Liberating Workplaces (EP.50)
Recorded
April 27, 2021
Last Updated
December 2, 2021
This conversation was recorded as part of Work Shouldn't Suck's Ethical Re-Opening Summit that took place on April 27, 2021.
This past year saw the environmental impacts of the workplace shift dramatically. For many, travel for work was completely erased, both commuting and related business travel. Conferences that traditionally attracted hundreds or thousands of in-person attendees shifted to online offerings. As we consider how to reopen our workplaces, how can we do that in intentional ways that center our impact on planet and people?
Resources mentioned during episode:
Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, Ejeris Dixon (Editor); Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Editor)
“Changes at Basecamp” by Jason Fried
“Basecamp's new etiquette regarding societal politics at work” by David Heinemeier Hansson
Guests: Vanessa Roanhorse & Syrus Marcus Ware
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guests
VANESSA ROANHORSE got her management chops working for 7 years at a Chicago-based nonprofit, the Delta Institute, focused throughout the Great Lakes region to build a resilient environment and economy through creative, sustainable, market-driven solutions. Vanessa oversaw many of Delta’s on-the-ground energy efficiency, green infrastructure, community engagement programs, and workforce development training. Vanessa is a 2019 Village Capital Money Matters Advisory Board Member, 2019 SXSW Pitch Advisor, sits on the local Living Cities leadership table, is a Startup Champions Network member, is an Advisor for emerging Navajo incubator, Change Labs, Advisor for Native Entrepreneurship in Residence Program, and is a board member for Native Community Capital, a native-led CDFI. She is a co-founder of Native Women Lead, an organization dedicated to growing native women into positions of leadership and business. Her academic education is in film from the University of Arizona but her professional education is from hands-on experience leading local, regional and national initiatives. Vanessa is Navajo living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
SYRUS MARCUS WARE uses painting, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture. His work has been shown widely, including in a solo show at Grunt Gallery, Vancouver (2068:Touch Change) and new work commissioned for the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art and the Ryerson Image Centre (Antarctica and Ancestors, Do You Read Us? (Dispatches from the Future)) and in group shows at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Art Gallery of York University, the Art Gallery of Windsor and as part of the curated content at Nuit Blanche 2017 (The Stolen People; Wont Back Down). His performance works have been part of festivals across Canada, including at Cripping The Stage (Harbourfront Centre, 2016, 2019), Complex Social Change (University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, 2015) and Decolonizing and Decriminalizing Trans Genres (University of Winnipeg, 2015). // He is part of the PDA (Performance Disability Art) Collective and co-programmed Crip Your World: An Intergalactic Queer/POC Sick and Disabled Extravaganza as part of Mayworks 2014. Syrus' recent curatorial projects include That’s So Gay (Gladstone Hotel, 2016-2019), Re:Purpose (Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2014) and The Church Street Mural Project (Church-Wellesley Village, 2013). Syrus is also co-curator of The Cycle, a two-year disability arts performance initiative of the National Arts Centre. // Syrus is a core-team member of Black Lives Matter-Toronto. Syrus is a co-curator of Blackness Yes!/Blockorama. Syrus has won several awards, including the TD Diversity Award in 2017. Syrus was voted “Best Queer Activist” by NOW Magazine (2005) and was awarded the Steinert and Ferreiro Award (2012). Syrus is a facilitator/designer at the Banff Centre. Syrus is a PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies.
Co-Host
LAUREN RUFFIN Lauren (she/her) is a thinker, designer, & leader interested in building strong, sustainable, anti-racist systems & organizations. She's into exploring how we can leverage new technologies to combat racial and economic injustice. As part of this work, she frequently participates in conversations on circular economies, social impact financing, solidarity movements, and innovative, non-extractive financing mechanisms. Lauren is a co-founder of CRUX, an immersive storytelling cooperative that collaborates with Black artists as they create content in virtual reality and augmented reality (XR). Lauren is currently the interim Chief Marketing Officer of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), where she focuses on amplifying the stories and activism of the YBCA community. Prior to joining YBCA, Lauren was co-CEO of Fractured Atlas, the largest association of independent artists in the United States. In 2017, she started Artist Campaign School, a new educational program that has trained 74 artists to run for political office to date. She has served on the governing board of Black Girls Code and Main Street Phoenix Cooperative, and on the advisory boards of ArtUp and Black Girl Ventures. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law.
Transcript
Syrus Marcus Ware:
So you have organizations doing the work of trying to push forward into a new direction, and then you also have organizations taking 17 steps back, as we saw with Basecamp. So I think what's very interesting right now would be to figure out what kind of organization am I in, actually. Am I in the kind of organization that's taking 17 steps forward and meeting the challenge where we're at and say, "Okay, how do we live abolitionist lives?" "How do we create a community after capitalism falls?" "How does our organization last until 2030?" And then you had these organizations who are like, "Let's go back to 1983."
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I’m Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about, well, that.
Earlier this year, podcasting's favorite co-host Lauren Ruffin and I produced Work Shouldn't Suck's Ethical Re-Opening Summit. The event took place online on Tuesday, April 27, and featured eight sessions, 25 amazing speakers, and covered a whole host of topics related to the ethical re-opening of workplaces amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
We raced to produce the Summit from start to finish in just three weeks as we felt the urgency and stress mounting as workplaces were in the midst of re-opening decisions. Several months on, we still feel the content is as necessary as ever, so we decided to release each of the sessions in podcast form.
In each of the eight sessions, you'll hear the conversations just as the Summit attendees did. As a reminder, in late April 2021, COVID vaccine distribution was just gaining speed and we had yet to begin hearing about the Delta variant. From that vantage point in time, it very much looked like by Fall 2021 things might be settling back into somewhat of a quote unquote normal routine. As I record this preamble in Fall 2021, that's not the case. We're now talking about break-through infections, booster shots, schools opening and closing again, hospital ICUs are packed in states across the U.S., and still how to safety gathering in indoors as the temperature again begins to drop with the change in seasons.
In the Summit's opening plenary titled A Year in the Life, Lauren Ruffin is joined by Vanessa Roanhorse and Syrus Marcus Ware as they discuss what we've learned this past year and how that knowledge and experience can help craft thriving workplaces. Lauren and I get things rolling, so let's jump over to the action.
Tim Cynova:
Before we launch into a conversation with Syrus and Vanessa, want to take a quick moment to share some of what we saw from our workplace survey. Thank you so much to everyone who provided feedback on the survey. We'll be sending this out as well, so if it's a little small on your screen, don't worry. Lauren is actually seeing this for the first time, so she's living the excitement with all of you. We had this five question survey, it was multiple choice and we asked people the slides here, how many days a week do you expect to work in the office as of the fall? And how many days do you prefer? Almost no one would prefer to be in the office five days a week, or even four days a week. Otherwise, these graphs are all over the place and I look forward to digging into what this might mean in our future conversations.
Tim Cynova:
Next we have, when is your organization planning to let more than a handful of employees back into the office? Shaving off the edges for that happened already and not before January 22. It looks like summer and fall. However, a third of respondents still don't know. And that's not an insignificant number, or sorry, not an insignificant number of companies went entirely virtual, entirely remote as a result of the past year. When do you expect to attend an in person indoor conference or performance of at least 100 people? Almost two thirds said not before January, our remaining third said the last quarter of this calendar year. So for those of us working in sectors where we convene people, for example, the cultural sector, people coming together for performances, we'll be diving in today what does that mean for us, and our organizations, and our missions?
Tim Cynova:
And lastly, when do you expect to fly again for work? Some people are already doing this. So people expect in the next month or so. Overwhelmingly, most people say not before the fall or next year. So again, we'll be sharing those. Sorry, I'm bringing Lauren back in here. We'll be sharing those in the email that goes out so you can dig into that. But we launched this summit with two amazing, amazing guests who we've had on our live stream and podcast before, Vanessa Roanhorse and Syrus Marcus Ware. To make the most of the rest of our time, without further ado, going to welcome in Vanessa, and bringing in Syrus here.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
Hello.
Tim Cynova:
Hi everyone. And with that, I'm going to pull myself out of the feed so the three of you can have the conversation, and I'll be back at the very end. So I have a good one everyone.
Lauren Ruffin:
Live Streaming is such a sport. It really fulfills all of my adrenaline junkie needs. [crosstalk 00:07:11]. How are y'all today?
Syrus Marcus Ware:
I'm good. I mean, it's Tuesday. I can't believe it's Tuesday. It feels like it's Friday. Not because it feels like it's the weekend, but because it feels like so much has happened. But I'm good. I'm well. It's nice to be with you early in the morning.
Lauren Ruffin:
Vanessa, how are you doing?
Vanessa Roanhorse:
I'm good. I started off my day talking about finances, and that's its own cup of coffee.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, for sure.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
I'm good. I'm happy. I'm in Albuquerque, it's gray out, which never isn't really common here. So it's kind of nice to have weather happening.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, we're supposed to get some rain. And I know we've got wildfires. We've got wildfires South here already. It seems the season is already kicked off, unfortunately. So the rain that's coming will be really helpful. Well, I'm really excited to spend time with y'all this morning. And you two don't know each other, so I feel what's going to happen is that beautiful crackle when probably kindred souls meet for the first time. It could happen, we're going to record it, it's going to be really brilliant. But I really think it's important to kick off with y'all, because what we're really talking about today is, as people are rushing to reopen, how do we do so in a way that is more sustainable, both for the earth the planet, and for us as people, where perhaps we can build new systems and structures and ways of working. And I know the two of you do a lot of thinking and are sort of engaged in a radical transformation and radical imagination about what our world and life can be. So just super again, really excited that you're framing this for us.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'll give a brief intro of y'all and then we'll let you jump in and introduce yourselves because I feel like both of your work is so expansive that reading a bio doesn't do it justice. And I also know that when you're multifaceted, the things you're thinking about day to day and what you're doing changes day to day, week to week. So I want you all to talk about what's top of mind for you. Vanessa is a really, really good friend of mine, my heart. I think Vanessa was the second person I met several years ago when I moved to Albuquerque. We've been inseparable since then. Her work with Native Women Lead has been transformational. Working now with a lot of finance is just doing radical, radical things. I don't want to, what they say, spill the can of worms or something like that, spill the beans. I don't want to vomit it all over before you get to share.
Lauren Ruffin:
Syrus is based in Canada. Does amazing work with the Black Lives Matter movement up there. I know we've not been hearing a lot in the States. I know our friends, the North have been going through it with regard to racial justice over the last couple years and just as long as we have in the States, and their work as an artist, as an educator, as an activist is also multifaceted. So with that, maybe, Vanessa, you want to give your brief intro and a individual description for our audience?
Vanessa Roanhorse:
Definitely. Yeah, it's A. Vanessa Roanhorse [inaudible 00:10:23]. I am Diné, Navajo from Navajo Nation. I live here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Tiwa lands. And I am a short indigenous woman who has mostly white hair, a little bit of black left, not very much anymore, wearing black glasses, black lipstick, black, I guess, my easy working in office blazer over my pajamas. And behind me in a room that's got a red wall with some images up there and some storage behind me. I'm really happy to be here. And thank you, Lauren. I honestly moved to Albuquerque almost six years ago. I had been living away from the Four Corners in my community for about 20 plus years. And upon getting back here, trying to reacquaint, build friendships. It's a lot harder in your 40s to make friends sometimes, because life is just so full. And just meeting you, it was magical, and it still continues to be. So I appreciate that. The love is there right back at you.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
I'm happy to say that I am my own agent, and so own my own company called Roanhorse Consulting. We are an indigenous women-led think tank, or at least that's what we kind of believe we do. We do a lot of work in capital access, economic development. We're using a lot of the evaluation methods lately to support people who are trying to build new, whether it's lending products or design more effective ways to understand economic data and why it matters, and what should we really be tracking. And so gratefully we use sort of our indigenous evaluation methodologies. And we think the plurality of those methodologies really are game changing, because they really focus on people and planet versus short term outcomes and job growth. So we're really trying to push on that side.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
And then on the capital access side, Lauren, you mentioned Native Women Lead, which is another piece of my heart work. And for me, Native Women Lead started because of my own journey to start a company as a brown indigenous woman, and how painful that was, and how lonely it was. And so Native Women Lead is now a fast global, globally growing organization focused on investing, lifting, scaling indigenous women into positions of CEO and leadership. All of this kind of balled up for me, because trying to start initiatives, companies, and access to resources was so non existent. I am now fully in the dreaming of new capital pathways for people and really looking at how do we innovate around underwriting, risk and evaluation. And then frankly, building the type of products that actually leapfrog and amplify what people are building. So it's been a good time. I hope that's a good introduction.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's beautiful. Syrus, tells about you and what you're thinking about lately.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
Hey, everybody. Lauren, it's great to see you and it's so wonderful to meet. I want to hear more about this innovation hub and what you're doing. My name is Syrus Marcus Ware. I use he, him pronouns. I'm based in Tkaronto or Toronto, the part that was underwater at the time of the Toronto Purchase, so it's the unceded territory of the Mississauga of the Credit. I'm wearing a blue shirt with black polka dots. I have a long ostrich feather or Emu Feather earring that I'm wearing that I got when I was in Australia. I have blonde dreadlocks piled in a messy bun. I have a bunch of neon bracelets that my daughter made me on my wrists, and I'm in front of a very messy background of kids drawing and kids everything just sort of on every surface. And I have brown skin and I'm a black person. I'm a black trans, disabled, and mad artists, activist, and scholar. And that's what I look like. I have a short beard, too. I am an organizer, I've been organizing for about 25 years. I've also been an artist for about 25 years, and have been in the art sector working in large institutions and also working independently as a curator, and also as an artist.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
And I've spent 25 years really working within this milieu and trying to understand how to make sense of what it means to work in the arts. I'm trying to make sense of that. But at the same time, I've also spent the same 25 years as an organizer, as an activist. So to me, I've been really drawn to the possibility that the world could be different than it currently is. So I've been organizing around disability justice, and trans justice, and black liberation for 25 years. Most recently, I helped to co found Black Lives Matter Canada, which is the presence of the Black Lives Matter movement here in Northern tribal Ireland, and [inaudible 00:15:53]. And there are chapters in Montreal, and Vancouver, and Fredericktown, and all over, and growing. And so I helped sort of steward that organization and help to make sure that we are helping the chapters to do all the great work that they need to do.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
And then I also work as an educator, so I teach at McMaster University. I teach in the arts, but I also teach systems thinking and leadership at the Banff Centre. And I'm really interested in the possibility of creating workplaces where we all can thrive. I am so fascinated by that chart that many people were like, "I'd like to be in the office zero days of the week." Because I think that we can invent new ways of being, and now is the time to do it. So that's me. And it's great to be here.
Lauren Ruffin:
Awesome.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
Wow. Wow.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. So that's a great segue into what I kind of wanted. It's manna from the heavens. I was like, "What brilliant thing am I going to ground us in today?" And then Luckily, Basecamp totally screwed the pooch yesterday.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
So I don't know if it's manna from the heavens, or just the usual shit show that rains down on us. Just naming the difference there.
Lauren Ruffin:
You're so right. So I just dropped a link to the changes at Basecamp post that came out yesterday. It happens, our whole audience has it. I want to ground our conversation here because I really can't think of a more textbook example of what not to do as a well respected company. And so for anyone who's not familiar with Basecamp, they are a company that makes project management software. I'd say millions of people use it every day. They've been really vocal about how they grew. They didn't take investment dollars, they really tried to pride themselves on building a good healthy corporate culture that I look to often as I was building Crux, as I'm having conversations about Work Shouldn't Suck, sort of moving slowly, not taking outside investment, really building things that as much as you need to build, not being sort of overly creative or overly complicated.
Lauren Ruffin:
And so they had this post yesterday, where they're like they're changing the way they operate. And number one is no more societal and political discussions on our company Facebook account, because the social and political waters are choppy. No more paternalistic benefits, like farmers market shares, fitness, wellness allowance, etc. It goes on and on. But I'm really curious, as y'all were reading this, what were your first... Because Vanessa, I know you and I are on the same Twitter. Syrus, I don't know what your Twitter feed looks like, but mine exploded yesterday over this. So what were your initial reactions to reading this post? What really stood out to you?
Syrus Marcus Ware:
It is absolutely outrageous. As you said, how did he get it wrong in a paragraph and a half? It is absolutely outrageous. I just want to pull out, I mean the point that I have... I believe there's a bit of an echo. The point that stands out to me the most, of course, is the no societal or political discussions on our company Facebook account. Because of course, what are you going to do, remove yourself from society? If you're not engaged in the social world, and you're not staying relevant, what the hell is the point? But I want to draw your attention to, I know this is a smaller thing, perhaps, but no paternalistic benefits. For years, we've offered a fitness benefit, a wellness allowance, a farmers market share, but we've had a change of heart. It's none of our business what you do outside of work, what a strange hill to die on.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
What a strange thing to think, all of the social benefits that we do that make us part of a community, because as organizations, wouldn't it be nice if we thought of these institutions as actually part of the communities that they're situated within. All of the things that make our workers come together, and make our workers thrive as workers, as human beings who are alive, not just workers, let's just cut all of those things. And to call them paternalistic is such a strange response to something that people have been pushing for decades in the workplaces, more live-work balance, more ability to be a human. It is such a strange thing to thrust forward. But of course, my biggest issue is of course with the no political discussions. Yeah, it's hard.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
No, thank you. Because that it's funny. I saw the Twitter blowing up, I skimmed the thing, and I just kind of rolled my eyes. And I was like, "Oh." And Lauren and I were talking earlier more white type bro bullshit, right? Let's just not deal with what's happening in the world. So this is the most clear example of white supremacy. Let's lean into our privilege and say, "We can't deal with these things, so therefore we won't." "And if we ignore them, they'll go away." Let's not acknowledge that people's actual living cells are politicized every day. Let's just not acknowledge that, that's something you walk out the door with, however, whoever you are, and it's a political statement, just for B. And then the final one is, for a company that's rested on these morals, talk about the complete opposite of what they've been talking about for so long.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
And more importantly, the use of paternalistic to me is the perfect example of the continuation of the lack of social contracts that were willing to hold on to anymore, that we are all connected, that we're all part of the same community, and when you thrive, I thrive. The belief that that's paternalistic, and also someone can give you that right, is part of the problem. Is part of the whole broken safety net situation in United States. The whole broken idea that people deserve quality and dignified lives. So I think it was the world's biggest eye roll, and then I just moved on. Because where are you supposed to focus your energy honestly, at this point? And you know what, there'll be some statement in probably a week or two, where there'll be like, "You don't understand what we were trying to say, you missed what we were talking about." And gas light, gas light, gas light, like textbook, textbook, textbook, textbook.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
Thank you for saying gas light, because that's exactly the way this reads. It takes the things that we've been fighting for, that we've said are important, like the ability to review your manager as much as your manager is reviewing you, and they've turned that around and said, "No 360 reviews, because it's too much work for you." Well, no, I've asked for this. Hold on a minute, but it's gas lighting and it's a way of making it seem the bizarre choices in this memo are somehow our wishes, it's because it's what's best for us. When in fact everything that they're cutting are the things that would make it a work environment. I mean, I just want to draw your attention to this one sentence about the political, "You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit or wading into it means you're a target." I mean, I don't know what else to say. I mean, if this is the framing, and what it means to be socially engaged in the world is that you're either, quote unquote, complicit. In what? In white supremacy? Or you're a target.What are they even saying?
Syrus Marcus Ware:
So I don't know that there is a statement that could be made on Twitter or otherwise, that would make me forget this statement was put out. I don't know how they're going to come out of this. But I do think that unfortunately, there are a lot of people who probably applauded this Twitter manager, because we're reacting. My Twitter feeds are curated, perhaps in a way where a lot of people were reacting. I'm sure there are people who are thinking this is great, because now I don't have to address my white supremacy at my job. Now, I don't have to listen to my employee who's giving me feedback about how I've managed. Now I don't have to arrange to make sure that so and so has their farmers market info or whatever. And it's very bizarre.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I think it's so wow. And I can't keep. As I read it, I kept thinking about in your 20s when you're rocking in a really tight friend group, and then there's a couple that breaks up, and then everybody knows everybody's business all at once. And I remember sitting and talking to a friend and she said, I'm tired of doing the right thing for the right reasons about her partner and why they were breaking up. This feels like they've decided to absolutely do the wrong thing for the wrong reason on purpose. I don't know how you take a workplace culture that they were so vocal about. If they've been quiet about their workplace culture, nobody would have cared. They've written books and profited on this idea of their good place to work. And I see Courtney Hart brought up in the chat, I thought the same thing, the paternalism of what is wrong with a farmers market? Somebody hates organic food. You know what I mean? It's so specific. So anyway, what's your bet? What do you think happened? What did one of those founders get accused of that created this? Because this post is a reaction to something we don't know about, right?
Syrus Marcus Ware:
Oh, interesting.
Lauren Ruffin:
What do you think it is?
Vanessa Roanhorse:
That's a good question. I mean, who knows? The thing for me is someone got caught doing something and doesn't want to have that come to light. There's a deal on the table somewhere that is going to inform something for Basecamp forward, or three white people are just white people. They got scared. They got nervous about the current climate. They're looking at their other peers and wondering if... But also someone who comes from a place of privilege assumes that people get to pick and choose how politics plays out, and that you can opt out of these conversations. And so, I don't know. I mean, I hate to say that and mean it, but it's just I can't explain any other way. It's just a white male doing white male thinking.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
I have a feeling that likely these values that are exposed in this, I don't even know what to call this, this info sheet, I think that these values are probably held dear by people in leadership and probably have been held dear for a while. I bet there's been a bit of a push pull about the direction, and for whatever reason, this is what went out. And we know that this whole reason went out because of white supremacy being dyed in the wool of our workplaces. And so that kind of dude-bro, white-sis hat kind of narrative, that we see in the writing of this. I mean, it's written like a textbook of neoliberal white supremacy, but in the business sort of an example of. Yeah, I think that probably these feelings have been held at the company for a while, and now it's just went out. So anyways, I'm so thankful that you brought this as an example, because of course, now, I've got my blood is sufficiently boiling to be ready for [inaudible 00:27:45]. Right, back on Twitter. I've got to tell you that.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's like a warm up, but I think focusing on David and Jason, the founders of Basecamp, and them feeling like it was their decision to make, right, which represents a level of hierarchy. And that in of itself is paternalistic in a company. So, I'm curious about that. But I'm also, I got to tell you, I woke up this morning thinking about the black and brown people who are in that organization. I mean, I'm guessing they're dusting off their resume. But this had to have been a hostile organization for them prior to the company shooting itself in the foot in this way, right?
Syrus Marcus Ware:
I mean, you would imagine that this is part and parcel. I mean, if anyone was at the helm is able to write what they've written here, it's so racist, and sexist, and violent, right? Because of course, it presupposes the people that don't have family, and presupposes the people that don't have self determination, or don't have disabilities. The way it's written is written with very few employees in mind being able to fit into this mold. So you can imagine that probably was a very difficult environment anyways for these racialized employees. I think what I would be thinking about would be, "Okay, so that black square that you put on your profile last June, that was just bullshit then?" I'm sorry to swear, but, "So that really meant nothing." We knew it meant nothing when a lot of these orgs put their square, but I don't know if Basecamp put a square, but once you write a statement that says we're no longer going to comment about political issues on our social media, you've put a nail in your coffin right there.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
And what that would mean to me as a racialized employee, it's that when racism happens to me in the workplace, where am I to go? That this is not an organization that's going to be able to help me through white supremacy if I experienced that on the job, anti blackness if I experienced that on the job. This doesn't create a feeling of safety or security for me as an employee to feel like I'm going to be supported when these things happen at my job. If an organization is going to go out of its way to say, "When we comment on politics." I'm sorry, there should be no two sides on the George Floyd killing. I mean, the man was killed and murdered by the police. That's not about, how do they say, wading into the waters and being a target or a complicit. I mean, it should actually be pretty straightforward. When we see violence and injustice such as that, you should be able to make a comment on that. And if you're not able to understand how to make that comment, that says lot more about where you're at in terms of your race politics. Yeah.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. And yeah, what about those employees, what are they going to do? And I think one of the things that I've been thinking about just as you were talking, is how these types of companies, institutions kind of continue with the ethos that the only purpose of business is to make money. The only purpose of business is to have this one single characteristic. But if you look at all of our communities and cultures before so much of this form of capitalism was the only option, we worked with each other, we relied on each other, whether it's for goods and services, we traded, we bartered, we understood that things were finite, and in that you paid for quality materials that were going to last. This just continues to be to me just that in stage capitalism that continues to claw its way up. But I hope that we're in a place now for those employees that the conversation has shifted, and that there are new social relationships being developed around these conversations, and we can have sessions like Work Shouldn't Suck. And it's actually a real thing.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
In that survey that Tim shared, where 0% of people want to work five days a week in an office is the perfect example. The question is, what are we going to do, though, to start to come back and create the better safety nets for our employees going forward, that isn't farmers markets, but it's healthcare. So in the United States, we have garbage health care. The ability to have health care, and so that when you get sick, you can continue working. The ability to have the flexibility if you're a single mom, or you just are a single person who needs time for mental space to not have to do a nine to five. And the agency we need as people to define how work can work for us is I think the work right now. So what are the social safety nets we have to focus on? And then how are we creating the process so that people can actually have a life outside of work?
Vanessa Roanhorse:
So I don't know. I think that's the moment that we're beginning to pause it. There's a whole lot that needs to happen on the policy side for us even get there. Because we've been thinking about it here in New Mexico. I'm a small business owner, I've got employees, and I can't offer meaningful benefits right now. So we are looking to history to say, how did people create cooperative forms of health insurance? What's the mass numbers we need to be able to get quality, particularly native American health care insurance. So those are the things I'm thinking about right now as we move forward. Because I don't know what we're going to do in terms of office either.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
It's so interesting, because at the same time as Basecamp was making this statement, you have other organizations reading books on transformative justice, reading books on abolition, thinking through how to have an abolitionist rooted organization, how to resolve conflict in your organization without relying on carceral logics and punishment. So you have these organizations making these massive conceptual leaps, they're going through a systems change, and they're trying to learn how to be better and more agile and respond in ways that tie into the abolitionist drive that we're seeing in the community. So I work at an institution, I work at a university, and my department chose to read collectively Beyond Survival, which is that incredible book by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in a jurisdiction that looks at transformative justice stories from the field, including in workplaces, and how to implement them. And so we collectively read that book together over a period of weeks and had a reading session to think about what would it mean to take a non punitive approach in our relationship to the university, in our relationship to our students, and their relationship to our colleagues.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
So you have organizations doing the work of trying to push forward into a new direction, and then you also have organizations taking 17 steps back, as we saw with Basecamp. So I think what's very interesting right now would be to figure out what kind of organization am I in, actually. Am I in the kind of organization that's taking 17 steps forward and meeting the challenge where we're at and say, "Okay, how do we live abolitionist lives?" "How do we create a community after capitalism falls?" "How does our organization last until 2030?" And then you had these organizations who are like, "Let's go back to 1983." And that's what we thought is Basecamp email, was let's go back to 1983, and we'll just live in that area for a while. I'd rather be in an organization that's moving forward and moving into these new directions that we're seeing in the social world. So to me, I think you're right, Lauren, they're dusting off their resumes. I mean, wouldn't you? I mean, I would be very hesitant to want to stay somewhere long term that was taking these kind of steps backwards.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder how much people reflect on the way they were taught to lead. An organization was really based on compliance and control instead of liberation. Because to me, to Vanessa's point about healthcare, the law says that we have to sort of offer certain things. There're a ceiling. I mean, there're a floor, and that floor is so far below the surface. But if we get to liberation, we get to the point where Vanessa started talking about what are the ways that we have historically operated to get people what they need? I know we have about 10 minutes left in this conversation, if there are any questions for Vanessa and Syrus, feel free to drop them in the chat, and I'll do my best to answer them, or have to ask them and then they can answer them. I'll make them do the work this morning.
Lauren Ruffin:
But what are some of the core tenants of a place where POC wouldn't be dusting off their resume? The political statements on Twitter is a good place to start, but what are the deeper sort of core values? Vanessa, I know that when you do events with Native Women Lead, there's always childcare there. And that, to me seems like a no brainer, but for some organizations, it seems an added expense, or an added level of coordination. How are y'all operating that sort of bringing the sense of imagination and liberation?
Vanessa Roanhorse:
We never question or negotiate people's time and what they tell us it costs. It is something we kind of try to work with, which is like, "You believe this is what you're worth, we're going to start there." So part of it is just recognizing. Because we work, almost not exclusively, because it's not an exclusive, it's just a lot of the folks we've been working with are women of color. And a lot of them within the Native Women Lead network are 35 to 45. So a lot of them are mothers, caretakers of young people and older people. And so we knew immediately, not only is childcare important, but access to quiet time for these women, and for people to be able to find space to just be alone to meditate, to think. If they needed access to spiritual materials, they were there. So this is just for all events that we tried to do. But additionally, we pay for every speaker and their time, we never not pay, we don't ask people to do us favors. And it's something that I didn't realize was such a big deal until I got in the conference circuit myself, and realized how much I had to fight for compensation for one hour. And how hard it was. And people were like, "Well, that's not what we do, we pay for the event." And it's just like, "How is that possible?" "How is it that we're not honoring?"
Vanessa Roanhorse:
So those are some of the things we've done. But in my company at Roanhorse Consulting, we basically have created the process forward where we will be an employee owned company over the next two years as we move forward that way, and that was my desire and gift to help build opportunity, and wealth, and assets for my team and my staff who've never had that before. And so in that building, they get to be a part of the decision making. We ultimately hope to move completely to team leaders similar to a law firm, where there's just lead folks who develop their portfolios. But honestly, it's just imagining a future in which people have agency, have self determination as you shared, Syrus, and also the ability to make choices on things we get to build and create. And it seems so simple, but turns out it's actually so antithetical to what most folks think of in terms of company, in terms of what matters. And I'll be honest, I've had to go to banks to get additional money and resources to help me grow this. And when I talk anything outside of traditional business practices, I become a risk to provide lending and resources to. So anyway, those are just some examples. I would love to hear yours, though, Syrus.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
Yeah. I'll talk about Black Lives Matter Canada, because we're in the process. We've a small staff team. It's a national organization that provides support around black liberation nationally, and we have this small staff team. And we were determined from day one to be the kind of workplace where people want to be engaged, they want to stay connected. So it's rooted in black liberation, it's rooted in black justice, we have made sure that there are things like benefits, and sick days, and on all of the things that you would want, yoga classes. And all the things that Basecamp has just cut, we've made sure are available. But also, we wanted to make sure that we're building out the capacity for our team to grow and diversify in the future. So we've been doing ASL classes with all of our staff, because one of the things that I find outrageous is that we're still in a situation where we're completely segregated between hearing, and deaf, and hard of hearing communities. We've created a world where we're in different schools, different workplaces, different communities, and never the two should meet.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
And we wanted something better than that for our communities. We wanted black, deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing communities to be working together for the liberation of all of our people. So we've all been learning ASL, black ASL, actually, which is a specific dialogue, dialect. We've been learning black ASL since January, with the incredible black deaf instructor, And just doing these kinds of things that are kind of building us towards an organization where we could have deaf and hard of hearing people working with us, and we can all communicate with each other. So just starting to work from day one with the plan of becoming more and more and more reflective of the diversity of the country, rather than less and less and less, which is what we're seeing in this Basecamp's email.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
No, 100% it's values. What are your values? I think everything you're saying I just think about, so much of our work, we talk about we need to understand if our values aligned, what are the values of what we're creating? How do the values hold us accountable? And I will tell you most times most folks don't want to go there. It's just too much work. It requires too much time. But it's like, if you aren't willing to build a true relationship, which is going to be bound by values, it's going to be bound by trust, it's just not worth it. It's just ultimately long term not worth it. And I think that's exactly it. Also, by the way, I had no idea there was black ASL.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, because-
Vanessa Roanhorse:
It's so amazing.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:42:55] videos are amazing. You've got to check it out.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
Yeah.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
Oh my god, I got to find this. Yes.
Lauren Ruffin:
Tim's back, which means that we're running out of time.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
Hi Tim.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
Hi Tim.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm usually super happy to see Tim, but this time I'm not.
Tim Cynova:
I'm so happy I wasn't moderating, that I could just sit there and listen to this conversation. Oh, god, that was amazing. Syrus, Vanessa, thank you so much for starting the summit off with us. The panel was terrific, and I look forward to be able to go back and rewatch it.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
Thank you so much.
Vanessa Roanhorse:
Yes, thank you. I wasn't done. I want more time, but another time.
Syrus Marcus Ware:
We could literally talk about this all day. That's the thing, is there is... I mean, I'm glad it's a whole summit, because there is so much juicy stuff to talk about.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, well hang on to that, we'll get lots of time to talk later on.
Tim Cynova:
Find more about the Ethnical Re-Opening Summit, including speaker bios and session recaps at work shouldn’t suck dot c-o backslash ethical hyphen reopening hyphen summit hyphen 2021.
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