{"id":183,"date":"2023-10-30T09:33:38","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T16:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/sims\/?page_id=183"},"modified":"2023-10-31T11:57:53","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T18:57:53","slug":"action","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/sims\/action\/","title":{"rendered":"PHASE TWO: Action and Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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The following activities are designed to help you practice empathy. Choose two of the following six options.\u00a0 Always use your best judgment to ensure the comfort and safety of all parties. Write a \u00be to one-page single spaced response to each option in which you reflect on the process and its effects.<\/p>\n

Microconnections<\/strong>:\u00a0Facilitate ten microconnections each day for two days. Give a compliment, verbally acknowledge someone, or otherwise offer an uplifting contribution to another person\u2019s life experience.\u00a0 Identify and demonstrate small ways in which you can create feelings of self-esteem in others, particularly those who are overtly marginalized.<\/p>\n

    \n
  • First<\/i>\u00a0coined by Harvard University psychiatrist Chester Pierce in 1970, the term \u201cmicroagression\u201d refers to commonplace verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults.\u00a0 Microagressions can be deblitating, particularly after accumulation. Building off Professor Pierce’s research, in 2018, Dr. Deborah Sims began using the term \u201cmicroconnection\u201d to refer to commonplace verbal, behavioral, or environmental conveniences and interactions that communicate friendly, uplifting, or positive inclusive acts and remarks.<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Local Diversity<\/strong>.\u00a0 Have a conversation with someone who can provide a different point of view from your own on an experience central to all of humanity.\u00a0 To begin, consider what experiences have most shaped you: your childhood (how you were raised, how you grew up), your education, your romantic pursuits, your family traditions.\u00a0 Then approach an individual who is different from you in at least one major identity category (race, class, gender, sexuality), and ask him or her to tell you about experiences in the context of a specific theme. [Tell me about dating, sex, and romance from your point of view.]<\/p>\n

    Change the Conversation<\/strong>. Influence the feelings, ideas, and values associated with a situation by posting comments online.\u00a0 Locate a conflict online and assess the conversation.\u00a0 Post three comments, either consecutively or within threads of conversation, which alter and improve the emotional tenor of the conversation.\u00a0 Remove tension, comfort a victim, use logic to ameliorate irrationality, use emotion to ameliorate meanness, and locate opportunities to centralize humane treatment of others.<\/p>\n

    Walk in Their Shoes<\/strong>.\u00a0 Identify a recent conflict in your personal life.\u00a0 In person or in writing, describe the conflict from the perspective of the other person.\u00a0 Attempt to explain their point of view, their feelings, their \u201cside.\u201d\u00a0 After your conversation or sharing your written work with this person, follow up by asking if your understanding of their views is accurate.\u00a0 If at all possible, ask the other person to do the same activity in return.<\/p>\n

    Account for Competing Values<\/strong>.\u00a0 Explain your point of view on a topic by packaging your ideas in terms of your opposition\u2019s values.\u00a0 Research shows that not only do we surround ourselves with others with similar views to our own (echo chambers), but we also tend to try to convince others across the aisle politically with our own moral emphases rather than theirs. Research a specific community that holds an opposing position from your own on an important issue in order to develop an understanding of their key values.\u00a0 Communicate your ideas to that group using framing and arguments that speak to their values rather than your own.<\/p>\n

    Validate and Care for the Suffering of Another<\/strong>.\u00a0 Identify a person who has suffered a trauma and indicate to him or her that you would like to offer some words of support.\u00a0 In a safe and comfortable place, validate this person\u2019s suffering; for example, you might say: \u201cI see what you have been through.\u00a0 That experience must have been very difficult for you.\u201d\u00a0 Build on this conversation in order to provide this person with a witness to his or her trauma.\u00a0 You may also complete this activity online.<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Feeling seen is a key part of healing from trauma.\u00a0 While it would be ideal to prevent suffering, trauma is often amplified by the silence, shame, denial, or dismissal that occurs in its aftermath.\u00a0 Consider the story of Susan Burton: Sexually abused as a child and gang raped as a teen, she sought help but was told to keep quiet.\u00a0 After an off-duty LAPD officer ran over and killed her 5-year-old son, she plunged into addiction and ended up cycling in and out of jail.\u00a0 In her memoir\u00a0Becoming Mrs. Burton\u00a0she explains how she was able to rehabilitate, eventually founding \u201cA New Way of Life,\u201d a life re-entry program for women who are former inmates, and co-founding another human rights organization, \u201cAll of Us or None.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>Now a Los Angles activist, she explains the way that validation of her trauma enabled her to heal.\u00a0 While in prison at 46 years old, Burton told her Civil Education teacher that she could not sleep due to the memories of her sexual abuse.\u00a0 The teacher encouraged her to focus on her own recovery rather than their course content.\u00a0 Burton reflects, \u201c<\/i>It was the first time somebody had legitimately said, honey, this shouldn’t have happened. Something went really wrong. And being able to have that verified by someone outside of yourself, it gave me the ability to actually begin to seek further, to get further validation with the individuals who the experiences had happened through\u201d (\u201cFresh Air,\u201d NPR, April 2017). \u00a0As Burton reflects,\u00a0<\/i>sometimes it is important to say, \u201cIt happened.\u201d\u00a0 Provide this validation for someone through this activity.<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      While this example relates to a specific kind of trauma, the activity speaks to any disruptive life experience.\u00a0 Also, the purpose is to be of service to another, so you need to carefully navigate how you can best achieve that goal. In other words, validation may come in the form of listening rather than words, or offering help without asking for details.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

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