Inside Outside

how do you not just be a flash in the pan? I don't know. I think you do that through organic relationship building, but I don't think that the goal is to be, maybe your goal is not to be a flash in the pan, but your goal certainly isn't to be within that community in the same way. At least that would be the case for me. So me moving into a Dwight community I think it would be a building relationship, but those relationships are going to be different than Dottie's relationship with the 80 year old woman and I should never expect it to be the same. So I think it's a little bit of balance, not wanting to be just as quick in and out peace, but also realizing that it takes work to be part of a community. It takes that time, it takes not only relationship building, but experiencing common experiences together. I think this happens a lot too often in research, where folks on the outside, where researchers go in and they think that six months of relationship building is going to make you this ingrained part of the fabric of a community and it's not, and I think recognizing that and being okay with that is good because I think someone like a Dottie can look at somebody like Rick and say, "You are part of this community in this way." With knowing that it's like you weren't with us 20, 30 years ago when X, Y and Z was happening. So I think it's being realistic about how to what extent you will fit in within the community and being okay. I think sometimes it's pitched as the goal is to become an insider. I never think that the goal should be to become an insider. The goal should to be, to build a relationship as an outsider.

I think it goes back to sort of just narratives and dialogue in the field of just social justice and community change in general around this savior mentality of how much can I go in and really just change or impact the community? I think especially how much can I do so as an outsider of that community, and there are so many different levels to what it means to be an insider or an outsider of a community, right? I think you can in many ways, be bold, you can be somewhere on that continuum. So I know for myself even though I looked more like the people in the room as a black woman, I was not from the Dwight neighborhood or Dwight community like Rick was, for example. So it's a lot about thinking about how much the change has to come from within, how much is that nexus of control really, in that organizing body of black women in the Dwight community who for the past decade has been pulling together these events, have been doing work in the community, and how much can actually be impacted by a Yale or whatever organization, or even a really great community or a really great outside activist who has just good goals and intentions in mind,

How do you know that someone's really the right person to be speaking to and not just the person that happens to be willing to speak or lonely? Well, I think that's a cool strategy because I think that when you come into a new place, the person that most likely would talk to a stranger is the person that's more gregarious and that's more outgoing naturally. So I think that keeping that in mind, knowing that, "Okay, this may just be the one person that nobody wants to talk to. That's why they're so willing to talk to me." But also just talking to that person and seeing their personality and seeing what they say about the neighborhood, how they feel about the neighborhood, how they [inaudible] back into the neighborhood. And then I think that's how I come to turn up, is this just an outsider or an insider? Based off of their connections, the depth of their experience within the neighborhood, and also how they feel about their neighborhood, because folks who are passionate about their neighborhood, those are the ones who I really want to talk to. Those are the ones that have the memory of the neighborhood. Keeps a memory of wherever they are, and they can give you the insights into who the key players also. The ones who are really passionate about, "I'm from this neighborhood. I'm from here, I love this area." The whole respect cat cable, for example, I think those are key people that can be reached out to. And you're going to say, "How can an event like this work in this particular neighborhood?" Or, "How do we align our aim with your aim?" It's like this is the best event possible.

we were talking about the replicability of this program and that's one of the things that I worry about, is the best programs, you're really dependent on actually having someone who is authentically part of both of these communities and that's not easily replicable.