An excerpt from Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems by Adam Kahane: “Systems are structured to keep producing the behaviors and results they are producing, and therefore often seem solid and unchangeable—but they are not. They are built, and they collapse. They crack and are cracked, which opens up new possibilities that some people find frightening and others find hopeful. Radical engagement involves looking for, moving toward, and working with these cracks—not ignoring or shying away from them. We do this by seeking out and working with openings, alongside others who are doing the same…
Al Etmanski has pioneered the transformation of the living conditions of Canadians with disabilities, away from segregation, dependency, and second-class status toward connection, agency, and justice. I have spoken with him and studied what he and others have written about his decades of experience, and especially about how his strategy and approach have evolved and enabled him to make the contributions he has. He has advanced through repeatedly searching out and working with openings or cracks (breakdowns and bright spots) in the social-economic-political-institutional-cultural “disability system.”..(More)”.
