Part 3: Equity Coordination and Leadership
Equity is a central ingredient to your leadership.
Equity is the fair and just distribution of money, power, and resources that ultimately lead to fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all people. Any path towards equity must acknowledge the root causes of outcome disparities in society; and challenge the “status quo” of power relations, assumptions, and societal views that work to minoritize and marginalize groups of people.
Equity strives to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups.
Equity is only achieved when all people have the economic, social, and political power and resources to make decisions about their lives, families, and communities.
What is an equity committee?
A group of individuals comprises key stakeholders that include staff, leadership, and community. This group holds the organization to values of equity and justice through thoughtful conversation and committed actions, with the goal of sustained transformation internally and in the world. They are responsive to the needs and accountable to each other and the community.
This equity continuum tool was created to understand the phases of equity continuum work. We have identified 4 phases:
- Identify
- Formation
- Priorities and Strategies
- Implementation and Evaluation
These steps, while pictured here in a linear process, can often require a more non-linear process and invitation to return back to the Formation stage when new members enter into the committee or there are significant changes in resourcing the work.
Tool: Equity Committee Continuum
& start again…
Identify
What does equity look like, feel like, and function like?
Formation
People
Money
Partners
Resources
Priorities & Strategies
What’s our focus and how will we get there?
Implement & Evaluate
Commit to sustained action towards liberation
Feedback
Each phase deals with critical focus areas that support and sustain our commitment to equity.
Designing Equity: Continuum
Identify:
What does equity look like, feel like, and function like?
Focus on: Inclusion + Team Cohesion and Accountability
Formation:
People | Money | Partners | Resources
Focus on: Transformative Systems + Community Care
Priorities & Strategies
What’s our focus and how will we get there?
Focus on: Network Building + Change Management
Implement & Evaluate
Commit to sustained action towards liberation
We then offered these eight circles to understand the depth and breadth of doing equity work in our organizations, agencies, and communities. Every phase of our equity work aligns with two circles. This supports us in making the work of equity more tangible and grounded.
Below you will find the Actualizing Equity tool and the guided questions we created for each circle. Note that each circle also has a “guide” – an ancestor, elder, or contemporary activist or practitioner that helps ground us in this work for justice.
Tool:
Actualizing Equity
Inclusion:
- Identify who is in the room and who may be missing
- Facilitate transparent and honest conversation around identity and power
- Honor multiple intelligences, identities and frames for the work
“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” –Audre Lorde
- People often stay away from difficult conversations, especially about identity, while at work. How can you/we work to have MORE conversations about how and why we show up?
- What does true inclusion look like for you? What’s 1 topic/issue/identity you wish you could bring up at work?
- How can we ensure this is a core value internally as we work together and externally as we work with our communities?
Team Cohesion & Accountability:
- Establishing platforms for committee members to interact without hierarchy and accountability mechanisms
- Co-creation of clear and transparent policies and frameworks
- Adaptation and flexibility to your team’s needs with a prioritization of joy, care and collective responsibility
“If we are truly committed to ending oppression and creating a new world, then we must be committed to each other. Then we must live out of the simple truth that we need each other. We need each other.” – Mia Mingus
- Share a powerful experience you had on a team (sports team, club, work team, etc). What made that team so impactful? What are some ways a team can build and grow together?
- What are the systems of power (racism, sexism, classism, ableism, heterosexism etc.) at play in your committee? What could dismantling these systems look like? What support would you need to address these systems of power?
- What are some barriers to equity that exist on your committee right now? How do these barriers show up in your work?
- Does accountability look different depending on the identities of each member of your committee? How can thinking about identity and equity be helpful in this process?
- What does being committed and accountable to the people you build/learn/work alongside look like?
Transformative Systems:
- Creating committee onboarding processes that empower the committee members in their role to transform the organizations they work in
- Establishing feedback as a central part of your committee culture
- Design work plans that are grounded in core values and practices
“There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures.” –bell hooks
- What do you imagine are the explicit finances, people, and resources needed to actualize your equity committee’s plan?
- Money (how much?)
- People (who can give you what you want?)
- Resources (what tangible resources are needed to move your work forward?)
- What is your organizational theory of change? Does it include an analysis of power, identity, and privilege?
- What roles are needed/work needed to be held within your equity committee to bring your work into fruition?
- Determine priorities within the context of the strategic plan and a realistic timeline, considering resources such as committee member time and ongoing operations.
- What can your committee accomplish in:
- 3 months
- 6 months
- 9 months
- 12 months
Community Care
- Create an intentional culture of care that is supported and prioritized
- Prioritize wellness practices that specifically center people most directly impacted by oppression
- Facilitate real conversations about stress, delegation, and trust and make a plan to manage and address care as an essential part of equity work
“We all deserve to heal on our own terms and we confront oppressive systems that get in our way. Healing justice acknowledges that we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence and to bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts, and minds. “
– Cara Page
Note: We acknowledge that care has been prioritized for White people inside and outside of traditional health care and care spaces. Because of this, this circle centers the experiences of BIPOC people whose care is often dismissed, minimized or overlooked.
- Open invite to do whatever looks like Care for you!
- What are some rituals and practices you use to take care of yourself?
- How might the different identities we carry impact the way we view taking care of ourselves and our committee members?
- What has been the culture of care and wellness at your workplace? Do you see opportunities for care and wellness? If not, what hinders it?
- What do you imagine are the explicit needs?
- Money (how much?)
- People (who can give you what you want?)
- Resources (what tangible resources are needed to move your work forward?)
Network & Movement Building:
- Determine and build relationships with organizations, collectives, and individuals outside of your organization
- Communicate proactively and with breadth about your goals and priorities
- Locate personal mentor/femtor/wymtor that are willing to offer honest, strategic guidance and accountability
“Tell me who your people are and I will tell you who you are.” -Ella Baker
- Is your work currently connected to larger movements for justice and community inclusion? What does that look like/could look like?
- Does your work hold any tension/contradiction/opposition with larger movement/liberation ideas (i.e decriminalize sex work, legalize marijuana, defund police, etc)? How will you hold and communicate these tensions?
- Who are the partners you need at the table to make tangible change happen? How do the identities of your team members (and yourself) and the identities of the communities you work with – or want to work with – differ?
- How will you communicate the priorities, milestones, and challenges to communities outside of your committee? (Think about what channels you will use and how often you will use them. Also how public is public?)
- Who is in your network right now? Who’s missing? Take time to create a web of your connections: PEERS, COLLEAGUES, MENTORS, THOUGHT LEADERS. In which area(s) do you want to grow your network?
Change Management & Organizing:
- Move from “me” to”us”; Commit to challenging hierarchy at your organization, as an equity committee
- Identify movements in the world that are connected to and adjacent to the work of your organization
- Lead and communicate equity committee priorities, decisions and calls to action to the broader organization and the community
“I’m glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility.” –Nikki Giovanni
- How do systems of hierarchy in our workspaces and the ways we work with our partners and communities impact our work? What are some of the strategies and tools that we can utilize to challenge hierarchy within our organizations?
- What are five demands your equity committee is working on to impact deep change? Identify the
- TARGET (who can make change on this?)
- GOALS (what are you asking for and why does it matter?)
- STRATEGIES (what tools will you use?)
- What do you imagine are the explicit finances, people, and resources needed to actualize change management and organizing within your equity committee?
- Money (how much?)
- People (who can give you what you want?)
- Resources (what tangible resources are needed to move your work forward?)
Generative Collaboration:
- Cultivate authentic partnership based on shared goals, objectives and strategies for equity
- Recommit to key participants within the equity committee
- Repair and rebuild relationships with people and partners where there has been harm or rupture
“The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you can alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change the world.” – James Baldwin
- How is labor (physical, emotional, and intellectual) divided among the group? Are there oppressive patterns and practices that are showing up here? How does your practice on this reflect or depart from the large organizational culture?
- What is your process for restorative, transformative, or healing justice processes?
- What is your committee’s relationship & culture around feedback? Do you have a formal process?
- What policies, practices, and habits of your committee undermine collaboration? (For example meetings during the school day automatically discriminate against young people’s ability to participate in decision making)
Justice-Seeking:
- Respond to historical and contemporary events
- Identify the context in which change is or is not occurring
- Commit to practicing, modeling and embodying equity and being in alignment with justice values
- Include the people most-impacted in your decision making processes
“Find the labor that you love. Then, angle it toward justice.”
-Ta-Nehisi Coates
- We have so many ways to talk about and understand oppression. We need more ways to talk about the world we are working towards. What is your north star? Clearly articulate what you want to replace oppression with. What does it
- sound like
- feel like
- taste like
- smell like?
- What part of that vision is your equity committee committed to actualizing? Make concrete – what are we working towards, not just what are we working against?
Once you move through these circles, we hope that you will have a clearer understanding of your equity committee’s work and also can identify pathways forward to deepen and expand your equity efforts.
The main takeaway here is that equity is a process and demands many voices, many entry points, and many strategies to see it in action.