Safe spaces

Bookstores as Safe Spaces

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment

20151219_152949

Publishers Weekly posted an article yesterday titled When a Bookstore is Also a Safe Haven. The writer, an independent bookstore owner proposed the idea that for many, bookstores serve as safe havens during times of national or personal crisis. She wrote about the instinctive sense during 9/11 that her store in Utah be open, and it was packed. It’s not always that people want to buy books, but they want some place where it is safe to process, with oneself or others–patrons and booksellers.

I hadn’t thought of bookstores in this way until I remembered that on 9/11 I was in Cleveland for a funeral of a friend and between gatherings, and after the news broke, I had a few free hours. Where did I go? A bookstore. I drank coffee, followed the news, called home, and tried along with the others who I’d never met to wrap my mind around the truth that our world had changed on that sunny September day.

I’ve noticed that some of my favorite stores are those where the booksellers and many of the patrons know each other. It’s kind of like Cheers where everybody knows your name. Yet I hesitate with this as well. I don’t go to bookstores for a social life, or a confessional. I go for books. Sometimes, I’m a bit creeped out if a stranger gets too friendly, and as an older guy, I don’t want to be that person either! I ordinarily find my social life with family, work, and my church, and some other long time friends.

The article writer notes how stores, particular those who cater to particular communities, may serve as a hub at a time of crisis, as was an LGBTQ store during the Orlando club shootings. For others, there is a greater safety than in a church or a bar. I do find that some stores, particularly if they provide places to read or work with a beverage in hand, often develop a regular clientele who form a kind of community.

They also provide a place to help us try to make sense of what has happened, both in conversations and with books (a way us readers often try to make sense of the world.) As you know, I’ve been an advocate for the value of brick and mortar stores as “third places” as well as for the level of service they provide, particularly as they become to their patrons tastes. This article took it a step further, suggesting they provide a vital public service in times of crisis. In our scary times, perhaps that is something we should value and preserve. I’m glad there was a place like that on 9/11.

The Speech of Freedom: Establishing Safety

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment

safetyfirst

Safe spaces have been pitted against freedom of speech on university campuses. Safe spaces are literally places where students from a racial minority, or LGBTQ students or other communities of interest can go where they won’t face hostile speech from outsiders exercising their “free” speech rights.

It seems to me that while safe spaces may be good temporary refuges, they don’t get us to the place where we can have the important conversations across our differences that allow us to reach a modus vivendi with each other.

This week, a number in the organization I work with went through Crucial Conversations© training. One of the insights shared is that people rarely get defensive about the content of what we say. Instead, they become defensive because of why they think they are saying it. The issue is safety, and the training says people experience safety, when their is mutual respect and a mutual, shared purpose.

What this suggests to me is that safety is not ultimately spatial but relational. The speech of freedom is not just about the content of what we say but our commitment to communicate in our words and demeanor genuine respect even for the others with whom we speak. With this is commitment to mutual purpose. What could be the mutual purpose between to differing people? If nothing else in our democracy, it would seem that wanting others to enjoy all the rights and opportunities of citizenship–a precious gift.

What was even more striking was the idea that we can have really hard conversations when we are committed to the safety of each other.Safety and freedom need not be opposed to each other or mutually exclusive. Rather safety both creates the environment where we might speak freely, and where we might listen, even to difficult things, because we know the other respects us and we are in this together.

“Safety first” may well be the motto of the speech of freedom. To cherish our freedom cannot just be to protect our own “first freedoms” but to ensure that others enjoy the safety we want. Seems like an American thing to do.

The Speech of Freedom

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

voltaireI have been observing some of the latest discussions about safe speech and free speech. I get the concerns about micro-aggressions. If you are part of an ethnic minority, for example, you may hear comments that reveal stereotypes that are offensive. The comment may not always be deliberately offensive, which reveals how much such stereotypes are part of the fabric of our society.

Yet it is also troubling that speech is often suppressed, or safe zones are declared. Many of us remembered fighting for free speech on campus,  We would even say,”I might not like what you are saying, but I will defend your right to say it.” It is concerning that in universities where it once was thought that the best answer for a bad argument was a better argument, we now seem to think the best answer for an argument we don’t like is to suppress it–disinvite the speaker, get the administrator or faculty to resign, shout down the opposition.

What I want to explore is an understanding of responsible free speech. Short of slander and liable, our free speech protections have been sweeping, and on the whole, the best protection our democracy has against tyranny. We protect a lot of irresponsible speech–speech that hurts, belittles, polarizes, and stirs hatreds. Some of the efforts toward “safe speech” are intended to address these irresponsible excesses. I actually think that efforts that bar such speech are misbegotten at best and tyrannous at worst. I’d like to propose something different.

I would propose that the ethic that follows from believing in free speech is a commitment to the speech of freedom. What do I mean by that? It is that we practice a kind of golden rule in our speaking. I ask, does my speech afford the dignity, and seek the freedom and flourishing of those I am speaking about or with, particularly those with whom I disagree? Do I want for them what I want for me?

Notice that this is not a proposal that suppresses disagreement or even vigorous argument. Rather, I would suggest that it creates the necessary foundation for such argument. I always find myself more willing to engage with, and more hopeful of a meeting of the minds with those who assume the best about me and want the best for me even if they disagree with my way of thinking.

I’ve often mentioned  Martin Luther King, Jr. in these columns. Though hardly perfect, I believe he practiced the speech of freedom. He contended for justice for his people, but said this could not be done with hatred in one’s heart. The aim was not an isolated safe space, but a “beloved community” that had room for the transgressors, as well as the aggrieved.

I think this kind of speech reveals the deep wellsprings of who we are. I would suggest that the test of our hearts is do we love the neighbor with whom we most deeply disagree? This kind of speech calls out what is noblest in us, the “better angels of our nature.”

I do not think we can wait until others practice the speech of freedom to begin to practice this in our lives. And I wonder, in our deeply divided society, if we can afford to wait? Do we want to settle for safe speech, or speech that is free at the expense of others, when we can forge a bond across our deepest differences in pursuing the speech of freedom?