May 2024 DiS Opportunities Roundup: Lessons Learned 4 Years In!
Hi everyone!
May is a bittersweet time of year for us. Four years ago was when George Floyd was brutally murdered in Minneapolis. This tragic event, however, brought together Marie, Michael, Rida and I to form Diversity in Sustainability. At the time, it was a way for us to make sense of what was happening, create community, and also to share the privilege we’d accrued over time to lift up the voices from fellow communities of colour. As the year went on, we felt like we were hitting our stride in doing this.
Despite the things we’ve accomplished, over the past year or so, I’ve really felt the winds changing. I have worked on the corporate side of sustainability for over 15 years, and there’s been discussion of greenhushing and DEI-hushing, and from my own vantage point, the silencing is real. After the affirmative action ruling in the U.S., and all the culture wars where ESG has somehow been added to the conversation, it has changed the field a lot. What was once a field that thought big picture, that was creative, that looked to creating solutions, is now mired in paperwork, legal language, and compliance controls. Companies that were at the forefront in talking about their commitment to diversity and sustainability are dialling things back, renaming things, or getting increasingly antsy about speaking about things publicly. I’ve also seen some of my other peers who are focused on racial and environmental and social justice burning out, stepping back from organizations they’ve founded in order to have a more humane pace of life. This is completely understandable – these issues can be thankless and exhausting, and people need time to heal and re-centre themselves. An author – whose name escapes me now – had a beautiful analogy that sometimes when you face exhaustion when making social change, you have to think like a flock of geese flying in a V-formation. Leaders can step back and rest, and let others in the group take the lead, while they conserve their energy by riding on the uplift of others in the flock. 🪿
But hang on a second! This isn’t a treatise from us to say that we’re throwing in the towel. This work isn’t becoming any less important – if anything, it’s becoming more important. Our societies are becoming more diverse yet unequal, divisions are growing deeper, changes are happening quickly, the consequences of climate change are accelerating, and we desperately need to build societies that centre voices of those most affected. And as an organization called Diversity in Sustainability, the words in our name have a level of meaning and responsibility that are important to live up to. So as we approach the fourth year of Diversity in Sustainability, we want to reflect on what we’ve learned as fuel to keep us going. Here’s just a snippet of some of the lessons:
🌲 The most exciting work is happening in frontline communities. People in frontline communities are the most affected and often have the best idea of what the solutions are. We all need to make sure they are not only involved in the work, but are leading it, and that we follow their lead and provide them the resources to do so.
➕ Remember that scale is the aggregate of individual actions. We often talk about the necessity of scale and speed for sustainability solutions. This leads to one-size-fits-all approaches that don’t work for everyone, and resentment that people are being forced to do things one way. Lasting change begins with a shift in individual mindsets, and people doing the own work within themselves first, before the cumulative actions can happen at scale.
🧑🏿🤝🧑🏿 People belong to groups but are also their own unique selves. Labels exist to simplify and make sense of the world but believing them to be the only attribute of a person can be detrimental. People are not only their labels, but there is an individual behind that too.
🏁 Take the time for long introductions. Anyone who has been to meetings and dialogues with us have seen that we spend almost half the time on introductions. It is important to establish relationships before moving forward on difficult and sensitive tasks. Safe spaces are not created by declaring “this is a safe space.”
👩🏻🤝👨🏿 RELATIONSHIPS ARE EVERYTHING! Reducing a relationship to a transaction is joyless. Life is made up of our webs of relationships. Managing a network is all about managing relationships. Finding a job is all about relationships. Check in randomly with people to see how they are, send them things that might be helpful to them when you see it. Your actions add up over time.
👀 Take the time to get to know completely new communities. You will be rewarded with new discoveries, new friends and most definitely – new stories to tell!
👑 Don’t forget that privilege is context specific. We have to recognize the power dynamics in every situation we’re in.
📣 Be wary of the loudest people in the room. Often times, they have a communications platform but lack the substance and may be in it for the wrong reasons. Actions speak louder than words.
📜 We have to know our histories to move forward. Getting to know our own histories, and the histories of our ancestors, helps us make sense of our worldviews and gives us the context on why we approach things the way we do as individuals and as society.
😠🤣In making social change, there’s a place for anger and there’s a place for joy. The former is great for drawing attention to a cause, but it will exhaust you. The latter, while acknowledging the former, will bring lasting change.
🥳🥳Lastly, we’ll be celebrating our 4th anniversary on June 20th , so for those of you close enough to Toronto – save the date! A shout out to Lucy Lu and Raveena Sajjan for their help in organizing, and our friends at Sun Life and The Works for sponsorship of the event! Please stay tuned for more details. 🥳🥳
💗
Heather
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