Masumi Maei Hayashi-Smith
When I started the BKF fellowship, I intended to apply it to multiple places in my life. I initially saw that the work of one author would help me with one area, and another author would pertain to another. As I have had more time to process the books I’ve read and the authors I’ve talked with, it’s so clear that the influences of my BKF findings have connected to all areas of my life.
My work has mostly been focused in three areas: organizing Thrive Street Choir, running my school’s emerging inclusion, diversity, equity program, and teaching elementary music classes. As the fellowship progressed, I saw that of the three projects, the knowledge I gained from the fellowship most strongly helped me with the Thrive Street Choir (TSC). So, while the fellowship helped me greatly in all areas, I am going to focus on my progress with TSC. I saw the most change in TSC because it is a new organization and one that I have a lot of ability to experiment with. My largest question with TSC had to do with community. As an organization that brings music to protests and actions, we have become increasingly in demand. As the number of our participants grew, I noticed that people often referred to the choir as “they” rather than “we” which frustrated me. In processing why this happened, and how to naturally get people to identify with the choir, I was most helped by three contributions of the fellowship: Charles Vogl’s book, “The Art of Community”, a very helpful group call with John Ott, and feedback from the culminating BKF “Mastermind” session.
In reading Charles’ book, I saw more clearly that what our organization needed was ritual around our activities and elements of membership. Out of that, I worked with fellow organizers to create protocol around the way our gatherings would flow that included space for people to share their names, intentions, and reflections. We also have plans to make identifying patches that we can distribute to members when they arrive at their first action. This idea was test-run at our largest action to date, the Climate March, where we had around seventy singers join in singing protest.
In talking with John Ott, I learned how important it is that I continue to ask for participation from the community. Before, I had been concerned that if I asked too much of others, then they would shy away from the organization. Instead John helped me see that by asking more, I was actually increasing people’s investment. In particular, he emphasized leadership development. Out of the conversation, I started an initiative to raise up and encourage song leaders. John helped me realize that more than an organization of singers who go to protests, we are actually an organization of song leaders, and along with them we also embrace all those who want to sing with us. The reason I feel like it is important to focus on song leaders is that puts us in a position to help build more leaders in today’s movements. I can see more clearly now that by promoting ourselves as an organization that helps train and elevate song leaders, we can help deploy and encourage songleading from activist organizations all over the bay area. It feels even more clear that among activist music organizations, we have a unique niche, and what we do is incredibly scalable.
Out of the phone call with John, the leadership team agreed to reach out individually to all the people on our list who had signed up as songleaders to see if they would like any support, and in what ways they wanted to participate in our organization. Through that process, I was able to connect with community members, and raise enthusiasm for multiple events coming up. It was powerful to see how the phone calls, meetings, and events all worked to create a kind of momentum. During that period of a few weeks, in addition to reaching out to song leaders, we had the following events planned: A song circle, a community gathering for the larger umbrella organization, a songleader training, and the Climate March. After talking with songleaders, a few felt encouraged to share songs at the song circle. More were enthusiastic about the songleader training, which had over 100 people attend it. Later at the larger umbrella organization gathering, I could see that people who had just met at the song circle had found each other and were creating new friendships. The Climate March was the greatest mobilization of song leaders where we had nineteen songleaders ready to lead songs for the march. Most of the song leaders led songs from a loudspeaker during the march. However, others led songs from larger stages, and were also deployed to help lead songs at with different factions of the march.
Additionally, the March was a big moment for Thrive Street Choir because the leaders of the 30,000 person march reached out to us specifically to lead music and two musical moments of solidarity at the beginning and end of the march. In the process, we made reference videos of the songs (which got around 4000 views), and met many other activist organizations eager to work with us.
In terms of developing internal leadership, we also found a standing time to have organizational leadership meetings, and are planning to have our first leadership retreat this weekend.
Lastly, in hearing feedback from the mastermind, I was reminded how important it is to have regular meetings. From that, I have made sure that we hold monthly song circles with rotating facilitators. Since making the circles a predictable and regularly happening event, we have consistently filled our venues to capacity. While this poses a new challenge of finding places that will hold us all, it is a really good sign. I have also written weekly welcome messages to members in our facebook group on any week when we have three or more members. Since starting the fellowship, our membership has increased by about 25%, and it feels like we are in a really solid place of growth.
Outside of Thrive Street Choir, I found the work I have done around leadership and community to be almost equally as rewarding with my school’s Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity committee. Out of the fellowship, and guided by a phone call with Tiffany Jana, I worked on an inclusive and participatory process of writing our school mandate. The process has been really generative and exciting for committee members as we work together to envision what we stand for and want to achieve. A few months ago, we finished our first draft of the mandate, and spent the last few months circulating the mandate among different communities for feedback. Just this week, we shared the mandate with the entire parent body with an invitation to an open town hall at the end of the month to discuss the contents and intentions of the mandate. After the town hall, the mandate will be finalized, and we have already been invited to post it on our school’s website. While a mandate is just the beginning of the process, it is important that as we create this group, we emulate the kind world we are trying to create on a macro-scale. I really see this reflected in the way our group has been working together, and the community we have created among ourselves. I’m feeling excited for our future.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to be a part of this fellowship. I have been so inspired by my cohort, by the facilitators, and by all the authors with whom I was able to interface.
In reading Charles’ book, I saw more clearly that what our organization needed was ritual around our activities and elements of membership. Out of that, I worked with fellow organizers to create protocol around the way our gatherings would flow that included space for people to share their names, intentions, and reflections. We also have plans to make identifying patches that we can distribute to members when they arrive at their first action. This idea was test-run at our largest action to date, the Climate March, where we had around seventy singers join in singing protest.
In talking with John Ott, I learned how important it is that I continue to ask for participation from the community. Before, I had been concerned that if I asked too much of others, then they would shy away from the organization. Instead John helped me see that by asking more, I was actually increasing people’s investment. In particular, he emphasized leadership development. Out of the conversation, I started an initiative to raise up and encourage song leaders. John helped me realize that more than an organization of singers who go to protests, we are actually an organization of song leaders, and along with them we also embrace all those who want to sing with us. The reason I feel like it is important to focus on song leaders is that puts us in a position to help build more leaders in today’s movements. I can see more clearly now that by promoting ourselves as an organization that helps train and elevate song leaders, we can help deploy and encourage songleading from activist organizations all over the bay area. It feels even more clear that among activist music organizations, we have a unique niche, and what we do is incredibly scalable.
Out of the phone call with John, the leadership team agreed to reach out individually to all the people on our list who had signed up as songleaders to see if they would like any support, and in what ways they wanted to participate in our organization. Through that process, I was able to connect with community members, and raise enthusiasm for multiple events coming up. It was powerful to see how the phone calls, meetings, and events all worked to create a kind of momentum. During that period of a few weeks, in addition to reaching out to song leaders, we had the following events planned: A song circle, a community gathering for the larger umbrella organization, a songleader training, and the Climate March. After talking with songleaders, a few felt encouraged to share songs at the song circle. More were enthusiastic about the songleader training, which had over 100 people attend it. Later at the larger umbrella organization gathering, I could see that people who had just met at the song circle had found each other and were creating new friendships. The Climate March was the greatest mobilization of song leaders where we had nineteen songleaders ready to lead songs for the march. Most of the song leaders led songs from a loudspeaker during the march. However, others led songs from larger stages, and were also deployed to help lead songs at with different factions of the march.
Additionally, the March was a big moment for Thrive Street Choir because the leaders of the 30,000 person march reached out to us specifically to lead music and two musical moments of solidarity at the beginning and end of the march. In the process, we made reference videos of the songs (which got around 4000 views), and met many other activist organizations eager to work with us.
In terms of developing internal leadership, we also found a standing time to have organizational leadership meetings, and are planning to have our first leadership retreat this weekend.
Lastly, in hearing feedback from the mastermind, I was reminded how important it is to have regular meetings. From that, I have made sure that we hold monthly song circles with rotating facilitators. Since making the circles a predictable and regularly happening event, we have consistently filled our venues to capacity. While this poses a new challenge of finding places that will hold us all, it is a really good sign. I have also written weekly welcome messages to members in our facebook group on any week when we have three or more members. Since starting the fellowship, our membership has increased by about 25%, and it feels like we are in a really solid place of growth.
Outside of Thrive Street Choir, I found the work I have done around leadership and community to be almost equally as rewarding with my school’s Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity committee. Out of the fellowship, and guided by a phone call with Tiffany Jana, I worked on an inclusive and participatory process of writing our school mandate. The process has been really generative and exciting for committee members as we work together to envision what we stand for and want to achieve. A few months ago, we finished our first draft of the mandate, and spent the last few months circulating the mandate among different communities for feedback. Just this week, we shared the mandate with the entire parent body with an invitation to an open town hall at the end of the month to discuss the contents and intentions of the mandate. After the town hall, the mandate will be finalized, and we have already been invited to post it on our school’s website. While a mandate is just the beginning of the process, it is important that as we create this group, we emulate the kind world we are trying to create on a macro-scale. I really see this reflected in the way our group has been working together, and the community we have created among ourselves. I’m feeling excited for our future.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to be a part of this fellowship. I have been so inspired by my cohort, by the facilitators, and by all the authors with whom I was able to interface.