Groundsheet: Social Justice and Organizational Accountability

11/06/2024

I'm coming back onto social media to re-share a post from 2020's election. The re-election of Donald Trump is a grieving day and a caring day for many. Some people feel more ready than ever to fight. Feel your feelings.

I had a distracted working week. I'm sure you did too. That's okay. In this coming week take a little time to take care of yourself. Make the time. You don't have to have hours. Even if it's just taking a moment to stop. Breathe deep. Refocus on your thoughts and intentions. Here are some additional tips to prepare for care for yourself and your community as you work through next week.
- Sirajah

Image Text reads:
POST-ELECTION
WEEK OF
SELF AND COMMUNITY CARE

MONDAY: Nourish Yourself
Cook or order something that will makes you feel well.
Listen to calming music, practice mindfulness, nap.
Take time away from election coverage.

TUESDAY: Encourage Others
Send affirming texts to anxious friends and family.
Write love letters to your neighbors with sidewalk chalk.
Remind others to purchase groceries Tuesday if you believe your city might experience violence or unrest.

WEDNESDAY: Prepare
Discuss the possibility of white supremacist violence with your family and friends.
Decide how you can intervene in or respond to racist incidences online or in-person.
Post your beliefs about social justice and your hope for the future on social media.

THURSDAY: Prioritize
Be aware of pent up nervous or hyper-vigilant energy. Exercise, nap, cry, cuddle, holler, dance, pray, etc.
Don't waste energy on bad faith arguments.
Choose a couple of friends to send love or support to and check in on them.

FRIDAY: Keep Fighting
No matter how the election turns out, we need to work towards a world that is better than either the Trump or the Biden administration could imagine.
Pick one or two social justice issues to focus on this year. Read about them. Advocate for change.

05/25/2022

Image is of a card with gladiolus and irises. The text reads:
I am so sorry to and for the friends and families of those killed in the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. I am sorry to the friends and families of the approximately 20,000 people who will be killed by guns this year. I am sorry to the resource-deprived and marginalized communities who will have fewer people to build community with. We owe you better. We owe ourselves better.

Hope is the only thing that can counteract my despair today. The labor and practice and action and fight of hoping that a better world is possible.
*Image text ends*

05/25/2022

Georgetown University's Sexual Assault Peer Educators invited me to do my first podcast as Groundsheet for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. You can listen to it as you catch up on emails.

I sat down with two incredible first-years, Noa Offman and Alison Karki. We talked about the intersections of race and s*xual violence, laying aside pride to focus on what's effective, who gets left behind with white-centered prevention programming, and how our culture's carceral responses to s*xual violence alienate victims and further marginalize survivors who need us the most.

And I got choked up because I'm pretty tender-hearted honestly.

I'm grateful to Noa, Alison, and Brittany Egan for having me on.

You can check out that podcast at this link: https://anchor.fm/sapespeaks/episodes/Exploring-the-Intersection-of-Race-and-Sexual-Violence-A-Conversation-with-Sirajah-Rahem-e1gopu3

*xualassaultawareness *xualviolence

In the newest episode of SAPE Speaks, first-years Noa Offman and Alison Karki sit down with Sirajah Raheem of Groundsheet as a part of SAPE's Sexual Assault Awareness Month programming. The three of them explore the intersection of race and s*xual violence, including concepts of intersectionality, h...

03/08/2022

From Sirajah:

It's International Women's Day. Shout out to all of the women folk worldwide, surviving, making people's lives better, building and creating, resting up and recovering, recreating womanhood, and fighting the patriarchy. Womanhood is a constant source of strength and solidarity for me, especially my identity as a Black woman. I try to counteract the suffering imposed upon women, girls, and people the world perceives as such with my labor in my day job and especially through Groundsheet.

I know that people of all genders continue to oppress and suppress women to reserve space and resources for men and boys. Even when we know there is more than enough space and resources for us all. Even when we uplift mediocrity and our own expense. That knowledge makes me want to devote time to making more space for brilliant girls and women to innovate and dream and space for us to dismantle the white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy. I especially want to make space for Black girls and Black women. I won't be left behind by my own work anymore.

I've been at odds with my gender at times because womanhood is coded through and through with white supremacist imagery and expectations to suit the male gaze. Sit this way. Talk this way. Look this way. Act this way. All ways inconveniently that I was not. But like, so many women have made a space for me to be in the world. And I've been trying to take it up and push beyond it to make space for others. Especially Black women. When I felt I need to justify my existence, I'm reminded there were and are other women like me.

But there are women who sit splay-legged and take up all the space. There are women who talk with deeper voices and laugh loud laughs. There are Black women who have tightly coiled curly hair and will let it be plant-like or snakey. There are Black women with dark, spotty skin who won't spend time on covering it. There are women who will push into spaces, who will talk first and loud and long, who will have ideas, who will innovate, who will drag other women into the room behind them, who will go onward with tenacity and assuredness that makes people ask exactly what gives her the right.

I do. You do too.




(Representing The Coathangers on my tee-shirt in this one. Great band and a great band composed of women.)

03/03/2022

Should I Intervene Or Am I Karen-ing? Intuition or Implicit Bias?

"In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction."
Audre Lorde
Black Women Writers at Work
1983

My background is in interpersonal violence prevention. Oftentimes, prevention practitioners conclude lessons by telling participants that if all else fails they should trust their gut. That “gut feeling” is something that we’ve been told we should rely on. We’re told that if the internal alarm bell is ringing we ignore it to our own peril.

However, it’s even more important that we learn to distinguish between intuition and implicit bias as bystanders and as prevention practitioners. Sometimes what sounds the alarm is not that we have recognized some latent warning signs in the recesses of our mind. Sometimes what rings the alarm is our own prejudices. How do we know when we're caring and when we're "Karen"?

Merriam-Webster defines intuition as, “the power or faculty of attaining direct knowledge or cognition with evident rational thought and inference”. Implicit bias is defined by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State as referring to “the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.”

Those two things can be hard to distinguish between. Intuition is when we notice a bunch of stuff and make a judgment based on those things without really intentionally noticing the things or making the judgment. Implicit bias is when we notice a thing and then we allow our preconceived notions or stereotypes to fill in all of the blanks and we make a judgment, often on the spot.

So, how can people check their gut? If you’re the bystander in question or you’re training bystanders there are some questions that you can ask yourself or encourage others to ask.:

1. If your gut feeling makes you feel scared or worried, ask yourself - am I noticing something in particular that I should be worried about. Are there observable warning signs?

2. If you’re not noticing anything particular, ask yourself - would I be as alarmed by this situation if this person was not different from me?

3. If you are noticing something in particular, but don't feel moved to help, ask yourself - would I be more alarmed if the person involved was more like me or a loved one?

4. If you notice some distinct warning signs, ask yourself - do I think that someone will be harmed as a result of this situation?

5. If you don’t think that someone is going to be harmed, can you talk to the people involved directly or distract them from the concerning behavior? Is there someone whom you can trust to not harm them and who can check in with them?

If you do think someone is going to be harmed, because there are observable warning signs, there are still options available to you across differences.

I made a handy flow chart with more considerations to help you determine when to intervene and when not to intervene. Check your gut. Is it implicit bias or intuition? Or indigestion?

09/08/2021

Follow us on LinkedIn and see our latest post about salary transparency. Really it's a celebration of the work of one of our cited sources when we talk about salary ranges, Nonprofit AF.

Salary ranges on job descriptions? Yes, please. Benefits? Let's share all of the amazing things that we offer. This relationship should be mutually ...

09/07/2021

Check Groundsheet out over on LinkedIn. Similar content, but often highlighting the collaborations and partnerships that inform my work.

Groundsheet | Sirajah Raheem | 29 followers on LinkedIn. Specializing in social justice and equity technical assistance for mission-driven organizations and institutions | I am an organizational accountability facilitator specializing in helping organizations incorporate social justice into their mi...

09/06/2021

Do you want to cultivate a culture of trust and respect?

Negotiations are an excellent place to practice those principles. Candidates have been transparent about what they have to offer you. Hiring Managers and businesses owe it to them to do the same. Let candidates preserve their time to compete for the salaries that meet their goals. Including salary ranges is a concrete tool to build trust, disrupt pay disparities, and prevent the devaluing of labor.

1.) Reduce the impact of individual implicit and explicit bias on the starting salaries of people of color and women.:

Implement policies that counteract bias by reducing the influence individuals have on salary negotiations. When marginalized people, specifically Black people and women, deviate from an Assessor's stereotypes by negotiating, the Assessors penalize them, proportional to the level of bias. This looks like lower starting pay compared to white male candidates, and sometimes, it results in the withdrawal of a job offer.

2.) Reduce the potential for Managers to act on their explicit or implicit biases by rewarding candidates that are similar to them.:

Some Assessors advocate for candidates they’ve only just met. They ask that we make an exception. At that point, the hiring process needs to pause. Answer the question: do we have policies in place that will mitigate any implicit bias pushing us to make an exception for this candidate? Review the specifics of the role. Review the candidate's demonstrated experience. Decide if you need to create a new role, OR decide if the employee is over-qualified for the role. Eliminate the wiggle room.

3. Prevent salary from degrading across the industry or for particular positions.:

There is evidence that:

- Roles that are majority women that require similar skills and education to majority men's roles -- pay less.

- Women are making less money for the exact same roles within the same industry.

- Finally, when a particular position within an industry becomes majority-women, that role’s salary or hourly pay drops.

There are lots of reasons why this has happened. It's easy enough to say, racism and s*xism devalue the labor of women and people of color. Pay transparency can provide data that tracks the valuing or devaluing of positions and allow us all to create policies and interventions that counteract how the labor of marginalized people is systemically and systematically devalued.

Remember, if Hiring Managers can negotiate a lower salary, the money saved will likely congeal as a salary deficit on the careers of women and people of color, doubly weighing on the careers of Black, Latinx/Latina, Indigenous women. It is also likely that their implicit or explicit bias will have caused you to pay a white male candidate more than a candidate from another identity. Create policies rooted in power-sharing and promote trust.

04/16/2021

This week is particularly difficult for people of color in workplaces and communities across the country. The video of Adam Toledo's murder by a Chicago police officer was released. Daunte Wright was murdered by police in the Minneapolis metro area. The Derek Chauvin trial is drawing to a close and the trauma of reliving a murder we all watched plainly is real. Public Anti-Asian violence and hate crimes continue. Your organization might feel compelled to release a public statement of solidarity or support. Nurture that compulsion. This might be driven by employees or it might be driven by leadership. Whatever the case, if you're in leadership please do not make/ask traumatized staff from marginalized communities to do the work of cultivating your org's social justice image this week.

As a leader, if you're driven to act this week then move beyond a performative black box with white letters. Hold off on the rushed statement and spend time assessing your internal and external practices and how they contribute to the systemic oppression of people of color, people with disabilities, and people from other marginalized communities. Decide what you're willing to commit to and be transparent with your staff, partners, and the community that you serve via a public statement.

If your staff is driving your organization's decision to release a public statement, but you don't have the internal infrastructure to do so, hire a consultant. A consultant can support you and do some of the heavy lifting. You, as the leader, should be writing this statement, to help you communicate your personal and organizational values, and help you be transparent about your next steps to repair the harm you've caused and/or contribute to a solution. If you have staff who are really passionate about this issue, invite them to be a part of the statement writing, but don't jettison your responsibilities as a leader to them. It's unjust and it's oppressive.

And after this moment passes, prepare for moments like these and do real strategic planning. Start by identifying employees with relevant expertise and compensating them to take on additional duties like drafting public statements or participating in committee work. Start by creating high-level positions specifically meant to support social justice efforts or more traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion work and hiring experts. Start now, because it's time to move beyond the performance of allyship and into the action. It's been time.

03/18/2021

Groundsheet stands in solidarity with the Asian community, with women of color, and with people doing s*xualized labor.

Yesterday, a white supremacist murdered eight people in three separate shootings at massage parlors in the Atlanta metro area. Six of the people killed were Asian women. The attacker chose to target them because he perceived them as vulnerable. He chose to hurt them because they are Asian, because they are women, because massage work is s*xualized, and because s*x workers are villainized. He chose to continue the cycle of violence against people of color in the USA, particularly he chose to continue the long legacy of violence targeting Asian people.

Groundsheet is an anti-racist organization. We are committed to dismantling white supremacy and fostering racial justice. We are committed to uplifting the narratives of all marginalized and racialized peoples. We center anti-Blackness in our work. We believe that where our identities intersect with the identities of others we are stronger together. To our Asian friends, colleagues, comrades, and neighbors, you are not alone. You are not unprotected. You are loved. You belong. We fight alongside you. Solidarity forever.