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john a. powell Well, worried about the future. That worry is legitimate. But the source of the worry, it's not me. You can keep all the black people out, you can keep all the immigrants out, you're still going to have these problems. Unless we deliberately say we want a world where everyone belongs. Not just white men, but certainly white men. Right now we're in a zero-sum mentality. If I win, you lose. If you win, I lose. Can we have a world where we all win, where we all participate?
Sanam John Powell, professor of law at UC Berkeley and the director of the Othering and Belonging Institute. Welcome to If You Were In Charge with me, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. And me, Kavita Nandini Ramdas. So we'll be talking in a minute about what is othering and belonging in a world where we're seeing so much polarization and atomization and dehumanization. But before we get there, a couple of things. Kavita, when is the baby coming?
Kavita Ramdas Oh my goodness. I'm so excited. Hi from California, Sanam. And our daughter is expecting her first child and our first grandchild any day now. But if he doesn't come on his own, we've got a date for a little encouragement, which is the 17th. So we're keeping our fingers crossed.
Sanam In England, for some reason, they always say that if the baby hasn't come, you have to go for a curry. I don't know. Is that an Indian thing? I'm like, what is it with the Brits and their curry?
Kavita Ramdas I think the Brits must get very excited about curry. Indians are probably eating it every day and it doesn't make any difference. We usually have other recommendations, but which might not be appropriate for being on air.
Sanam Okay. But how excited? And have you decided? So first of all, it's going to be a baby boy.
Kavita Ramdas It's going to be a baby boy. We do not know the name. It's top secret. Only those two, Luke and Meera, know. Okay. So we are being good, good grandparents and not butting in. Boundaries and brownries. Do you remember the conversation with Farhana in which she said, look, you know, from cultures like ours, we don't have boundaries. We just have brownries. Everybody who's brown is in our boundary.
Sanam There's nothing about privacy, absolutely.
Kavita Ramdas No, what privacy? Yeah. But I'm trying to be a good California, astute, woke grandmother.
Sanam Excellent. Fun thing to be expecting and hoping for in 26. Yeah.
Kavita Ramdas Yes. It's nice. Actually, as we think about belonging and othering, it's so interesting because I think it starts right from the beginning, doesn't it? You know, here we are, Pakistani and an Indian married to each other with our daughter married to a young man who is of French, Huguenot and Scottish-Irish descent. And who belongs and who is other in which, in, you know. It's the brownries. (..)
Sanam There's something about this, which I love it. Everybody's there. But it's funny because I was also looking at this from the standpoint of the World Cup. And then you look at the team members of each country. Oh, I know. And everybody's got somebody from somewhere else. There's lots of brown in those teams, let's just say. There's lots of brown, but also the Norwegians have, they're striking Viking. He was this, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Holland, yeah. And he was born in Leeds, so he could have played in the English team, but he chose to play for Norway because I think he grew up in Norway.
Kavita Ramdas Or the young man who was Nigerian-British who's playing for the American team, Fuller in Balogun. Exactly. The trump card. Oh, yes, that was the trump card. Oy vey. Did the poor U.S. team no good, unfortunately, and they really deserved better.
Sanam But the World Cup is just such a wonderful example of when we say diversity, yes, and pluralism and social cohesion, yes. We're all there. Everybody's having a good time. It's really fun. I was also thinking about the football metaphor because of what's been going on with the MOU, with Iran and the U.S. and the return for bombing, which is disappointing. //S01: Well, here we are.//
Kavita Ramdas Here we are.
Sanam They bombed an 800-year-old bridge.
Kavita Ramdas Oh, son of a...
Sanam Because it's just, I mean, that, you know, yeah, it's sort of, I mean, apart from, again, civilian infrastructure and so forth. But my metaphor for what really needs to happen is to say you have two players, you know, U.S. and Iran. You have a third one, which is the spoiler, which is Israel. And what we really need is 15 umpires to hold and monitor what they're doing and hold them accountable by the rules and allow the thing to go forward. So I was trying to think, well, what game or, you know, what sport has that, that you've got the two, you've got more umpires and, you know, watchers than players and tennis. And so Wimbledon, I'm like, yes, it's like Wimbledon. You have two guys on court and then you've got a whole bunch of them watching every line and the umpire up there. And if you misbehave, you obviously get penalized. I'm like, why don't we have that for diplomacy? That would be wonderful, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it's not, it's there. It's just there to be done. But where is the EU and where is the UN whose job, whose only reason for existence or the primary reason for their existence is to prevent this kind of nonsense? And, you know, so I'm very frustrated with the old men who are destroying our institutions.
Kavita Ramdas Yeah. And I rather fear that although the UN is in the process of selecting a new secretary general and that all but one, I believe, of the candidates are women, I'm rather afraid that right at the moment when we say we're tired of all the old men, we will bring in a woman and then expect her to magically sweep up all the mess of the last 40 years and clean it up and somehow magically wave her wand and make it perfect.
Sanam Of the candidates that I saw, only one of them is below retirement age, mandatory retirement age of the UN itself. You know, I'm like, why are we doing this?
Kavita Ramdas Oh, I know, you know, brings us back, I think, also to this whole question about the dismissal of young people and the young people who are actually doing extraordinary things. You and I talked about this briefly after the election results in New York City, where, you know, three democratic socialists supported by Mamdani actually defeated significantly mainstream Democrats in the mainstream. So, you know, I really wish we would think differently, but that's not where we are, unfortunately.
Sanam And bringing it to, you know, the conversation that I had with John, we missed you very much. But this concept of saying that everybody belongs and then how we other, and one of the things that we've talked about was how anytime you have spaces of exclusive power and influence and money, and people push to get in, and typically it's women or people of color or whatever, they try to get into those spaces, (.) that force moves somewhere else, like, okay, now we want to have, you know, women at the head of the UN. (.) If it happens, it's going to happen because the influence of the UN has been so diminished and the forces that are determining, whatever, peace and security, what have, are now in the hands of, not even governments anymore, it's the tech world. //S01: Militaries and the tech world.// Exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's, it moves, it's like, it's like a sort of organism that, that kind of shifts and moves away because it doesn't want to be transparent. It doesn't want to be inclusive. And, and youth, youth is one of those things, right? It's, it's how, how we keep young people in a way excluded.
Kavita Ramdas Away and excluded. And, and I think that it's interesting when you and John were talking, and I think about the long years that he's worked on these issues. Did he say anything that helped you feel like we could get a better grasp on, is this just how humans are? Is this how we construct ourselves? That we, we must create mini tribes so that we can other others. What were his reflections on what works and what doesn't work?
Sanam I think the essence is that it's, you find within yourself different ways to be able to connect and, and see the humanity in the other. And he, and he talks about that. He talks about looking into the soul of the other and trying to understand where they are. And, and things like, you know, when you're dealing with the white young men who are feeling marginalized, being able to understand and, and acknowledge and respect their grievance or what their issue is, not to dismiss it, right? So that, that sense of hyper empathy and deep connection, I think is what he would say is the way to do it. But, but he also said that violence is his, is his red line, that no tolerance of violence, which, which again is resonates a lot with, with the world of peacebuilding. And I think the question really is, we may say belonging and open the circle or the tent. The question is whether those who feel threatened can see the humanity in, in us or those they, they other.
Kavita Ramdas And I think this is part of the whole conversation around how do you, how do you challenge those who see the world extremely differently from yourself, (.) even starting from a place of compassion and understanding, when you sense no openness or willingness to receive. And when sometimes, in fact, that willingness to be in conversation can actually result in your experiencing direct violence and threats. So I think that's the other part of it. And I have come as a feminist who I think had a very strong clarity around questions of violence to a place where I've begun to understand that there are certain contexts within which you also have to understand is violence something that we have misinterpreted because it has been primarily used by men and by men in militarized situations. I read a very interesting book by a Sri Lankan woman who was looking at the experience of women fighters in different anti-colonial struggles and she talked about the Tamil Elam fighters in Sri Lanka and she also talked about the Eritrean women fighters, many of whom I had had the pleasure of meeting after the Eritrean war in, I don't know, 1998. And I just wonder, Sanam, you know, and we heard, of course, after the attack of October 7th that people under occupation have the right to resist, including the right to resist through armed struggles. I feel like where I've come now is a place that's more nuanced, that says there are certain circumstances in which that may be your only alternative. In a way, I'm less able to other people who use violence. Absolutely. (..) Because I'm realizing that not that I think it solves things, but that I am beginning to appreciate where that comes from and where there is this feeling that that's all that's left.
Sanam For me, the, because over the years I've worked with so many women who have been involved in armed movements for liberation and so forth. And in Nepal, for example, many joined because they had experienced violence at home or because of the military coming in. And so they're trying to avenge either the violence that was perpetrated against themselves or their families. Exactly. You know, these words get mixed up because there's a question of defense and resistance, right? //S01: Yes.// But then you look at the language of the United States and we talk about the defense budget. And it's not defense.
Kavita Ramdas It's the... No, it's the war budget. And actually, I think it's weird that he renamed it the Department of War because I actually think in some ways that's more honest because it never was about defense.
Sanam If you're Palestinian, do you have the right to resist and defend yourself and your family and your property and so forth? On the one hand, and legitimate defense or the defense of your country if you're sitting in Ukraine.
Kavita Ramdas Yeah.
Sanam But the fact that we have been gaslit into thinking that $3 trillion of military spending is quote unquote defense, whereas overwhelmingly it's being used for offense and for creating more violence and perpetrating violence against those who have no form of defense. The nuances are on multiple levels. I think maybe the point being that the difficulty of sitting with someone who fundamentally either (.) doesn't think you exist or you should exist in the same space or your role is to be, you should be the laborer or, you know, your children don't have the right to become, you know, to go to the best universities because those are for our kids. You know, that kind of... This is where some of this belonging and othering comes into play. And I think we're seeing it across when you start to have second and third and fourth generations of immigration and, you know, people moving around.
Kavita Ramdas Well, no, I think women are the largest, in terms of percentage, we are the largest group of people who have been consistently othered, right? We shouldn't be in 2026 still having to say women's rights are human rights. And yet, here we are. We, when people say, well, you know, feminism, there's no reason for feminism because, you know, it's just humanism. We care about everybody. And I'm like, feminism is not about saying you don't care about everybody. It's about saying that, in fact, when people have claimed that they care about human rights, they've just ignored 50% of the population. That kind of, you know, going back to the question of violence, I think the first site of violence for most people is their own bodies. And to have an experience in which women disproportionately experience that violence on their own bodies. (.)
Sanam We have institutions, companies, you know, whatever sector, you know, business sector, private sector, public sector, that have been designed in ways that make it difficult for women to progress and elevate to the highest levels, right? And I remember when I first started working in the States, actually, with Swanee Hunt, asking if it would be possible to have childcare for the nights that I was away, you know, for work. And to begin with, this was a radical idea. And anyway, long story short, we ended up having a group of us who had children, somebody who had a dog. Well, can there be some policy for compensating? And I came to London and asked my sister, who was in the finance world, I was like, what policies, what benefits do you have? They had, at the time, her company would give £2,000 a year worth of parking in central London and £2,000 a year worth of gym membership, right? But there was no alternative to, okay, if you don't want to take the gym membership or the parking, you can have £2,000 worth of childcare. And the difference that makes, well, you know, you can imagine who goes to the gym, who has time to go to the gym at seven o'clock in the morning or at six o'clock in the evening.
Kavita Ramdas Because somebody else is handling your childcare.
Sanam Exactly, right. It's not going to be your working moms. And I was like, just these tweaks, these little tweaks to make life a little bit easier or what time the first morning meeting happens. You know, the difference between it happening at eight o'clock or 8.15 was huge for a mother who has, you know, childcare coming in. So, and I was told that asking to change institutions was radical feminism.
Kavita Ramdas And I was like, I just think that's common sense. I'm like, why is that?
Sanam I never thought of myself as a radical. (.)
Kavita Ramdas I'm like, okay, if that's what it is. Well, there we go back to the idea, Sanam, of what's a radical idea that shouldn't be considered //S02: radical. There we go.//
Sanam It's, that's, that's right. Radical and feminist.
Kavita Ramdas Whoa, man. Yes. I mean, it reminds me of when I came to Berlin to study feminist foreign policy. And I told a group of Germans, I think my second week we were at a picnic in, in, you know, this beautiful park in Berlin. And there were two men, one of whom is a writer, one of whom is the head of the Goethe Institute in Beijing. And they said, well, feminist foreign policy, why would you study feminism? Isn't that about man hating women? And I said, you know, you have a government that says it has a feminist foreign policy. And they were like, yeah, yeah, but that's just stupid. I mean, like we, you know, you don't need feminism. I mean, feminism is just about people hating men. And I said, well, boy, do we have a lot to talk about here? So, you know, I think John's sort of recognition when you said to him, oh, that's actually something that we've been talking about for years inside feminist circles is a recognition of the fact that in some ways women continue to be othered in unconscious ways, because the word doesn't even think that that's weird.
Sanam You know, when, about the, if you were in charge, she said, well, I'd give the power away because we is always smarter than I. And I, yeah, I just, I liked that very much. It was like, you know, again, this idea of collectively thinking about things and different perspectives.
Kavita Ramdas Now, as we sit in the heart of this World Cup, where you can so clearly see that the we is more important than I, it doesn't matter if you're a Lionel Messi or a Mohamed Salah or, you know, the whole team has to play together, right? It's so visible. It's so obvious.
Sanam And, and, and then how the, every time you have an underdog, you know, like the Cabo Verde team.
Kavita Ramdas Oh, the Cabo Verde team. The whole world was with them. They were, we were all, or, or even like the Norwegians with their Viking rowing. //S03: Yes.//
Sanam There are now, you know, there are kids in, in Africa that are like the, you know, they're
Kavita Ramdas doing the Viking row because that, you know. Just like there are kids in Liverpool who like pray like Salah after, after he gets a goal, you know, they're all bending down.
Sanam They're all these little white kids bending down and doing their, you know.
Kavita Ramdas It's, it's lovely. It's, it's very lovely. And I'm glad that you had a chance. The we is smarter than I. And I think the we is also what the world needs, right? For, for a.
Sanam We are. Yeah, we are. //S03: We are the world. We are the world.// It is us, but, yeah, so anyway, lovely, lovely to chat with you. //S03: Thank you, my dear.// I'm assuming next time we talk, you will be. //S03: Inshallah, Inshallah. Inshallah. (.)// Another good solid to the world. How wonderful. Okay. //S03: All right, my dear.// Lots of love to you.
Kavita Ramdas And we will look forward to listening to John. Exactly. (.......)
Sanam John, welcome to If You Were In Charge.
Kavita Ramdas This is a podcast where we talk to people who are tackling some of the world's biggest problems, but actually doing something about it. Because there are lots of people who are pundits and give you analysis and make you all depressed. But then there are very few people who are actually saying, okay, I'm going to take this problem and deal with it and have solutions. So when you say othering and belonging, what does that mean? How do we explain that to people? (.)
john a. powell Well, first of all, this is great to see you and be talking to you. Basically, it's almost exactly as it sounds. Othering basically means where you don't court someone for human dignity. Usually, there's a story behind it. It's like, well, they're too short or they're the wrong gender or they're the wrong age or they're the wrong color or they're the wrong religion. At the extreme, we may kill them, we may commit genocide, or we may put them in a reservation like doing the United States, or we may not let them in the country or may not let them vote. But in some way, so it's not just identifying someone. Consequences happens as a result. It's exclusion.
Kavita Ramdas They're not the same as me.
john a. powell That's right.
Kavita Ramdas Can I ask you on a personal basis, have you had moments in your life where you experienced this and what was it like?
john a. powell Sure. In a recent book I wrote called The Power of Bridging, I talk about my family so we can be other than our own family. So it can be other than different levels, intimate relationships all the way up to the state. And they're not the same, but similar. I grew up in a Christian home. My father was a Christian minister, and at 11 years old, I left the church, and my father stopped speaking to me. And so I went from this very loving, belonging family, belonging is where you have full agency, you're seen, you're appreciated, you participate, to being othered in my own family for five years. And it's quite different. //S03: At the age of 11.// At the age of 11.
Kavita Ramdas What did you do? How did you cope with that?
john a. powell Not very well. (.) You know, it's hard to say. I mean, first of all, I should say, my family is very loving, and we fixed it. In fact, probably the person that principally fixed it was my mother. And my mother was not going to have it where she was going to either lose her husband or her baby son, six of nine children. So she started bringing us back together. She started bridging us. So that was a big part of it, is that I had help from my mother. But I suffered. But it also, maybe not who I am today, and appreciate othering, right? And so we know othering as racism, as xenophobia, as sexism. But those are just particular expressions of othering. I think growing up African-American in the United States in the 50s and 60s, yeah, I've had all kinds of, I literally have had people say to me, you don't belong here.
Kavita Ramdas Do you know, it's so interesting, because I'm Iranian by background. And before the Iranian Revolution, and the othering that happens to us as well, both in the US and around the world, one of my aunts says that she was in New York City, she was friends with an African-American girl, and they were looking for an apartment. (.) And anytime her friend went to knock on the door, it was immediately, there's no housing here. It was my aunt's first experience of discrimination and othering, as you were saying, because it just wasn't something that she had seen. not that it doesn't exist in other countries, it was just that she'd come from a background of privilege, and the doors had always been open to her, you know. So it's fascinating that you're saying this. And for me, the idea that the United States, we look at the 1950s and 60s, and through the television, and through the sort of nostalgic, you know, gauzy lens, there's an invisibility of the kinds of experiences you're talking about. And is that also part of othering, that you're just not visible?
john a. powell Ralph Ellison, a famous U.S. African-American writer, wrote a book called The Invisible Man. He talked about being invisible, and yet being noticed. And so when you walk into a grocery store, you walk into some place, you have a place, and if you're out of that place, you're noticed, but you're never seen.
Kavita Ramdas As you.
john a. powell As you, and so there's a South African word called sawobanu, it's translated in, I see you, or it's also translated to mean, the divine in me sees the divine in you. I see you as a full human being. I see you as someone that matters. I see you as someone with value. (.) And to be othered is not to be seen, but to be noticed, and to be flattened. So when we notice someone, we notice only some aspect of them. We notice maybe there's a homeless. We notice their skin color. We notice a thing that makes them, quote unquote, different. And then we tell a story at the extreme that they're a threat. And so when you think of authoritarian regimes happening all around the world now, there's always a designated other. (.) And there's also the sense of people have a place. So women have a place. People of color have a place. And their place, the people who are saying this, is that they belong. They're in charge. They're supposed to run the country. They're supposed to run the company. They're supposed to run the household. So it's very insidious. But it happens all over the world.
Kavita Ramdas Again, the stereotype in the U.S. and all the statistics that tell us about the threats that a young black man faces if they're walking down the street with a hoodie, the levels of police violence against young black men. If I were to sort of turn the question of othering to women, which is the work that I do, it's almost irrelevant.
Sanam It's like we don't, we're not a threat.
Kavita Ramdas We're invisible in a different sort of way because who cares about what women say or do or you're just, you know, whether it's a sexual being or, yeah, it's a weird sense. And the irony is that as peace, women peace builders use that to their advantage because you see a group of women sitting around under a tree or getting together in someone's house in Afghanistan these days, it's just seen as, oh, those women, whereas they might be doing all sorts of political work or, you know, awareness raising or other things. things, it's still othering, though. It's still you don't get to be in charge, basically. Yeah.
john a. powell So, yes, there's different forms of othering. So, for example, the elderly. Oftentimes in many societies, in the United States in particular, we don't hold elders in high regard, but we don't kill them, usually. We don't arrest them, usually, or someone with a disability, right? Again, so there are different levels of othering, and it's at the extreme that we either imprison or kill them. //S03: Or dehumanize. Or dehumanize in a different way.// But part of it, as you suggested, is being able to assign someone a place. And it's like, well, how did that happen? How is it that you decide who someone should be? And oftentimes when that happens, we talk about the group as being others. They have to prove themselves. And, of course, they can't because the problem is not with them. The problem is the othering is often done to create belonging for a smaller group. So they're not completely symmetrical. Much of the othering that's happening today in terms of trying to create, quote, unquote, homogeneous societies. So the people who are considered different, which difference matter? //S03: Yeah.// Wurundah, which had one of the worst genocides in the 20th century, one of the things that became important for othering were the number of cows you have.
Kavita Ramdas Yes. Right?
john a. powell And we must say, that's irrelevant. Well, that's the point. All of this is really irrelevant. These are sociological phenomena. They're not inherent or biological phenomena. You know, and people in the United States, I just came back from Northern Ireland, try to make sense of, well, why are Catholics and Protestants still fighting? You know, think of Shiites and Sunnis. To an outside world, it's like, aren't they just Muslim? But we can make a difference out of a difference. We can make it matter. And once it matters, a lot of things flow from that.
Kavita Ramdas If I then turn it to say, what does belonging look like?
john a. powell Well, belonging, first of all, I think it's a reality. We do belong. We belong to each other. We belong to the earth. We matter. We matter. And our voice matter. Our agency matters. We're of equal value. We have dignity. You're at home. You know that people care about you. You're connected. You not only have a voice, you have influence, you have agency. And you get to co-create the thing you belong to. You're not joining someone else's thing. It's not the same as inclusion.
Kavita Ramdas Someone's not setting the rules and you have to abide by them. You create the rules and it's dynamic.
john a. powell Well, you co-create. //S03: Yeah.// Right? You don't get to do it by yourself, but you do it with others. We are doing this together. It's not your party. It's not my party. It's not your country. It's not my country. It's our country. In some sense, it's a radical expression of democracy. So, for example, if you go to a place in the United States, in Silicon Valley, for example, you see very few women, very few African Americans. How do you make sense of that? What's the story you tell about that? You could say, as one engineer at Google said, well, women are not just good at math. So you blame women. You explain it in terms of women. You know, people used to explain segregation as to people naturally wanted to be with their own. So black people want to be black people, white people want to be black. Actually, it's obviously not true because you have interracial marriage, and in many states, it's against the law. Why do you need a law saying people can't be together if people naturally don't want to be together? So cultures are constantly remaking themselves. And how we make sense of things is largely what we call through stories or narrative. How do we understand that?
Kavita Ramdas Putting us in boxes, but someone else is determining that, right?
john a. powell We all have multiple identities, you know, so I'm not, you know, just a black man. I'm also a vegetarian. So is that a source of creating a community around vegetarians? I also live in California.
Kavita Ramdas Smokers, smokers are really good at community. They're always standing in the courts, you know, some street corner puffing away. And I feel like they've got such solidarity amongst themselves for being excluded.
john a. powell So the World Cup is happening now, right? And a friend just wrote a piece about how the NBA Finals, basketball, made New York, everybody in New York belong, right? (.) Everybody was a Knicks fan. That's the team, the New York Knicks, for that moment. In a sense, she was right. It's like there was a shared identity. COVID sometimes created spaces where people had shared communities. But then what do we do with that in terms of stories? What do we do with that in terms of structures? What do we do with that in terms of possibilities? Do we make it easier or harder? Do you get blamed for, why are you with that person? They're not like you. So what do you mean they're not like me?
Kavita Ramdas Or do we not even tell the stories? I work with colleagues in Iraq and, you know, huge problems, both political and then tribal and then, you know, the Shia-Sunni extremist divides. And a few years ago, we were going there for some work. And they said, no, all the hotels are booked. And we said, what's going on? They said, well, it's the regional football, you know, matches or something, tournament. For two weeks, all the violence stopped. So all these people that were killing each other for whether it was access to water or something else, there was an agreement that we all like football. So we're going to stop. And it makes me wonder whether we're underestimating the power of cultural, arts, sports, these kinds of things as a celebration of the diversity and the unity. So if we look at the World Cup again, everybody's there. The whole world is there. Different teams, you know, people going crazy. But it's still incredibly peaceful. It's still, there's a unity. So are we missing a beat in doing more of that?
john a. powell Absolutely. I mean, part of the thing is that we have been, from fits and starts, moving toward greater and greater acknowledgement of shared humanity. That wasn't the case a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago. Part of it, we also, we didn't have the technology. But today, I mean, think about things like the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which is problematic, but also incredibly important. In 1948, really, right after World War II, right after the Holocaust, still England being a number one empire in the world. What do you mean we respect the human rights of every person? But it's been important. It's been an important possibility, an important story, an important aspiration, and now important laws. (.) So, we have the capacity to create greater and greater belonging. What we've done in the past, though, is whenever we create belonging, for the most part, we've also created othering at the same time.
Kavita Ramdas Constantly. So, the bigger, we still, we still want to exclude somebody. We still want to exclude somebody.
john a. powell And that's not necessary. It's not necessary. And so, we say belonging without othering. Think about religions. Religions say if you're part of the religion, good, you're in. Regardless to your race or whatever you're in. But if you're not part of the religion, you're out.
Kavita Ramdas We do a lot of work with religious leaders around peacemaking. And on the one hand, there's an acknowledgement that religion has been the source of many wars and so forth. So, they're trying to deal with that aspect. But when they come together, you see the unity until you put a woman in the mix. And all of a sudden, they're having to process the fact that we are saying we are also equal human beings because so many of these faiths either don't say it outright or even if they do, you know, you're second-class citizens, right? So, it's interesting that mixing us up together to face the humanity of the other is such an important part of creating the wider belonging as well.
john a. powell So, belonging without othering is very radical because, and you can sort of think about who is the other? Is it, are women the other? Are children the other? A certain religion the other? It varies from society to society. And it's dynamic. Part of it, again, is the structures, but also the narrative and stories. The culture can actually create a space where even language, right, the art can create a space where people come together. But we need to be deliberate, especially now when we're having people running around the world with a lot of power, a lot of money, saying we should be homogeneous. We don't believe in pluralism. We should get the other out of here. How did you get into my house? It's like, how did this become your house?
Kavita Ramdas You're now in Germany. I was there a couple of years ago. And there's a very strong force from the far right, but it's also fairly mainstream about what is German identity and who is German. They even talk about bio-Germans, bio-Deutsch, as in, you know, like, it sounds like organic food. But I was looking around and I was thinking, well, after World War II, who came to rebuild, literally put the bricks back together to rebuild this country? And it's the Romanians and Italians and Turks and so forth. But they are still not woven into that society as, you know, it's not pluralistic in the way that we're trying. I don't know, in the United States, we think we are. I'm not quite sure how well we've done it in the U.S. But this perception of us and the other is still quite strong in many countries. How are you finding the difference between Europe and the U.S. on these discussions?
john a. powell In some ways, I think Europe right now is more open. I think historically, the United States has grappled with these issues more. You know, the United States, by some measures, have a more diverse society. And Europe thought of itself more homogeneous, I think. I think that's changed. I think it will continue to change with changing demographics. But also, right now, instead of the United States being, quote-unquote, the leader of the liberal world or the leader of the illiberal world, with Trump and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon, they all articulate a vision, ethel nationalism, basically of white supremacy. (.) And while those threads are in Europe, it hasn't seized the power centers in the same way. So, for example, the big push in the United States for many of these things is coming from the government itself, from the White House, from Congress, from the courts. It's happening in Europe, but it's not – they haven't seized the instruments of power.
Kavita Ramdas And what would you say – I mean, you know, one of the arguments, of course, we hear is that white British man or the white German man or, you know, there's always some stereotype. They are feeling alienated in their own societies. What do you say to that audience, to the folks that are saying, oh, you know, our countries are being run over by these people and the assumption is that these people don't have our values, they don't have our culture, et cetera, et cetera?
john a. powell Two things. I think everyone can suffer. And too often we have people fighting each other and the elites are left out. In fact, sometimes we're fighting over my elites are better than your elites, right? I mean, the reality is that, yes, the average white person in Europe don't really have power. If you look at the global economy for the last 20, 30 years, it's more than quadrupled in size. Where's all those resources gone? It hasn't gone to poor people, to immigrants. It's gone to the elites. So the elites sit out of this discussion and people are worried about the future. And so I think that worry is legitimate. But the source of the worry, it's not me. You can keep all the black people out. You can keep all the immigrants out. You're still going to have these problems. Unless we deliberately say we want a world where everyone belongs, not just white men, but certainly white men. Right now we're in a zero-sum mentality. If I win, you lose. If you win, I lose. Can we have a world where we all win, where we all participate?
Kavita Ramdas So I'm going to come to our key questions in a minute. But a couple of things. (..) How do you do that when one side, let's say if we take the Israel-Palestine story, if we take the Rwanda extremist Hutu versus Tutsi story, how do you do that when one side literally wants to eliminate the other? Like one side has so dehumanized the other that they don't even see them as human beings. And similarly, as we try to reach out to whoever the violent groups are, we are struggling to see the humanity in them.
john a. powell People act out in a way violently and otherwise because they're afraid, because in some ways they themselves are also feeling other. You have to at least acknowledge that. Why am I attacking that person? Because that person, that person represents a threat to me and my family and my group.
Kavita Ramdas But is that a perception or a reality? That's the problem. It doesn't matter.
john a. powell You have to deal with it, right? I mean, part of the mistake that we make, I think, is that we think if it's factually wrong, that's the end of the story. It's not the end of the story. It's part of the story. If I'm really afraid, why am I afraid? You can say, I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job. Okay? Why am I going to lose my job? Because these immigrants are going to take it. What if I can show you that you are going to lose your job, but not the immigrants? You're going to lose the AI. What do you do about that? Belonging is not just getting a good job. It's being seen. It's being heard. So if I'm telling you I'm afraid, can you see that? Can I articulate that? And I think it's unhelpful to simply say that fear is irrational. That fear is stupid, which is oftentimes we say, here's a study that shows you that that fear is off. Now you're saying, not only are you discounting my fear, you're discounting me. You're saying I'm invisible, as opposed to God, it must be hard. And the reality is, in many parts of the world, certainly in rural Europe, rural America, there have been disinvestment. Then the question is, how do you make sense of it? And part of it, again, is just engaging people, listening, even when we disagree with them. It doesn't mean they're right, but it means I see your pain. I say that we have to see people and engage people, not just with the mind, but also with the heart.
Kavita Ramdas So what's a radical idea that shouldn't be radical? And in practical terms, you know.
john a. powell Well, I think, again, I think maybe the most radical idea is, again, belonging without other aid. Very simple, extremely radical. People say, oh, what does that mean? Well, first of all, I can't tell you what it means. It's something because it's something we have to come to together. Just like I can't tell you what equality means. I can't tell you what love means. That's a social concept. (.) But what it raises questions about is then, what are you going to do about the nation state? What are you going to do about the accuracies? What are you going to do about, I don't know. You have to work to keep people apart. You have to work hard to keep people apart. You have to create laws. You have to create. We just had a situation in the United States where Minnesota, which is one of the whitest states in the United States, confronted the United States government to protect immigrants. And they weren't, people are ambivalent in Minnesota. It's like, we want a new immigration policy. But you're not allowed to take parents with their children. You're not allowed to snatch people out of their cars. You're not allowed to treat people as if they have no dignity at all. And these are our neighbors. It's like, so when we call them immigrants, we have one image. We call them our neighbors. It's a completely different image. And so they were calling them neighbors. And they were confronting the military in extremely cold weather in February in Minnesota. And they stirred them down. (.)
Kavita Ramdas And this is just ordinary citizens, right?
john a. powell I said to people, you know, other than the two people who kill, you know none of their names. They're not politicians. They're not the elites. They're not, they're just people saying, no, we're not going to stand for this. And it surprised people. And they stared them down and changed the discourse in the country. And the person who was head of immigration in the United States for that was fired. Because he was doing what President Trump had asked him to do. But he hadn't anticipated people standing up. So to say people belong and to keep people that experience, that opportunity to get to know each other, to be curious about each other, is incredibly powerful.
Kavita Ramdas Once you see them face to face, I mean, that question of being, it's one thing being online, it's a whole other thing sitting next to someone and having this conversation.
john a. powell You know, I've talked to people who cross the political ideological spectrum. I have friends on the left and right. And there are very few instances where we can't reach some kind of commonality. But there have been a few. So sometimes to talk to people, what I call bridging, I'll say there are certain conditions that I have, and not many, but there are some. And one of them is no violence. And sometimes people say, no, we're not going to agree to that. (.) You know, it may turn violent. So I'm not doing it. Right. So there have been those instances. But those are few and far between. Most of the time, people are surprised how much we have in common. (.) And sometimes it's things that are not on the agenda. For example, you like cats? I like cats.
Kavita Ramdas Yes, exactly. Milk chocolate. Are you a milk chocolate or a dark chocolate? Yeah.
john a. powell But it doesn't stay at that level. At some point, once I see a person's humanity and they see mine, it changes a lot.
Kavita Ramdas So through the Institute, what do you do? Like, what are you doing to instill this, whether it's a local level or national level?
john a. powell Well, a couple of things. I mean, a number of things, actually. But how we talk about things, you talk about cultural things, sort of cultural expression. We work with organizers all over the country who are increasingly engaging in what's called long bridging, bringing people together to help people have a shared experience, shared humanity. And it's powerful. (.) At a fundamental level, when you bridge with people, it's not to shift their position. It's to actually share humanity.
Kavita Ramdas To meet them in the middle. //S00: Yeah, exactly.//
john a. powell But we're doing that all over the country now. And the demand is, we can't keep up with it. And frankly, I want to do it globally. One of the reasons I was in Northern Ireland was I feel like they have something to teach us. They've actually gone through this 30 years ago. The people who led that effort were not the politicians. It was the women. //S03: It was the women.// Some mothers who had been not in the front line, not in parliament, but basically saying, these are our sons. These are our husbands. These are who are dying. This has to stop. And it's like, who are you? You don't know anything about politics, right? So it's stepping out of those prescribed roles.
Kavita Ramdas And how did they do that?
john a. powell What do they have to teach us today? So, yes, we do it in schools. We work with government. We work with corporations. We work with anyone. But I think it has to be a much more deliberate global movement. It has to be a movement that we continue to learn from. We have to be in relationship with each other. I was just in Spain, meeting with the peace movement. (..) Complete parallel to what we're doing. Slightly different words, but exactly the same thing. So where should peace prevail? It's everywhere.
Kavita Ramdas Everywhere.
john a. powell Everywhere.
Kavita Ramdas And it's interesting because in my universe where we talk about peace building in countries affected by conflict or extremism, some places the word peace is used. Other places they have to say social harmony because the opposite of peace is war. And in this country right now, they don't want us to talk about peace. They're happy to talk about, as I say, social harmony, social cohesion, pluralism. But peace itself becomes a kind of a contentious context. One question that I would have that we always ask, obviously, is if you were in charge, what would you do? And you can take that if you're in charge to say, you know, you are the president, you're advising the president, whatever. I mean, it can be politics. It can be in the media world. But where would you like to be in charge? And what would you do?
So it's a great question.
john a. powell And it can go in many different ways. So my immediate answer would be, if I was in charge, I'd give up being in charge. Because I believe, and I know you work with different kinds of leadership, I believe we are stronger together. That we is always better than, smarter than I. And I believe in democracy, not in just a way of voting, but people coming together and having collective agency. As African-Americans, sometimes people talk about being kings and queens and the old
Kavita Ramdas days when we were pharaohs and all that.
john a. powell It's like, no. First of all, if I was back 3,000 years ago, I wouldn't be the pharaoh. I wouldn't be the king or queen. I'd be building pyramids. I'd be a slave. I don't want to be the king. I don't want to be the elites. I don't want to be the ones who are deciding other people's lives. To me, that's replicating. It's not the hierarchy is bad because I'm at the top. I think dominance is bad, period. I don't want to dominate. And I learn from you. I learn from others. I grow. I want a society, a system, a culture, an expression that invites that.
Kavita Ramdas It's a very feminist approach. You know that. This is, yeah, in women's spaces, this question of collective leadership, we're hearing this from a lot of people from different sectors saying it's about collectively, what do we do together? So, okay, so that would be one thing. And you create, but where would you put your, where do you, are there, are there particular kind of keys where you think this is, you know, whether it's education policy or culture or politics, where would you want to instill this idea of belonging for people to feel it?
john a. powell I think it's everywhere. You know, the way we do physical structure, how we design buildings, you know, there's this whole thing up from the porch to the patio. It used to be in the United States that all the buildings had front porches. And so you're walking down the street, you see your neighbor and you maybe stop and have lemonade and conversation. And then in the fifties and sixties, we start building patios in the back.
Kavita Ramdas Oh, I see. Oh, interesting.
john a. powell So now you don't physically see people. That's the design. People don't think about it, but it's, I've gone for weeks without seeing my neighbor. I don't know if they're alive or dead. Absolutely.
Kavita Ramdas I mean, suburbia in America, I'm like, where is everyone? Right. Whereas I lived in Georgetown and we were sitting on our stoops, you know, Halloween, you're just there. It's, that's, that's fascinating. Yeah.
john a. powell And in the United States, public became bad.
Kavita Ramdas Yes.
john a. powell So if you, you don't want to use public hospitals, you don't want to live in public housing, you don't want to send your kids to public schools. And Jane Jacobs wrote a book called The Life and Death of Great American Cities. And she said, great cities bring people together by design. Not intending, right? It's like you just get on the tube or the subway and everyone's there. I have a friend who's a multimillionaire and he says one of the things he missed most during the pandemic was being on the subway and just seeing life, right? So how do we actually arrange all different aspects? Right now we do almost the opposite. We have a lot of fear and I think fear is natural, but we have to curate it. It's not unchecked. (.) Right now it's being curated into anger and resentment.
Kavita Ramdas So my father used to say that America had become the country of private wealth and public squalor and it was the alternate to, again, growing up in Europe when he had been in Europe where your public spaces, I mean, here you look at the parks and so forth, are there for everyone to enjoy. So yeah, how did America become, you know, the space of extreme capitalism is what I call it. But yeah, it's fascinating, this question.
john a. powell Well, there's a joke in the United States and that it says, how did the United States become what it is compared to our sister country, Canada? And someone said, well, when the king and queen got a divorce, the queen got Canada and the king got the United States. (.)
Kavita Ramdas There you go. And then the other, you know, along with all this, it's meanwhile saying, you've given up the power to be in charge. What if you were Elon Musk? What if you had the billions or the infinite resources to do what you think needs to be done? What would you do with that?
john a. powell So again, if I was Elon Musk, I'd be Mackenzie Scott.
Kavita Ramdas Yes.
john a. powell As you know, she's given away, I think, $27 billion. She's given away, by some account, a third of what the philanthropic community has done. She's done by herself and without a foundation, a big public. I mean, she does. So literally, I think, you know, I remind people that in the United States, I think five of our states are commonwealth. And what's a commonwealth? At the constitution, at the formula of those states, they acknowledge that wealth is common, commonwealth, or we share stuff in common. And frankly, if I'm not sharing stuff with people, it's not fun.
Kavita Ramdas This is what I find. I'm like, you know, I can understand, vaguely, vaguely, I can understand, okay, you want your first yacht, let's say, right? But even that, you're not going to use it 20, you know, 12 months a year. But why would you need three of them? And what's the point if all of your friends also have yachts?
Sanam Because the whole point of having something is to share it with your friends and family,
Kavita Ramdas right? But this hoarding of wealth that has become, it's almost like we revere these guys. It's ridiculous, right? Right.
john a. powell Yeah. And I think it's basically, I mean, from my perspective, it's like, we're all going to die. And I think part of this is what they call immortality projects. that we're grappling with. People need stuff. People need food. People need shelter. People need a place to worship. But then, as you said, they don't need certainly three yachts. And it shouldn't happen, Rob and Peter to pay Paul. I'm a social introvert, so I like being alone, but I love people. But we're also deeply relational. Part of this is a structural society where we can learn from each other, where we can grow together. If we turn toward each other instead of against each other, then I think the future is bright. (..) If we turn against each other, there's no future. And right now, we're in a world where we're afraid the future will exclude my group. There's no place for my group in the future. That's the thing that when you asked about the people who are turning to violence, I think that's what's driving it.
Kavita Ramdas But it's also the guy on top who is fueling. Because I've talked to gang members. I've talked to militias. They're just ordinary young men as well. And there was no opportunity. And they ended up being pulled into certain directions. But it's that manipulation that happens as well, which is extraordinary, that it's happening more and more, right? That's right.
john a. powell And I live in the Bay Area. I work with a lot of, not so much now, but I used to work a lot with tech companies. And a lot of them did start off, I think, wanting to do something for humanity. And from my perspective, many of them got lost or losing their way in terms of wanting to win at all costs. And I think we have to sort of, you know, move from- //S03: Win what?//
Kavita Ramdas What do they want to win? I mean, they've got the money. They've got the- Right. What do they want to win now?
john a. powell Be number one and beat China, beat the other companies. //S03: There's always somebody else.// That's this anxiety. What the Buddhists call the hungry ghost. It's like, it's never enough. It's never enough. It's just drive toward deep anxiety. And as you look at the United States, we're not a healthy country. We're never the happiest country. We lived shorter times than our European friends and allies. We still haven't grappled with racism. We're not just afraid of immigrants. We're afraid of immigrants from Africa in particular. I mean, that shows up in the data, which says more about America than that's about Africa. We're a country that's really unhealthy. Rich, yes, in terms of material, but really poor in terms of spirit and soul. That's what I would want. I'd want us to live in the world, not where we dominated, not where I dominated, but live in the world where we all belong. And to start saying that, to start living that, what does that mean in terms of school curriculum? (..) Students, when students belong, they perform better. Patients, when people go to the hospital, if the doctor or nurse or healthcare workers spend 90 seconds just seeing the person, acknowledging the humanity, their health outcomes go up tremendously. It doesn't cost, you know, 90 seconds, right? Don't give me another pill. Don't give me another MRI. Just look at me. Acknowledge me. So I think this is what all of us need and want. We have an epidemic of loneliness, most extreme in the United States among young white males. What are we doing wrong? How can we learn?
Kavita Ramdas Our last question is, what gives you hope?
john a. powell Some people say hope is nostalgia for the future. In some sense, I don't organize around hope, but neither do I organize around despair. I believe what we do matter. It doesn't mean it's going to turn out the way we want it to turn out. (.) So I'm not an optimist. I'm not a pessimist. I'm going to call it a possibilist, that our engagement make things possible. So I think we need to be engaged with the world and with each other. And I think if that happens, we'll probably be okay. (.)
Kavita Ramdas Thank you. That's a wonderful way to say it.
Sanam This was If You're in Charge, a podcast brought to you by ICANN, the International Civil Society Action Network. Get in touch and tell us what you think at info at icanpeacework.org and follow our newsletter. Like and subscribe. And please tell everybody else who might like the show. So my thanks to ADA Productions for making the show possible, to A Little Monster Media for our music, and of course to my amazing co-host, Kavita Nandini Ramdas. And finally, to all of you for listening. We'll be back soon. Thank you. Thank you.