Thank you. What is community and power and relationship mapping? So, traditional community power mapping is a practice used to help map out the people and the power in a clearly defined community. So let's say your city, your town, your neighborhood, related to a clearly defined issue, goal, or campaign. So, you know, electoral folks do this all the time. You might do it if you're trying to get a stop sign installed at the end of your block, or if you're trying to pass an ordinance through the city council. Important to understand the matrix of folks who are involved and who has power. Where today we're gonna be talking both about the use of power maps for specific is issues or events, and also more generally how to just map your community in general. So we are going to be talking about how to identify key stakeholders, which can include, you know, individuals, institutions, organizations, community groups, all kinds of things who have some sort of relationship to the issue or to your community. And then we're going to talk about the kinds of strength and power that people have, right? How people can make things happen, or how people can try and stop things from happening in your communities. So let's get that second slide or the next slide, please. So the questions here are, why do we want to map community power and relationships? Here are a few reasons. One, click please. Developing a community power and relationship map can help you answer a whole bunch of critical questions that are really important when, for example, there is a threat from outside, or you are contemplating whether or not to take a particular risk by showing up in public in a particular way. So these are the kinds of questions that you might be asked that might come up. Like, where does power exist within our community? What kinds of power do folks have? And we are going to go into this a little bit more deeply. Who is the most likely to support our campaign or our goal? And with which resources? Who are most likely opponents, our enemies, our blockers? And what kind of resources do they have? Which relationships can we strengthen or build to grow our organizing power? Who can we make friends with? Who can we play well with in order to have a greater likelihood of getting what we want? Then, which relationships can we leverage to shift others' influence on our campaign or goal? All right. Oh, one more. Sorry. What other information do we need? Sometimes you'll find out that when you start asking these questions, you don't actually know all of the answers. So often you'll have to go out and find some more things out. What do we still need to know about where power exists in our community around this issue? All right, next slide please. So we are going to talk first about general community mapping. When we work with congregations, all congregations have some sort of relationships with their community. They, of course have members who belong to any number of other organizations and networks, members who have, you know, public roles or positions in certain places. And of course there are also external relationships that all congregations have, whether it's that, you know, once a year you give the plate to a local domestic violence organization, or you have a long standing partnership with the local multi-faith network, or, you know, any number of things. These are sort of the, the constellation of actors and figures that make up your community. So first we're going to talk about this in a more general sense. Ideally my friends you'll have a map of this kind of, these kind of relationships long before crisis strikes. And while it is true that often really strong and powerful relationships can be forged in moments of crisis, it is much better to be prepared ahead of time. I hope you all took that out of some of the workshops and the panel presentation earlier. So we're going to talk about what that looks like. So I'm gonna give you a specific example here. This is a, this is a, I can, I'll take the next slide. Rhiannon, please. This is a made up version. This is penultimate UU Church of Anywhere, USA. And imagine that you're sitting down with folks in your congregation, whether it's the board, the, the minister, maybe the staff, particular folks who are in leadership. This is one example of what your map might look like. I used a template that is free on the internet from,a, a thing called Visible Network Labs. They have an ecosystem map template, and I will drop that link here in the chat for you all while I'm talking about this. It might be useful for you to use on your own. But as you can see in this diagram, we've got sort of five categories of partners and, you know, actors in in the community here that we're thinking about in relationship to Penultimate UU Church of Anywhere. So up here, at the top we've got UU Partners, right? What are the other Unitarian Universalist organizations, networks, people, actors who are part of our extended network who are, who are going to show up for us. So you can see, you know, if you are in a state, one of the 26 states around the country that has a UU State Action Network, that's going to be great folks for you to be in relationship with in some way. Of course, Side with Love My Office, we are, we work with congregations all the time around justice issues. We've got teams that work, in all of our issues, and we offer all kinds of resources and support structures for folks who are doing justice in their communities. And of course, there are other Unitarian Universalist congregations. Some of you live in areas where you can't spit without hitting a UU church. Other folks might be the only 1, 2, 3, 4. I think, you know, a couple of our states only have three or four Unitarian Universals congregations in the whole state. But knowing who your nearest UU neighbors are is really important. Mm-Hmm. You also, as we mentioned earlier, you'll have your UUA field staff, right? The field staff of your region. You all just had a regional breakouts. Every congregation that is a member congregation of the UUA has a point person a contact in the regional office, and that person is your first line for anything that goes off. And then of course, we've got the Trauma Response Ministry. We heard from Reverend Aaron Paysom this morning. Those folks are always available in the case of needing support after a critical incident. So that's just one little constellation here. You'll see that I've also got the Multifaith Ecosystem, other progressive congregations, community based, community based congregational organizing networks. That's like the IAF, the Industrial Areas Fund or PICO network. these are often multifaith networks that are doing some sort of organizing together. There might be multifaith and ecumenical networks or chapters organizations. And then of course, faith-based nonprofits. Secular movement partners can include, you know, organizations collection, coalitions and collectives who are working in particular issue areas. Civic organizations including,you know, historic ones like, the NAACP or, other various, you know, public, justice oriented organizations. And then of course there are issue-based campaigns. Let's say there's a ballot initiative being proposed in your area or in your state. There will be folks who are working on that very specific issue in a time-bound way. We always have elected officials and government agencies. You know, if you're thinking about your own city or town, that might include the city council, the mayor, the school board, the the parks district. It may also include law enforcement and various departments that have oversight for various parts of community response. In the case of crises or events, it might include the mental health services of your local government as well. And then of course, there are just other influential organizations and institutions in your area, right? Nonprofits and social, social service agencies, neighborhood associations can be very powerful. Civic institutions, libraries, schools, those sorts of things. And then the business community, right? So all of our congregations all have some matrix of relationships like these. It's really helpful to think about which of these relationships are close relationships which are a little more extended, a little more distant. You know, when I talk about a close relationship, it's like I've got the phone number of the person to call and they're gonna pick up my, they're gonna pick up my call. If I call, a little bit more distant is like, I know this thing exists. Maybe we've done an event or two with them in the past. There might also be in your constellation of relationships, some relationships that are a little hostile. So, for example, if you're talking about law enforcement and there have been some conflicts between, like let's say the local organizing community and your sheriff's department or your police department, or the parks police or the transit police, those are things to map as well. We aren't always just talking about who do you like, we're also talking about what are the relationships that can be leveraged in one way or another, and what are the relationships that we're trying to move or shift in order to get what we want? So, next slide please. Now we want to think about if you are facing a very particular situation, it's great to have all of that as background. You know, the landscape, you know the people, you know, the actors. You've got all the people in your phone, in your Rolodex, however you like to catalog your stuff. But then let's say something very specific happens. So here's kind of a, a process that we're going to outline for you. First, you're going to want to identify key stakeholders who have a relationship to the issue or the goal or the crisis, right? Who are the people who care about this? That can be people who are, let's say we're talking about homelessness in the city that you are in. There's a whole bunch of people who have a stake one way or another in that. And you're going to want to identify them while thinking about who are we already in relationship with and who shares our values. Next bullet, please. Exactly. So you are gonna wanna see what, what do these people think? What's their orientation to the problem? Are these the, let's say we're talking about homelessness again, are these the evict everybody? Homelessness is a crime, folks? Are these the we should allow encamp encampments of houseless people to crop up where they need, people? Where do they fall on the spectrum next? Yep. And then the types and strength of power each stakeholder has, we have all kinds of different power, and we leverage it in different ways. We're going to talk about that in just another moment. Stakeholder relationships, not just with you, but among each other. So sometimes, you know, if my congregation cares very, very deeply about the issue of homelessness in our city, it's going to be more effective if I am in relationship with, let's say, my local Habitat for Humanity, and my congregation can call up the executive director of that Habitat for Humanity and have them call the city council directly, right? How can you use the relationships that you have because they have other relationships, right? It, it's not going to be that effective for me to do, but it might be very effective for them. So yes, let's talk about who holds the power. Lots of different people and positions and organizations will hold power individually and collectively. So of course, we are talking about individuals, decision makers, particularly elected leaders, community leaders, specific community members who are well-known or have a public profile, et cetera. Then there are institutions, educational, medical, financial, religious, public institutions. This can include large corporations and small businesses. It really depends on the context in which you are. Then there are organizations and associations. So these are groups that have come together, coalesced around a particular thing. So might be a nonprofit we're serving a particular issue, have a particular goal or mission. It might be unions, neighborhood associations, multi-faith or interfaith coalitions, business associations, political associations. It could be the athletic club, right? If you're having a conversation about whether to, allow a high rise to go up and what is the current soccer field? There might be a soccer club in town that is going to be extremely influential in talking about this conversation. Might also include professional associations, et cetera. Then we are also going to talk about community groups or networks. These can be hobby interest groups. They can be service or charity clubs. They can be neighborhood networks or associations. They could be things like your local equality organization, right? Your LGBTQ plus community group. You can be supporter and survivor groups. You're, you know, the, the NA chapter that meets in the basement of the church. It could be an unhoused community network. And then finally what we call minimally organized public sectors. So these are groups of individual people who share an experience or an identity, but are not formally in association with each other. So for example, um, all of the people who live in the buildings that are run by the major, developer corporation, right? They're all living in the housing that is owned by a particular landlord and they're all being cheated and they're not maintaining the houses. All of those people have a shared experience, right? But they are not yet an organization. Now, if they formed a tenants union, then they would become an organization or an association. So thinking about the different kinds of layers of people and individuals who hold power. Next, please. So now let's kind of talk about the different kinds of power. Of course, there are economic and financial power considerations. That could be everything from money and donations to the power to set a budget to generational wealth, et cetera. When we're talking about communities and cities, often that's like, which neighborhoods get paid attention to because their property taxes pay for a lot of stuff in the city. Then there's ideological power. This means the power to shape the story, the power to shape who thinks what about whatever is happening. So this is ability to define the reality and to influence others to take on that division. So this can be media, this can be people with a public platform. This can be religious institutions. This can be political campaigns, be canvassing campaigns. It can be academic institutions who come out with particular research in one way or the other. Educational institutions absolutely have ideological power. And then we start talking about political power, right? This is the ability to pass or promote legislation as an elected leader to participate in the electoral processes of voter to influence political decisions as an individual, an association or an institution, right? So, political power gets held at a lot of different levels. Then finally, we're talking about relational power. So it's the ability to use existing connections that are grounded in trust. For example, your family members, your coworkers, previous organizing powers. It can be known community connections, support or leadership shared interests or experiences. This is like we are able to move together because we know each other and we trust each other. I think there's one more. And then finally, tangible resources, right? Access to physical facilities. Do you have a place where people can meet? Great. Do you have a bus that can transport people or a church van? Do you have essential equipment? Do you have a sound system? Do you have public wifi? do you have food or medication or resources that you are providing people with? So these are all different forms of power and each different, one of those people that we named before organizations hold a different type of power and sometimes more than one of those types of power. I, so we're going to talk about, I'm going to just walk you through a little hypothetical case study here about my own city of Minneapolis. You can see that we have an axis here. We've got from, left to right. We've got how how aligned are they with what we want to have happen. So, for example, if we, if my congregation is really excited about pressuring the city council to stop doing sweeps of homeless encampments to stop, bulldozing tents and kicking people off of public land, I wanna know who the biggest opponents to that kind of ordinance are going to be. And I wanna know who my best friends are gonna be in the struggle, right? So that access of the horizontal access there is about, are they aligned? Are they our opponents or are they our allies? Now the vertical access is about who has the most power and in which ways. So most powerful to least powerful. So the people who are gonna be the most helpful to us are the people who we would peg as being in that top right hand corner. They are both really on our side and they have major power to wield. So, next slide please. This is just an example of how we might do a power map, and a relationship map for this particular issue, right? Homeless encampment evictions in Minneapolis. So on that left hand side, I don't mind calling out my city's mayor for his really awful record about treating our houseless neighbors. Mayor Jacob Fry is probably the biggest opponent to treating houseless people with dignity here in the Twin Cities. And then as you'll see right under Mayor Fry, there's a, there's a post-it there with, CMMS, and then there's a several names. So there's a block of council members on the city council who always vote with the mayor. Now the mayor is the executive. And we recently in Minneapolis passed a law that gave the mayor more power than the mayor had had before. So you'll see that Jacob Fry is up high on the power access, and the city councils are a little bit lower now. Now, other people who have a lot of influence in this, in this arena and who are really not aligned are real estate developers and speculators people who want that land and who want to be able to use it in a way that nobody has to think about anything other than fresh new construction business owners near encampments, angry or scared homeowners. They're all in the orange there. Now, in this sort of like middle ground, it doesn't necessarily mean neutral, but it doesn't necess it, it means that they are not decidedly actively working on one side or the other. So you'll see right there in the dead center, there's a block of, of, of CMMS, right? Our, our council members who are the swing votes, right? There's voters and constituents on that access, right? We definitely have power to shape things. And in fact, if more of us showed up in our municipal elections in off years, we would have a ton of power. But because few people show up for those, we don't actually wield that power very well. You'll see the local media are pretty high on that too, right? How the stories get told shapes a lot of things. Now, on the more allied side of that access, you're gonna see that we've got shelters. And so social service nonprofits, of course, they want our houseless population to have places to be safe and affordable housing. They want more resources to offer, more shelter beds, all those sorts of things. And they have moderate power. They have, you know, relationships, but they don't, as nonprofits, they're not part of the business community, so they don't make anybody any money, which makes them a little bit less, influential than, for example, that real estate developing community. On the other side, we've also got supportive homeowners. You'll see, and you'll see that I placed those folks down on the less powerful end of the spectrum, because number one, there are fewer, there are fewer homeowners who are actively out there saying, yes, I am okay. And I actually really want the houseless encampments to be able to spring up in the vacant lot. That's three houses down from where I live on my block. So much less power and much less vocal. And then on this far edge, these are our friends. These are the people we are collaborating with. We've got plans we're showing up at the city council meetings together, we are eliciting statements and testimony together. We are, we've got a campaign strategy. So there's a particular group of, again, city council members who always vote on this end of the spectrum. There are a, here in Minneapolis and particular, there's a bunch of anti criminalization organizers and organ, organizations, that are working really hard to disrupt the ability of the government to criminalize people for being, for being poor. And that is a, that's a, it's, it's a big group of people. They have a little bit less power than, you know, some of the other constituencies, but they're organized and they are our friends. And then you'll see that down at the bottom there, I've listed houseless residents living in encampments. Those folks, because they are generally not having their very basic needs met, are not super organized. There is not, for example, a, a, a homeless person's union in the Minneapolis. However, when those folks do have the ability and are invited to, and are organized into and organized among themselves to testify at a city council meeting, for example, they can have a really, really important role in this because they are in fact the most impacted people, right? However, on this diagram, you will notice that given the constellation of everything that's happening in a city, the folks who are most impacted are at the lowest level of power in this situation than anybody else. So part of the conversation about partnership is how do we give, how do we actually show up in solidarity with the people who are most impacted? And how do we build power so that those people have more and more of a voice? Okay? So, that's the sort of, that's the overview of how I might do this in my neighborhood. We are going to, I believe, yes, we are right on time. So I'm gonna actually let you all do one of your own. So we are gonna use a technology called a Jamboard. If you are familiar with this, great. If not, it's pretty easy. Rhiannon, you can stop that slideshow. And I am gonna, hold on, I'm gonna drop this link into the chat and you should be able to click on it. So in the chat,, which you can get to by clicking a little chat bubble down at the bottom of your screen, you'll see that there is a link to something called a Jamboard. I invite you to click on that and to join me over in the Jamboard. Do you want me to share that, Ashley? Or, Yes, actually, yeah, go ahead. You can screen share with the Jamboard. Get this? Yeah, hold on. Yeah, Yeah. But you gotta get over to the Jamboard tap, but yes, Everybody okay? Yeah. Nope, you're in the slides. You know what? That's okay. Let me share it. Why don't you stop sharing and I'll share. Okay? It's okay. No worries. No, this is Ruth. All good. All right. So I'm gonna share my screen. Here we go. Are you all seeing in your links, but I'm seeing in mine, in the window Here? Yeah, I'm sorry. In the groups. The group six, it says fabulous. Yeah. Excellent. So you're seeing group six. So this is called the Jamboard Friends, you'll see up at the top my, where my cursor is. There is a little one out of six here. If I advance, I'm in two out of six, three out of six, et cetera. Each of these slides has the exact same format on it. We're in a moment, we're gonna divide you into small groups. And I'm not sure exactly how many there are gonna be, but Rhiannon's gonna get 'em ready for us. Well, How many would you, like How many participants do we have? We have about 36, including you and me. So, let's do Six groups. How many do you want? Per? So, okay, so six per ish, No, sorry, we want groups of four or five. Okay. That do not include us. Yeah. So as Rhiannon is getting that ready for us friends, you're looking at the Jamboard. You'll see over here on the left hand side, there is a little menu that's got all kinds of different things. You'll see that the cursor is selected right now, this little arrow, if I'm there, it just means my cursor is on the thing. Your favorite button in this Jamboard is gonna be the one right below that. That's called a sticky note. So you click on this, you'll get this little pop-up window. Mine name's yellow right now, but I can choose what color I want my sticky note to be. Ooh, I like that pink. I know. Thank you. I'm gonna go with pink. So, I'm gonna write, city council members. And once I'm done typing, you should be short, right? You don't wanna write a paragraph on these. I'm gonna click save and you will see, okay, then I'm gonna click cancel. 'cause I only wanted to do one that my post-it showed up here on the Jamboard. So I'm gonna give you a scenario in a moment in which you are gonna be talking about who in the community theoretically might be your friends and your allies or your opponents. You're going to talk about how powerful they are. Most powerful, the least powerful. I'm going to say, all right, these city council members are positively inclined, but they don't super support it. And I'm gonna put 'em at, you know, somewhere here. So the exercise that you are gonna do is each of you is gonna have the power to create your own post-Its, and you're gonna do this, I'm gonna stop sharing screen and I'm gonna tell you the scenario that you are gonna be working with here. And it is this, Imagine that a group of folks in your congregation come to the minister and the board and they propose hosting a drag story hour during Pride weekend in your area. Now keep in mind that there have been some disruptions of drag story hours over the past several months in your community, including one incident where a white nationalist group showed up at the local library branch to protest during a drag story hour. One of the members proposing the event, who's a member of your congregation, works for the local LGBTQIA plus equality organization. And that person shares that their organization has been looking for a potential host and would be excited to partner with you with your congregation. So before you make a decision about whether or not it's a good idea for your congregation to host this event, you decide to sit down with the leadership. Your congregation's leadership sits down together to do a community power and relationship map, to think through who your existing collaborators and allies might be, who might be enlisted to support it, how you might grow that support and allyship, and then who might be actively resisting or opposed to it. And that might include, for example, white nationalists who showed up at the last drag story hour, but it might include a whole other list of folks in between. So you've seen the Jamboard, we're gonna put you into six different groups, I believe. And you are gonna use the sheet on the Jamboard that corresponds with your group number. So you'll be assigned to a breakout room, and if you are in group two, then you group is gonna use Jamboard slide number two, which you can get to with that little arrow at the top of the Jamboard that advances to the next slide in your group, you're gonna have about 20 minutes to talk. And, you're going to get to, actually, actually it's more about 15 at this point. We want you to just talk and think about using the examples of the congregations that you actually belong to. Talk about who you would name as allies and opponents in this, what kinds of power and how powerful they are. And stick your sticky notes on there, just like I did in the example. Good. Good, good, good. All right. If you are not muted, I'm going ask you to for these last five minutes. We are running out of time. So I would just want to say what I said to the folks in the, in the room just now, which is that I just gave you 15 minutes to begin to have a conversation about what would normally take probably 90 minutes to two hours in a best case scenario in your congregation, right? I mean, you can imagine that with people that you know, that all know the community deeply. This would be a very different conversation and much richer because you have so many more points of information, shared history, shared context, all of that. But I do want to encourage you to take a look through that Jamboard and see what other people came up with. You all did an excellent job. I got to be big brother, kind of lurking there, watching you all put your post-its up. And it was really great. I want to also just make a plug that relationship and power mapping is one piece of the puzzle, but it is a whole puzzle. So at Side with Love, we have a ton of resources for a lot of these different things. This is one of them. there we have a template for facilitating a conversation about partnerships and power in your community. it's literally a facilitator template. It's got everything that you will say, all the materials you'll need, the activities you'll invite your folks to do with you. And I will put that in the chat momentarily. Another piece of the puzzle for most congregations is talking about your, level of risk tolerance, right? The kind of risks that your congregation is ready to take right now. How to push the limits of those risks. But how to be clear about what you can say an accountable yes and a real no to, because when crisis arises, let me just tell you that it is not that helpful to not know who has the power to make the decision or to have to go into a congregational meeting that everybody needs to be a part of. That will happen in a month to decide whether the people who are asking for your sanctuary tonight need their answer, right? So again, the theme of the day is do the work beforehand and you will continue to build on it over time. In the chat here, I'm dropping several different things. The very first link there, it says SWL Side with Love, Community Power and Asset Mapping template. That is what I was just talking about. This is what I was working from today. And this workshop, it's got a full plan, with definitions, framing, as well as the facilitator plan for a workshop that you can run in your congregation to do this process. Secondly, you'll see, there's this, Side with Love Responding to Right-Wing Threats link here. That's where we've collated all of the resources that we've been sharing with people. That includes sort of context setting stuff, workshops that we've run,, templates for assessing the level of risk that you're facing, all kinds of different stuff on there. It's a great resource. Third, you will see that there is that Side with Love Skill Up link. Every month Side with Love offers a concrete, one and a half hour long, what we call a skill up, where we teach one particular organizing skill that people find useful. So last week for example, I ran a skill up about facilitating those conversations about risk discernment. That's a great repository for a lot of things. The skill up that I ran last week about risk discernment is not actually up on that page yet. 'cause the video is still processing, but we will have it up very soon. But that's another great resource to take home to your congregation. That risk discernment template, again to facilitate a, a session in your congregation. Also linked in the chat here also. And, um, template, this is about, oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry. The power and asset mapping template is about mapping what, what assets and resources you have in your own congregation. so you know what, what you have to offer when you show up to the table in a relationship and say, Hey, well we can contribute this, or we lack this and we need to find a partner who has X, Y, Z thing. That's human infrastructural and financial resources. I'm gonna end by saying it can feel overwhelming to know where to start. The reality is that congregations are already hubs of resources and relationships. None of this is brand new. You can start anywhere in the circle. And what matters is that you begin right? Some of this work may actually already be done in your congregation depending on where your leadership is. Some of it may be good to start over again. All of it needs to be touched on regularly. So, don't go into this feeling behind, but go into it feeling like this is our moment to really dig into the richness, to the assets, to the abundance of this community and to be able to show up better in public. Right? So to close out this scenario of the Drag Story hour, some of the wonderful stories, many of our congregations have been hosting drag story hours around the country and several of them have in fact been targeted by white nationalist groups. Some of the most powerful stories are of when entire multi-faith communities, queer groups in the community, neighborhood associations, librarians, you know, the local university where all of these folks who are sort of seemingly disparate, but all share values around L-G-B-T-Q-I-A affirmation and celebration. People who believe in freedom of speech and the importance of literature and reading all come together. And the truth is, those bad actors out there are a very, very, very small percentage of the population. The only way that they are able to win is if we don't understand how deeply connected and resourced we are. And so the work of community mapping, relationship mapping, asset mapping is actually deeply affirming 'cause it reminds us how many people in fact share our values and how powerful we are, even when we don't feel like that on our own when we come together. So I'm gonna wish you all good luck as you do all of this. Please feel free and contact us at Side With Love. I'm gonna drop our general email in the chat here. It's love@uua.org. Please feel free and send us your questions. Check out our resources, sidewithlove.org. We are grateful for you, we're cheering for you, and we are so grateful that you are all out doing the work that you are doing. Take care, be well, and the closing will start in seven minutes back in that main room. Take care everybody.