TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

Speakers

Teressa Raiford: #blacklivesmatter was just the beginning

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Don't Shoot PDXIt can be easy to over­look Ter­es­sa Raiford in a crowd­ed room, and that seems to suit her quite fine. Short in stature, she is soft-spo­ken and unas­sum­ing in per­son, often with gaze avert­ed and the occa­sion­al half-smile.

There’s a notice­able hint of lone­li­ness in Raiford’s demeanor that the com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er and leader of Don’t Shoot Port­land does not try to hide, one of the ironies of lead­er­ship that she accepts as part of the job.

“I couldn’t love too much,” said Raiford, 46, speak­er at TEDx Salem’s REVOLUTIONS event.  “You’re not avail­able to pets or fam­i­ly or any­body.”

“It’s real­ly bad, but it’s most­ly for the safe­ty of the peo­ple we love.”

From online harass­ment and threats against her life, to an arrest and tri­al for dis­or­der­ly con­duct, Raiford accepts and puts aside the costs of doing her job. A gen­er­a­tional Ore­gon­ian who traces her family’s roots in the state back to the 1880s, she spent her youth in and out of fos­ter care from the age of 7 through 18. It’s one rea­son she often feels out of place, in the place she should call home, she said.

Yet at Port­land City Hall, two months ago, there again was Raiford, help­ing lead the charge of pro­tes­tors demand­ing to have a voice in delib­er­a­tions between the city and the police union.

For her TED talk, Raiford will speak about the heart of protest — the impor­tance of get­ting involved and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. And she will share why she does it.

Specif­i­cal­ly, it was one day in Sep­tem­ber 2010 that changed the life of this for­mer accoun­tant, the day she learned of the shoot­ing death of her nephew, Andre Pay­ton. It was a loss that forced her to come to grips with the plague of gun vio­lence, a com­mu­ni­ty issue that seemed to get no trac­tion among city lead­ers who would seem on the sur­face to be recep­tive to such a pro­gres­sive cause. Port­land is sym­pa­thet­ic, but is also main­ly white, she said.

“Port­land is a fake pro­gres­sive town,” she said.

See­ing the inac­tion forced Raiford to rec­og­nize that more need­ed to be done to make minor­i­ty voic­es heard, and more would be asked of her than just fundrais­ing and march­ing, she said.

“The only way that I could empow­er my com­mu­ni­ty was by protest­ing,” she said.

Get­ting the courage to lead the com­mu­ni­ty in protests didn’t come too hard, though. The old­est of 11 sib­lings, Raiford had had to take charge of her life and fight through her sit­u­a­tion from an ear­ly age, as both her par­ents end­ed up serv­ing time in prison.

“It was always on me to take care of sib­lings and cousins, and even my moth­er,” she said. It’s what dri­ves her to each protest, each ral­ly, each plan­ning ses­sion.

“It hurts to go out there. It hurts. All this stuff is bad. Mass incar­cer­a­tion, fos­ter care audits. The pain of my expe­ri­ence, and the val­ue of my age, and know­ing that I can fight for that child. I have to have courage.”

And in the end, it’s what gives Raiford her iden­ti­ty, no mat­ter how tired, or scared she might be.

“[The com­mu­ni­ty will] come get you,” she said. “They won’t let you not serve them.”

“I am the peo­ple that I serve,” she said. “Doing some­thing is rev­o­lu­tion­ary. And it’s nec­es­sary.”

“We might not always know exact­ly what we have to do, but if we don’t do any­thing, then that means that we don’t mat­ter. And that’s telling the world that it’s okay that we don’t mat­ter.”

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem IV

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for a stu­dent. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

Vanessa Timmons: Resiliency throughout domestic violence, activism, survival and revolution

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Some­times, the word “rev­o­lu­tion” brings to mind a kind of vio­lence, the kind asso­ci­at­ed with wars and revolts and mas­sive upris­ings. But for oth­ers, the real rev­o­lu­tion­ary work is the work that goes into pre­vent­ing vio­lence — and help­ing its sur­vivors heal.

vaneesa2bOne such per­son is Vanes­sa Tim­mons, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Ore­gon Coali­tion Against Domes­tic and Sex­u­al Vio­lence, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that works through­out the state to end vio­lence in all com­mu­ni­ties. Tim­mons is also a moth­er, a grand­moth­er, a sur­vivor of sex­u­al abuse, and one of the speak­ers at this year’s TEDxSalem.

“I real­ly see domes­tic vio­lence work as rev­o­lu­tion­ary work,” Tim­mons says. “Rev­o­lu­tion hap­pens in a com­mu­ni­ty when all indi­vid­u­als are able to thrive.”

For Tim­mons, the rev­o­lu­tion lies in the com­mu­ni­ty, not just in the indi­vid­ual. She sees heal­ing as a com­mu­ni­ty-wide action, not just some­thing that indi­vid­ual assault and vio­lence sur­vivors must do.

“My talk is focused on resilien­cy for activists and self-care as acts of rev­o­lu­tion,” she says. “It’s real­ly look­ing at how we sus­tain brav­ery and be engaged in rev­o­lu­tion­ary acts. How do we keep our brav­ery and resilien­cy and vision vig­or­ous­ly engaged while we’re in that effort of chang­ing the world.”

Tim­mons fur­ther explains that a lot of her work is char­ac­ter­ized as anti-vio­lence, anti-racism or anti-oppres­sion. But it’s also pro- work, too; it’s work­ing toward a bet­ter world for every­one.vanessatimmons

“The weari­ness of peo­ple as we’ve gone through this elec­tion cycle, in a lot of ways that weari­ness inhibits our abil­i­ty to sus­tain and main­tain our efforts,” she says. “I am real­ly hop­ing that peo­ple walk away from my talk with some prac­ti­cal skills that I use to sus­tain my own brav­ery and resilience in times of dif­fi­cul­ty.”

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem IV

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for a stu­dent. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

Yesenia Gallardo: Save the planet, eat an insect

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yeseniaWhile crick­ets, grubs and insect eggs might not top your list of snack foods, they pop up in cui­sine around the world, and they just might be the key to a green­er plan­et.

“It just makes a lot of sense,” said Yese­nia Gal­lar­do, a TEDxSalem speak­er, envi­ron­men­tal­ist and insect entre­pre­neur.

“The sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the nutri­tion is there.”

Insects are ener­gy effi­cient, so they con­vert what­ev­er they eat to mass much more quick­ly, she said. For exam­ple, it takes two pounds of feed to get one pound of food from insects com­pared to 25 pounds of feed for one pound of beef, she said. There are sim­i­lar sav­ings in water and land.

Gal­lar­do under­stands that insects aren’t for every­one. For those will­ing to try, it seems that crick­ets are the eas­i­est to stom­ach.

“I don’t think they’re the most deli­cious insect out there,” she said. “They are the gate­way bug.”

An even eas­i­er sell might be sam­pling pow­dered insects, which are added to ener­gy bars, chips, cook­ies and oth­er snack foods.

Eat­ing insects wasn’t a gas­tro­nom­ic stretch for Gal­lar­do, a Salem native. She spent her sum­mers in Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co, and many of the region’s dish­es include insects. One pop­u­lar dip, made with ant eggs, tastes like bacon-fla­vored mush­rooms, she said.

She used to raise crick­ets in an indoor micro-farm. She sold her tiny, tiny live­stock to food man­u­fac­tur­ers, but it was too hard to cli­mate con­trol the space.

Now the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate is work­ing a dif­fer­ent angle: crick­et poop. Not for food, but for fer­til­iz­er. It’s a renew­able resource that doesn’t deplete nat­ur­al ones strain­ing under the demand for soil amend­ments.

“It has so much poten­tial,” she said.

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem IV

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for stu­dents. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

Jerry Braza: Sowing the seeds of mindfulness

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This picture was taken in Homer, Alaska where Braza is helping leaders create a more mindful community.
This pic­ture was tak­en in Homer, Alas­ka where Braza is help­ing lead­ers cre­ate a more mind­ful com­mu­ni­ty.

TEDxSalem speak­er Jer­ry Braza plants the seeds of mind­ful­ness one con­ver­sa­tion, one sem­i­nar and one com­mu­ni­ty at a time.

When he talks his words fall slow and steady. His eyes stay fixed on the per­son in front of him. There is nowhere else to be but here, right now.

In Homer, Alas­ka, Braza taught hun­dreds of edu­ca­tors, health-care work­ers, men­tal health providers and par­ents the ben­e­fits of mind­ful­ness and how to cre­ate that still­ness with­in. Once they heal them­selves, he said, they can heal the com­mu­ni­ty.

Braza is an ordained dhar­ma teacher in the lin­eage of Bud­dhist Mas­ter Thich Nhat Hanh, spread­ing mind­ful­ness at retreats, sem­i­nars, work­shops and class­es. But mind­ful­ness didn’t always come nat­u­ral­ly to the retired West­ern Ore­gon Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor.

“I was always in a rush,” he said about his life 35 years ago.

“I always felt anx­ious. I felt like I was always late. I was with some­one, and I was not real­ly there.”

He remem­bers skip­ping pages when he read books to his kids at night because he felt like he didn’t have the time.

Braza start­ed to take class­es on med­i­ta­tion and mind­ful­ness. He trav­eled to India, Chi­na, Viet­nam and Thai­land to study. Then he mixed in his Catholic roots of con­tem­pla­tion and devel­oped a sec­u­lar mind­ful­ness prac­tice that he now shares.

One sim­ple way to prac­tice, he said, is to linger longer on some­thing beau­ti­ful. We often focus on neg­a­tive things. Instead gaze on some­thing of beau­ty such as leaves on a side­walk, the moon, a flower or some­one you love. Stay with that image for a full 10 breaths.mountain

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 …

Catch Braza at TEDxSalem this Jan­u­ary to find a lit­tle more peace in your life and your com­mu­ni­ty.

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem IV

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for stu­dents. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

Alia Braley: The power of non-violent action

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“When I was younger, know­ing that my grand­par­ents were involved in the Amer­i­can Civ­il Rights move­ment of the 1950s and 1960s was inspir­ing to me,” said Alia Bra­ley, who has been work­ing as a researcher and advo­cate of strate­gic non­vi­o­lent action for the past three years, cur­rent­ly with the Albert Ein­stein Insti­tu­tion.  alia-braley

For her TED Talk, Bra­ley will dis­cuss the mas­sive impact of strate­gic non­vi­o­lent action in the world today, from the pro-democ­ra­cy protests in Hong Kong in 2014 to the anti-cor­rup­tion protests of Guatemalans in late 2015, where pro­test­ers in both the cities and coun­try­side came togeth­er to orga­nize a gen­er­al strike that crip­pled the gov­ern­ment and led to the prompt res­ig­na­tion of sev­er­al lead­ers includ­ing the pres­i­dent.

To be clear, non­vi­o­lent action is not the same as paci­fism. It is a form of con­duct­ing con­flict that is often used for prag­mat­ic rea­sons — because it is pow­er­ful and it works.  It also should not be con­fused with civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, which has a pre­cise def­i­n­i­tion as a sub­set of the infi­nite tac­tics avail­able to non­vi­o­lent activists.

“Non­vi­o­lent action is basi­cal­ly the abil­i­ty of diverse peo­ple to active­ly engage in struc­tur­al change in their soci­ety on their own terms” she said.

The aca­d­e­m­ic study of non­vi­o­lent action is only just in its infan­cy accord­ing to Bra­ley, but the use of non­vi­o­lent action goes back to ancient times. His­to­ry holds many famous exam­ples of suc­cess, includ­ing the strug­gle for inde­pen­dence in India asso­ci­at­ed with Gand­hi, as well as less­er known exam­ples, like the Baltic resis­tance against Sovi­et inva­sion in the 1990’s.

Rig­or­ous study of non­vi­o­lent action is impor­tant, she said, in order to assess and improve its effec­tive­ness. Today, more soci­eties are using non­vi­o­lent action than ever before, but often with mixed results.  The cas­es often cit­ed include the rise of author­i­tar­i­an­ism in Egypt, and the desta­bi­liz­ing blood­shed and dis­place­ment caused by the Syr­i­an civ­il war.  How­ev­er, it should be not­ed, she says, that the trou­ble in Egypt and Syr­ia has arisen as a result of vio­lent actors that dis­rupt­ed the ini­tial suc­cess of non­vi­o­lent move­ments.

Through con­nect­ing with orga­ni­za­tions like the Albert Ein­stein Insti­tu­tion, non­vi­o­lent activists are able to access the resources and knowl­edge that may help them to plan effec­tive­ly and avoid some of the most com­mon pit­falls.

Despite the vio­lence preva­lent in today’s news, non­vi­o­lent action is a dri­ving force in domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, Bra­ley said.  For an exam­ple of a suc­cess­ful non­vi­o­lent move­ment with max­i­mal­ist goals, she sug­gests that peo­ple learn about the move­ment that over­threw Slo­bodon Milo­se­vic in the for­mer Yugoslavia as depict­ed in the doc­u­men­tary Bring­ing Down a Dic­ta­tor.

alia1“So many of the dev­as­tat­ing and heart­break­ing prob­lems in the world today come from polit­i­cal vio­lence and the threat of polit­i­cal vio­lence,” she said.  But although peo­ple know their needs, they often feel pow­er­less to cre­ate change.  “Learn­ing about how strate­gic non­vi­o­lent action works helps indi­vid­u­als and groups put their knowl­edge they already have about their soci­ety into action that can cre­ate real and last­ing change.”

 

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem IV

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for stu­dents. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

 

 

Gina Ochsner: Wielding the power of words for a (peaceful) revolution

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Gina Ochsner is a sto­ry­teller (just like us!).

The Salem native is an award-win­ning nov­el­ist and fic­tion writer. She’s the writer-in-res­i­dence at Cor­ban Uni­ver­si­ty, where she teach­es writ­ing and lit­er­a­ture and directs the annu­al Por­tals Writ­ing Con­fer­ence.

And as a speak­er at TEDxSalem, she’s going to tell you an incred­i­ble sto­ry about a series of events between 1987 and 1991 in Latvia, Esto­nia and Lithua­nia that became known as the Singing Rev­o­lu­tion.

ochsner_gina_credit-annie-beedy_catalog-author-photo“These peo­ple band­ed togeth­er to say to their Sovi­et occu­piers, ‘We’ve had enough, it’s time for you to go home,’ ” Ochsner explains. “They band­ed togeth­er and made a human chain over 400 miles long and held hands. It stretched from the cap­i­tal of Esto­nia to Lithua­nia. They sang songs and recit­ed poet­ry and this made a dif­fer­ence. With­in 18 months, the Sovi­et Union com­plete­ly pulled out and they were among the first to declare their inde­pen­dence.”

Ochsner learned about the chain of singers while research­ing her lat­est nov­el, released just four weeks ago, called The Hid­den Let­ters of Velta B. The book is about a fam­i­ly in Latvia, a boy who hears all, and the pow­er of sto­ries, words and secrets.

“I was­n’t plan­ning on writ­ing about Latvia,” she says. “But I got to know a Lat­vian woman who lives here in town, and she was telling me her fam­i­ly sto­ry and I start­ed doing research there and real­ized this world that has opened up to me that I nev­er knew exist­ed. I was so struck by the rich­ness of the cul­turgina-bwe and the love for song and dance and poet­ry, it just over­whelms me.”

These are all themes that Ochsner plans to explore in her TED talk.

“It’s inter­est­ing to think about rev­o­lu­tion and how big change hap­pens with some­thing as small as words and how we use them,” she says. “I think peo­ple some­times believe they have no voice or pow­er and that’s sim­ply not true. These were ordi­nary peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed in these events. They were just hum­ble, ordi­nary peo­ple who got togeth­er and said, when we are togeth­er, our voic­es are strong.”

 

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem IV

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for a stu­dent. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.