In our conduct with each other & our community, we agree to…
…Respect varied cultural backgrounds
- Create, adjust, and support pathways for access and engagement
- Honor diversity of sex, neurotype, race, ethnicity, national origin, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, financial means, family make-up, spiritual practice, language, and education.
…Maintain a shared standard of confidentiality
- Not share one another’s stories or struggles without consent, and be truthful when reconciling our mistakes and conflicts.
- When in person, honor requests to refrain from technology use in communal settings, giving everyone the right to discuss certain subjects without the risk of being recorded.
- When in virtual meeting spaces or on calls, let others know who else is in the room and may be listening, so that participants can make informed decisions about what and how they share.
…Communicate with transparency
- Be open about our intentions in being here & what we hope to offer and receive from the space & community.
- Practice honesty, especially as it relates to sharing information and offering its appropriate context.
- Ask for what we need & communicate when we don’t know or understand.
…Be conscious of patterns of participation
- Be aware of who is and isn’t speaking, ensuring that we are each contributing our voices as well as intentionally supporting others in doing the same.
- Be self-aware to avoid over-committing, without becoming self-centered in our contributions.
…Investigate conflicting & differing viewpoints responsibly
- Strive to understand each other while remaining committed to the recognized truths of material conditions & structural oppression.
- Reject absolutist thinking about “right” and “wrong” organizing strategies, recognizing the ways that a diverse set of tactics can be effective.
…Acknowledge conditioning
- Expect that our experiences, perspectives, and opinions are heavily impacted by our position (e.g. income, class, education, etc) within oppressive social structures.
- Understand that we are all influenced by white supremacy & imperialism, and have learned to engage with the world based on our various relationships to the power structures they have been used to create.
…Honor & embrace a full truth.
- Engage cognitive dissonance & gaslighting as separations from material reality in favor of a psychologically appealing one.
- Be mindful of various vantage points of social struggle, acknowledging their limitations & implications.
…Take responsibility for our own experiences
- Use ‘I’ statements to own our individual feelings & perspectives.
- Use ‘we’ statements to demonstrate collective commitment and own our group decisions and actions.
…Avoid making assumptions
- Actively confirm consent, agreement, & understanding.
- Be aware that we are not able to speak to the intentions of others.
- Engage with curiosity rather than guessing what someone means.
- Don’t expect that there are inherently shared norms of communication.
…Have uncomfortable conversations
- Share the responsibility of naming group problems & communal contradictions, working to resolve them.
- Engage conflict with care, without promoting it.
- Practice emotional honesty instead of letting things fester.
- Name the implications of power dynamics and the reason(s) for working through any identified conflicts.
- Give credit where credit is due, even when it is not easy.
…Move forward with compassionate accountability
- Recognize emotions & feelings as real, informative, & worthy of investigation, rather than assigning automatic judgment to their presence.
- Expect each other to make mistakes, and respond with care instead of punishment.
- Work to support one another in seeing, confronting, and healing from harm, since individual actions (and inactions) have collective consequences.
…Anticipate a desire for progress
- Give and receive criticism as constructive, not condemning.
- Strive to come from a place of love and correction if we are offended by something one of us says.
- Expect that we are all interested in building real community, and be willing to investigate intent while addressing impact.
…so that we may achieve our goals of individual and collective liberation!
*Revised May 2024