesting that we bypass the hard stuff. I'm suggesting that joy enables us to truly face the hard stuff with eyes wide open, with an unflinching gaze, and with sustained energy and capacity to do the hard work required. Look, if I'm going to practice naming things that I want to change, I want to also practice naming things that bring me delight, naming things I find beautiful, and naming things that bring me joy. Remember Marshall Gantz, the legendary community organizer? I think he would take issue with me using legendary, but I'm going to go ahead and use it. Marshall was instrumental in the civil rights movement in the American south and labor movements in the west coast of the US in our conversation, Marshall and I spoke about the ways that play and laughter were essential tools during his work with the organizers of the United Farm Workers of America.
- [04:29]
Marshall Gantz
In the Farm Workers. We laughed a lot. We laughed a lot.
- [04:34]
Unknown Host
Yeah. Say more about that. Yes. Talk about that joy and that laughter. Yeah.
- [04:38]
Marshall Gantz
Well, we all went to see the Godfather, right? All together. And so then for about the next four years, we were all, oh, that's a consigliere. Oh, that's this. Oh, it needs a horse head. And I mean, it's like, it's like that humor is so important.
- [04:54]
Unknown Host
It's everything. It's everything. And it gets a bad rap in certain of spaces, right? Like even in spaces that are. That would call themselves organizing spaces. Oh, I know, right? I mean, it's, it's. And I, you know, when I say that we can have joy and even sometimes moments of ease while working to change the world. Some people look at me like I'm crazy naive or I'm skipping over the hard parts. But it's not that, Marshall.
- [05:22]
Marshall Gantz
It's not that the humor really kept us going. You know, there was a guy named Luis Valdez. Luis started something called the Theatro Campesino, the Farmworker Theater. And Luis brought the theatro campesino to the union. And so they did all these plays all the time. They called actos of, you know, the strikebreaker and the striker or the grower and with masks. And it was like every weekend we'd have these plays, and we'd have the songs that they created. And a lot of the actors were farm workers. And so. And we would take this to a labor camp where we couldn't get in and pull a flatbed truck and a generator and lights and put on the performance at the edge of the camp. And of course, everybody'd come out to see the performance. They didn't come. They were in the camp, but they could come to the fence. And of course, the foreman would come too. And then the theater was making fun of the foreman. And so you see people there looking at this foreman saying, yeah, that's the guy with the big nose. Yeah. And you're making ridiculous sources of fear.
- [06:28]
Unknown Host
Yes.
- [06:29]
Marshall Gantz
You know, that's real stuff.
- [06:30]
Unknown Host
It's real stuff. It's real stuff. It really is. I love that clip so much. I mean, one. You can hear that we are actually laughing as we reflect on the funny moments that Marshall describes. And also just the role of joy in our own lives, both mine and Marshall's, as organizers, as educators, as people who have been in the social impact business for, you know, much of our adult lives. I appreciated that Marshall, as somebody who has been doing this work powerfully for a very long time, not only in the U.S. but globally, that he resonated so deeply with the kind of risk that it can feel like you're taking when you dare to say, yes, we can change the world. Yes, we can fight injustice. Yes, we can mobilize against structural racism and depression. And we can also enjoy our lives and be whole people with meaningful, loving, expressive relationships. So I just appreciated that when I spoke with Krista Tippett about this very same subject, she brought up a good point about hope. Let's roll the tape back on that.
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Krista Tippett
I say that I've never met a wise person who doesn't know how to laugh and enjoy and especially to laugh at themselves. It's a mark of wisdom.
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Unknown Host
Yes.
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Krista Tippett
And also I think this theme of joy being, you know, not an extra, not optional, not a luxury, not a privilege, but like a human birthright.
- [08:08]
Unknown Host
Yes.
- [08:08]
Krista Tippett
Something that can't be taken away from us, our capacity for joy. I think we have to support each other sometimes to create space for that capacity. Right. But. But it's a birthright, and it's Fuel, right? It is resilience, making fuel. And this connection between joy and justice, I think is really kind of countercultural here. But this theme has just risen up so loud and clear in just almost literally almost every conversation I've had in the last couple of years. And it's new. I mean, it's not a new thing, but I think it's a new consciousness. And then this one's a little more complicated. This feeling that there's so much suffering in the world that somehow it would be to disrespect that or to not be morally responsible, to be joyful. And in fact, joy is the resistance, right? It's both. It's not that you don't feel for what is hard and terrible, right. But you have to do both to be alive and keep walking forward. But that's not really training that we've gotten. Do you know this? There's this wonderful ornithologist I interviewed, Drew Lanham, says joy is the justice we give to ourselves. Oh, I love that which the world can't take away in the midst of all that it is taking away. Bryan Stevenson says hopelessness is an enemy of justice.
- [09:37]
Unknown Host
Right.
- [09:37]
Krista Tippett
He says the hopeless activist, the hopeless lawyer, the hopeless politician is not going to get us anywhere. And I think those things are close, side by side, because joy, also the capacity to reach for joy and to know that as actually part of the struggle also keeps other things like hope alive.
- [09:58]
Unknown Host
There's something about what Krista said that I appreciate hearing because it seems that this question and topic of joy as an engine for social change is not just on my mind, but on a lot of our minds. And that we're all kind of longing for a way of doing change, making that doesn't require that we leave joy at the door or wait to experience joy until we've won our battles. And I'll tell you, it has been so important for me, particularly as I'm stepping into formal leadership roles in philanthropy and social impact, to be able to have joy as the engine, right? To not just be glad to do the work, though I am, but to really be able to say this work is an opportunity to do what I can do, to contribute to building the infrastructure for the future that I long for and that so many of us long for one where all of us can thrive, one where we all can have self determination, one where we get to choose what we want and where we get to bring all of ourselves to the table. I just think that joy for me has been really important because it's helped me keep my eyes on the prize. It's helped me look with an un. Sort of blinking eye. So I've thought a lot about how joy has been an engine and guide for me. And throughout the past two seasons, I've also spoken to many incredible change makers who are also using joy as fuel in their work. One of them was Deborah Cleaver, the founder of Vote America. She is one of the most effective and diligent people I know. Her democracy work can be truly taxing, and yet she believes that comedy is essential to what she does. In our conversation, I asked Deborah how humor made its way into her leadership. Let's hear her answer.
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Deborah Cleaver
This is a funny question. You're asking me how I came to be so funny.
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Unknown Host
Yes. Yes, yes.
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Deborah Cleaver
And I mean, the work that we do is so serious.
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Stephen Colon
Yeah.
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Deborah Cleaver
Like, I want to live in a democracy. Like, that is, like, a serious goal. And the work that will lead to us living in a democracy is not glamorous. It's hard. I feel like every day, my. My work is 10% harder than, like, I want it to be. And so since the work itself is so serious, I don't. I just don't feel that I. I need to be serious. If we just focus on how hard it is and how serious it is, there's no joy there.
- [12:42]
Unknown Host
That's right.
- [12:42]
Deborah Cleaver
And sometimes I'm like, what we're gonna do right now is we're gonna laugh or we're gonna cry. And I have always chosen to laugh. And at the. At the hardest times, it takes. It takes longer for me to crack a joke.
- [12:57]
Unknown Host
Yeah.
- [12:58]
Deborah Cleaver
About this situation. I mean, we have seen some very not funny things.
- [13:02]
Unknown Host
Yeah.
- [13:02]
Deborah Cleaver
But, like, laughter just keeps me. It keeps me going.
- [13:06]
Unknown Host
I love that.
- [13:07]
Deborah Cleaver
Because if I'm not laughing during the day, the weight of the world is just. It's too. It becomes too much.
- [13:14]
Unknown Host
Right.
- [13:14]
Deborah Cleaver
It will crush us. We will be, like, crushed under the seriousness of what is happening.
- [13:19]
Unknown Host
One of my favorite quotes really resonates with me is by E.B. white, and he says, I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. And this makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? So, in a way, the savoring must come first. I mentioned this quote during my conversation with Jimmy Briggs from the Skoll Foundation. He and Deborah have similar views on this. Let's listen to what he had to say.
- [13:54]
Jimmy Briggs
You have to have the joy you have to have, you have to have the happiness. And as a journalist and philanthropy, I mean, I should tell my colleagues all the time, we gotta bring joy into this work. The issues in which we're focusing on may be very serious and you have to take pleasure, you have to take joy, fulfillment in this space and what we're doing. Because otherwise you can't sustain it.
- [14:17]
Unknown Host
That's right.
- [14:17]
Jimmy Briggs
I mean you can't sustain it at times, especially in the darker moments of. The moments of less elimination, less light. I mean for me. Silver1 said, I mean as you're talking, I was thinking about, we recently had a work call and as the opening question, kind of the check in question was which holiday is your favorite? And I said, juneteenth. And what I said, which you may appreciate. Julia, I said Juneteenth. But it's complicated because, yeah, I said, frankly speaking, I feel like Juneteenth has been co opted because I was celebrating Juneteenth before 2020 in George Lewis. More dad, I've been celebrating Juneteenth for, for a long time.
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Unknown Host
That's right.
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Jimmy Briggs
You know, doing the picnic in the park, the Bearville cake, the chicken, these collard greens, the, the black eyed peas with rice, the cornbread, you know, the Jumbalaya. Like we had the spread, you know, and the mixtape. Yeah, mixtape.
- [15:06]
Unknown Host
Come on. St. Louis. Yes.
- [15:09]
Jimmy Briggs
You know, so like it was like an all day affairs, child friendly, intergenerational, multiracial, multinational. Like it was, everybody was invited and we just, you know, we were all, we just celebrated freedom, you know, being free. And I said like, for me, like Juneteenth has always been a period of joy. But beyond that, like, you know, just finding joy in my music, listening to jazz or you know, sometimes I'm in the car and I'll pick me up and I'll put on Richard Pryor. I need Richard to help you laugh, you know, take me back, you know. But the laugh and the joy are essential to the journey.
- [15:44]
Unknown Host
So Jimmy, like Deborah, is somebody who has worked in some very serious and challenging and painful spaces, right. As a journalist, he has covered conflict zones and he has witnessed and written about violence, loss, struggle, injustice in some of its starkest forms. And yet, you know, this person, this good friend of mine, like me, will throw on some Richard Pryor as a way to make it all make sense. And you know, I think you've heard me talk about my love of comedy. You know how I, as a young girl I used to sneak my parents comedy albums. Yes, I did say albums. And would Listen to Richard Pryor and Red Fox do their magic, you know, saying some words I had no business listening to at that stage, but teaching me even as a child, that storytelling, finding the humor and the beauty of a thing that is on surface difficult, that these are the ways that one moves through life. So with Jimmy's sharing, we reflected on joy as ritual. And I think joy is also about practice. So for me, I spend some time every day doing what I need to do based on how my brain works and how my life works to center joy and intention. Every day. Every day. Because joy is still somewhat countercultural. It's not necessarily the norm, that if you say, look, I'm here to work for justice, for equity, for a thriving democracy, that people also presume that you, you are a lover of great music, great food, and good comedy. Right? Like, it's not that it's unheard of, but it's not necessarily where you go. We maybe think more about what's your analytic framework. And part of what I am doing is doing my best to use joy as a way to go beyond binaries. It's not either you're fighting the good fight or you're happy. It's that you have joy as an engine to do systems change, work that you can sustain where when it's all said and done, you've loved the life you've lived while also being proud of the impact you've had. Right. That's the goal. So for me, it's about what are the daily practices that enable that? It's writing in the morning. I'm a big fan of morning pages. Getting the stuff out that would tell you joy is not an option, so that you're free to think. Of course, like many, many, many before me, meditation is important. Movement is important. You know, I have been of late a practitioner of Pilates. And, you know, I'll tell you it is a wonderful space to practice joy because it is not pretty, it is not easy. I look a mess while I'm doing it and I am not good at it. But I can tell that there is something to be joyful about, that I can move my body, strengthen my body, that my body responds to movement, that I have the. The gift of being able to be in community with teachers who know more than I do. And I can take joy in the learning and the struggle and the absurdity of the visual of me on that reformer. But yet it is joyful. And, you know, the reason I think the practice of joy is so important is because, look, social impact, work is hard. But it's not just social impact work that's hard. Life is hard. Life is good. Yet it is not easy. And the natural transitions and stages of life, the losses that we all go through, they weigh on us. They're not easy to navigate. But if we have a practice of joy, if we have muscles around laughter, it can help us move through hard times. I want to highlight a conversation I had with Stephen Colon, my good friend. He's also the CEO of Bottom Line. It's a nonprofit that provides mentorship and resources for students from communities that are often overlooked when it comes to post secondary education and college access. Now, Steve and I talked about some very serious and difficult things, but we laughed through the whole conversation as you're about to hear.
- [20:19]
Stephen Colon
The biggest gift my parents gave me was the ability to find joy and laughter in the most ridiculous and maybe uncomfortable and depressing of situations. Right? Like, you know, my. My father passed a little over a decade ago, and I can remember him, you know, in hospice cracking jokes and. Or out, you know, in his sick bed cracking jokes and like, making us laugh and. Right. Like. And that ability to. Those of, you can't see me, I'm on the bigger side of a human. And the doctor was asking him, cause he was sick and he was asking him if he remembered people. And he's like pointing to people in the room, do you remember this person? Who's this person? Who's this person? And he gets to me, he's like, who's this person? My dad's like, that's my son. And I'm just like, he's fine. Ain't nothing wrong with that man. Ain't nothing wrong with that man. But, like, finding to me, my, my practice, my, my. The thing I do is to intentionally find moments of joy and laughter. And I'm a big believer in if you laugh, you will create joy. Joy doesn't have to precede laughter. Sometimes laughter precedes joy. And so like, for me, finding something that just makes me laugh and brings that spirit up. And so look, this is serious work we all do. This is important work we all do. But the moment we start taking ourselves too seriously, the moment we can't find the joy and laughter, the game is over. We've lost.
- [21:41]
Unknown Host
I mean, that is such a powerful example of joy is not about that you're living this life of luxury or avoiding or skipping over, bypassing things that are really hard. It's about what is the way that you hold and move through those moments. And Steve, you know, he embodies this in general. I don't ever spend time with him where we don't spend a good 50% of our time together, you know, laughing till our stomachs hurt. And to see that that is a principle, one that he got from his father with the that's my big son comment, you know, dad had jokes even when he was in hospice. Right. Which says a lot about how Steve came by his perspective and relationship with joy. But it also just shows, right, he said, Steve said that sometimes laughter precedes joy. That we can, through our practices, through our willingness to laugh, that we can actually cultivate and create joy and infuse joy in situations that don't necessarily at first glance look like they're going to be particularly joyful. Doesn't mean that they're easy. Doesn't mean that we don't also have grief, sadness, rage, disappointment. But the idea is, can we include in the range of emotions joy? Can we embrace joy with the same rigor and vigor that we embrace our anger or embrace our grief? You know, that's something I think about a lot. And Steve is somebody who helps me practice embodying joy regardless of circumstance. So I think a lot about. For folks who are making change, aspiring to make change, evolving in their change making work, which we all are, you know, what are the ways that I would invite and encourage you to, to experiment with finding a nurturing joy in your own life and in your own vocation. And for me, it's really, it's not complicated. It is very simple, it is not easy, but it is not complex. It is about finding the daily practice that moves you to notice the beauty, to notice the funny, to notice the absurd, to notice the comical, to be able to build your ability to see and notice those moments and those aspects, like that's the thing, that's the ticket because it's always there. And I invite all of you listening to reflect a bit. And if you don't already know how, you would answer the question, what are the daily practices that bring you joy or that make you better at experiencing joy? Then take some time and think about what that might look like for you. Thank you everyone for tuning in to part one of let's say A Little Bit More. If you want to check out the episodes that we mentioned today, you'll find all those links in the show notes for part two. I'll be talking about what it takes to build community and coalitions across identity. That feels like a very timely topic. In this era of fragmentation, we're all living through, please make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out. In the meantime, go back to listen to any say More episodes you might have missed. See if you can predict which guests I'll be highlighting in Part two of let's say A Little Bit More. Thank you so much for joining and I'll catch you all at the next episode.
- [25:36]
Talaine Montgomery
Every week, We Are For Good podcast listeners, friends and community members reach out to us for both recommendations and introductions to people, products and services to help them take their nonprofit mission further. And you know what? We love it.
- [25:51]
Unknown Co-Host
Totally. This community is fueled by the support of Value Line partners who've invested in making this community and content accessible for all. And they just happen to be powered by really good humans too.
- [26:01]
Talaine Montgomery
So we want to give a shout out to We Are For Good's partners, Donor Doc, RKD Group and Virtuous, and we hope you'll check them out. We deeply believe in their progressive tech tools and offerings that are truly powering a more generous world.
- [26:15]
Unknown Co-Host
So reach out to them directly. And if you do mention We Are For Good sent you, you'll get that red carpet treatment or head over to weareforgood.com refer to to learn more or you can even click the link in today's episode description.