“Not ‘What’s wrong with you?’ but ‘What happened to you?’ is the key question. Trauma theory provides us a perspective to understand that. In that vulnerability is where we can learn.”

Arabella Perez speaks with us about organizational trauma and helping teams and organizations move towards healing.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Question: What do we say when we’re asked “What does equity have to do with my mission?” Put differently, how do we respond to the following comment? “Well, I don’t think equity is a part of our organizational mission.”

An answer: Well, it takes practice. You’ve got to be comfortable telling the truth to yourself before you can invite others to make their own discoveries. “The goal is to help people learn and catalyze actions so they can transform their culture to center equity.”

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Letting myself get messy–allowing space for the wild in my work for racial justice, that’s what surfaced for me this month in my conversation with Aram Mitchell. As the director of Renewal in the Wilderness, Aram ‘helps those who help’ by leading wilderness trips for educators, medical personnel and others, to balance, harmonize and energize.

As a sense of isolation deepens, how does our relationship to the earth offer hope and healing? How does it affect our work on racial justice?

For me, it was about respecting and allowing in the disorder, the imperfection.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

During times of tragedy and crisis – grief, pain and anger in this moment can feel almost unending. As we know from the courage, perseverance and triumphs of those that have come before us – we shall move forward.

Just a few days before the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department, and national uprisings for black lives, and justice for all black communities – we gathered with a community of leaders to explore how we center racial equity in our strategy now and for the long term.

As we continue to seek paths forward in this darkness, we wanted to share some of these reflections as an aid to teams in your strategy conversations now and in the weeks ahead.

You can find the full Strategic Thinking in a Long-Term Crisis doc here.

We encourage you to open it up and flip through as you listen to the video!

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

In the next few months we’ll be seeing primary elections rolling through our states, and it’s got us thinking about why we vote and why some of us step up to lead and to run for office.

Last year we saw an incredible victory for our community here in Lewiston, Maine: Safiya Khalid became the first Somali-American and youngest person elected to our city council. . I had the honor of watching her campaign, her courage, and her hope spread through our city. That’s why I wanted to sit down with her this month and hear more of her story.

To support Safiya visit: https://www.facebook.com/SafiyaForCityCouncil

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Narrative shift happens when we stop basing decisions, strategies, and policies on the current dominant narrative (think, “Pull yourself up by the bootstraps!” or “America first”) and start, instead, to purposefully ground our work in our personal values and principles. Narrative shift is our path to a better way of life.

This month, Erik Peterson of Bending the Arc Strategies shares his take on developing healthy narrative shifts on Brass Tacks.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

The project of white supremacy is deeply intertwined and at times is no different than the project of patriarchy. It is our responsibility to pull back the misogynistic interpretation of feminism that would have us ignore it, make fun of it, or push it aside as “not for me”. What is feminism? What is misogyny? And what is the value to each of us of reclaiming a useful sense of these terms?

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

There are moments of change that completely redefine who we are – to the world, and to ourselves. How do we walk through these moments with grace and courage? How do we explore connections to race and gender that influence these changes?

Check out our conversation with Professor Leslie Hill.

Here is Brittney Cooper’s book Beyond Respectability that Leslie recommends and one of Leslie’s go-to video’s of Angela Davis at the 2017 WOW! Conference.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Summer is a time that calls me to step back and ask myself about what lies underneath: Where do I need to relax more? Where could I bring myself joy? Comedy improv has always been a tool that helps me in those reflections. I wanted to spend some warm summer time with my lovely sister-in-law talking more about our experiences as women of color in comedy and what it brings us in life.

If you’re in Pittsburgh, check out her shows at: https://www.arcadecomedytheater.com/

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

One perspective from the ground with Adam Mason, State Policy Director, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Brass Tacks is our labor of love – answering your toughest questions on taking your big ideas and putting them into action each month.

Ben and Nico dive deeper into topics relevant to organizing and organizations: How they self structure, whether and how they adapt to crises, how they scale, why they shrink, and what practices they utilize to carry out their missions, among a lot of other nuanced tidbits of history and learning. Today, we’re looking at organizations as living organisms.

Our podcast and videos are made possible by our supporters. We want to thank Carol Wishcamper for her support. You too can broaden the impact of our conversations here. Please consider supporting us on PayPal–and getting some cool perks. Click here

What is white resiliency? What are some ways to build + develop it? What does the characteristics of white resiliency include? What is the application or connections of racial resiliency to other identities in the world? How resiliency is connected to the greater liberation?

Today we’re talking about a tool I’ve been using extensively since the first day I found it: The White Resiliency Framework. Craig has lots to teach us about entering into the conversations about racism without defensiveness, denial and centering ourselves.

Craig White is the founder and principal of Craig White Consulting, working with schools, nonprofits and foundations around the US to offer racial equity training and consulting, give voice to marginalized groups and shine a light on issues of equity and underrepresentation. In addition, Craig serves as the Supportive Schools Director and Special Projects Advisor for the Campaign for Southern Equity, where he provides training, policy guidance, and assessment services to assist Southern schools in becoming more inclusive and welcoming for students of every sexual and gender identity. He also advises and advocates on other LGBTQ youth-related issues and policies.

Craig is an adjunct faculty member in the education program at Warren Wilson College and serves as a co-leader of the Leadership Learning Exchange for Equity, a program of the Maine Community Foundation. Craig graduated from Brown University before getting a master’s degree in social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a William C. Friday Fellow for Human Relations through the Wildacres Leadership Initiative. He has lived with his family in the Asheville, NC area since 1999.

Our podcast and videos are made possible by our supporters. We want to thank Carol Wishcamper for her support. You too can broaden the impact of our conversations here. Please consider supporting us on PayPal–and getting some cool perks. Click here

There is hope for economic justice in America.

That hope begins with having more explicit conversations about the ties that bond us, and building economic systems that bring us together, rather than tear us apart.

I was grateful for the chance to sit down with friend and author, Brian Johnson, to hear more about his new book: Our Fair Share. Brian shares his proposal for a Citizen Dividend that can transform how we connect to each other and our economy.

We’ll explore: what brought him to this idea, what experiences drove him while writing, and how communities can use his ideas in action.

Brian C. Johnson has spent a career in social justice across the country. He currently serves as the CEO of Equality Illinois, the statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization for Illinois. Prior to this role, he has served as a first grade teacher in Baton Rouge, a public school leader in Hollywood, a political candidate in Los Angeles, and the head of a community organizing team working in two dozen cities across the country. His book Our Fair Share: How One Small Change Can Create a More Equitable American Economy brings his fresh view on our country’s values as it seeks to help tackle economic inequality in America.

Brian’s website

Our podcast and videos are made possible by our supporters. We want to thank Carol Wishcamper for her support. You too can broaden the impact of our conversations here. Please consider supporting us on PayPal–and getting some cool perks. Click here

Passive house standards are calling us to help address climate change to make more resilient buildings that are healthier for us.

In this episode of Unearthing, Naomi shares her story of how she got into the passive house industry + how she’d like to see communities in Maine benefit from it.

Naomi Beal is the Executive Director and founding member of passivhausMAINE and a founding board member of the North American Passive House Network. Naomi embraces the challenge of developing phME into a sustainable organization through local, national and international partnerships. Naomi believes Maine’s economic development can be fostered through a framework of building efficiency and innovative and traditional wood products. She lives in South Freeport, ME.

Our podcast and videos are made possible by our supporters. We want to thank Carol Wishcamper for her support. You too can broaden the impact of our conversations here. Please consider supporting us on PayPal–and getting some cool perks. Click here

Alexandra Brodsky joins Unearthing today to talk about her new book, Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash.

Values and principles that can guide how institutions handle allegations of wrongdoing by their members. How do we address accusations of sexual harm that the accused denies? Where is dignity for all in the process without a lack of accountability and justice for all?

Alexandra is a civil rights lawyer and founder of Know Your IX, an organization devoted to ending gender violence in schools.

Our podcast and videos are made possible by our supporters. We want to thank Carol Wishcamper for her support. You too can broaden the impact of our conversations here. Please consider supporting us on PayPal–and getting some cool perks. Click here

Nico Chin speaks at GEO Learning Conference 2019.

Nico Chin speaks at GEO Learning Conference 2019.