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Imagine a world where workers share in the fruits of their own labor. Now imagine that this world is within our reach. While the Harvard Business School is just starting to consider new economic paradigms beyond capitalism and its incessant exploitation of workers, Colorado state officials and residents are taking bold action to create the world that we want to inhabit—one marked by thriving worker-owned businesses and a far more equitable distribution of wealth.

Employee ownership can take many forms, including worker cooperatives, employee stock option plans (ESOPs), “hybrid” employee-owned LLCs and corporations, and employee-ownership trusts. While the National Center for Employee Ownership defines employee ownership as “any arrangement in which a company’s employees own shares in their company or the right to the value of shares in their company,” in a worker cooperative, ownership means not just sharing profits, but having a direct voice and vote in the workplace.

Broad-based employee ownership can help to preserve businesses and sustain quality jobs…it can also bring democracy to the workplace.

The benefits of employee ownership are demonstrable and manifold. According to NCEO, employee-owners have higher wages and net worth, receive better workplace benefits, and are less likely to lose jobs during a downturn compared with workers who do not have an ownership stake in their place of employment. A recent study found that employee-owned businesses, defined as employee ownership of at least 30 percent of business shares, which all employees having access to owning, are more productive, grow faster, and are less likely to go out of business than non-employee-owned businesses.

In short, broad-based employee ownership can help to preserve businesses and sustain quality jobs. Depending on the ownership structure, it can also bring democracy to the workplace.

According to NCEO, as of December 2021, the US was home to 6,482 ESOP companies with 10.2 million active employee-owners. This number is somewhat deceptive since it includes large public companies where the only employee benefit is stock ownership. But included in that number are 5,880 privately held ESOPs with over 1.5 million employee-owners, many of whom play a significant role in helping to run the company. Additionally, though they form a far smaller sector (about 10,000 people), worker co-ops are growing at a rapid pace of 30 percent per year.

Despite this growth, an estimated 24.7 million people are employed by small businesses and are at risk of losing their jobs as a generation of Baby Boom business owners retires, most with no ownership-succession plan. Employee ownership in many cases could be that plan. But the time to act is limited.

Colorado’s Story

Colorado is home to some of the country’s most favorable cooperative laws. It is also home to many well-known and successful employee-owned businesses, including Namasté Solar, Alpine Bank, Leevers Supermarkets, Hercules Industries, and Sexy Pizza, to name a few.

The state has taken a novel approach to employee ownership, led directly by the state’s recently reelected governor, Jared Polis, who has championed employee ownership since his days as an entrepreneur, incorporating employee ownership into both of his successful startup companies.

Before becoming governor, Polis served as US representative to Colorado’s 2nd congressional district, during which time he supported the Main Street Employee Ownership Act, a 2018 law that expanded cooperatives’ and employee-owned businesses’ access to the US Small Business Administration’s small-business loan guarantees (even if there have been challenges in the act’s implementation).

Polis’ commitment to employee ownership runs deep. In 2017, Polis announced his gubernatorial campaign at an employee-owned grocery store in Colorado Springs.

By April 2019, Governor Polis had signed an executive order to support the creation of the Employee Ownership Office. The executive order also established the “Employee Ownership Commission,” on which both of us currently serve. The commission is tasked with:

• Establishing a wide-reaching network of technical support for businesses wanting to become employee-owned
• Educating businesses and communities on the benefits of employee-owned businesses
• Identifying and removing barriers to the development and advancement of employee-owned businesses

While other states have created temporary employee-ownership offices, Governor Polis’ executive order was the first permanent commitment to employee ownership made by a sitting governor. By housing the Employee Ownership Commission and the Employee Ownership Office within the Office of Economic Development and International Trade, Governor Polis ensured he would receive regular updates from a cabinet-level director, meaning that an employee-ownership advocate is at the table when state government economic policy decisions are being made. Colorado is believed to be the first US state to house employee-ownership-related programming and support within an executive agency. (California and Massachusetts have since followed Colorado’s lead.)

Colorado’s legislative support of employee ownership is also strong. In 2017, then Governor John Hickenlooper (now US Senator) signed HB 17-1214, which established a revolving loan fund to help businesses transition to employee ownership and required OEDIT to work with a local nonprofit to support and provide outreach on employee ownership.

In 2019, the commission set up the loan program as well as a grant program to reduce business transition costs. Prior to 2019, the state saw only a few conversions each year. Since the grant program opened, the state is averaging about 20-25 conversions per annum. OEDIT maintains a small business navigator ombudsman position to give direction and guidance to business owners interested in transitioning to employee ownership.

In 2021, the state legislature further expanded its support of employee ownership by passing HB 21-1311, which provided $10 million annually for five years in tax credits to fund the professional service costs (legal, accounting, and so on) of conversion to employee ownership. This represents the largest financial commitment by a state to support employee ownership in the nation. Given this recent investment in outreach and education efforts, coupled with heightened interest from local governments, we expect to see many more employee-owned businesses statewide in the next five years.

Another driver of this statewide effort is the need to close an enormous racial wealth gap. A recent Denver study notes that the homeownership gap between Whites and Blacks, a common proxy for the racial wealth gap, is greater today than it was 50 years ago. Employee ownership makes one’s job a valuable business asset (often worth well over $100,000), and can be a powerful way for workers of color to build wealth.

Building a Broad Coalition

Colorado has harnessed and engaged a broad coalition of support from the business community, professional service providers, policymakers, banking, philanthropy, and community organizers. The primary employee-ownership technical assistance providers in the state—the Center for Community Wealth Building, Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center, and Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Cooperative Development Center—now have direct support from OEDIT to advance conversions.

OEDIT has successfully incorporated community wealth building as a pillar of its economic development toolkit. This involves activating and collaborating with the state’s Minority Business Office and working with community groups to provide culturally relevant programming and support. The employee-ownership grant program is especially important because it helps to ensure that the benefits of employee ownership reach low-income residents and residents of color.

Addressing the Obstacles

Without broad-based efforts to shift this mindset, achieving systemic changes that advance employee ownership will remain challenging.

Despite these advances, much work remains to be done. The perennial refrain continues to ring true: to make employee ownership mainstream, business owners and workers need to know that employee ownership is an option. Sixty-eight percent of business owners participating in the Colorado State of Owner Readiness survey indicated they have devoted minimal time and attention to their exit. This is concerning as the same survey indicated that seven in 10 Colorado small-business owners intend to sell their business in the next 10 years. Given that only one in five businesses can expect to find an outside buyer, selling to employees is one of the safest ways for owners to exit their business.

Awareness is one obstacle, but it is hardly the only one. Here are some others:

• Diverse Representation: Colorado employee ownership advocates have activated a diverse coalition, but diversity and inclusion is needed at all levels—including in the state commission and among technical service providers, direct practitioners, and potential employee-owners. We know that employee ownership can be a powerful tool to close the racial wealth gap. Yet in Colorado, people of color are grossly underrepresented in the employee-ownership field. Intentional efforts are required to achieve equity.
• Barriers to Capital: Many practices and policies limit potential employee-owners’ access to capital. For example, to secure loans to finance employee-ownership conversions, personal loan guarantees are often required. The Main Street Employee Ownership Act sought to expand access to capital by loosening this rule, but bureaucratic red tape has held implementation up. Impact investment and non-bank financing from community development financial institutions also remain limited.
• Developing Professional Supports: Streamlining handoffs and communication is essential to speed conversions and reduce costs. Achieving this means coordinating quality technical assistance with legal, accounting, and financing providers.
• Building the Culture: Perhaps the most important and intractable obstacle to establishing more employee-owned businesses is culture. Advocates must create a cultural shift within individuals, communities, institutions, and systems.

Unlike international centers of employee ownership, like the Basque Country in Spain and Emilia Romagna in Italy, in the US, especially white America, the values of shared prosperity and broad-based ownership are not widely held. Americans tend to lionize the “self-made millionaire” (now “billionaire”) and laud those who “pick themselves up by their bootstraps.” Without broad-based efforts to shift this mindset, achieving systemic changes that advance employee ownership will remain challenging.

This means advocates of employee ownership must recognize that part of our work is countercultural: we must change the narrative of who our economy serves and how. We must normalize the belief that a homegrown company can succeed by treating its workers well, creating real value, and distributing earnings to its workers. This requires creating a business culture that prioritizes broad prosperity above scale, market dominance, or short-term metrics of success. It requires more human-centered business relationships.

Leveraging the Ecosystem

While Colorado has begun to address barriers to employee-ownership conversion, including limited access to capital, other ecosystem players must also invest in employee ownership. Individuals, philanthropy, financial institutions, and government at all levels can align the tools, resources, and social capital at their disposal to support employee-owned business.

For example, philanthropy can employ program-related investments and grants to support the technical assistance and affordable capital needs of employee-owned businesses. For cooperatives in low- and moderate-income communities, philanthropy can provide stipends to enable employees to work on the clock to develop their cooperatives. Another option would be to seed secondary cooperatives (that is, organizations that support co-op businesses) to increase the efficiency of cooperative networks. Foundations can boldly commit a set amount of their endowment—say one percent—to investing in employee ownership.

Financial Institutions can work with cooperative and employee-ownership groups to create an alternative to the personal guarantee. For instance, they could work with sectoral organizations to develop an insurance product that functions like personal mortgage insurance, which supports homeownership for people unable to make a 20-percent down payment.

Foundations can boldly commit a set amount of their endowment—say one percent—to investing in employee ownership.

Local governments have an opportunity to mainstream employee ownership by training economic development professionals on the various employee-ownership models and funding positions to support co-op education and outreach. They can invest in marketing to reach business owners who are ready to retire. Increasing business owners’ understanding of employee ownership and its potential as an exit strategy can help to ensure successful ownership transitions, maintaining and even strengthening the local tax base.

In addition to passing legislation, the state government can support public banking and ensure that public dollars circulate in the community and contribute to financing conversions of businesses to employee ownership. At the federal level, reforms could include amending the Community Reinvestment Act to support employee ownership through improved access to capital and technical assistance, as Senate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proposed in 2019.

Moving Forward

Employee ownership faces many challenges, but it has a proven track record. The potential for its expansion, particularly in states like Colorado, where officials are backing employee ownership, is significant.

Although Colorado’s efforts are far from perfect, they are helping to build a foundation that’s already making a difference in the employee-ownership sector. The work ahead is clear. Building an ecosystem that supports employee ownership requires a combination of community action, education, philanthropic support, and favorable government policy. Given the pending retirement wave of aging small-business owners, there is no time to lose.

While Yessica Holguin and Jason Wiener currently serve on the Colorado Employee Ownership Commission, nothing in this article should be taken as the official position of the Employee Ownership Commission or the Employee Ownership Office.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Editors’ note: This article is from NPQ’s winter 2022 issue, “New Narratives for Health.” 

Click here to download this article as it appears in the magazine, with accompanying artwork.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

—Audre Lorde (A Burst of Light: Essays)¹

When I sat down with Dr. Lourdes Ashley Hunter-Fowler to discuss her healing justice work and two-decades-long journey as an activist for trans rights, we paused—at her request and to my delight—to take a few deep, synchronous breaths and ground ourselves before starting the interview. Dr. Hunter-Fowler is the founder and executive director of the Trans Women of Color Collective—an expansive coalition designed to uplift the narratives, leadership, and lived experiences of trans people of color while building toward the collective liberation of all oppressed people. She describes herself as a “Black, trans, nonbinary, neurodivergent, disabled—or ably different” individual. She also identifies as “a healer, orator, academic and educator, a dismantler of oppressive systems, a descendant of enslaved Africans, freedom fighters, and liberators.”² For Dr. Hunter-Fowler, living at the intersection of these identities grounds her work resisting systemic oppression and creates avenues toward healing and liberation.

A resounding theme, as we spoke, was the importance of incorporating self-care in one’s work to create positive change in the world. Dr. Hunter-Fowler illuminated throughout how cultivating healing and joy— critical dimensions of self-preservation and care—is an act of resistance. “Some people dream,” she declared. “I live. We should all be able to live out our dreams.”

A response to the fatal violence against trans people

It was her vision as a healer that led Dr. Hunter-Fowler to start TWOCC. In 2013, she joined forces with thirteen other trans women to establish the collective in response to the ongoing attacks of trans people, particularly Black trans women, and in particular the murder of Islan Nettles—a young woman who was fatally assaulted at the age of twenty-one. “We had to heal,” said Dr. Hunter-Fowler, as she recounted hearing the news of Nettles’s murder and described the subsequent vigil that was held in her memory.

She [Nettles] was brutally beaten in front of a police station. Nobody helped her. She was twenty-one years old, in the prime of her life. A fashion student, just walking her dog. She told the man [who approached her] she was trans, and he beat her. And we say visibility is important, [and] we need to disclose who we are, but that can get you killed. The community came together. They had a vigil, but the vigil was led by cis people. They misgendered her, called her by her birth name, and they didn’t take into consideration the trans community. So, we had to heal from that trauma as we were also healing from [the death of] this young woman.

Unfortunately, the murder of Islan Nettles is one of many fatal attacks that persist today. The Human Rights Campaign—an advocacy group that is recognized as the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization within the United States—has tracked fifty fatal attacks of transgender people in 2021 alone.³ These fatalities represent a significant increase from when HRC started tracking the attacks eight years earlier, and those numbers may be higher: current records may not fully capture the extent of fatal attacks endured by trans people in the United States. The trans community has also faced political threats that include an increasing and unprecedented number of anti-transgender bills in state legislatures, as well as public narratives that are demeaning and stigmatizing. Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative at the HRC Foundation, has noted,

In 2021, we’ve seen the highest number of transgender and gender non-conforming people killed in a single year since we began tracking these deaths in 2013. These victims had families and friends, hopes and dreams. None of them deserved to have their lives stolen by such horrific violence. Most of the victims were Black trans women . . . an appalling trend of violence. This horrific violence is fueled by racism, toxic masculinity, misogyny and transphobia. We need everyone to join us in empowering transgender leaders, building safer, stronger communities and reducing stigma. We cannot rest until all transgender and gender non-conforming people can live our lives safely as our full selves.⁴

Dr. Hunter-Fowler—along with thirteen founding partners—recognized a need to create safe, affirming spaces for healing and also to uplift the experiences of trans people, especially Black trans women: “We had to focus on our own. We had to write [our narrative] ourselves, and we had to develop the tools.” She continued,

When we started [the] Trans Women of Color Collective, it was me and thirteen other trans women: Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, Nala Simone, Brooke Cerda Guzmán, Aisha Lyons, and many [other] trans women who were focused on healing. We started speaking at conferences. We started controlling our own narrative, having healing retreats. I remember [thinking] this is what we can do. We do not have to wait for somebody to do it for us.

TWOCC was created to provide economic opportunities and affirming spaces for trans people of color and their families to build community and engage in healing and restorative justice practices through arts, culture, media, advocacy, and activism.⁵ The efforts of TWOCC center those “who have not had access to resources, opportunities and sustainable systems of support to live unapologetically in their truths.”⁶ Dr. Hunter-Fowler describes her work as focusing on uplifting and celebrating the beauty and ingenuity that exists among trans people of color while also being responsive to their needs as a community. She explains:

Whatever the community says that they need, we provide. There’s no blueprint. There’s no curriculum. We ask the community what it is they need, and we provide it, whether it’s food, shelter, or a hug. At a moment’s notice. According to what the community needs, whatever I have, you should have it too. And let’s get it together.

This is an approach that aligns well with healing justice efforts—a framework used to respond to generational trauma, facilitate collective healing, and transform systemic oppression.⁷ It proposes that healing and joy are essential elements of liberation. It is also the basis of TWOCC’s work— namely, the Healing and Restorative Justice Initiative, which is a signature effort under way to “shift the narrative [from] surviving to thriving” in trans communities of color and elevate those “who have had their voices stolen, usurped, commodified, silenced and exploited by cis gaze, colonization, anti-Blackness, imperialism and transphobia.”⁸

For Dr. Hunter-Fowler, healing justice is . . .

. . . understanding how white supremacy, cishet patriarchy, colonialism, [and] capitalism are embedded in every aspect of government and life. We need to create solutions outside of those systems. We don’t need to correct these systems [because] we didn’t create them. We don’t need to fix them, they’re not our problem. What we need to do is create modes and operations outside of those systems, so that we can heal from the trauma that they cause and restore ourselves back to who we were, back to who our ancestors were. And we can do that. It’s just going to take some time—and that’s okay.

Prioritizing youth leadership to create meaningful change

As part of the work to create new systems of support, TWOCC engages in a wide range of activities in the areas of education and wellness, and disburses funds (including a COVID-19 rapid response fund) and financial resources to fulfill such community needs as housing, food, and clothing. In addition to providing those resources, TWOCC maintains a focus on supporting youth leadership in cultivating affirming spaces for communities to engage in healing and restorative justice. “We lean in with an intentional response to the trauma our community has endured by leading with the voices and leadership of our youth and young people.”⁹

“Our young people, they’re not waiting. They are stepping up. And it’s important for them to have direction, guidance, and inspiration. And it’s important for us to be that for them [while] also letting them find their own way.” —Dr. Lourdes Ashley Hunter-Fowler

“They’re our future,” said Dr. Hunter-Fowler, as she explained her rationale for investing in youth leadership and letting their voices drive TWOCC’s advocacy work. Alongside youth leaders, TWOCC has hosted initiatives in over forty states in the United States, and has global initiatives in Switzerland, England, Norway, Jamaica, and East Africa to facilitate cultural exchanges and anthropological studies with community organizers. These efforts are in service of curating a global platform to further the work of collective liberation.¹⁰ Dr. Hunter-Fowler explains,

Our young people are doing amazing things. A lot of times, people must go through these entry-level jobs and work their way up. We make all our young people directors. We ask: “What is it that you want to do?” “What is it that you do well?” “You want to be the director of fashion?” “You want to be the director of art?” We give them [the] power to explore and celebrate our lives as queer folks, as folks from the African diaspora, [through] art and fashion. Our national director—Nyla Foster—won Miss Black Trans International, and she used her art and her talent to bring awareness to the lives of trans people. She’s also a youth counselor, and deals with housing insecurity in Kansas City. We’re helping young people realize their dreams, whatever it is that they’re dreaming to do. We’re not here to say, “Oh, you must go to college in order to be successful.” If they want to go to college, they can go, [and] we’re helping them through college; but you don’t have to go to college to be important, to follow your passion, to follow your dreams. We’re shifting that narrative, and we’re giving out the titles. Yes, I’m a doctor. That’s the path I took because society says titles [are needed] to be heard. But I get to use that power to create opportunities and curate opportunities for others.

Our young people, they’re not waiting. They are stepping up. And it’s important for them to have direction, guidance, and inspiration. And it’s important for us to be that for them [while] also letting them find their own way.

Dr. Hunter-Fowler’s human rights activism and her commitment to supporting youth leadership draws both from the inspiration of her parents and leaders like Shirley Chisholm—who paved the way before her—and from the challenging experiences in her life as a trauma survivor:

Life has not been easy. But it‘s the journey and it’s your legacy that‘s important. The journey was worth it. When I get phone calls and emails from parents of trans kids saying, “My child is going to be just like you,” I [respond], “No, your child is going to be greater than me.” The ability to sponsor and support young trans people through their art and through their ministry makes life worth living. It keeps me going every single day.

I could remember at five and six years old, marching down Woodward Avenue with my mom. She was part of the United Automobile Workers (a labor union representing workers in auto, aircraft, and agricultural implement manufacturing, and other industries). She worked at Chrysler. My father worked at Ford. They’re both retired. We were always fighters for the people. I was raised in service to the community, and as I began to get older—at seventeen—I started an organization called New Generations in Detroit, which was a space for LGBTQ youth. [As an adult,] I went to New York City with forty dollars in my pocket on a one-way ticket, and I was going to work at the shelter and figure it out. They (workers at the shelter) noted, You can’t be trans here. So, I found myself in a men’s shelter [and] having to get on welfare. I can remember being in the shelter, [being] sexually abused, raped, [and] violated. And I had a case manager. She said, You’re getting out of here, and she helped me find my first apartment. So, there are angels out here, and I just want to give back this portion of what was given to me. For me, Trans Women of Color Collective is an extension of that history of service.

Maintaining self-care while in service of others

Dr. Hunter-Fowler is a staunch advocate of maintaining self-care while working in service of others. She noted that as part of her effort to create positive change in the world, “I [also] need to focus on me, and make sure I am here for the next generation, for my family, for my children, for my husband, for my mother. I think we should all think about that as we are in service—that we are also making sure we’re taking care of ourselves.” As she spoke, Audre Lorde’s famous words, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare,” etched themselves into my mind. Her words are also reminiscent of those of longtime activist Angela Davis, who has said, “Anyone who’s interested in making change in the world, also has to learn how to take care of herself, himself, theirselves.”¹¹

“Every breath a trans person of color takes is an act of revolution.” —Dr. Lourdes Ashley Hunter-Fowler

With healing and restorative justice as their mission, Dr. Hunter-Fowler and her husband have extended their homes—in Jamaica and Maryland—to others as safe and affirming communal spaces for trans leaders, in support of their artistic expression and leadership. Dr. Hunter-Fowler has created an artist residency fellowship and a mentorship program for executive directors. While she and her husband live on the lower level of their home in Maryland, for example—which is also fully equipped with a gallery space and large, private yard surrounded by a forest for healing retreats—guests and mentees have access to residency spaces on the upper levels.

For Dr. Hunter-Fowler, this work to uplift and celebrate the voices and experiences of trans people, particularly Black trans women like herself, is a joy and a dream come true. The impetus for starting TWOCC—to create healing spaces in response to the fatal attacks of trans people—still holds precedence today. For years, with the ongoing violence coupled with systemic oppression, many Black trans women have operated under the notion that their life expectancy is no more than thirty-five years. As such, Dr. Hunter-Fowler states, “Every breath a trans person of color takes is an act of revolution.”

When I leave my home, I don’t know if I’m going to return. My mother has already buried two of her children, and she has two left. I can’t let her down. So, I know every breath I take is shaking the room. I have to take these breaths, because my life depends on it, my mother’s life depends on it, my legacy depends on it, [as does] the legacy of Black trans women.

A breath shifts the narrative, because somebody didn’t get to breathe today. And so many Black trans people—trans people overall—don’t have access to opportunities. They’re struggling. I used to be one of them.

So, I have to get up—and even if I lay down a little bit, that’s fine, too.

I asked Dr. Hunter-Fowler to share her thoughts on what our future would look like if we all operated from a place of healing. Her response was one word: “Bliss.” In that moment, we paused and imagined what bliss means to us. For Dr. Hunter-Fowler, bliss means:

Flowers and rainbows and butterflies and unicorns and cheesecake. Fried chicken. Sunny days, starlit nights. And that’s what I’m trying to create. We must start somewhere. That’s what I think of when I operate from a place of healing. Walks in the park, picnics, tubing down the river, horseback riding. I can’t wait for someone else to create it for me. Sometimes I just go take a blanket, take my little Bluetooth speaker, and lie in the grass. I love all types of music. I particularly like gospel, and I love jazz music, symphony, Bach, Beethoven. I like ambient noise, even just the sound of the birds. The deer here are huge, and just going outside and seeing their footprints, [I say to myself,] I see I’m occupying your land. The birds have all types of little nests in my backyard, and I just listen [to their song]—happiness doesn’t cost a thing.

Nestled against a backdrop of luscious foliage that fills a warm and calming section of her home, Dr. Hunter- Fowler radiated warmth and smiles across our Zoom connection. She ended our conversation with advice we can all benefit from:

Don’t compare your happiness with others. There’s no such thing as perfection. You create that for yourself, and you are responsible for your own happiness. You must create your happiness for yourself. Anything is possible—go out and get it. You must get up, get out there, and go get it. Even if it’s a homemade pizza. Go ahead and make it. Even if it’s the muffins that you like to bake. Go ahead and bake them. Be happy.

These words align with what activist Karen Walrond calls “lightmaking,” which is defined as “any time you are led by your values to do purposeful action in the hopes of making the world brighter for other people.”¹²

This is activism. This is healing. This is resistance.

Notes

1. Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light: Essays (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1988),
2. J Mase III, “To Be Black, Trans and Brilliant: Lourdes Ashley Hunter,” interview, Trans Women of Color Collective, July 29, 2014, twocc.us/to-be-black-trans-and-brilliant-lourdes-ashley-hunter/. (Also at HuffPost, “The Blog,” www.huffpost.com/entry/to-be-black-trans-brillia_b_5623511.)
3. Human Rights Campaign, An Epidemic of Violence 2021: Fatal Violence Against Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People in the United States in 2021 (Washington, DC: Human Rights Campaign, 2022).
4. Ibid.
5. Trans Women of Color Collective, “About Us,” twocc.us/about-us/.
6. Ibid.
7. See Nineequa Blanding, “What Is Healing Justice?,” in this
8. Trans Women of Color Collective, “Healing And Restorative Justice Initiative,” twocc.us/our-work/ healing-and-restorative-justice-initiative-hrji/.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light; and “Angela Davis On Radical Self Care,” Self Practice, transcript from Angela Davis Interview with Afro Punk, 2018, selfpractice.com.au/self-practice/angela-davis-on-radical-self-care.
12. Andee Tagle, “Life Kit: Activism doesn’t have to be intimidating,” NPR, July 9, 2022, npr.org/2022/07/09/1110698797/life-kit-activism-doesnt-have-to-be-intimidating.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Editors’ note: This article is from NPQ’s winter 2022 issue, “New Narratives for Health.” The following was adapted from a talk given by Prentis Hemphill, founder and director of The Embodiment Institute and The Black Embodiment Initiative, at the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) 2022 National Conference, in Chicago, Illinois.

Hemphill is a writer and cartographer of emotions, an embodiment facilitator, a political organizer, and a therapist who is unearthing the connections among healing, community, accountability, and our most inspired visions for social transformation. For the last ten years, Hemphill has practiced and taught somatics in social movement organizations and offered embodied practice during moments of social unrest and organizational upheaval. They have taught embodied leadership with Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), and generative somatics. They served as the Healing Justice director of Black Lives Matter Global Network from 2016 to 2019. Hemphill’s work and writing have appeared in the New York Times and the Huffington Post, and they are a contributor to You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience (edited by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown; Random House, 2022), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation (adrienne maree brown; AK Press, 2021), and The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice (Staci K. Haines; North Atlantic Books, 2019), and they are the host of the acclaimed podcast Finding Our Way. Hemphill lives in North Carolina on a small farm with their partner, two dogs, and two chickens, and is working on an upcoming book on healing justice.

Click here to download this article as it appears in the magazine, with accompanying artwork.

Hey, everybody, how’s it going? Thank you for inviting me to speak today. It is really exciting and sweet to be with you all—I haven’t been out of the house in years at this point, so it’s nice to be together. I have a lot of words, good words—and I will try to move through them and also stay connected to you all as much as I can. I want to extend a lot of gratitude and recognition to this land—to this place in which I am a visitor that has held me so well, and that I know has also held so many of our ancestors.

It was a challenge to put together my words for this talk on healing and social change just four days out of the massacre in Buffalo, in which Black people, and Black elders especially, were gunned down because of white hatred and white nationalist violence.

I feel overwhelmed—I just want to name that—by the barrage of seemingly endless brutality against our people and against our efforts for social change. And it’s not missed on me that often, when I’m talking about healing and social change, I feel like I have to almost prove why healing and social change are important, even though we are living in these times when we’re witnessing such tragedies.

It feels apparent—but it also reveals to me how accustomed we are in some ways to the suffering of poor and working class people, and the suffering of Black people in particular. So, sometimes these questions of how we heal and how we change can feel flimsy to me against that violence. And not to bring us down but to really ground us—we are in chaotic times generally: over one million deaths from COVID; the fascism that is gaining traction in our country making its intentions toward our bodies and our lives clearer and more realized each day; and climate change and war posing existential threats to all life. All of these, I believe, make it more and more critical that we deepen into and understand these questions.

I’ve been doing movement and social change work for two decades now. I started as a not very good organizer. But I was brought into abolitionist work and transformative justice models and frameworks, which pushed me toward imagining a world without prisons—which, if we take that a step further, had me think about and understand and feel into the question: If not a system that logically ends in prisons, what might we then build? If prisons and the carceral system became illogical to us, what institutions might we create? What might our communities look like? What might our relationships feel like? How might we be different with each other?

So, that’s how I began my work around healing. Those questions led me to explore healing as a necessary component of social change, and I have been doing this healing work inside of movements ever since. I became a therapist—I became a politicized somatics practitioner—and I have been supporting trauma- healing political formations to understand the role of trauma and how it can impede our best efforts toward social change. And I recently founded an organization called The Embodiment Institute, where we are practicing building more just, embodied, relational habits with one another.

I don’t think I encountered the words trauma and healing outside of talking about a wound until I was in college, or after that (and I mean a physical wound). I knew, for example—even though I didn’t have the words for it—that what my parents had experienced in their childhood impacted how they showed up with me. I knew that their stories held something inside of them that could be activated, could flare up, and could create more or less threat or danger for us as children. I knew that my parents loved me, but I also knew that what they had to do to ensure our survival often stood in for the tenderness of love that I really longed for as a child.

I also knew that the things that we often did for reprieve, to buoy ourselves up, to remember and listen to the magnificence of life—our Saturday morning dances, our impromptu songs, our deep hugs—were connective rituals in our family. Saturday mornings, you put the record on and you dance together. And that helped us and brought us back into connection with each other and into life. So, I knew early on that wounds and memories and our experiences of healing were always with us—imperceptible to the eye but incredibly legible to the soul, if we knew how to listen to one another.

I want to briefly explain how I hold trauma, because I think it’s important. And I know that this is one of those words that are both over- and underused, but I think it’s useful for us to understand what might be happening inside of us. Trauma has always been a political term and a politicized term. Understanding trauma tells the story in some ways of how pain lives inside of us—in our bodies and in our behaviors. And who we identify as having experienced trauma tells a story about who we as a society allow to feel, and whose pain matters to us. We don’t acknowledge everyone’s trauma equally, and trauma as a field has been showing whose trauma matters over time. But trauma itself is an overwhelming event—that’s what they say, an overwhelming event—and it is a condition that breaks apart or stunts our capacity to belong, to experience safety, and to experience dignity. And by many accounts, these are necessary for human survival and for our well-being.

What I really want you to understand about trauma is that safety is the internal foundation that allows us to be creative and collaborate with other people. If I’m safe enough, I can create and do things in the world.

Belonging is our relational sphere. I belong to the species. I belong in my family. I belong in my community. I belong in Earth. Dignity is where our self-concept and our self-image lives, and it’s often impeded and crowded by the experience of trauma and also by shame. So, safety, belonging, and dignity get broken apart inside of trauma.

Trauma does not live neatly in one body. It necessarily spreads. It spreads relationally and it spreads across time.

And the residue—what lingers—is always inside our relationship with ourselves, and it’s always present in our relationships with one another. It’s inside and outside experience. We don’t often talk about the break in relationality that trauma actually fundamentally is—and it’s really important for us to understand that. Also, what I described to you earlier was generational trauma—how it gets passed and the meandering ways it wanders through our families and our communities and our lives. It is generational in that way and also epigenetic—as we’re learning more and more.

The other thing I want you to understand about trauma is that it’s not necessarily one catastrophic event. That’s how the idea of trauma originally came about. We think about it as one event that happened, but it can also be conditions. The definition of oppression I often use is that it is the concentration and distribution of trauma into certain bodies and certain communities. We often think about it structurally, systemically, but what happens is that oppression concentrates experiences of trauma into certain zip codes, into certain blocks, and into certain bodies. You all with me? I’m packing a lot in, so I just want you to stay with me. So, what happened in Buffalo, for example, is devastating in so many ways. And it’s devastating because of the lives of elders—especially—and community members being viciously taken. But it’s also devastating because of how it impacts family members. This will have a lasting impact for generations. We’re looking at something that will last across time. It spreads. Trauma does not live neatly in one body. It necessarily spreads. It spreads relationally and it spreads across time.

So, why is this important for social change? Why is it important that we’re talking about this? In all of these spaces where we are attempting to cultivate and inspire social change, we still often find internal transformation reinstituting these capacities of safety, belonging, and dignity—of strengthening complex human relationships—mysterious. Mysterious, accidental, random—we don’t understand it. But I believe— and what I’ve seen through movement—is that where our wounds are unaddressed, where our own story is not understood, is exactly the same place where the fractures in our organizations occur and the fractures in our movement occur.

I want to talk about mistrust and conflict as an example of that. I’ve worked with many organizations. I get called in a lot to facilitate conflict work. And if the conflict is not so acute, I usually come in and do a trust training first before I do conflict. Because trust—a trustful environment—is the environment in which conflicts can happen in a generative way. Trust is disrupted by trauma. I talked about how belonging gets ruptured in trauma, and that disrupts our ability to extend trust to one another—to believe that others are trustworthy, for example. And we are experiencing, I would say globally in some ways, and especially in this country, a breakdown, an erosion, in trust—a failure of institutions and intentional manipulation or breeding of mistrust inside of the population. We’re experiencing a kind of growing suspicion and mistrust. But trust is so necessary. Trust is what makes things happen. It’s the lubricant for all social relationships, and especially for collaboration and coordination. So, we have to look at trust as one capacity that’s necessary to rebuild in our relationships and in our organizations, because nothing meaningful can happen without it.

I also want to say that the way power and privilege can operate is that if we’re used to having power over, it can feel really hard to extend trust to people who don’t have as much power. Not extending trust can be a way for us to hold on to certain power dynamics that reinforce who we imagine we are. (And I may or may not be saying this because I’m in a room of philanthropists.) But even that is a relationship to trust that needs to be healed and transformed, I think, in order to have meaningful relationships and to do meaningful and transformative work beyond what you know and understand currently alone.

Healing . . . increases our capacity for authentic relationships with one another, and therefore opens us up to a power inside of our movements that we have not seen before.

In short, I believe it’s impossible for us to do what we set out to do around social change without understanding and being really skillful at the inner and relational lives that we have. It’s impossible for us to transform the world, transform our systems, without being equally willing to transform ourselves and to do that really hard, sometimes painful, deeply uncomfortable work of reckoning with what it is that we have embodied, the systems we have embodied, and the ones that give us identity and meaning that we may as of yet be unwilling to let go.

So, healing. I want to talk about healing and not just trauma. But healing—what is it? I don’t know if you experience this, but people talk about healing, and you can be like, What is that? And I know sometimes I struggle when talking with funders or folks in philanthropy about healing, because it can feel so abstract. But what I want to say is that if trauma is an overwhelming situation that breaks safety, belonging, and dignity, healing is any set of practices or processes that restore a felt sense of safety, the capacity and desire to belong, and a sense of dignity as evidenced by a reduction of shame and an increase in agency. This is important for me as a practitioner. This is how I think about the work that I do with individuals and organizations. This is how I orient toward it. But healing opens up possibilities for our lives that we have not yet seen, that we cannot even feel, necessarily. Healing also increases our capacity for authentic relationships with one another, and therefore opens us up to a power inside of our movements that we have not seen before.

I think it’s important for us to pay really close attention now to the question of how we build the skillfulness to stay together in the midst of very hard things. That’s an important skill. Let me call it one of those soft skills— it’s one of those soft skills that everything is built on, to be able to stay together through the hardest of things, to build trust, to repair trust, to extend trust to one another, to move through conflict skillfully, to be vulnerable, to allow for intimacy, to vision beyond what you have seen, to look beyond the world that you have inherited and see something more. All of these capacities become more possible when we engage in deep transformative work—when we’re not just looking at other people to transform around us but are as deeply committed to our own transformation, as deeply committed to becoming new, as our expectation that the world change around us.

This morning, I went to visit an organization that I’ve worked with over the years and that I love, called the Chicago Torture Justice Center. The center works with survivors of state violence—torture perpetrated by the Chicago Police Department—and we’ve done embodied healing programs together. We were talking today about how important it is and how difficult it can be to talk about transforming along these axes— safety, belonging, and dignity—but how thinking about healing in this way transforms the very quality of an organization, of the relationships, the power, the effectiveness, and the clarity of the work.

So, what that means is that healing can look like a lot of different things. Healing can—and should—look like reparations. It can look like any opportunities for Indigenous and Black people to steward and inhabit land, to have a deep investment in our communities. It can look like creating healing spaces and trainings that give us a spaciousness to untangle the persistent stories and habits that live inside of us, and to have the space to practice new things, to embody new ways of being with one another, where we can experience this real safety, belonging, and dignity. It also means supporting these interventions and culture around social change—obviously, transformative justice, conflict transformation, restorative justice, and also the imaginative work of ritual creation—creating new cultural ways of being with one another and infusing the world more with meaning in terms of our values, so that how we come together is as important as what we do.

A framework that’s been critical for our work at The Embodiment Institute is the idea of transitional characters. I borrow this term from family systems therapy, which looks at how people take on healing, the trauma that lingers in their lineage, how people who are willing to face and understand the route of violence or abandonment in their own family and then commit to learning new patterns in their own relationships change the course of their lineage.

I have always been really inspired by this concept of transitional characters, and I have also been really clear that we are not only embedded in family systems, we are also embedded in community systems, we are embedded in institutional systems, we are embedded in philanthropic institutions. And as these sites shape us—shape who we are, shape our habits, shape the way we talk, shape the way that we show up—they’re also incredible sites for transformation. They are the places that we can shape back. We are shaped and we shape back—that’s part of healing. We are shaped, and we learn through our shaping what didn’t work, what stunted us, what stifled us. And we intentionally shape back to create more space for more life, more expression, more connection. That, for me, is the work of the transitional character in this moment. It’s not only absolutely transforming our family systems but moving beyond to transform all the systems in which we’re embedded.

I think this is the time for all of us to understand ourselves in this way—that none of us exists as sideline characters or inconsequential beings in whatever it is that we’re doing but that we are all transitional characters. And this means our work inside of every system we’re in is to understand how to nurture life and creativity and connection inside of those systems—how to take the risks that are necessary, how to push where it’s necessary while maintaining connection, how to transform what is necessary.

I invite those of you in philanthropy to choose to join us on this journey of being transitional characters, of transforming your own relationships in your own life, and especially in this domain in which you practice, by supporting this work around healing and healing justice and transformation.

So, I’m charging you with becoming a transitional character in this moment and choosing to engage in that way. I’m sure that many of you already do, and are transitional characters. It is imperative that we be transitional characters in this moment—you, and me, and all of us. It is imperative that we have the opportunities to build the necessary skills that we need to do the transitional work that we need to do in order to know how to navigate conflict, to be able to be vulnerable with one another, to inspire trust and build trust among each other. This foundational culture work is what will make our movements strong and keep our movements together moving forward.

Lastly, I invite those of you in philanthropy to choose to join us on this journey of being transitional characters, of transforming your own relationships in your own life, and especially in this domain in which you practice, by supporting this work around healing and healing justice and transformation, extending trust and care to your own grantees and also being willing to do this work and to allow this work to be the site of your own healing— of expanding belonging, of increasing reflection—so that we can all grow and transform what is necessary for us to transform in this time. I’ll end it there. Thank you so much.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

The cultural sector is actively seeking alternatives to business-as-usual. This article is the third in the series, “Remember the Future: Culture and Systems Change,” co-produced by Art.coop and NPQ. In this series, queer, trans, and BIPOC artists and cultural bearers reflect upon the unique role that culture has played and can play in activating and enacting structural change—and in building a solidarity economy.

This article offers a conversation between two friends, neighbors, and peers, Andre Strongbearheart Gaines, Jr. (Nipmuc) and Carlos Uriona, who collaborate with Double Edge Theater, a cultural cooperative and ensemble collective based in Western Massachusetts in the small town (population 1,695) of Ashfield, that “assumes responsibility for art making, visioning, and survival needs of the theatre,” and Ohketeau Cultural Center, an autonomous place for Indigenous culture that centers Nipmuc teachings.

Originally founded by a small ensemble of women, Double Edge Theater is now a permanent, cooperatively run company that engages in theater production and design, food systems, farming, administration, carpentry, music, dramaturgy, performing arts, and other interdisciplinary cultural endeavors.

The theater recognized, seven years ago, that they were on the unceded land of multiple tribal nations, and it made a commitment, through their relationships with the tribes, to giving land back. This led to the recent opening of the Ohketeau Indigenous Cultural Center, which is adjacent to the theater. The collaboration between the Ohketeau Council and Double Edge Theatre represents a practice of acknowledgement, repair, and reparations.

This conversation, edited for clarity and length, shows that the path to land back and decolonization is not a metaphor—it is rooted in everyday acts of power redistribution, knowledge reclamation, and solidarity with Indigenous peoples.

Carlos Uriona (CU): When did you realize that you didn’t want to live in this system where we live or how we live? How would you describe it, and then, what would you do now?

Andre Strongbearheart (AS): I don’t think that there is an actual time when that happened inside of me. But it took me a long time. I spent 17 years in the construction field, in the dog-eat-dog world, climbing up these particular ladders that are meaningless and create gentrification. There’s a lot that was going on inside of me. You know, what society tells me, “Oh, you’re moving up the ladder, you’re in a good class, you’re making x amount of dollars!” It’s the story of the frog, you know…

CU: Stay in the pot until the heat kills you.

There are a lot of things that happened, and for me, it was the ceremonies that woke me up.

AS: Yeah. Some years ago, I grew up around power. I grew up around my people, but I didn’t want to take part in it. I lived a crazy life when I was young. Then, when I got sober and in recovery, things started to get clear inside of me. And I think that’s part of it. What happened is that’s part of the system of drugs and alcoholism, like, it puts this cloud in our people’s minds.

I was trying to work full time, do side work on the side, and do all my traditional work somehow in between. I was probably just as busy as I am now, but somehow, also living society’s lifestyle, too. There are a lot of things that happened, and for me, it was the ceremonies that woke me up, being able to just break away and go to these ceremonies. These ceremonies started to unveil these things within me that were already lying dormant.

CU: What ceremonies are you talking about?

AS: Yeah, some of the ceremonies, I mean, are ceremonies that were illegal until 1978:  Ceremony of the Sundance, Ceremony of the Sweat Lodge, Water Ceremonies, Harpoon Ceremonies, these Pipe Ceremonies….All these ceremonies will start waking you up more and more. And I got to a point where things became really clear, and I didn’t know why I was walking and doing the things that I was doing. So, I started to gravitate more towards the things that fed my spirit, rather than the flesh and the monetary things that were created around me.

CU: How did COVID-19 affect you and your community?

AS: A lot of people were upset about COVID-19 and what happened here, but our people never had this fear of crossing over. We know that this journey is so short in our flesh, and that fear was a tactic for colonialists. Fear was a way for them to create a particular lifestyle for us. And so, we never feared taking that journey of crossing over. It was sad when our folks weren’t flesh anymore. But we had a whole understanding, a complete understanding about what happened to our people after we’re here in flesh.

And so, yeah, COVID-19 itself was really the icebreaker for me. When COVID came, I was in the midst of a divorce anyway. I had built up a four-bedroom house and Jacuzzi house and boats, and this, that, the other things, all the things that society says that make you the norm or the healthy person here. And then, I got to a point where none of that mattered.

Like I said, those ceremonies wake you up, and you realize all you have is your flesh and your hair in this world. That’s all you have. You actually possess nothing but that. Everybody thinks you possess these other things. These are just temporary things that come and go just like our bodies.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was what, what was true. I walked away from the job, walked away from the house, walked away from all these things that were trying to make me comfortable, and confronted all my truths.

So, when COVID came, and my job site shut down, I said, “All right, enough is enough. I haven’t been back to the [construction] union since then. This year will be three snows.” Basically, I went to our reservation and found an old ratty camper and gutted it out, put a woodstove in it, started splitting wood and hauling water. And it was back to basics for me, in the midst of the pain and confusion. The only thing that was healthy was the time of solace and hibernation.

It was right around November when I did that. And I was able to step into the winter. And for our people, that’s a time of storytelling. That’s a time of hibernation. And so, I was grateful that that happened at that time because I was able to step into that from there, and then wake up in the spring with a whole new outlook.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was what, what was true. I walked away from the job, walked away from the house, walked away from all these things that were trying to make me comfortable, and confronted all my truths.

From there, I’ve never really looked back. I look back in the sense of acknowledgment, but I never looked back in the sense of, I need this job, or I need this benefit, or I need this health insurance. No, I don’t need that. What I need is…traditional food to eat. I need to be able to hunt. I need to be able to be in the forest and acknowledge all these medicinal plants. These are the things we actually need here. And every year and every day, it gets clearer and clearer.

CU: So, what did you start doing then? When you stopped working, you go to the camper in the reservation. You create a new place. Because you started to create things.

AS: So, what happened was, the Creator is funny in the way things all worked out and the time that the Creator allows you to free yourself from the bondage. My cousin had developed a relationship with Double Edge Theater. And they had been talking about remodeling some space. He asked me if I wanted to do some construction for the tribe or for the people in general, Indigenous folks. And that gave me a new mindset, like, “Oh, maybe I can use my skills just for my people, that will be okay.”

And so yes, we began to build a cultural center, a little social spot, and named it Ohketeau, which means to plant a seed to grow. And what happened was, my brain started to grow; that seed that got planted, I was able to have the freedom of building. Things have just started to work in place. When you walk in a good way, things just work out. And it’s hard. It’s not easy. It is because I walked away with all the same bills that society says that you’re supposed to pay.

CU: And you pay them?

AS: Yeah, and I have for three snows now. And it’s hard to explain the way it worked.

CU: Let’s name a couple of things that happened (more than a couple). So, you have been using your skills to create the building for Ohketeau, which is now a center. And many people use that. It’s a resource for the community. So, you have then started using your skills and you have the knowledge, ancestral knowledge, hunting, tanning. You developed a lot of things that you have been doing, from burning the mishoon to leading workshops.

AS: Yeah, I can speak a little bit on that. So, with this newly developed relationship and space, I was asked about what it needed to grow. And there were answers to that. It was like, “Oh, I need to shop to make my wampum jewelry and other things that I work on. I need to be able to tan hides and teach this traditional knowledge that I have.”

CU: And you’re teaching that.

AS: Yeah. And I’m teaching that. And so, workshops have been put in place. And I’ve started to organize myself with the help of others at Ohketeau and Double Edge. It’s hard to explain. Some workshops generate revenue. I hate to even talk about this because money in general is ridiculous. But we live in two worlds here. And so, there are workshops I do. I’m a paddle maker, a jewelry maker. I sell the skins that I make as well. Peto cans, drums, from water drums to hand drums. Various types of traditional tools and weaponry. Things like that, that a lot of our people that dance traditionally need to buy.

I also teach how to butcher and hunt. And recently, I’ve started doing cultural inventories in our traditional homeland.

CU: That’s amazing.

AS: That was a huge one. Coming into some of the agreements with these land trusts. But it’s doing the walk for us, in showing up when people aren’t going to take care of you right away. A lot of people are like, “Oh, I want this to show up.” It’s like, no, you need to go walk the land and create relationships and see where it goes. And people have a problem with that, but I do not. I will show up anywhere.

CU: You are in a lot of relationships.

AS: Yeah, a whole lot—from the Hilltown Land Trust to Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust. And these particular places really understand what it means to work with Indigenous folks. It’s been really an interesting journey.

CU: You’re operating like a connector also, with different communities, not just your initial community.

Why is it that our kids have to go to these public schools that teach them about Christopher Columbus and Christmas, rather than [the] ways that we moved just a few hundred years before the history books that they started printing?

AS: Oh, absolutely. I move through Shinnecock [in upstate New York]. I spent time in Narragansett [in Rhode Island]. I mean, we’re interrelated as well, in a lot of ways if you go back in time. I’ll be in Akwesasne next weekend, raising money for their emerging school, the Freedom School, on their reservation and sitting with them, talking to them, talking about how we can implement some things back into our communities.

CU: And you were telling me last night about dreams, like creating this school to learn the language and to learn about the culture.

AS: A lot of our folks have thought about these things, but nobody has executed it. But why is it that our kids have to go to these public schools that teach them about Christopher Columbus and Christmas, rather than [the] ways that we moved just a few hundred years before the history books that they started printing? These things are important to us, and they should not be looked at as barbaric or pagan or whatever society calls them.

When they came here, they said, “Oh, they have rituals,” and they just created a whole lot of discourse about how our people were diabolic. They had a way of making us look like we were some sort of animals. Soon, I’ll be bringing a bunch of Nipmuc youth over to the museum, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, so they learn about our peoples.

And so, it’s about rekindling the fire inside of our people because, unfortunately, a lot of our folks are in cities. So, a lot of our folks also haven’t seen wetus. They’ve never been in a mishoon. They’ve never eaten a fiddlehead. They’ve never actually seen maple syrup, sap turned into syrup. Or tasted it fresh. In the cities, you ask them to go get syrup, they’re going to bring it back from Aunt Jemima fructose syrup, that’s not even real. But they don’t know. It’s not their fault. It’s what society and assimilation did.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

The following is a transcript of the video above, from our November 16, 2022, roundtable, “Building a Movement for the Common Good.”

Todd Wolfson: I think the first strategy for us was to step back and actually think about the whole working community at Rutgers. Rutgers is a big university with about 30,000 workers— 25,000 union, spread across 20 different unions. And when the pandemic hit, the university, as it always has, as all our bosses do, aim[ed] to split the workers by attacking the more vulnerable parts of the workforce, which were disproportionately women and people of color. And historically, Rutgers has done this. Historically, all the institutions we’re fighting against aim to do this. And so, for us at that moment, what we realized was, we had to build more of a wall-to-wall or industrial vision of what should happen at Rutgers.

We realized that we had to step back and create a vision and platform that was for all workers.

And before we could even think about what to do with the community, we had to think about what needs to happen among this massively diverse workforce with dining staff, coaches, counselors, postdocs, grad workers, 50,000 undergrads, and then faculty of the full-time and part-time variant, et cetera. And we realized that we had to step back and create a vision and platform that was for all workers. And what that meant was demanding that the most privileged of the workforce sacrifice during a moment of crisis to safeguard the needs of the most vulnerable, which were the ones that the university aim[ed] to ride the pandemic out on.

And so that’s how we approached it. We created a people-centered approach to the pandemic, which really asked faculty to consider a workshare program, which is like a furlough, but you make [it] back; you get made whole both by the federal COVID programs and by state programs. But in doing this furlough program, we were making savings [that is, saving the university money], and we demanded that they don’t lay folks off with that money, and particularly, don’t lay off our staff that have been serving us meals, cleaning students’ rooms, et cetera, et cetera, for decades upon decades. And I think in shifting towards that: one, we were able to fight back much more effectively than any one sector of workers in the university would have been able to do. And two, it helped us realize the power when we think wall-to-wall or industrial versus thinking about craft—at least in the university setting, where we’re all geographically located in one place.

And so that really was a shift for us in thinking about what is to be done. And it’s changed how we approach organizing at the university—and, also, what we think needs to happen at higher ed institutions across the country.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.