#Systemic Change

Gentle Power: How Quiet Kindness Transforms Systems

Consequently, gentle actions endure when they are woven into norms and rules. Policy feedback research notes that once institutions change, they create citizens who defend and extend those changes (Paul Pierson, 1993). The behavior becomes self-reinforcing: what began as risky kindness becomes common sense. Consider schools adopting restorative practices. Rather than punish, they convene students to repair harm. A large evaluation found reductions in suspensions and narrowing racial disparities (RAND, 2018). The process is soft in tone yet hard on harm, and its effects compound—today’s repaired relationship becomes tomorrow’s calmer classroom. In this way, systems are altered—quietly, and for a very long time. [...]

Why the Master’s Tools Can’t Free Us

In tech, auditing biased algorithms while preserving surveillance business models retains the house; community data trusts and public-interest technology shift ownership and purpose. In public safety, reforms that expand budgets and tools can entrench harm; abolitionist approaches emphasize shrinking the footprint of punishment while investing in housing, health, and care (see Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s Golden Gulag, 2007; Mariame Kaba’s We Do This ’Til We Free Us, 2021). In climate, ‘just transition’ frameworks retool economies around worker and frontline leadership. Across these arenas, Lorde’s compass asks: whose needs define success, and do our tools redistribute power enough to remake the foundation? [...]