An Inclusive View: Sharif Abdullah
Two hundred thousand faces form a crowd, all gathered in a peace meditation. In August 1999, the Sarvodaya organization began its peace initiative in Sri Lanka by calling 100,000 people to mobilize and meditate for peace.
Sharif Abdullah founded and now directs Commonway, an organization which provides administrative support and strategic advice to Sarvodaya. All of Sharif’s work is based on the philosophy of inclusivity, which he explains means that “All of our lives are linked, no matter who you are or where you are on this planet. And because of this, I have a responsibility to treat others a certain way.”
According to Sharif, our society is a ticking bomb. We have about 50 years left, environmentally and psychologically. We must change our perspective from an Exclusivist point of view to Inclusivist. We must stop looking from an “Us and Them” perspective and begin to realize that we’re all in this together.
Sharif Abdullah began his pursuit of social and spiritual change in Camden, NJ when he was only a teenager. Sharif says of it, “Camden was a toxic relationship.” Welfare, poverty, casual violence, and public housing were all realities in his early years. In spite of this, or perhaps in reaction to this, Sharif became a founder of the Black People’s Unity Movement (BPUM), an organization that created a sewing factory, two day care centers, affordable housing and a supermarket, among other things.
Sharif earned his BA in Psychology from Clark University in Massachesetts, and went on to earn his Juris Doctor degree from Boston University. After practicing public interest law for six years in Charlotte, North Carolina, Sharif lost faith in the adversarial process. Instead, he turned to social change based on the theories of inclusivity and empowerment.
I was doubtful how one man or one organization could effect enough change to alter the whole world’s point of view. But Sharif referred me to a picture of a Chinese student standing in front of a line of tanks. This picture existed and it affected people around the world, he said. Then he pointed out that a person interacting with a few other people in a single moment has the power to effect change; it is all about finding the right fulcrums and levers, the points at which change can be affected.
Rosa Parks is a prime example of one person affecting change. She threatened the system of apartheid; her threat consisted of the most basic action: sitting down, Sharif explained to me. The dialog was between her, her butt and the bus driver. The bus driver could have chosen to ignore her action and the white patron could have taken another seat. But it didn’t happen that way. Instead, her action helped to instigate a non-violent movement. In Sharif’s words, change depends on what power one person has in a single moment to affect change. And that power is a lot.
I asked Sharif how positive approaches like his can compete with a social mindset focused on selfishness and currency. They don’t have to compete, he responded, because exclusivity is a failed mindset. It hasn’t worked and the proof is that we are headed for extinction. The key is how quickly we shift our mindsets before factors of our extinction come true.
Sharif’s goal is to help people come closer to a “WE ARE ONE” mindset. One of his projects to change mindsets is called the Commons Café. The Commons Café requires a face-to-face dialogue where people from entirely different racial, economic, and ethnic backgrounds are gathered together to have conversations. It’s as simple as that. People who would not normally come into contact with one another are placed at tables of 6-10 people and are given note cards with questions to guide the conversations. The goal is to change pre-conceptions of those different from ourselves and to realize that our stereotypes are not always true.
The Commons Café challenges assumptions. For example, a wealthy man speaks, saying “Homeless people are picking up cans with a shopping cart. They are crazy, talking to themselves.” The homeless man sitting across the table responds, “Well I am homeless and I don’t act like that, and I’ve never heard of anyone acting like that.” This dialogue began between these two men because the wealthy man quoted a book and the homeless man corrected where the quote came from. They found out that these two men had the same college degree. Sharif comments, “They are able to shift each others’ paradigms around an issue that was unexpected.” Talking directly is vital to changing the way people think at the very base level. This situation reveals the stereotype that most poor and homeless people are stupid. “This conversation flies in the face of this assumption.”
Sharif acknowledges that he could use the little bit of money he has to avoid the reality of the Other. When traveling in the Third World, he could choose to ride in an air-conditioned cushy car, but he rides on the buses, shoulder to shoulder with everyone else. “I can recognize the reality of how people are living.” This is the beginning of the paradigm shift from “I am separate” to “We are one,” one that starts at the level of the individual.
Biography
Sharif Abdullah facilitates workshops on topics such as conflict resolution and diversity for organizations like the International Conflict Resolution Conference, Institute for Sustainable Development, and Association for Humanistic Psychology. Sharif has worked directly with city and county governments, federal agencies, international bodies, and corporations in an attempt to further spiritual change and develop the principles of inclusivity and empowerment.
Sharif spent five years as an adjunct professor at Marylhurst University. He has been a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, and is currently an adjunct professor at Portland State University.
He has written several books, including The Power of One: Authentic Leadership in Turbulent Times, Creating a World that Works for All, Sips from the River of Wisdom, Searching for Depth, and Finding our Way in the Land of the Blind.
