EPISODE 13: ERIC WARD

MARY MORTEN: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to “Gathering Ground,” where with each new episode, a special guest and I explore what it looks like to survive and thrive, more importantly, in the nonprofit landscape. I'm Mary Morten, president of Morten Group, LLC. Morten Group is a national consulting firm that operates in Chicago and works with clients from coast to coast and everywhere in between. Our work is carried out through organizational development, research, executive placements, and diversity, racial equity, and inclusion.

Before we get started with our interview, I want to remind you that “Gathering Ground” can now be found on Apple Podcasts, in addition to anywhere else you listen to podcasts! Just search “Gathering Ground” on iTunes to find us. Be sure to rate and subscribe to get a notification whenever there’s a new episode.

I am thrilled to welcome to “Gathering Ground,” all the way from Portland, Oregon, Eric Ward, executive director of Western States Center.

Originally from Los Angeles, Eric Ward began his civil rights career when the white nationalist movement was engaged in violent paramilitary activity that sought to undermine democratic governance in the Pacific Northwest. Eric founded and directed a community project to expose and counter hate groups and respond to bigoted violence with the Community Alliance of Lane County. With the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, Eric worked with government leaders, civil rights campaigners, businesses leaders, and law enforcement officials to establish over 120 task forces in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. As one of a handful of prominent leaders of color working to counter this new manifestation of organized hate, Eric successfully encouraged some violent neo-Nazi leaders to renounce racism and violence. Joining the Center for New Community as national field director in Chicago, which is where I met Eric, Eric assisted immigrant rights advocates in addressing the growing influence of xenophobia on public policy.

Now Eric sits on numerous boards, committees, and tasks forces, and he serves as the executive director of Western States Center, an organization whose mission it is to connect and build the power of community organizations, to challenge and transform individuals, organizations, and systems to achieve racial, gender, and economic justice.

We’re pleased to welcome Eric to “Gathering Ground.”

Hey, Eric! How are you?

ERIC WARD: Mary, I’m so glad to be with you. Thanks for inviting me.

MM: Absolutely, and I’m so happy that it worked out. We are in uncharted, unprecedented times, and of course, with you being in Seattle — I’m sorry, you’re in Portland, but tell me, how are things going in your neck of the woods? Because you all are really going through it with the coronavirus.

EW: We are. We are certainly thinking about folks in New York but also Seattle and San Francisco, two other places where COVID-19 has really had an impact. And Oregon, so far, appears to be lucky, but we don’t know. I think, like the rest of the country, we can only tell by those who have actually been able to be tested, and the parameters for testing are just so limited, and there are so few tests available. And it is taking anywhere from 24 hours but up to 10 days for test results to come back. There’s just no clear picture of how widespread COVID-19 is in Oregon. And so we are holding our breath. I think, like many places across the country, the dark truth is this, that we are only going to be able to tell how widespread it is once we start to see the mortality numbers begin to settle in in Oregon. So we are holding our breath. We are expecting it to be as widespread as it is in most parts of the country. We think that there is a lot of secondary impact around COVID that many organizations and leaders are turning to address, but we see ourselves as in this with the rest of our country and the world.

MM: Well, it is the new normal, as I’ve been talking to about with a number of our client partners. And we are, as you’ve, you know, certainly indicated, we’re really at the beginning of it in many cases, certainly here in Chicago, where we are seeing huge numbers. So our hearts and thoughts and prayers are with everyone and all of us, because we’re all in this together. It is one of those times when you hear that and I actually think people might mean it.

What have you heard or experienced with regard to people being more caring, more open? Are you seeing that yet in your area?

EW: We are. We are certainly seeing the majority of Oregonians really stepping up in real ways, you know, taking collective responsibility for their community and for their state and (to get ?) with the courage of medical personnel in Oregon, some who are working without any safety equipment because masks simply do not exist in the numbers needed. You are seeing it in folks who are called gig workers but who have become the front line in the confrontation around containing and mitigating the impact of the coronavirus, folks who are, you know, delivering groceries. I mean, it is powerful — restaurants who have shut down only to reopen to provide food to hospitals. It is quite moving the mutual support that is developing. And we’re seeing it with local and state-elected officials and we’d like to see more of it from the federal government. We think this is a national crisis that calls for responsible leadership whose first priority is to the cohesion of the United States and the protection of the American population, and all of that population.

On the other hand, Mary, I will say this: We are also seeing emerging another face that is not so friendly and seems to run counter to the values that we embrace here in Oregon, those who are using this as an opportunity to express anti-Asian bigotry and discrimination, targeting that community. We are seeing it in kind of a not-in-my-backyard NIMBY-type rhetoric that is less interested in supporting one’s neighbors and other Oregonians and has turned its back through selfishness and ideas that somehow rural and urban Oregon are facing somehow distinctly different struggles, which is not true. But overall, most people see the importance of mutual support, but that mutual support won’t take the place of federal intervention. What we really need is our federal government to work right now.

MM: Understood.

Well, we will undoubtedly come back to that at some point, but I appreciate you sort of setting the context for what’s happening in Oregon.

Let’s set the context for you and your sort of upbringing, if you will. We always like to start with a little bit of context. Helps our listeners maybe understand why you do the work you do now. So set the scene for us, if you will. You grew up in Los Angeles, and tell us what that was like.

EW: Yeah, so I grew up in Los Angeles, and I grew up at a time that desegregation was beginning to come into play. So for, you know, most of my childhood, Los Angeles was fairly segregated, most of my growing up experiences with African-American and the Chicano community in L.A. In sixth grade, I moved down to Long Beach, California, which was a suburb of Los Angeles. I came there at a time when the school district was desegregating. So many of us found ourselves being bused to schools that were up to an hour away on city bus into neighborhoods we had never been into. And I, like many other African-American and Latino students found ourselves in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades walking to and from the school bus only to be taunted by folks who were driving by, screaming things like “Monkey, go back to Africa.” Now, remember, this is not 1950s American South. This is the West Coast, a suburb of Los Angeles in the 1970s. And it happened so much we never even thought about telling our parents or teachers. It was just normal. It was what it meant to go back and forth to school each day.

Look, eventually I decided that I wasn’t going to run anymore, that I wasn’t going to try to hide from that bigoted rhetoric. And it was really in that moment when I decided to stand my ground that I just realized that I didn’t want anyone else to grow up in a world where they were targeted because of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, disability — you name it — that it was important for us to stand against bullies.

You know, as I was coming up in high school, the punk scene was taking off in L.A. Now, the punk scene in L.A. is much more diverse — (laughs) — than folks realize, so it meant nothing to go see Motörhead one night — right? — to go see X the next night, and the third night to finish it up by watching the Red Hot Chili Peppers open up for Grandmaster Flash. Right?

MM: Wow!

EW: It was a diverse punk scene, and the music that we took in was very diverse. And it was in that punk scene that some of the familiar patterns began to repeat themselves: individuals who were showing up with “White Power” signs intimidating folks they thought were vulnerable in the punk movement. And we had to make a decision around whether we decided to defend our scene or to let someone else take it over. And that really began my racial justice activism, which I brought to me when I moved to Oregon in the ’80s, and where I learned how to organize. I became a community organizer in the late ’80s in Oregon working with a group called Clergy and Laity Concerned, now the Community Alliance of Lane County. And, you know, once you get that fire in the belly, you never turn around. And I’ve spent the rest of my life helping communities respond to hate violence and hate groups around the country. Right? How do we ensure that on top of all the other stressors and challenges we face in a society that we’re not also feeling the pressure of armed and unarmed paramilitary organizations who are seeking to intimidate people based off of their differences. And I’ve been proud of that work. That work continues today. I’m the executive director of Western States Center, which exists in the Pacific Northwest that works nationwide to expand racial and gender justice by community-based organizing, leadership development, and capacity building of grassroots organizations in our region and around the country.

MM: Well, that is a great summary of your background and it brings us to where you are now. I want to go back, just for a moment, because, of course, I didn’t know any of this had occurred and what your background was, necessarily, when we were working together in Chicago. How did you go from school to working with the — what is it, the Alliance — the Community Alliance of Lane County — to Chicago? Like, how did you come to Chicago? What brought you to Chicago?

EW: Yeah. So, you know, it starts when I and four other friends moved to Eugene, Oregon in the fall of 1986. You know, approximately a year later I began a student — I started [at] Lane Community College. I had gotten a work study grant and was the receptionist of the multicultural center at Lane Community College. It was then that something really important happened that changed my life forever. I was told by the head of the multicultural center that a speaker was coming to campus, and did I mind hosting him, by taking home from class to class and making sure he had lunch. And, you know, for a poor kid like me who never really knew where his next meal was coming from, the idea of a free lunch was incredibly enticing.

MM: (Laughs.)

EW: But I became more enticed when the head of the multicultural center said — you know, and he was just released from federal prison. Right? And his name was Dennis Banks, and he was a leader of the American Indian movement in the 1960s and ’70s. And he had just been released from prison and was out on a speaking tour. And so, you know, I was just a punk rock kid who, you know, was cynical about, you know, most things, trying to find myself, had just moved from a very diverse city — right? — to one that was very monocultural, about 90 percent white. Most black folks hadn’t even been in the state until around World War II — right? — so a new black community for all intents and purposes. And I was just intrigued. And so I got to spend the day listening to this Native leader speak to groups about race, about inequality, things that I thought were happenstance but quickly understanding that in fact these were systemic problems. Right? They weren’t just because someone was an individual bigot and wanted to make someone else’s day hard, that these were structural inequalities that were having impact on society.

And so we were having lunch and I’m sitting with him, and basically, I can — you know, my one claim to fame is I sat across from Dennis Banks one day and he basically asked me what was I all about. And you know what? That changed my life forever because I started to ask myself, what am I about? And what I am about, I decided, was helping people find their own power. And that led me to organizing in Oregon. Then I took a job in the Pacific Northwest at a place called Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. That organization eventually closed its doors. And then I moved to Chicago when I was offered a job as the national field director for an organization called The Center for New Community, which was launching a project to work with immigrant leaders and organizations in how to respond to increasing anti-Latino rhetoric and attacks in the United States. And that’s what brought me out to Chicago in September of 2003.

MM: All right. Well —

EW: And I fell in love with Chicago three days later.

MM: There’s much here —

EW: It is the center of God’s universe.

MM: Yes. Well, absolutely.

EW: Yeah.

MM: And likewise, I just have to say that for the last several years, we have worked in the Pacific Northwest. Didn’t know you were there — (laughs) — when we were doing all that work there. We still actually are working with — we have a client right now in Seattle, who, as you can imagine, we won’t be seeing in person any time soon, but we are still doing, yes, work in that area, and it’s absolutely beautiful. And what really -- I think it’s difficult for people to think this is where there’s a hotbed of activity with regard to white nationalism and antisemitism, and I really want to move into that part of our conversation because I think you’ve done such an extraordinary job of showing why antisemitism and racism really are inextricably linked and why they must both be dismantled.

So let’s talk a little bit about how you came to understand that. You have an incredible article that you wrote in 2017 that I read. I’ve read, actually — the funny thing was that I was looking for some materials for our client in the Pacific Northwest, which is the Pride Foundation, around antisemitism, and your article popped up, and I thought, wait a minute, I know Eric Ward. I had no idea he was doing —

EW: (Laughs.)

MM: — this work as well. And let me just say, the picture of you in that article, Eric, I think is important for everyone to see — (laughs) — and so we’ll be putting that on the website, just so you know. (Laughter.)

But seriously —

EW: It is — yeah. Those photos.

MM: Yes, it is a great photo and I think, really, sort of crystallizes the background that you were talking about growing up.

But tell us how you came to make that connection between antisemitism and racism, which is long overdue. I mean, of course, you weren’t the first one to do it, nor will you be the last, but I think you’ve done it in such an accessible manner that I think it really is something we want to lift up here on “Gathering Ground.” So let’s talk about that connection.

EW: Yeah. So I moved up to the Pacific Northwest in the mid-’80s, and right before me, another individual also moved up from Southern California, and his name was Richard Butler, and he didn’t move to Oregon; he moved to Idaho, northern Idaho, specifically, outside of a town called Hayden — near Hayden Lake, Idaho. And while I was trying to find myself, Richard Butler knew who he was and who he wanted to be. He started a church that he opened up called Church of Jesus Christ Christian/Aryan Nations. And the Aryan Nation, as it became known, taught a pseudo-religious belief called Christian identity, and the three tenets that he preached were Jews were the literal children of Satan; two, that people of color were subhuman or chattel, meaning, in his eyes and his adherents’ eyes, people of color had no souls; they might as well have been cattle. And the third was that white Northern Europeans were the true descendants of the tribes of Israel and that the United States was to be like the new Israel and that Jews were fake Jews; they were, in fact, not influenced by the devil but they saw them as the devil incarnate.

Now, the Aryan Nations, why this is important is because the Aryan Nations soon after releases a document called the Northwest Imperative, and the Northwest Imperative called on Neo-Nazis, Klans members — right? — and other white supremacists to relocate to the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain states in order to create an Aryan homeland. And while not everyone moved up, a lot of folks ended up hearing that call and moving to the Pacific Northwest, to a place that had a low density of people of color and had values that these groups could take advantage of, such as, you know, what my neighbor does is my neighbor’s business. Right? It’s not my business. And so folks were reluctant to criticize these hardcore racists that were coming into their community.

Now, as I was organizing and other folks were organizing — this is pre-Internet, and so you couldn’t go research a group by Googling them. Right? You actually either had to attend meetings or you had to get on their mailing list. Right? And so those of us began to organize against some of the hate crimes and intimidation that was happening.

How bad was it? Well, those affiliated with the Aryan Nations were involved in the assassination of a radio Jewish talk show host by the name of Alan Berg, who was a talk show host on KOA radio in Denver. He was gunned down one night out in front of his home because he had been arguing with members of the Aryan Nations, who were deeply antisemitic. They were also involved in armored car robberies. And then, other individuals who were aligned with other white supremacists, soon to be white nationalist organizations, were involved in other acts of discrimination and violence, including the murder in 1988 of an Ethiopian immigrant by the name of Mulugeta Seraw on the streets of Portland.

This was the environment in the Pacific Northwest.

As we were doing that research that I was talking about, we began to notice something, that yes, the fliers and the rhetoric and the messages were deeply racist, deeply homophobic, deeply anti-Latino. Right? But almost every flier or every speech always referenced Jews — right? — and not Jews as simply another minority group to be targeted but always positioning Jews as somehow the puppet masters, where people of color were the puppets of Jews. It was in the caricatures on the fliers. It was in some of the hardcore messages by white supremacists and white nationalist leaders. And it became clear to us that if we wanted to build an effective response against what we now know and call white nationalism that we needed an understanding of this antisemitic worldview that was fueling this white nationalist movement.

So I often say, Mary, that I came to understand antisemitism not simply because, you know, it’s good to understand how different forms of bigotry function in society, I came to understand antisemitism because it was the lever upon which we could push back against this white nationalist movement. It was a direct pushback to the worldview that they were promoting in our region.

MM: So when you think about this work and how you’ve come to do it in such a deep manner, what has been the reaction from others as you talk about antisemitism as a form of racism and really talk about the fact that to dismantle racism we must also dismantle antisemitism? What’s been the reaction that you’ve received?

EW: Yeah. So the reaction I think at first was one of disbelief. Right? You know, how could people who have white skin be victims of racism in American society or potential victims of racism in American society? I think that was one natural pushback. The second was one of a hierarchy of oppression. Right? If this group hadn’t experienced the same level of oppression — right? — that people of color had experienced or LGBTQ folks had experienced — right? — did the oppression that they were dealing with rise to a level of concern? Right? Why did it need to be taken seriously?

And then I think the third, particularly for those of us who are rights activists and work on human rights issues — right? — it was hard for us to hold the complexity of antisemitism along with our critiques — right? — of Israeli government policies that denied the rights — right? — of Palestinian people.

And I think those three things made it very difficult for progressive and left spaces — right? — to want to come to terms with what I was calling a rising threat in the United States. But if I could respond to that, you know, my response is is that antisemitism in some ways functions like other forms of bigotry, and in that one way that it functions (generally ?) is through the act of denial. Right? All of us typically play a role in denying systemic forms of bigotry until we are forced to acknowledge them. That has been no different than around transphobia, homophobia, racism, misogyny. Right? Most progressive groups, while we love — and leaders — while we love to pretend we were born woke — right? —

MM: (Laughs.)

EW: — and were woke before we were born — right? —

MM: If only. (Laughs.)

EW: — the truth — right? — that we don’t confess is that most of us were actually dragging — were pulled dragging and screaming into intersectionality. Right? And many of us struggled around that. And so I think in the same way we find ourselves in the moment, where folks are struggling around the intersectionality of antisemitism — it’s not an issue we’ve had to discuss in decades. It’s not an issue that we felt was important. Right? And we are in a moment, though, where we have to grapple with it because it is a key to preserving real inclusive democracy in America. The truth is is that antisemitism isn’t just a threat to the Jewish community, it is a threat to any of us who believe in government that is people-centered, transparent, and accountable. And it is, at the end of the day, left unchecked — right? — where we are most vulnerable in our own racial justice and rights movements today.

MM: Well, I certainly have had my own experiences as — growing up in a family that was very Catholic, very, very Catholic, I often say there were three photos on our mantle: It was Martin Luther King, Jesus, and Mayor Daley, the father.

EW: Yes. (Laughs.)

MM: And so that was — that kind of summed it up. That was our family. And as you, I’m sure, have experienced too, people often will assume they can talk to you about other groups. You know, you talk about this hierarchy of oppression, and that’s actually a term that we use in some of our racial equity work, because people do want to pit — right? — one group against the other. And to your point, this idea of intersectionality people came to very, very slowly. And so growing up in a family where one of my brothers was studying to be a brother — right? — in the Catholic church, meant that there were, certainly in the late ’60s, early ’70s, lots of white men running through our house because that’s — those are the folks in the — you know, that were studying to be brothers. There weren’t a lot of young black men doing this. And so, as a result of just my exposure to all different kinds of groups and going to our community center, I started taking drama classes at our community center, and my instructor was Jewish. My drama teacher was Jewish. And so while I was reading I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, I was also reading The Promise and My Name Is Asher Lev — (laughs) — and all of those books growing up. And so I had the very different sort of understanding of what it meant to be Jewish. I thought it was very similar, you know — still do! — (laughs) — to being Catholic, of course —

EW: (Laughs.)

MM: — certainly with the guilt aspects my mother would run by me.

So I — it was just a very different sort of upbringing, and I didn’t understand that people — even people who were black who had experienced all kinds of discrimination felt that it was completely OK to completely denigrate Jewish people. And I can remember certainly as an adult — and actually, interestingly enough, it was at a pride party where someone used a really derogatory term about Jewish folks, and I had to call them on it. And they were shocked. They were shocked that I did this and that I said anything.

What have you seen happen as a result of the 2016 election? I was actually in — oh, goodness — somewhere right outside Seattle. Again, beautiful place where one of the staff people that we were working with said, well, you know, you do want to be careful when you’re here because we have a lot of white nationalists here. And I said — I was shocked to find that out, and that they, of course, felt empowered after the election, in some cases, and so we’re hearing more and seeing more about them. Is that what your work has also found?

EW: It has. I mean, we know that white nationalists, while the number of organizations have shrunk — right? — the growth of individual organizations has grown substantially. So we’re seeing a consolidation, and I’d base that off of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Year in Hate report. Their numbers suggest that white nationalists are consolidating within organizations. We know that they have been active, and more active, not only in community-style organizing and violence but within the electoral sphere as well. More white nationalists have run for public office in 2018 than any time since the civil rights movement victories in 1965. So certainly the white nationalist movement is on the rise and it has had a footprint here in the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain states for some time.

You know, why has it been tolerated? Well, I think it’s been tolerated for a couple of reasons. One is communities of color in the Pacific Northwest and mountain states are very small, so the dominant populations are white folks. And white populations don’t see themselves as the targets of white nationalists. Ironically, data proves otherwise. Right? White nationalists have made — at least in the last 30 years, the majority of victims have actually been white. And that means that white nationalists are as much of a threat to this white population as it is the smaller grouping of color. But because communities of color are so small and white populations don’t see these white nationalists as a threat, it often gets overlooked. Right? And what we tell some of white populations is, you have to understand: While a thousand people, when you are 5 million, doesn’t seem significant, a thousand hardcore white nationalists when you are only 2 percent of the population becomes much more significant. Right? So that’s one piece of the puzzle is education and making people understand that all of us are threatened by white nationalist violence. If we don’t believe that, we merely have to look back three days ago at the arrest of a white nationalist who was getting ready to set explosives at a hospital in Missouri — right? — to target medical personnel and those who had contracted the coronavirus. Right? He was doing that driven by antisemitism, but his victims — right? — were going to be patients and medical workers in a hospital. So that understanding that all social movements, not just good social movements, have impact on a society is critically important.

The other is this, Mary, and I think it was said best actually by a young alt-right activist who could have been a white nationalist. And he was outside a protest that I was monitoring in Portland, Oregon over two years ago. And someone, a citizen journalist, ran up to him like to interview him — right? — and to ask him all these hard questions about why he was in Portland and no one wanted him in Portland. And I’ll always remember the young kid responding in this way — right? — and what he said as an alt-right activist the person holding the camera to the question of why are you here and no one wants you here, the young alt-right activist said — laughed and he said, “Yeah, I’ve heard that, too.” And then he said: “But you know what? The truth is Portland, Oregon has a shrinking black population by both percentage and whole number.” He said, the truth of the matter is is that the black population is disappearing in Portland, Oregon. And he then said, “So you can say you don’t want me here, but the fact of the matter is is you are doing something I could never get away with. You are actually disappearing the black population.” Right? That was his response to the city of Portland and to anti-hate activists. He was basically saying that we are hypocrites in the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain states. On one hand, we say we don’t want our populations, our vulnerable populations targeted, but on the other hand, by almost every data point, people of color, particularly African-Americans, in our region suffer from poverty, educational — lack of educational access, employment, housing — nearly every factor one could test in and, in many cases, worse than any other places in the nation outside of the Deep South. Right? And so part of the reason we have such a significant and influential white nationalist movement is, one, folks won’t acknowledge they exist and, two, we won’t make real the inclusive values that we say we hold out here in what is called Portlandia.

MM: Well, I totally agree with that, and I think that it’s just not happening there, of course. Right? We —

EW: That’s right.

MM: People will think that everything is — it’s OK, and that’s OK, too. It’s also OK to be antisemitic. “Of course I’m, you know, down for the cause and I’m anti-this and anti-the other, but it is OK to be antisemitic because we know that actually those things are happening and that all the other stereotypes that exist about Jewish people, you know, running everything in Hollywood and in all sorts of other industries, that is true.” So it’s always interesting to me to see how people make the distinction between what they will believe is actually true and what they have experienced and really understand how these — all these pieces are linked together.

I want to make sure that we have a chance to talk about your philanthropic work, your work in foundations, because I know as someone who’s, you know, been an executive in a foundation that it’s very different being on the other side —

EW: That’s right.

MM: — and I’m curious how you brought all of your work, which is why you were asked to come to a foundation. And I think sometimes when groups ask us — ask people who are activists or organizers to come into a foundation, they don’t understand that they’re going to get that entire person, with all the values that they were working on that made them attractive in the first place that will come with them. And so how did you make that change from going from a foundation — going from being an organizer, being on the front lines, to going into Atlantic Philanthropies, and from there, of course, you went to the Ford Foundation. Let’s just talk about that briefly, if you can give us some sense of what that transition was like.

EW: Mary, this is a good question. This is a good question, because you know — I often — I remember when I got hired for my first job in philanthropy as, you know, basically a program officer for Atlantic Philanthropies. You know, a great foundation founded by Chuck Feeney, who is Irish-American — great story about a man who decided to give away over 90 percent of his wealth while he was still alive. Right? And it’s profound. And I remember the day I was told I had the job and I remember looking over my shoulder to see who they were talking to.

MM: (Laughs.)

EW: Right? I always thought to myself, well, folks must just be thinking in a limited life foundation, “How much trouble can he cause?” Right? And I was thinking to myself, a lot! Right? Because I’m an organizer and I’m going to try to organize.

Look, I went into philanthropy for three specific reasons: the first is I felt that I could have significant impact and help groups who were doing amazing work have significant impact at a really critical moment. And that was my primary motivation. And, you know, the second had to do with the fact that I realized that as an organizer and a community change organizer steeped in progressive values that I, too, had kind of put myself in a bubble, and I wanted to have that bubble challenged. And I knew that was going to happen in philanthropy because I knew that the due diligence processes, you know, were really heavy and intense — right? — that I was going to meet people I would not normally have conversations with, and that I would be forced to learn and grow and actually have to defend the things that I believed. And I felt like that was critically important — right? — that being in a place where my own progressive conventional wisdoms would be challenged was so important. The third was just this: The third was just put up or shut up, Eric. Right? I had sat back and critiqued and point my fingers at social change philanthropy for so long I thought to myself, when am I going to step up — right? — and enter that space? Right? If you want to see change, you have to also be willing to like step inside of places to change them.

So those are the three reasons I went into philanthropy. I said to myself that I would only be in philanthropy for five years and I would go back to the field. I don’t think anyone should have longer than 10 years at a foundation as a program officer. Right? I think, one, you get very comfortable; two, I think you lose some perspective about reality in the field, including the need for fluidity; and three, I knew at the end of the day, I just wasn’t going to make a very good professional philanthropist. Right? But I will say I’m so proud of my time in philanthropy, incredibly proud of being able to work with the Ford Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies, and Open Society, and other philanthropic colleagues — I mean, some of the brightest folks I’ve ever had the privilege to work alongside and their dedication to the field. And I walked away with a nuanced idea of what it means to govern and what it means to work in large-scale institutions that really are trying to understand how they make the most impact. And it was phenomenal.

But at the end of the day, the election of Donald Trump signaled for me that it was time to go back to the field. And with the Ford Foundation having at that point entered into its own strategic planning and shifts in directions, the opportunity just seemed perfect to take myself back to the field and I was thankful I had made that decision when the white nationalists murdered two individuals on the light rail in Portland, Oregon, soon after Donald Trump was elected, in the spring of — or sworn into office, in spring of 2018. And I was able to come back to Portland and to work with folks on the ground to try to understand what was happening in this part of the country again and understanding that white nationalists were once again seeing the Pacific Northwest as their foothold for the rest of the nation.

MM: All right. Well, thank you so much. I think it’s important for us to have people like you who do move into philanthropy, but you move back, because, of course, you’ve learned so much while you were in philanthropy. What do you think you would say was a lasting impact, just if you had to give me a quick sentence, just a brief sentence? What are you most proud of? Maybe that’s how I’ll put it.

EW: Yeah. I’m really proud of being able to work closely with Muslim, Arab and South Asian leaders in helping them develop a strong, robust civil rights and racial justice component to their work. I’m proud of the immigrant rights organizations I was able to fund. You know, being able to support young Jews of color and being able to come together to set their own agenda. There are huge moments of pride. You know, helping Native women and black women artists come together to learn how to develop content for immersive media, including virtual reality. I’m proud that Atlantic and the Ford Foundation really allowed me to engage in innovative work. But Mary, it’s just simply this: I’m grateful that that was proven to me as the most important part of my life and, as well, that we can hold complexity and nuance, and we are a movement that needs to be mature enough to do that. We need to eschew the easy answers and our own versions of scapegoating that silo us and prevent us from building mass-based movements for change.

MM: Thank you. Thank you so much for that.

I want to read — before we go to our questions and answers — you know we have this question section coming up, right, Eric?

EW: Yes.

MM: (Inaudible) — your questions. OK. So we’re going to do that very quickly. But let me just read this last bit from your article, which I think it sums it up very nicely.

A central insistence of antiracist thought over the past several decades is that, as with any social category produced by regimes of power, you don’t choose race, power chooses it for you; it names you. That is why all the well-meaning identification in the world does not make a white person black. Likewise, as much as I draw inspiration from the Jewish community, and as much as I adore my Jewish partner and friends, it was my organizing against antisemitism as a black antiracist that first pulled me to the Jewish community, not the other way around. I developed an analysis of antisemitism because I wanted to smash white supremacy; because I wanted to be free. If we acknowledge that white nationalism clearly and forcefully names Jews as non-white, and did so in the very fiber of its emergence as a post-civil rights right-wing revolutionary movement, then we are forced to recognize our own ignorance about the country we thought we lived in. It is time to have that conversation.

And Eric, we want to thank you so much for having this conversation with us today. We’re going to take a short break. We’ve been listening and talking with Eric Ward, who is the executive director of Western States Center in Portland, Oregon, and we’ll be right back. You’re listening to “Gathering Ground.”

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining me on “Gathering Ground.” We want to hear from you. If you have any questions about your work in nonprofits or any of the topics that we’ve covered here on “Gathering Ground,” send them on in. Send them to mary@gatheringgroundpodcast.com. That’s mary@gatheringgroundpodcast — all one word — dot com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to “Gathering Ground.” Our guest today is Eric Ward. Eric is the executive director of Western States Center in Portland, Oregon. And it is time to answer a few questions, Eric. Are you ready?

EW: Yes.

MM: OK. So here’s the first question. It’s very timely because it’s something that I’m sure lots of folks are thinking about across the country as we are on shelter in place orders. This is from Caitlyn. And Caitlyn asks or says: “I am an executive director in Chicago, and like many workplaces across the city, we are moving to 100 percent remote working starting this week. I have a team of about 30 people, and we are a highly social bunch. What are some ideas for keeping our office culture alive across airways as we practice social distancing to protect ourselves and our most vulnerable?”

What do you think, Eric?

EW: Caitlyn, thanks for the question. And you know, two quick pieces: The first is make sure all of your communications amongst staff — meetings, check-ins — are virtual. Use Zoom, Google video, whatever you can access, but visual communication is critically important. The second is to set up at least once a week a staff lunch and a staff cocktail hour that just happens virtually for, you know, 45 minutes for folks to just got on and chat and catch up. No agenda. Just a chance for folks to check in with everyone. The third is this: Make sure if you’re using Zoom that you lock your room so you don’t have folks who weren’t invited showing up randomly inside. But virtual means going visual and seeing one another to ensure that. And you know, don’t be afraid to just text someone and pick up the phone and call and see how they’re doing.

MM: I like that. Very nice, Eric. I just want to summarize and say that that’s absolutely what we have been recommending to our client partners as well. There’s a need to over-communicate, in many ways, at this point in time, if you weren’t doing that before, to your point, and to put those opportunities in place where people have to, to your point, have to pick up the phone, have to get on video conference. But you have to be in touch with each other. I think for many people, certainly for our group at Morten Group, we work virtually 90 percent of the time, 95 percent of the time, so this is not a huge shift for us; however, it is very different when you want to go out and you actually cannot. And so I think the communications virtually, the cocktail hour, very nice idea. I’ve had a number of those myself over the last several weeks. And I love this idea of the locked room, because for the first time ever, and I think it’s because so many people are on Zoom these days, we had someone drop into an actual interview, if you can believe it. We had someone drop into an interview. They were clearly very shocked and surprised, and we weren’t the people they were expecting to see. But they did it three different times before they came completely out of the call. And so I don’t think I even — I’ve ever thought about locking the room, but I think now we really need to do that, just because so many of us are online.

So great. I love that.

EW: Yes.

MM: All right. Here’s another for you. This is from Carter and Carter says: “We were just fortunate enough to reach the goal for our very first capital campaign to open a new flagship program. Assuming we’re going to be back in the office in the next couple of months” — yes, we all want to assume that — “we should be having a launch in June. Unfortunately, the staff member who is supposed to be the director of this huge new program just let us know that she’ll be leaving the organization at the end of the month. Others of us have worked with her to develop the program, but it was her brainchild. What is the best way to go about making sure the program is successful without the person who conceived it?”

And I think this is not an unusual occurrence.

EW: That’s right.

MM: And I think it also points to some development of “bench” internally, and succession planning, frankly. But what would you say? What would you tell Carter?

EW: So I would say — assuming that the separation is mutual, you know, the first thing I would do is definitely download with the parting staff person and to see two things: one is, can you keep this person on for a very short time as an adviser, or is there someone else who they feel is equally holding the vision of the organization that could be brought on as an adviser? The second is is I would not be so quick to just bring in another staff person. This is actually a time when perhaps bringing in a consultant to help manage the project and to help engage in a search for the right lead is going to be critically important. And the third is, if possible, don’t be afraid to delay the program a little bit to make sure you have a good handle and a good understanding on what it is you want to do with this project and what the impact will be.

It is probably a very stressful time for you all, in terms of moving ahead on this project, but making sure you are taking the right steps to get the right person is critically important for a new project.

MM: I like that. Great advice. And I think the biggest takeaway is to take a deep breath and to do your due diligence, make sure you’re putting the right amount of time into the launch.

I think to your point, Eric, often we are just trying to get the next thing done. Right? And nonprofits, folks who are working in nonprofits, they had a plan, “we’re gonna launch, we’ve got to keep moving.” And I think this coronavirus pandemic has shown us that those plans can go out the window in a blink of an eye. And so now what are you going to do? Right?

EW: That’s right.

MM: So let’s take a moment, let’s just take a moment to regroup and to think about what is most important, and I love the idea of maybe getting some external support; sometimes when we’re doing the work and so involved with the work, it’s hard for us to have any objectivity around it. So really wonderful ideas. I love it.

OK, here’s our last one. We’re going to keep moving here. This is from Dana. Dana says: “I work at a nonprofit that works with the LGBTQ community, but as I’ve spent time here over the last two years, I’ve realized that their focus seems to be on white LGBTQ issues. As a person of color and a relatively new staff person in a mid-level management role, how can I go about bringing up the topic of intersectional work that works through a lens of racial equity without ruffling too many feathers?”

Then, I love this, since we’ve already touched upon intersectionality a bit in our earlier conversation — what do you think you would offer up to Dana, Eric?

EW: Yeah. I mean, I think in this case the key pieces to remember are to not focus on persons but on systems. Right? And so what I would advise is don’t make it a grievance. Make it an opportunity to strengthen the system. And what is the system that needs to be strengthened? This is my second piece. It is the diversity, equity, inclusion lens of the organization. And the organization isn’t at fault. Right? It exists within a society — right? — that is built on racial inequities. So in many ways, it is acting out the norms of the society that we live in. Your role is to help the organization understand by adopting new norms, even though they will feel not normal — right? — that the organization will actually come out stronger because it will be more representative of the LGBTQI community. And so the third piece is I would first start the conversation — right? — by talking both about the losses that the organization experiences because of disparities, systemic disparity, and also the opportunity that will come the organization’s way — right? — by adopting a new system.

The truth is is that organizations within social change spaces that don’t come to terms with the need to strengthen their organizations through diversity, equity, and inclusion will soon find themselves simply out of business as demographics change in the United States. It is not only a value piece, which is critical, but it’s also a business sense. If you want to run a successful nonprofit in the United States, it has to reflect and be responsive to the changing demographics in America.

MM: Absolutely. And I believe that there’s no going back from that. What do you think? I think we’re not going to turn and go back to some earlier times in our country’s history where that wasn’t the case. I feel like that is going to continue, that will is going to continue to be built. Do you agree with that or —

EW: Yes. I mean, look, we have had the civil rights struggle. Our role in life is not to go back — right? — and re-fight the 1960s civil rights struggle. That question has been answered inside the United States of America. Our role — right? — our generation’s role, and I’m talking about everyone walking around in social change today — right? — our role is to preserve that paper so the next generation can write its own song around inclusion. And so our role really is to help strengthen our institutions. And that takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of dedication to sit in a moment where your job is to strengthen imperfect institutions — not imperfect because people are bad or people are cruel; they’re imperfect because we live in a system that is filled with disparities. It is the natural outcome — right? — of an unequal system. And so it is a hard job. It is a burden. But all change comes with a burden, and if we’re not willing to carry that burden, we have to step aside and allow others to do so.

MM: That’s right. That’s right. Change will be uncomfortable, so we’re just going to have to get used to sitting in it and moving forward. Absolutely.

EW: That’s right.

MM: It has been such a pleasure speaking with you. Of course, there is so much more we could say, and maybe we’ll do a part two at some point, but this has been wonderful having an opportunity to catch up with you and to talk to you about the very important work that you’ve been doing all over the country, but right now you’re doing it in Oregon as the executive director of Western States Center, and that is — the website is westernstatescenter.org. You can check out their work there. You can check out more about Eric Ward.

Eric, thank you for being our guest today on “Gathering Ground.”

And to everyone listening, I’m Mary Morten. Until next time.

We are so pleased to let you know that you can now find “Gathering Ground” on iTunes, in addition to SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and Radio Public, and at gatheringgroundpodcast.com. I’m Mary Morten, and this has been another episode of “Gathering Ground.”