Movements of Belonging

Community and activist groups are dealing with an epidemic of entrenched conflict and divisiveness, aggravated by impacts of the pandemic and technology. Cancel culture, racism, burnout, and toxicity are potent and growing concerns, impairing organizations engaged in social inclusion and justice from fulfilling their missions. The impacts of these dynamics fall disproportionately on BIPOC and systemically oppressed communities. 

Building Belonging for Social Movements aims to fill the gap between commitments to social inclusion and a community’s ability to implement the necessary changes. 

We build collaboration and social inclusion in organizations and communities by teaching skills and practices that subvert structures and habits of dominance, right/wrong thinking, shaming and blaming, and reward and punishment. These skills allow individuals and organizations to address the impact of oppression in ways that are aligned with the principles of nonviolence. The skills include repairing relationships, attending to impact, self-care to avert burnout, giving and receiving feedback, de-escalating conflict, bystander intervention, calling in, facilitating inclusive meetings and consensus decision making processes and governing without hierarchy.

Activities

• Connecting with movement spaces to gather pain points and other needs
• Designing and offering accessible content on ways of being that foster connection while working towards shared purpose
• Design and implementation of multi-day community building event
• Establishing online community building network
• Creating and implementing an on-the-ground intervenor network to maintain communities of practice