The goal of this space is to foster radical community building and belonging that reimagines communication, connection, vulnerability, healing, and the choreography of conflict & repair. We are here to return to our humanity and build a community framework that honors our right to joy, creativity, safety, dignity, belonging, healing, and growth.
The creation of this space is an acknowledgement of the importance of joy and creativity to the human spirit, and a declaration of our right to live in a world that nurtures our creative inclinations and natural curiosity. We affirm that access to creativity is a human necessity, and that barriers to creative expression have a deleterious effect on our minds, bodies, and communities.
We acknowledge that we each come to this space having experienced trauma and harm at the hands of individuals, communities, and systems, and having caused trauma and harm ourselves. We acknowledge that we enter this community with our own emotional needs, tools, and capacities. We affirm that the work of unpacking and healing from these traumas is lifelong, multi-generational, whole-body work, and that this work is informed by our multiple intersecting identities.
In this space, we acknowledge the centuries-long systemic exploitation and oppression of Black and indigenous peoples, as well as other communities of color. We affirm that centering Black and indigenous women, girls, and transgender people in the building and maintenance of this community serves to honor their continued subjugation, and shift our community framework away from our indoctrination in capitalistic white-supremacist values toward healthier ways of being in relationship with one another. We believe in the human capacity for growth and transformation, and commit to the messy life-long work of healing and growing ourselves and our communities.
Remembering always our humanity and the humanity of our community members, we will participate in and navigate this space according to the following agreements:
- We acknowledge ourselves and our community members as social (requiring connection to and community with others), imperfect, and multi-faceted human beings. We acknowledge that the individualistic, transactional, and dehumanizing ways of being that we have been taught are not in alignment with how we wish to exist, and affirm the need and desire to imagine new ways of constructing and maintaining our relationship to self and to our community members. It is our individual and collective goal to align our values and words with our actions. We agree to meet this journey with integrity and compassion, and to acknowledge and hold space for the complexity of ourselves and our community members as we unlearn and collectively dream a new community framework into existence.
- We agree to communicate with ourselves and our community members using language that is affirmative to our identities and validates our humanity. These identities include and are not limited to gender, race, socioeconomic class, ability (disability/neurodivergence), housing status, and religious/spiritual affiliation.
- We acknowledge our indoctrination in harmful western white-supremacist culture, and agree to meet ourselves and our community members with curiosity rather than assumption. This includes not assuming a person’s identities (e.g. their gender or pronouns) based on their appearance, name, et cetera. We agree to correct the mistakes we make in gendering/naming people (including mispronunciations), and to meet mistakes made by community members with the grace that they deserve.
- We acknowledge the exploitative and harmful nature of cultural appropriation, and agree to refrain from using the language and cultural icons/markers of other cultures in a manner that is appropriative, mocking, or offensive. This includes and is not limited to the use of cultural slang, AAVE and other dialects; cultural iconography, dress, food, and accented speech. We affirm that cultures susceptible to appropriation and harm are not limited to communities formed based on geography, race, or religion, and include other socially marginalized groups such as the deaf community and the physically disabled community.
- We agree to acknowledge the impact of our actions, regardless of our intentions, and to meet the intentions of our community members with the humanity that they deserve.
- We acknowledge that conflict is a healthy part of community and belonging, and that a key component of safety is the safety to express discontent. We agree to continually work to heal our adherence to the tenets of white supremacy culture (including fear of open conflict, defensiveness, objectivity, and either/or binary thinking), and to welcome the choreography of conflict as a means of understanding, healing, and growth within ourselves and in our community.
- We acknowledge the harm caused by capitalistic, punitive, carceral, and dehumanizing models of conflict resolution, and affirm our desire to imagine and enact healthier, more transformative ways of navigating conflict within ourselves and among community members. We agree to use the tools outlined in The choreography of conflict to express, address, navigate, and repair conflict with community members, including
- actively participating in and providing our feedback to the framework;
- allowing our ideas and wisdom to be freely used to improve the framework;
- refraining from discussing our community conflict(s) on social media platforms without the expressed permission of all parties involved, and holding always the multiple forms of safety that are necessary for healthy participation in conflict transformation;
- guarding the framework as a free resource available to all, and agreeing not to use the framework for profit.
- We acknowledge our indoctrination in the URGENCY tenet of white supremacy culture, and agree to actively combat the inclination to hurry or rush ourselves and our community members. We acknowledge that the timelines of healing, growth, and conflict transformation are not linear, and that our western programming, participation in capitalism, and resulting trauma, often cause us to want to rush these processes. We agree to work individually and communally to create slower and healthier processes for ourselves that honor the complexity of our humanity and that of our community members.
- We acknowledge the cultural corruption of “expertise” in western white-supremacist culture, and we affirm that, while extensive academic study of and knowledge on a given topic is, at times, useful and necessary, personal experience, ancestral teachings and practices, intuition, self-discovery, and inner knowing are also valuable to our individual and communal growth and healing journeys. We agree to validate and uplift these forms of knowledge within ourselves and our community, and give them the weight that they deserve as we share space with one another.
- We acknowledge that relative safety is one of the core desires and needs of human beings, and that the safety of dominant groups has historically been prioritized over and to the detriment of people who hold the most marginalized identities. In order to heal and grow from the harms caused by misogynistic white-supremacist ideology, we agree to use the tools outlined in “The choreography of Conflict” to hold ourselves and community members accountable, and to center the safety of marginalized peoples over the comfort of those holding privileged identities. This includes and is not limited to
- Refraining from interrupting/talking over community members, unless expressed permission is given
- Refraining from claiming or suggesting reverse -isms, including reverse racism, reverse sexism, reverse classism, reverse ableism, and reverse fatphobia
- Refraining from violating boundaries set, including boundaries around space-taking (e.g. “I need some space from this conversation” or “Please leave me alone” or “I’m not open to discussing this with you”), educating community members (e.g. “I am not open to doing the labor of educating you” or “I will not answer questions that can easily be googled”), groups created to increase safety (e.g. “This is a space for Black LGBTQIA+ people only” or “I am looking for input from other parents only” or “I’m disabled, and I am looking to make other disabled friends”)
- Refraining from invalidating or gaslighting the experiences of community members or sidestepping the impact of our actions (e.g. “I was just trying to relate to you” or “I use that word because I grew up in community with that group of people and I used it with my friends there” or “That slang may have originated in your community, but it’s popular now and it means something different in larger culture, so it’s okay for me to say it” or “I was just singing along to the music/acting out the movie scene/quoting someone else’s words” or “My partner/spouse/co-parent/best friend/child belongs to ___ group and they are comfortable with me doing/saying this with them”)