Since we completed Growing for Change, our 2017 workshop series on how systemic oppression shows up in our lives and work, there has been one question on nearly everyone’s minds in the Sierra Club community:
What’s next?
It makes sense. We took one big step together on our equity journey, and now folks are hungry for more. For some folks, Growing for Change was their first introduction into topics like intersectionality or binary thinking. We’ve heard from people who had powerful epiphanies at the workshop about their own lives, identities and how they exist in the broader context of societal inequality and oppression. It’s understandable that these folks are eager for more learning opportunities now that they are on their journey.
For others, particularly folks who have a lived experience of oppression, the workshop offered a glimpse of a future Sierra Club that many are eager to see become reality as quickly as possible. I can relate. The Sierra Club community we are working to build - a culture that welcomes and celebrates the contributions of all people who share our values - is something I can’t wait to be part of either.
The Equity Department team
Growing for Change helped us chart our path forward. By bringing together nearly every staff member and over 150 volunteers, we were able to get a clear view of currently held attitudes about equity in our community. The workshops helped us to surface issues and gather data on the challenges we face. In 2018 we’ll take the information gathered at Growing for Change and use it to inform our strategy going forward. George Chavez, the Equity Department’s recently hired Cultural and Behavioral Metrics Analyst, has been hard at work observing the workshops and organizing the data collected into actionable form. This year he plans to use his background in social psychology to create a data tool for assessment.
This tool will allow us to track progress toward our shared goals around equity, inclusion and justice with a higher degree of certainty and clarity. It’s one thing to agree that our community should be more inclusive - but how will we know when that has happened? And how will we know which of our tactics are making the difference? There is great urgency from within our community to change quickly, to mitigate the harm being done today by our existing organizational culture. Not everyone in our community can afford to wait for Sierra Club to change. People’s lives are at stake. The impacts of delaying progress cause harm to the very people we’re trying to support with our work in the Equity Department. This tool will help us ensure that the work we’re doing is having a meaningful impact, and keep us pointed in the right direction as our strategies and approaches evolve over time.
The tool will assess our progress toward becoming a more equitable, inclusive and justice-oriented community by tracking meaningful change in six broad categories that are deeply inspired by the Jemez Principles. We’ll include survey data, interviews with people within the Sierra Club community about their experiences here, input from partners on their experiences working with us, comments submitted at Growing for Change, and a wealth of other qualitative and quantitative data. What will result is a powerful tool for measuring our collective progress and shaping our evolving strategy as we learn about what works and what doesn’t.
This year also marks the end of the term of our first-ever multi-year plan on equity at Sierra Club. The plan, written before the founding of the Equity department, has led us to where we are today. Now, with all the learning from Growing for Change behind us, it is time to chart our next steps. Creating a new multi-year equity plan requires the knowledge, voices, and experience of everyone at Sierra Club. To develop this plan, we are creating a collaborative process designed to honor the wisdom and learning of everyone in the Sierra Club community who is working to advance equity, and build out a cohesive vision of how we will all work together to transform ourselves in the coming years.
As we look ahead, we’ll also look backward in order to reflect on and reckon with our shared history as a community. Everyone who participated in Growing for Change experienced the opening presentation in which we learned about the history of the mainstream conservation movement. April Thomas from the Equity Department will be working with Survival Media to take that content and turn it into video format so it can be a learning tool in Sierra Club spaces and communities across the nation.
In fact, one of our biggest projects for 2018 will be to take all the tools and curriculum developed for Growing for Change and adapt them into different formats like online learning modules, videos and workshop guidance. New folks are joining the Sierra Club community every day; we want to ensure that everyone has access to the learnings and tools from Growing for Change so that we can all have a shared foundation of understanding. Brittany Harris, Training Coordinator, will be working to create these new formats for learning that will allow us to reach more people than ever with our educational opportunities going forward.
As for what’s next on each person’s journey...some of that depends on you. If you’re stuck on what to do next, ask your manager or a volunteer leader in your chapter about local education opportunities. Work within your own department or chapter to fit into existing equity projects or work with your leaders to see how you might be able to take on new projects. One of the best ways to learn about this work is by doing it. The Equity department will continue to roll out ongoing opportunities like online learning modules in 2018, but we also encourage you to seek out learning that suits your particular needs and knowledge.
Some opportunities and workshops on equity skills that we recommend include Undoing Racism from the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, Building Racial Equity from Race Forward, Let's Get Real: Unlearning Racism & Internalized Racism from Stir Fry Seminars, and the White Privilege Conference and the PGM ONE Summit, both which are sponsored in part by the Equity Department this year. If you, your team or your chapter have available resources to secure additional training or equity coaching, consider contacting organizations who have worked with the Equity Department, including Partners for Collaborative Change, Catalyst Project for Collective Liberation and Leadership That Works.
Each of us is responsible for our own learning journey. Growing for Change planted the seed - don’t forget to water and care for it. The Equity Department is here to help you along the way.