The Bridge #101 [Camille A as guest]

in which a friend from Brooklyn updates us on what she's got going on

Hi Bridge readers

I’m Jeffrey’s friend Camille. We first connected when in Brooklyn and our kids started in school together. We discovered other things we had in common: both working in tech, both deeply curious and passionate for social justice.

The past few years, I’ve built out a practice supporting non-profit organizations and projects that need to, or decide to, close. The practice is called The Wind Down, and if you or someone you know is going through a non-profit ending, I offer a free hotline call. I learn so much every time I talk to people about their organizational wind downs, and I also do my best to offer resources and support.

In addition, I also facilitate a community called Stewarding Loss for people working in — or curious about working in— the nonprofit closure space. We have wonderful guests at our monthly gatherings. Feel free to join anytime!

Something About Endings (TO WATCH)

As part of The Wind Down, I decided to start a crowd-sourced memorial page for closed nonprofits. It’s called The NGO Museum and features the closing announcements of nonprofits from around the world — from small theater troupes to large universities.

Recently someone sent me the announcement of the closing of The Big Quiet, which was a global initiative to promote meditation. Formed initially in the founder’s apartment, it grew to be a team of dozens that facilitated mass meditation sessions in large arenas, parks, and shopping centers.

People often assume that closures are the result of some catastrophe or failure, but many closures – in fact, my favorite closures! – are intentional and the result of the organization having accomplished what it set out to do. The Big Quiet is a wonderful example of that. Check out the beautiful video they created to commemorate all the amazing work they did over 9 years of existence.

Something About Bearing Witness (TO READ)

I’ve been slowly working my way through Vanessa Andreotti’s excellent book Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. The writer’s central contention is that modernity is a system of colonial and extractivist relations, and its time is rapidly coming to an end. She holds that the work ahead – for those of us so inclined and so courageous — is to bear witness to these endings (the endings of an unjust system) and then continue to transform ourselves by learning and observing.

The book is peppered with exercises and frequently has the reader employ tools useful for engaging with the provocations in each chapter. One of the tools is “The Bus Within Us.” Imagine that within you is a bus full of different passengers. Those passengers each have feelings and thoughts of their own. It’s a bit chaotic maybe and can even be contradictory, but to imagine such a bus is to recognize that sometimes we have a wide variety of different thoughts and feelings inside. If we can recognize that, then we can become more open to other perspectives, when talking with others on topics we might initially disagree on.

Vanessa Andreotti offers us these tools (including The Bus Within Us) as a way to break spells, to challenge us to behave differently (on the inside) in the face of seismic changes happening globally. While the old system of modernity needs be “undone,” there is still critical care work needing to be done, thus the title Hospicing Modernity.

Something About Grief (TO LISTEN)

A favorite album of the year to date for me is Stankface Standing Soldier by Mato Wayuhi. Mato (who uses his given last name Standing Soldier in the album title) is not only a music composer but also an actor, filmmaker, and rapper from the Oglala Lakota tribe in South Dakota.

Stankface is his third album; it’s a tribute to his late father, with whom he had a strained relationship. The songs on the album cover grief, addiction, depression, imposter-syndrome, class, love, loss, and his evolving relationship to his own sexuality through the lens of his Lakota culture. I love every song on the album, and the way he intersperses songs with archival audio of his father, grandmother, and great grandmother is incredibly beautiful. On Stankface Standing Soldier, Mato Wayuhi balances depth and profundity with playfulness and a genuine, infectious enthusiasm. I especially recommend the album to people who enjoy artists like Kendrick Lamar, anderson.paak, and Tyler, The Creator. 

When my father passed, I flew back first class /
One of the first time I ever did that /
You know, grief don’t come with a roadmap /
& it don’t take cash /
But it won’t take back /
All of my remember-whens /
You made me a better man /
The happiest I’ve ever been

[Mato Wayuhi, “FEE FI FO FUM” feat Black Belt Eagle Scout]

Thanks so much for reading. If you liked what I shared, you can sign up for *my* newsletter Closing Remarks. It’s a semi-regular link-roundup of news and views from the world of non-profit closures, project endings, and the shifting narrative around longevity and impact in civil society. Take care,

Camille A