If you’re a regular reader or part of IISC’s network, you’ll know that we build collaborative capacity for individuals, organizations, and networks to pursue social justice and racial equity. Organizational and network capacity isn’t the only thing we need to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, but there’s no doubt that we need the collective ability to deepen relationships, sharpen analysis, create shared visions, and make space for joy and for rest, even as we design effective strategies and develop action plans.
Last fall, I participated in a panel of grantees of the Borealis REACH (Racial Equity to Accelerate Change) Fund at the Exponent Philanthropy Conference. Moderator Makkah Ali asked us (myself, Judy Lubin of the Center for Urban and Racial Equity, and Natalie Bamdad of Change Elemental) to respond to a series of thought-provoking questions. Our pre-panel dinner and the actual conversation was too juicy not to share! For now, just sit with the questions (some of which were asked directly, and some of which emerged as I was writing this post).
How is racial justice work evolving in organizations and networks?
What racial equity trends are you noticing in the field?
What are people interested in working on? What goals are they focusing on?
Where are you finding more resistance?
How is the work (i.e., the analysis, goals, methods, language, etc.) evolving as people encounter positive energy and resistance?
How are people thinking about the relationship between racism and racial justice and other systems of oppression that matter in their work? What kinds of strategies are they using?
What does it look like to build the capacity of organizations and networks to pursue racial justice?
Walk us through an engagement that demonstrates what it looks like to make inroads toward racial equity. What were you hired to do? What happened? How did you assess the group’s progress?
Walk us through an engagement that demonstrates the barriers or blockades to effectively carrying out racial equity work.
What are signs of an organization’s readiness to engage internally in racial equity work?
How are we supporting people to stay focused and sustain their efforts over time?
How can funders support their grantees’ racial justice and racial equity work?
What would you like funders to know about the future of racial equity work and the role they can play in it?
What types of support has your organization received that has been most useful to meet this moment?
How can people prepare themselves for this work?
What does it take from us as practitioners to design and facilitate this kind of work? What kinds of skills, attitudes, and practices do we need to cultivate?
What does it take from leaders and staff in organizations? How does that differ for BIPOC folks and white folks? How does it differ for folks from different generations, genders, and other identities?
What other juicy questions are emerging as you work toward racial justice and racial equity?
We will dig into our experiences and responses to these questions in other posts throughout the year. Stay tuned!
I’ve always been drawn to complexity – messy problems that overlap without clear boundaries or tidy solutions. The kind of issues for which many of us long for a straightforward solution. The kind of issues that many people rush to oversimplify in their quest for a solution. Racism is one of those issues. Here are just a few who’ve shone a light on the need to think and act comprehensively.
Reflecting on lessons from the 1960s, Audrey Lorde reminded us that “there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” She was reflecting specifically on the intersections of racism and sexism, and also on the fact that our current struggles for justice are built upon the work of those who came before us.
Dr. King organized against the triple evils of racism, poverty, and militarism, declaring that “the promise of a Great Society was shipwrecked off the coast of Asia … I intend to keep these issues mixed because they are mixed. Somewhere we must see thatjustice is indivisible, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Building on Dr. King’s legacy, the contemporaryPoor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is calling for a comprehensive, multi-issueThird Reconstruction that addresses not only racism, poverty, and militarism, but also the failure to care for people and the planet, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.
In her 2017 book, No is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics, Naomi Klein stated “It is becoming possible to see a genuine path forward – new political formations that, from their inception, will marry the fight for economic fairness with a deep analysis of how racism and misogyny are used as potent tools to enforce a system that further enriches the already obscenely wealthy on the back of both people and the planet. …[formations that are] knitting togethera multiracial and intergenerational coalition bound by a common transformational project.”
How does this matter for the work we do at IISC every day? I can see a few lessons and am curious about what else you see.
We can do more to help people explore how their central issues and concerns are inextricably linked to other issues and concerns, so that they can see more clearly the opportunities for partnership and solidarity. In the spirit of practicing net-work, we can help people understand how their work can be better leveraged if connected with others in the wider ecosystem.
We can do more to help people focus on building power through that partnership and solidarity – the kind of power that is necessary to meet the forces that hold the current social, political, and economic arrangements in place. We can focus more attention on what it would take to change those arrangements, even as we support people to strategize about how to survive and even thrive within those arrangements. We can remind ourselves to think and act more like organizers and less like administrators because we are, in fact, working to build the power necessary to birth a more just society.
We can do more to help people use their awareness of their own identities, particularly the identities that put them at the margins of society, to expand their consciousness and their circle of moral concern. As they say in the Poor People’s Campaign, “Everybody in. Nobody out.” We can encourage people to build relationships and learn from movements and leaders in other sectors, other countries, and from other identities. We can stand up against efforts to restrict what books we and our children can read and what pieces of our history can be taught.
And, in the face of such enormous questions and pressing needs, we can continue to encourage people to slow down, truly see one another, and find beauty and joy in the midst of struggle. We can celebrate the moments when we manage to weave together a network of both likely and unlikely partners, moments where we achieve small and large victories in our individual and shared work, and moments when we amplify ways in which justice, peace, and love manifest in our daily lives and work.
What does the path forward look like to you? How are you helping others to find a path through complexity and towards connection?
In June of 2022, IISC decided to experiment with a four-day work week. First, it was just for the summer. Then we extended it into the fall. Eventually, after careful review of its impacts on multiple levels, we decided to make it permanent.
Here is the original post about this decision, which provides important context.
For years, our visionary president, Kelly Bates, dreamed of implementing a four-day work week at IISC. But it wasn’t until Covid broke open every preconception we had about work that it actually seemed possible. While Covid has led to a lot of heartbreak, it has also given us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to completely reimagine our work, from where and when we work to how we manage our time and productivity and more. And so…we are trying an experiment this summer. From mid-June through August we are implementing a four-day work week at IISC.
Some background to this decision might be useful to share.
During Covid we went fully remote as an organization, as did so many others. And eventually, as we grappled with the impact of the pandemic on our work and personal lives, we implemented monthly restoration days (one Friday off each month) and started ending the workday on Fridays at 2 p.m. (essentially giving staff a 37-hour work week). These interim steps made a four-day work week experiment seem possible.
Before taking this step, we took a look around and learned from a lot of other organizations who have done this and we talked extensively with our staff. We learned that four-day work weeks are not a perfect solution to all that challenges us and that sometimes people will still work some on Fridays. But we also learned that a four-day work week can make the work/life balance significantly more manageable; multiple staff from other organizations that had implemented it shared that they’d not now have it any other way.
Another stop on this journey has been a simplification of our goals here at IISC to our intention to become sustainable, whole, and purposeful. Trying out a four-day work week is just one of the steps we are taking in pursuit of these goals. A four-day work week will require us to be more purposeful and intentional with our time and, ultimately, we hope that it means our staff who work diligently for racial justice will feel their work is more sustainable and that they are better able to show up as whole people.
We enter into this experiment with a lot of questions. Will it reduce stress or cause more? Will we be able to get our work done by getting better at prioritizing how we use our work time? Will it impact our finances? We are also entering into this experiment with a sense of gratitude for the out-of-the-box thinking it has taken to get us here, and with the hope that this change will better support our staff as vibrant humans who are living, being, and working in myriad ways to make the world a better place – within IISC and beyond.
The myth of the nonprofit sector is that we achieve our mission and creativity through a 9-5 workday. And if we have learned anything during the pandemic, it is that we all need to be better supported to live into our full potential. This policy change is in deep alignment with our values of love, networks, and racial justice and we are excited to launch an experiment that challenges us to live out these values in new ways.
Maybe some of you are already doing this, or will soon join us? If so, let us know how things are working out – you can use the comment section below. And check out this TedTalk with Juliet Schor discussing the value of the four-day work week – from retention of employees to enhanced productivity and overall wellness for people and families.
What happens when thousands of racial justice leaders and practitioners come together after a pandemic? So much power and knowledge-sharing – and plenty of dancing and hugs, and even a few martinis!
At the 2022 national Facing Race Conference in Arizona, sponsored by Race Forward, participants were graced with gratitude for their work for racial justice, invited to be even bolder in our approaches, and instructed to avoid internal implosions at a time in which our organizations and the movement are needed the most.
I heard five important calls-to-action:
Backlash Means We’re Winning. Keep Going!
We’re winning! The number of people of color leading and pushing change in institutions is at its highest levels. We see movement wins such as the growing people of color electorate and the halt of the Keystone pipeline. The use of the word “systemic racism” is now commonplace. We were encouraged to keep pressing forward and harder to break through on our biggest ideas. Opening plenary speakers said, “Fight for your impossible idea… and let us dream and fail.”
Get out of Isolation. It’s Time for Reconnection!
We’ve become accustomed to quarantine and staying close to home but we were encouraged to move out of our comfort zones. Specifically, we were reminded to talk to people at their doors and to bring them back into protests and visible organizing. One speaker said, “we have to retrain people, including ourselves, to interact again, especially in person and in public.” At IISC, our mission is creating skills for collaboration and interaction. We’re exploring how we can enter and hold physical spaces with care while still centering those at risk from COVID through an equity and disability access lens.
Don’t Underestimate White Nationalism. Expose and Bring it Down!
As distinct from the ideology of white supremacy, white nationalism is coordinated and direct action fueled by hatred and violence. Organization-building to support white racist and anti-semetic attacks and violence is on the rise and getting very sophisticated. From Boston to Michigan and Florida, leaders pointed to overt and well-organized actions in their communities from white nationalist organizations. They encouraged us to work with community organizations, government leaders, and neighbors to develop strategies to prevent their inroads and to frame messaging to drown out their discourse.
Stop Internal Organizational Implosions. Build Organizations on Soul Work!
We heard a loud and clear call for each person inside an organization to take responsibility for extinguishing the internal fights we are waging against each other so we can focus on the external fights for justice. No organization, person, or leader is perfect so we can’t cast each other to the curb in punitive and harmful ways, stay in victimization, attack each other, and fall into gossip. They asked us to build our organizations so people can do their soul work and be liberated to do work with joy and happiness.
Move Forward. Live into Possibility!
I was struck that you barely heard the name “Trump” around the conference. The focus was on moving and organizing for what we want and imagine. Not that we don’t pay attention to the war on our democracy and progressive values but that we go in the direction of creating even more conditions for change and living good personal lives as we do it. IISC held a workshop at the conference on fighting the return of the old normal by envisioning and leading for liberatory systems and racial justice transformation. We produced a resource guide to help you and other organizations do that while attending to the current challenges before us. Check it out.
In summary, we have power, we’re winning, and we need to reconnect and get our own house in order. Now that’s a push we at IISC appreciated and definitely needed, and maybe you feel that way, as well. We hope to see you at the next Facing Race conference in 2024.
IISC was thrilled to host a workshop at the Facing Race Conference 2022 called “Let’s fight the return of the ‘Old Normal!’ – Leading for liberatory systems and racial justice transformation.”
The workshop was offered on the Institutional and Sector Change track, which “is a home for practitioners from a wide range of sectors wanting to get real about transforming how our institutions operate in order to dismantle structural racism and generate racially equitable outcomes.”
We created a space where participants could take a breath, experience something new – a space that was infused with joyful music and where they were surrounded by provocative art and quotes and could imagine a more beautiful future. Here’s a brief workshop description, followed by a link to a resource guide that we hope that you will use and adapt.
Are you fighting the “return to normal”? Unsure about what “new normal” looks like? Marian Wright Edelman taught us that, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” So we’re going to spend some time trying to see the new normal together. These past few years have taxed racial justice leaders and organizations in unimaginable ways. Join us for a moment of collective hope. We’ll co-create visions of racial justice in practice, sharing stories that feed our collective imagination. We’ll strategize about leading our organizations and networks out of “old normal” white supremacist systems and practices toward liberation and transformation. We’ll share tools for helping leaders to demand, envision, and build more liberatory and racially just futures. We’ll raise up structural and organizational strategies for creating a new normal of moving from trauma to racial justice transformation in organizations, workplaces and networks. Together we can fight going “back to normal” using the greater strength of both vision and strategy to bend the arc of society to transformative futures.
Check out IISC’s new resource guide that shares some of the prompts, practices, and artwork that were featured in the workshop. Please use the comments function below to let us know how you are using the resources offered here and what you are learning by offering this opportunity to others. We hope the resources are useful in support of your own visioning and your own practice!
Last week, the REACH Fund (the Racial Equity to Accelerate Change Fund of Borealis Philanthropy) invited us all to participate in the building of a collective muscle that reflects the future we envision. With Kelly Bates from Interaction Institute for Social Change and Natalie Bamdad from Change Elemental leading the way, we explored the journey of racial equity, trends we should anticipate, and what’s needed from philanthropy to elevate and prioritize this vital work.
Here are a handful of high-level learnings the REACH Team shared after the conversation with Kelly and Natalie:
We must expand our lens for the type of work that contributes to the advancement of racial equity. Racial equity work is about more than toolkits and evaluative reports—it is about data and also storytelling, relationships, process, design, healing, and implementation. As funders, we must acknowledge the value and breadth of this work and its unique component parts.
The pie is big enough for everything. Funders must abandon a scarcity mindset in funding racial equity work and choose multiple streams of work to resource. The potential for change is limitless when we collectively approach our work with abundance.
Racial equity work is reparations. Racial equity work is reparatory work. As funders, we have to acknowledge the source of concentrated wealth, incorporate this history into our funding decisions, and let resources “flow like a river.”
Philanthropy must grapple with the scale of transformation needed. Part of “readiness” for radical racial equity work is understanding the depth of engagement required to untangle the impacts of white supremacy on our organizations and ourselves. Racial equity work is not one-off, project-based work. It is a years-long journey and a vision that must be embedded into the core of our organizations.
We have to design for the future we envision. Ultimately, racial justice requires we exist to serve the future we envision—not simply act against oppressive and oppositional forces. We must center our vision for the future in our organizations’ racial equity journeys and missions.
The REACH Team also shared that they were meditating on a lesson they learned long ago—one that speaks to their Fund’s very existence, which they are reminded of repeatedly: the work of racial equity practitioners is vital to leading the movement ecosystem towards liberatory principle and practice. The wisdom, approach, and tools of these facilitators, coaches, and healers are essential to supporting the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors to dismantle and repair the systems designed to uphold white supremacy—and, importantly, to do so in a way that centers healing and joy.
This post is a revision of one that was shared on June 11, 2020. The poem has been revised.
As the world tries to return to the “old normal” of racism in every facet of our life, or to the exhaustion from an overproducing system, let’s resist it fiercely and walk into the next one hundred years together in the spirit of new creation and norms.
May this poem that I wrote be a source of vision and inspiration.
Sun rays coming through trees, Pikrepo
Let not the slow creep of the old return
Like childish feet come slipping through your doorways
Look in the direction of the sun
Remember the lessons of staying in place?
Wading into presence
Tending to family
Resting your breath
Facing scars
Embracing insecurities
Abandoning perfection
Slowing your heart to hear cries of “I Can’t Breathe”
For the futures of humankind
Erase the “old normal”
Walk toward the light
Grieve the long path of injustice you were in
And stand upright
There can be no turning back
You can look over your shoulder and peek once in awhile
But there is no freedom behind you
Greed, exhaustion, and oppression live there
You said you wanted change in your lifetime?
Keep walking forward
Keep pausing to hear your heartbeat
To hear the people in the streets
And create the next 100 years
And you will not return
Because we will rise forward with the force of 100,000 horses galloping
Tens of thousands of drums pounding
And a Planet alive with millions dancing
Plants growing
Animals running
Seas churning
Temperatures readjusting
Life spilling over into our lineage of children
With Earth healing
We will reclaim the Earth!
And live into a future we’ve never been to before.
IISC is delighted to share that a number of our staff will have the opportunity to attend this year’s Facing Race National Conference, presented by Race Forward. Enthusiasm for this flagship racial justice convening is popping, especially given that it’s happening in person for the first time since 2019.
We are looking forward to being in community with other racial justice practitioners as we gather to gain a deeper sense of what is needed in this moment and how we at IISC – both individually and collectively – can best contribute. We’re also excited to hear from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, now our fellow Bostonian in his role as director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.
In addition to attending the conference as participants, members of our team will also be leading workshops!
IISC President Kelly Bates and Director of Practice Miriam Messinger are co-leading a session – Let’s fight the return of the “Old Normal!” – Leading for liberatory systems and racial justice transformation – in which they will lead participants through a process of co-creating visions of racial justice in practice and strategizing about leading our organizations and networks out of “old normal” white supremacist systems and practices toward liberation and transformation.
IISC Senior Associate Cynthia Silva Parker is co-leading a workshop with Sean Thomas-Breitfeld, Co-Executive Director of Building Movement Project on behalf of the Deep Equity Practitioners Network. Real Talk About Building Organizational Capacity for Racial Equity: A peer exchange. The workshop will offer people who facilitate learning, strategy development, healing, team building, coaching, organizational change, and more to advance racial justice an opportunity to build community and share ideas about engaging tough issues – from getting past performative efforts and moving toward liberation to helping organizations embody racial justice in their operations as well as their programming.
We are committed to sharing reflections once we attend and process the conference experience. Stay tuned!
In middle and high school, I challenged (and most likely annoyed) my teachers around this time of the year. I went to school in Plymouth, MA and wondered out loud why Native Americans would want to celebrate Columbus Day. “Shouldn’t it be a day of mourning for them?” I’d ask. I don’t recall any teacher having a good answer to my question or even being willing to engage in meaningful dialogue. I’ve always been a little proud of myself for having some level of consciousness at that age. And, I’m well aware that there is so much more to learn and to do.
Indigenous People’s Day isn’t just another three-day weekend. It’s a great opportunity to honor Indigenous people and to recognize and grieve the genocide and land theft that is at the heart of the founding of this nation. It’s a day to tell a more truthful story about the founding of this nation: the story of how the land that is now the U.S., which became the basis for wealth and well-being for the original settlers and their descendents, was stolen, swindled or taken by force. We Shall Remain and Unnatural Causes Episode 4: Bad Sugar provide powerful reminders of that history and connections to present-day conditions. Honestly, the more I learn, the more I feel regret, shame, and powerlessness to redress the wrongs. After all these years, I am still looking for ways to be an effective ally to Native American communities and to leverage the considerable privilege that being a U.S. citizen affords me.
Indigenous People’s Day is also an important opportunity to learn what Indigenous communities are doing in the present day and what it means to decolonize. It’s an opportunity to live into solidarity. For me, one powerful step in that direction has been learning from and participating in small ways in the Decolonizing Wealth Project, from which I borrowed the title of this post. The project asks:
“Are you a decolonizer?”
“Are you fighting for a more just and sustainable world? Are your efforts to bring about change rooted in a deep love for humanity and the earth?”
My response? Yes, I am fighting for a more just and sustainable world. Yes, my efforts to make change are rooted in a deep love for humanity and the earth. And yes, I have a long, long way to go to call myself a decolonizer.
In 2019 and early 2020, my colleague Eugenia Acuna and I had the privilege of working with Edgar Villanueva and the Decolonizing Wealth Project to help develop some of the project’s tools and resources. Since then, I have been diving more deeply into Edgar’s work (Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance is now in its second printing!) and taking baby steps toward using money as medicine to heal what’s broken in our world. I got my decolonizer t-shirt (You should get yours too! Proceeds support organizations working with Native-led organizations working on racial justice.), though I still feel like I have more to do before I can actually wear it.
This year I’m revisiting Edgar’s seven steps to healing and challenging myself to apply them more consciously and consistently in my practice and my life. The steps are so straightforward. They are simple to state and oh, so challenging to do. (No spoilers here! Get the book and find out what the steps are.) As I reviewed them recently, I realized how often I skip past some of the steps and sometimes even practice their exact opposite. I invite you to join me in digging deeper, reflecting more honestly, loving harder, and practicing grace with oneself and with others more often. How will you open yourself to being guided by Indigenous wisdom as we seek to heal divides and restore balance?
IISC is honored to share that we were selected as a finalist in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion category of the 4th annual .ORG Impact Awards. This program – sponsored by the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the people behind .ORG – honors and celebrates inspiring mission-driven organizations and leaders from around the globe that not only demonstrate a passion for making the world a better place, but also work tirelessly to create a positive impact in their communities. IISC is pleased to be one of only five finalists in this category – selected from a record number of submissions from around the world.
The winners in each category will be announced on November 15 and we will certainly be even more delighted should we win that final honor (along with a cash prize!). That said, regardless of the outcome, IISC is pleased with this recognition as a finalist and will be happy to celebrate with the winner should it be one of our co-finalists.
Most importantly, we honor the people of IISC who make this all possible. So much hard work and dedication is behind why we have been recognized in this way. Learn more about us here!
All past workshop participants are invited to join a facilitated LinkedIn group to connect with others. The groups will be a place to share successes and challenges, exchange resources, ask questions, and support each other in continuing to apply and practice the workshop frameworks and tools.
In addition, all group members will be invited to attend quarterly online gatherings hosted by a talented lineup of IISC facilitators. These gatherings will be a space to connect with others and to continue to build on the content and experience of the workshops.
IISC has long dreamed of creating these communities and we are delighted to launch this project with the support of The Kresge Foundation.
If you have attended a workshop and are interested in joining us, please complete this short survey. Survey respondents will receive a link to join the LinkedIn communities. We are excited to welcome you into the IISC community in this new way as we grow our network of social change practitioners.
Registration is Open!Join us April 20 – May 10 for the FSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge: a daily practice to build the skill, will, and courage to advance racial equity in our food system and beyond. $21 for 21 days.
