Community as Rebellion

The title of my post this week comes from Dr. Lorgia García Peña’s book, Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color. When I started reading her book earlier this year, I could not bring myself to read past page 4. At the time, I was in the process of extricating myself from a professional situation that was not aligned with my core values and principles. Although my career has not been in academia, Dr. García Peña’s experiences were way too familiar to me, and therefore, touched a raw nerve. So, I put her book to the side, with a commitment to revisit it once I was in a better space.

It was an absolute leap of faith when, as my method of extrication, I decided to hang my shingle to work as an independent consultant. It is actually a misnomer to call it a decision. It was the manifestation of my intuitive knowing that continuing to work within yet another institution that was misaligned with my values and principles would undo all the healing and progress that I had made the prior year.

Like most things, it isn’t until you’re out of a situation that you realize the toll it’s taking, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This is something that has borne out for me every single time, across personal and professional experiences. When it came to the professional instances, I did not have the luxury of time nor the financial resources to take a break to unpack what made something toxic or how to mitigate the impact if I found myself back in a similar situation. Or, even better yet, how to remove myself before damage was done. What I have lacked in time and space, however, I have had in abundance with community. And it is in and with my beloved community that I have been able to survive and persist through toxic experiences.

As I wrote back in May, I finally got the opportunity to take a break in 2022; an opportunity that is unfortunately reserved only for people in certain positions and types of organizations. To be real, though, it was the first time in my life that I really stopped to think about my why - for work and life - and it was the first time in my career that I absolutely had no clue about what would come next. It was the first time that I stopped my nonstop doing and started to truly sit in my being.

My break brought an immense amount of healing, with support of my beloved community, so that when I found myself in a misaligned, albeit familiar dynamic, the decision to walk away without the next thing secured emerged with unwavering clarity. The usual worries about finances were nonexistent. Given my healing journey, I just knew in the totality of my being that I would figure things out. And as it always has, my community caught me midst leap, and offered opportunities for consulting work, which softened my entry into a completely new chapter of my life. Finally, I was able to walk away before the situation had any chance of taking a toll on my wellbeing.

I picked up and finished Dr. García Peña’s book this past week and I hear echoes of her experience in mine, namely, the important role that community has played and continues to play in my life professionally (and of course, personally). Community is what comes up as I reflect on how I decided to do my consulting work, which is in partnership with members of my beloved community.

Community is what comes up when I reflect on the sessions I was honored to help plan for and participate in a couple of weeks ago in New York City. These sessions centered on Dr. Yanique Redwood’s book, White Women Cry & Call Me Angry. [Disclosure: Yanique and I go WAY back to our days in graduate school at the University of Michigan. We graduated from the same program and we both spent a substantial part of our careers in philanthropy. She is a dear friend and very much a member of my beloved community].

I have written about my experiences in philanthropy but nowhere to the detail and extent that Yanique covers in her book. In sharing her story with such candor, vulnerability, and courage, Yanique creates space for others, and especially Black women, to not only see the systemic nature of our experiences within philanthropy and other sectors, but to also know that we are not alone.

I moderated the session we had on November 8th, specifically for women of color, which was hosted by another dear sister friend and member of my beloved community, Leticia Peguero at Firelight Media. As I looked at all the women in our circle – about 20, the vast majority of whom I was meeting for the first time – I was in awe of the display of care that unfolded throughout our conversation.

Although our discussion highlighted violence and harm, I did not leave the conversation with the heaviness that can come from holding space and bearing witness to another’s pain, especially when the experience is so close to home. Rather, I came away feeling hopeful and with a deep sense of gratitude for the community of women who amid naming violence and harm, modeled what it looks like to be in a community of healing, grounded in love and care for one another. I was also uplifted by the spirit of reclamation that was in the room. This was a group that was fully rejecting the master’s tools, standing firm in our individual and collective power, and, with intention, not allowing what we have experienced to define who we are or how we show up.

This same sense of hope emerged from the session I participated in on November 9th, hosted at the Surdna Foundation and superbly facilitated by Trish Adobea Tchume, from Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. This was the first sector-wide conversation Yanique engaged in, which is another act of courage, since the group was likely to contain individuals who might have internalized her critiques and displaced their discomforts among the group. Rather, it was a space of truth-telling and naming things that are wrong with the sector. Of holding space for the tenderness and emotions that were surfaced. Of saying enough to the violence and harm that seems to be ubiquitous across the sector.

Philanthropy, like academia, is an elite sector, that with very few exceptions, is dotted with people of color in institutions and positions who get propped up as, in Dr. García Peña's frame, “The One.” Often, these individuals are touted as the institution’s commitment to “diversity and inclusion” with zero actions on the part of the institution reflecting any such real commitment. At the same time, the institution makes it clear to “The One” that in exchange for their positionality, they need to fall in line and perpetuate the status quo, or else.

While philanthropy certainly has people of color who are more than happy to serve as “The One”, I have been encouraged by the number of folks who are not willing to fall in line and who refuse to be tokenized. Folks who are refusing to uphold and perpetuate injustice in the sector. Folks who are actively seeking out community, like we did on November 8th and 9th. Folks who are rejecting the crumbs thrown at them, full stop.

Some of these acts of resistance are out in the open for all of us to see – like Yanique’s – and others are stealth, with few, if any of us, knowing what is happening behind the curtain. In whatever way they show up, these acts fight against the “divide and conquer” strategy that tries to pit individuals from marginalized groups against each other, within institutions and sectors that think we should feel honored for being granted access to the hallowed halls.

As I think about community, I also cannot help but think about the series finale of Reservation Dogs [Side note: If you haven’t seen the series, you must. It’s amazing]. In the finale, Lily Gladstone’s character, Hokti, describes how those who have passed on from the physical realm continue to live on through community.

It's how community works. It's sprawling. It spreads. What do you think they came for when they tried to get rid of us? Our community. You break that, and you break the individual.

When I look back and think about the professional struggles I have had and how I have made it through, I see so many faces of my beloved community. Instantly, I feel warmth fill my chest and a smile spreads across my face. Thanks to Dr. García Peña and Reservation Dogs, I now appreciate how much my being in and holding onto community has been a systemic act of resistance, in and of itself. May we all commit to the communal, not only as an act of survival and a space for healing, but also as a glorious act of rebellion that will ripple through generations to come.

Reflection Questions: When you think about your professional experiences, what role has community played in supporting you? What experiences did you manage on your own that would have benefited from you connecting with community? What would it look like to have an ongoing practice of engaging with community for healing and support? Professionally? Personally?