The following is part of a series of articles that were published between 2018-2019. This is to preserve the beginning of the Transformative Solidarity Model and honor the possibilities of growth.
An Active-Ally is someone who witnesses an injustice and responds to it in any situation.
The Active-Ally Model is a guide to a process. It is not prescriptive. It is not a step list or a how-to guide. It was developed through my experience of becoming. Through questioning my ways of being. Through the challenge of living in the gray, the middle, the margins, and the otherwise. The Active-Ally Model offers a way to think differently, to move and be differently. It does not offer a destination. It offers a different lens to do life through.
This model is an ask to live and show up differently. To engage with relations differently. To spend time in the awareness of our being – from the ugly to amazing.
It asks us to live in a space of curiosity and to risk vulnerability.
To step into the realm of possibility and becoming. It requires us to sit in the discomfort of change and the constant movement of the in-between. It asks us to live in the honesty that is not about locating Truth.
To, more often, exist in the space between. To be honest and vulnerable. This lens requires sitting in the unknowing, the discomfort of not understanding, the fear of being witnessed; to reject the understanding of right or wrong. It asks us to acknowledge and love ourselves in ways many of us have never experienced. To love others in ways many of us think we are not capable of. This model asks us to hold grace for ourselves and for others. It asks us to risk intimacy and embarrassment.
The Active-Ally Model is a cyclical process, in three phases which are in conversation with each other.
The three phases are:
Image Description: A large, black circle with three words and blue arrows placed around its edge. Each word is purple, framed by a thick, black lined rectangle. Around the edge of the circle are the three phase. If the circle were a compass then at North, is the word AWARENESS. Southeast is the word ACTION. Southwest is the word INTEGRATION. Between each word is a blue arrow indicating a The clockwise movement around the circle. Another black line, on the inside of the circle, curves inward between AWARENESS and ACTION, with another blue arrow indicating a clockwise movement between Awareness and Action. Between Awareness and Integration is another inward curved line with another blue arrow, indicating a clockwise movement between Integration and Awareness. This diagram model is meant to represent the conversation between the three phases, as well as indicate Awareness as the touchstone for the other two phase.
