Episode #147: The Urban Village
“Gosh, it's been a ride and it's just been a ton of fun and transformative. I'm super grateful to have been on that journey and ended up where I am,” says Jesse Phenow with typical Midwestern humility. Jesse is referring to the culmination of a series of unlikely events that led to his involvement with the Karen community in Minneapolis. (Note: Karen is the English word for this ethnic group; it’s “Kayin” in Burmese. However, they refer to themselves as “Knyaw,” and so we will be using this word in this summary.)
Jesse grew up in Richfield, Minnesota, a diverse community outside Minneapolis. He grew accustomed to the stimulation and curiosity that a multi-ethnic environment affords, so when he went to college in Bethel, a conservative, primarily white town, he felt the change acutely. As a result, he decided to spend some time volunteering for a resettlement organization. What happened next would shape the course of his life, though not in a way he might have imagined.
“Full disclosure: I signed up to be a volunteer thinking, ‘Gosh, I'm going to be able to help some recently arrived refugees! I'll be the friend and ally and welcomer that that they've been needing,’” he recalls. “I went to my very first session of volunteering, where I was tasked with coming alongside a newly arrived family from Myanmar. I walked up to the front door of the house and knocked. And as the door opened, and I was embraced, I found out almost immediately that I had the completely wrong narrative! This family didn't need me; in fact, in a lot of ways, I was the welcomed, not the welcomer. That family’s posture and sense of welcome was something that I desperately needed, and hadn't really experienced before.”
This dramatic reframing was all the more profound given Jesse’s background in traditional Christian communities. “It is embedded in the culture of white supremacy in America, and certainly in the conservative evangelical world, this idea that I have something to offer that you don't have yet. So I think there is a real ‘savior’ mentality.” That meeting helped to dispel these notions and set him on a new path almost immediately.
“One of the things that that struck me,” he says, “and I know that this is true across many of the ethnic peoples of Myanmar, but man, the sense of hospitality and welcome is just completely and radically different from anything I've experienced here in the United States!” It wasn’t just the remarkable kindness that impacted Jesse, but also how he saw the refugees navigating their new, complex and challenging reality with such ease. “When you get proximate to someone who's experienced a refugee reality, and you start to listen to their story, you start to learn about their savvy, gritty resilience,” he remembers. In spite of the hardships confronting his new Knyaw friends, Jesse found they retained a spirit which deeply impressed him.
From that initial encounter, he became closer to the family, and through them began to meet the wider Knyaw immigrant community, which is the second largest in the world outside only their Southeast Asian homeland. “You can go to Knyaw grocery stores here, you can have a Knyaw realtor, you can get insured by a Knyaw agent. I think most things here that you would need to do in Minnesota, you can do in Knyaw if you need to.” Communicating at first through hand gestures as he learned about their culture and sampled their food, right away he was struck by how close-knit the community was, for example by their use of familial terms like “uncle” and “younger sister” and “elder brother” with one another instead their given names. And Jesse adds, “Knyaw people are hilarious! They don’t take themselves too seriously, and are just radically humble, and just deeply respectable in their way of not having such big egos.”
While still in college, Jesse took what would be his first of many trips to Knyaw refugee camps along the Thai border. Coming back, he chose to write his senior thesis on the Knyaw Revolution. As he got further into his research, he was filled with a much deeper sense of the people and their history. He learned that in pre-colonial times, Knyaw tribes found themselves sandwiched between the much more powerful Bamar and Thai empires, but that things improved slightly when the British came, as the new rulers found them to be “humble and trustworthy and loyal.” It also didn’t hurt that many converted to Christianity. Knyaw forces were closely tied to the Allied effort in World War II, with some British officers even suggesting that should they win, the Knyaw would be given their own independence. This ultimately did not happen, and after General Aung San was able to form the newly independent nation of Burma, many Knyaw began to feel a growing discrimination. Jesse explains that this soon boiled over into a full-fledged conflict that has still not been resolved, making it the longest-running civil war in the world. He then gives listeners a crash course on the important touchstone events that have taken place in the past seven decades and how they have impacted the Knyaw people, including the 1962 military coup, the growing Burmanization policies, the 1988 democracy movement and resulting flow of student activists to Knyaw territories, the devastating Buddhist-Christian split, and finally, the fateful fall of Mannerplaw, the Knyaw headquarters, in January 1995. Pausing here, he notes how “in a lot of ways, since ‘95, the Knyaw Revolution has looked a lot more spread out, kind of thinner but scrappier in a lot of different ways.”
Armed with his deeper knowledge of the Knyaw people and their history, Jesse wanted to spend more time on the ground. So after graduation, he bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok, and spent the next several months visiting Knyaw villages in Burma, as well as Mae Sot (a town on the Thai border) and associated refugee camps, broadening his connections and deepening his knowledge further.
After returning back home in Minneapolis, he was working in an office providing mental health services to immigrant communities, which put him in touch with the many Knyaw and Karenni families in the city. “There's a lot of trauma,” he acknowledges. “There's a real lived pain that stems from a lot of years of intense violence and human rights violations. There's not a Knyaw person in Minnesota who doesn't have a story about a family member or a friend being harmed, raped, killed, tortured, or a village burned.”
During this time, he and the Knyaw family that he had first met in college decided to buy a house together, and where they live communally to this day. Then one day in 2019, he happened to see a “For Sale” sign on an abandoned bar nearby. He bought and renovated it, transforming it into a Knyaw communal space he named “The Urban Village.”
“The Urban Village exists to accompany Knyaw and Karenni youth as they embark on a journey of connecting, healing and launching,” he explains. “We have kind of this community space that we've filled with Karen and Karenni art and different cultural items and artifacts.” This is especially important for the Knyaw community for their sense of belonging and continuity after their history of overt discrimination and then violence from the Tatmadaw that forced many first into refugee camps, and then this completely alien environment where they have to start new lives. “We're hearing from elders a genuine fear around a growing disconnect between them and their kids,” Jesse says. This is a not uncommon phenomenon in forced immigrant communities; it can be seen in the younger generation not speaking the parents’ language well (if at all), for example, and an unfamiliarity with their own family and community history. This lack of connection either to one’s own culture or the new one can lead to a shaky sense of self. As a result, it can be hard for some refugee youth to “know who they are” and find their place, which can lead to a variety of challenges. This is where Jesse hopes The Urban Village can come in. “Our hope is that that connection really starts with a connection to themselves and to their identity, whatever they come to believe that to be, but that they feel a sense of connection. Hosting our programs in The Urban Village actually provides a really cool opportunity for that.”
Of course, the latest touchstone moment in the long arc of Knyaw history is the February 2021 military coup. In many ways, its aftermath has exposed an additional manifestation of generation gap between Knyaw elders and young people in Minnesota. The former had to survive near constant assaults from the Tatmadaw while the latter do not have that personal experience, and their different perspectives strongly shape their outlook and sense of possibility. The perspective of the elders is past-centric and pessimistic, while the perspective of Knyaw young people is future-centric and optimistic. As Jesse explains, “I'm not sure that the elders within the diaspora are ready to trust it, or forgive it, or forget what happened. The youth of the diaspora are much more willing to embrace this moment and see the opportunity for unity and for a new reality moving forward. But the elders are skeptical, and I think it's understandable.”
Overall, he sees that many Knyaw who were forced into exile see resistance to the coup as “a real intense reclamation of identity.” Equipped with real-time updates through social media, a tool that did not exist during their community’s past struggles, there is a feeling that this is a golden moment to seek a kind of recognition and self-determination towards which the Knyaw have been striving for so long.
Even since the coup, Jesse has continued his relief trips to Knyaw villages in Burma. He supports health and education projects, helps document the on-going situation, and interviews elders with the aim of building a historical archive. As tumultuous and challenging as the last two years have been, he sees many signs of optimism. “The entire country is really fighting back, and I think this type of unity probably hasn't been seen before.” Noting that the Knyaw Revolution is now in its 74th year, he finds a “feeling of hopefulness and optimism in what this new unity is providing, but also a very sad and depressing reality of what it's taking to get there… It's certainly a hopeful but a dark time in Myanmar.”