Changing the Elusive 'System'
Canada is once again at a turning point, the warts exposed in areas like poverty and access to health care, due to COVID-19, coupled with the call to action around police violence with the Black Lives Matter movement has left more people making a commitment to push for systemic change. But beyond the marching, protests, letters to politicians and other direct action, you may still be wondering really what this elusive ‘system’ is that you are fighting back against and further, how do we go about sustainable change?
The System.
When we have spent much of our time in society under the thumb of a socio-economic-political system that is weaved so intricately into our private and public life we don’t even realize ( or realize all too well) its power over our institutions and behaviour, It becomes “just the way it is”. That is not entirely wrong, the best way to describe the ‘system’ is through using Brofenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, which uses layers stemming from the individual to characterize elements of society and levels of impact. There are four critical levels to explore within this theory in order to understand our system as a whole, microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem.
The Microsystem is also known as the individual level, or ‘you’. This reflects your immediate environment and includes people that you have direct contact with. This level of the system talks to how we act as both recipients and contributors to these personal relationships.
Changemaking Opportunities:
Reflexivity
Reflect on your social identity and the values that affect it. You should be able to understand the social world as it’s experienced by both yourself as well as well as others. Journaling is a great tool to do this.
Implicit Bias
Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.
Uncover Your Implicit Bias with this test
Your Privilege
It’s time to understand more about your implicit privilege, given to you by the system, by unpacking that knapsack. Read up on “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” of white privilege that stands true today.
The Mesosystem operates at the relational level, and talks to the relationships between the microsystems in your life and the cyclical nature of their influence at a higher level. These could include the impact of your experiences in how you interact with schools, peers, religious affiliations, workplaces, and neighbourhoods as broader units (or vice versa).
Changemaking Opportunities:
Hold Accountability
Recognize bias in yourself and work to change your behaviour and attitude and hold your peers accountable in the same way by speaking up when you witness oppressive comments or actions.
Bystander Training
Learn how to effectively speak up as a bystander, so when the opportunities arise, you are ready to speak up and have the tools to do it well. More on Bystander Training
Tackle Policies
Challenge bias, racism and sexism by advocating for better processes and policies in the places important in your life, such as your workplace, school or religious institutes.
The Exosystem level refers to the main structures that govern society and help bring order to our lives. These include things like our economic system, political system, education system, government systems and religious systems. These systems are also the ones that ensure inequality prevails as they reinforce both good and bad values and are rooted in outdated traditional systems.
Changemaking Opportunities:
Engage in Direct Action
Become part of a mass working towards the greater good through direct action. You can publish an opinion piece, engage in social media advocacy or organize/participate in a protest/demonstration that advocates for sustainable transformational change.
Rework the Current System
Anti–Oppressive Practice seeks to identify strategies to construct power in a way that will address the systemic inequalities that are operating simultaneously at the individual, group and institutional level, as opposed to producing and reproducing oppression.
The Macrosystem is the governing body for all of our public life. It’s the value system that informs our shared cultural beliefs, customs and laws. It defines how to implicitly act, and the reason why some of us make conscious decisions to act differently when we practice self-awareness and honour equity in our values. The Macrosystem is also our scapegoat for a lot of needed change with beliefs like “Canada isn’t racist.”, etc. It allows us to be complicit in our warts, particularly if we are on the side of privilege. When people talk about sustainable transformational change- this is where it should happen.
Changemaking Opportunities:
- WORK THAT SYSTEM….
- WORK IT AT EVERY LEVEL….
- STAY ORGANIZED
- KEEP UP THE PRESSURE
- DON’T WAIVER