Community Guidelines
These are the community guidelines for the Learning and Unlearning Book Club.
Per the leadership and guidance of Layla F. Saad, our book club will be facilitated using The Circle Way as a guide. The theoretical basis of The Circle Way derives initially from the traditional wisdom of native elders throughout North America and their instructions to Manitonquat to make their knowledge known to the world. The Circle Way gives us three basic instructions for community circles:
The first instruction is respect
The second instruction is the circle
The third instruction is celebration
Our Three Instructions:
In addition to honoring the instructions of The Circle Way for how we host our community meetings, we hold our own three basic instructions for the Learning and Unlearning Book Club:
The first instruction is intersectional anti-racism
The second instruction is learning and unlearning in community
The third instruction is informed action
We hold this quote by Ijeoma Oluo (the author of So You Want to Talk about Race) to be incredibly grounding:
“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don't have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it's the only way forward.”
This quote will be a guiding light for this community. We must all acknowledge that we are part of, and socialized in, a racist system, and understand that we have made mistakes and maybe we will make them again in the future, however, we are committed to educating ourselves enough as well as taking action, in order to prevent that as well as fighting the racism inside and outside of ourselves.
This leads us to our second commitment - learning and unlearning in community. We cannot guarantee a space of comfort, in fact we hope you get uncomfortable with confronting the difficulties and realities of racism. However, we aim to create a space of bravery and understanding, one based in compassion, empathy, and honesty. We commit to non-judgement on the grounds that we will not stand for disrespect. We commit to an environment of support in this journey, but each and every one of us must do so.
This brings us to the third commitment, a very important point of space and what we mean by informed action. This is two-fold. First, all action we take within the club will be informed by community reflections and feedback. We will prioritize the voices of BIPOC and assure that we are always listening and reacting to BIPOC identified folks. We will also continuously engage in a feedback loop with you all. If something is or isn’t working, we commit to aligning ourselves towards or away from that practice. Second, all action we encourage people to take will be informed by our reading, understanding, and those voices of BIPOC community members as well as leaders outside the Learn Unlearn space.
Our Shared Values:
Bravery
Humility
Unlearning
Action
Support
Respect
Vulnerability
Intersectionality
Accountability
Transformation
Community
Empathy
Humanity
Dedication
Honesty
Resilience
Community Agreements for Engaging In Our Circle
Move up, move back -- bring your full self and contributions to this space, and make sure to create enough space for everyone else to do the same. The times you opt to contribute and the times you opt to move back honor our commitment to the full experience of this entire community.
Unlearning white supremacy and racism requires humility, and sitting with painful realizations that our human nature would rather ignore. Everyone in this community will approach our work together with humility.
Hand-in-hand with humility is the necessary requirement that we suspend judgement of self and others. We believe that judgement and genuine curiosity cannot coexist. This is a space for those willing to be curious, to be reflective, and to commit to improvement without the harsh judgement that shuts down the learning process.
Learning often requires failure. We recognize that no one was “born woke” and everyone has come to this space to be vulnerable and learn. This is a space that demands forgiveness, and also demands not letting people off the hook. We will compassionately support a process of turning mistakes into learning and understanding, while not diminishing the mess-ups that lead to learning moments
We will not diminish wrongs that happen in this space, and, simultaneously, we will not allow this to become a place of shame. Judgement and shame are the opposites of curiosity and vulnerability.
When having discussion and disagreement, we will all honor that the goal for everyone in this space is to learn from and teach one another, not to prove to others that we are right.
If harm -- especially acts of racism, sexism, violence, sexual violence, ableism, homophobia, or other considerable interpersonal harms rooted in oppression -- is committed in this space, and if the person who is harmed desires to do so, we commit to bringing in external experts in restorative justice to moderate a restorative justice process between involved parties.
Leadership Commitments/Addressing Power
Lori and Jess have taken on the initial hosting of this space. We have done so, as two white women, because we believe it to be inappropriate to ask BIPOC to do more work to educate on racism at this time. However, any BIPOC person interested in taking on leadership of this space is welcome to join the hosts/leadership in any capacity, and is asked to identify themselves if that is of interest.
Leaders are accountable to the demands and feedback of BIPOC. When feedback is conflicting, leaders will commit to centering the most marginalized voices first, in accordance with Black feminist and womanist practices.
In this space, “leadership” (aka, being a host) means being a thoughtful coordinator, facilitator, and feedback gatherer. Leadership does not mean: making important decisions for the group without feedback, representing the ideas of the group without consent, or dominating the group process with one’s own opinions and ideas
Hosts of this space will continuously engage in self-evaluation and reflection, and seek evaluation from one another and from group members. This space has been set up intentionally so that it may easily be hosted by different leaders in the future, if deemed best for the learning process and community.
We believe in building power WITH others, and not building power OVER others. Hosts who seek to use their leadership position in this community to display and use power over others in this community will be asked to change their behavior, or no longer host in this community.
Hosts of this space will be fully accountable to community feedback, disagreement, and requests for change. We are committed to honoring our own needs while also meeting the needs of this community. From The Circle Way: “Leadership is complex, difficult, a bit scary. So many depend on us. So we must welcome and honor those who are willing to take leadership roles. If we disagree with anything they do or how they are leading, we can discuss it and come to a clear understanding and agreement – remembering that among rational human beings there cannot ever be a conflict.When we listen to each other and attend to all our needs, we will discover how to work together in harmony.”
Space hosts will not in any way financially profit from this space, now or in the future. If community funds are used at any time for expenses related to the execution and hosting of this space, full transparency about how and where funds were sent will be made available on a regular basis.