Meeting Up In Memphis at AAMFT

Several of us from Teams II, III, and IV met up in Memphis, Tennessee recently at the annual conference of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. These young women and men are either graduates of the COAMFTE-approved training program in marriage and family therapy at ACU, or they hope to be come August, 2009.

The poster session, "From Therapy to Advocacy, Principles to Practice: A Story of Two Groups," is actually a work in progress of several of these social justice teams from ACU. So, within a "poster" context at AAMFT in which attendees walk past, take a look, stop to converse, and then move on to the next poster, we were able to talk to some people about the efforts that we have often talked about on these pages.

In this one, we engaged creative people, Aaron Long and Joshua Hinson of Ada, Oklahoma and the Chickasaw Nation, to help us to construct a meaningful poster that compares and contrasts narratives of African American farmers and the people of the Chickasaw Nation. While there are striking differences, there are some striking similarities, especially around devotion to the land and land loss.

Here are some of the people who helped put this together, Tim Parker, Michelle Finley, Kimberly Cherry, Rebecca Culver, Ruqayyah Samia, Ty Mansfield, and Daniel Haile. Let us know if you have questions about the poster or this event.

They came, they worked, they produced

Several weeks back on this blog I wrote with much enthusiasm about Ruqayyah, Ty, and Daniel coming to Ada. It's a 4 1/2 trip from Abilene, Texas to Ada, Oklahoma, but somehow they managed it with busy schedules, clients to see, things to read, papers to write, and their other obligations to manage. It was a packed weekend. We stayed up late, laughed, talked, and, of course, we had to show them the community and have them meet some of the people here in this community.

After a morning run for Ty, Daniel, and me, one of my wife's world famous breakfast casseroles, and a tour of the key spots of the city, we settled into an afternoon of thinking out loud. We all wanted to stay with the essential ideas of developing a conceptual model that engages structural and narrative theory, work of previous teams, and ideas related to racism in its various forms that emerge from institutions of power and privilege upon the lived experiences of people.

We were able later to engage the expertise of two professionals here in Ada, Aaron Long and Joshua Hinson, in putting together a poster that speaks to the ideas and concepts that we consider to be germane to the topic at hand. We expanded it a bit by adding a second group alongside Black farmers for the purposes of comparing and contrasting. We are of the opinion that it gives us something to think about, and something that should continue to stir us to action.

At the end of the day, institutions of power and privilege are still amongst us. Racism still is ever present. Decisions are made as to worth on the basis of skin color, and other de-personalizing things, and our world is the poorer for it.

Though I'm no longer at ACU, and no longer teaching in the MFT program there, I am pleased, very pleased, that these students opted to continue the work of Teams I, II, and III.

Here is what this group of MFT students at ACU produced.