Aligning Values & Action
We support leaders and organizations who are striving to center anti-oppression principles through a process of aligning values with actions & policies. This often means critically engaging with the ways our actions may not mirror our stated values.
Building Capacity to Name
To align values and action requires specificity and practice naming power dynamics. While many of us have been taught not to talk about race, class, gender, gender identity, sexuality, etc., building our collective capacity to do so is crucial to engaging in equitable practice: we cannot solve problems that we cannot name.
Connecting Individuals to Systems
All of us are individuals operating in and impacted by systems. However, connecting our daily experiences in our personal and family lives, our work, and our communities to larger systems can be challenging. We make critical connections between the individual experience and oppressive systems so that the interplay is concrete and identifiable.
Taking Action
Many leaders feel paralyzed by what the right actions might be. Through our process of aligning values and action, building capacity to name, and connecting individuals to systems we help to frame next steps through an equity-lens.
Our Intersectional Lens
We approach our work through an intersectional lens, which means we use frameworks that acknowledge that no system or identity (i.e. race, gender, class, gender-identity, sexuality) operates in a vacuum. Rather, on the systemic level different oppressive ‘isms’ (racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc) interact with and reinforce each other. On an individual level, each of us is made up of multiple identities and the intersections of these identities shift our experiences.
This lens is grounded in a racial power analysis because we believe that race is our foundational identity and how we experience all of our other identities is impacted by our relative racial privilege and/or marginalization. By using a racial power analysis, we facilitate conversations that continuously connect the systemic to the individual and vice versa.
