These are principles & values that guide -how- we do what we do. And shared understanding is critical. So here’s what we mean when we say…
*COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP
A communal commitment to sharing responsibility for our culture and our structures. It is an active engagement in service to the community. Responsible collective leadership centers Black-wholeness and labors across differences in institutional and social power, building connections through struggle.
*HEALING
The act of growing & maintaining connection as a cyclical process. Laboring to create awareness & engagement with our full selves & community instead of merely seeking to dispose of our ailments, injuries, or one another. The healing process requires a commitment to decolonizing wellness and creating a culture of collective vulnerability & trust.
*ACCOUNTABILITY
The practice of voluntarily committing to actions & relationships where materially, economically, & politically powerful parties are responsible for making sure other folx (they are accountable to) have a clear understanding of why something is happening in order to move forward. Accountability produces transparency in organization and decision-making.
LOVE ETHIC (as described by bell hooks)
The value that we utilize all the dimensions of love—care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge”—in our everyday lives. A belief that honesty, openness, and personal integrity need to be expressed in public and private decisions. A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free and to live fully and well.
COMMUNITY (as described by M.S. Peck, affirmed by bell hooks)
The coming together of a group of individuals “who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure. And who have developed some significant commitment to ‘rejoice together, mourn together,’ and to, ‘delight in each other, and make others’ conditions our own.”
*COMMUNALISM
The practice of putting the human needs of people first and building community together because of moral necessity. Centering long-haul building of a liberation movement grounded in community, not the winning of concession or capitalist accumulation. It is marked by all giving according to their ability and receiving according to their need.
*Written by BLC – updated April 2024