A Chat with Babes
Early in my 1987-93 stint in the Philippines, I met with an attorney who conducted paralegal training – that is, sessions aiming to help selected farmers, shanty town residents, women and other disadvantaged groups acquire basic legal knowledge and skills, so as to in turn help their fellow community members with land, housing, domestic violence and other problems. Babes, as he was called (a typical Filipino nickname), explained that “it took me a while to realize that when I thought I was doing paralegal training, I was just giving law lectures” that his audiences didn’t understand.
Experts’ problems teaching laypersons about matters crucially affecting them is a big roadblock to some key aspects of international development. Babes and many of his fellow legal services attorneys eventually learned how to conduct effective training, though. They cut back on lectures and instead used games, role-playing, mini-dramas, Q&A and other interactive techniques. They also increasingly turned to the paralegals to spread knowledge, rather than relying on lawyers.
Nonetheless, teaching less educated and sometimes mistrustful populations about rights, governance, housing and even public health – a field that’s developed particular expertise regarding what’s sometimes called “popular education” – remains an ongoing challenge, especially when a crisis like Covid erupts.
Beast Mode and Big Dog
Which brings us to Beast Mode and Big Dog. If you’re up for a uniquely illuminating, fun discussion that features Dr. Anthony Fauci schooling us and being schooled on the challenges of overcoming vaccination hesitancy, check out his video heart-to-heart with retired NFL star, Marshawn Lynch.
This is not your typical TV interview.
Lynch, one of the game’s greatest running backs at the peak of his 2007-19 career, has long been active in his home town of Oakland, including by handing out free face masks during the pandemic. He builds on that activism in the discussion with Fauci, first by asking some pointed questions and later by providing some useful advice.
He was nicknamed “Beast Mode” early in his career for the way he’d relentlessly barrel through defenders, running unusually roughshod even by the NFL’s brutal standards. Here, for instance, is a play that became known as the Beast Quake (click through to the YouTube link):
Just as he would kick his game up a notch when shifting into Beast Mode, Lynch does the same in the half-hour chat with Fauci. Consistent with his colorful conversational style – charismatic, extremely informal and occasionally profane – he kiddingly calls the good doctor “Big Dog” and “Faucheesi.”
As you’d expect, Fauci does a good job of fielding Lynch’s queries and acknowledging the very sound bases for Black communities’ mistrust of the medical profession and, by extension, vaccination. That mistrust is a big reason why Lynch hosted Fauci to begin with.
In any event, here’s the video (which is well worth backing up to view from the beginning, though the clip starts in the middle):
Lessons from Oakland
The discussion is especially useful because the education flows both ways. During the first part of the episode, I’d considered some of Lynch’s questions on-point but also long-winded; I eventually realized that he was seeking a conversation more than an interview, and that there was an effective method to his mode.
Reflecting that reality, perhaps the greatest value begins about 25 minutes into the talk, when Lynch articulates the need for experts to communicate with his community in terms and methods it can understand.
He’s saying something we can all relate to: Listen in on a conversation among doctors (or lawyers, or scientists, or engineers, or auto mechanics) and your eyes can glaze over from the specialized terminology. And it’s nothing new to note that often the key element in best communicating the message is a trusted messenger.
But these points take on added resonance when we’re dealing with the life-and-death matter of Covid, particularly given how it’s ravaging Black communities (one of many points Fauci finely addresses in the session). One Beast Mode suggestion for Big Dog is that public health authorities must find better ways of communicating vital information about vaccination to the many audiences who don’t trust or understand what the government is trying to tell them.
I’m sure Fauci has heard this before. I’m not sure he or many of us have heard the message in quite the way Lynch puts it, or in the context of once-in-a-century pandemic, or for the benefit of a population that has reason to doubt doctors bearing inoculations.
Lynch doesn’t offer a detailed list of “to do’s” about vaccination education. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for doing more than what’s being done and (as with Philippine paralegal training) to work as much as possible with and through community members. His chat with “Faucheesi” is itself a step in that direction.
The dialogue offers a reminder that the difference between vaccination resisters and believers isn’t simply a matter of Red/Blue, pro-Trump/anti-Trump, ignorance/knowledge. Furthermore, some people may remain unpersuadable, no matter what. And I’m certainly not saying that what applied to paralegal training in the Philippines in the 1980s necessarily translates into encouraging vaccination in America today.
Still, as the country starts to shift from the challenge of making vaccines available to that of convincing folks to literally take a shot – and as we hopefully lead the way in sharing vaccines across the globe – Lynch’s lessons are well worth heeding.
Hat tip: AS
very interesting
thanks Stephen
Thanks, Mr. Mayor!