Purpose & Principles

We exist to support change agents, disrupt systems of oppression, and co-create liberatory, abolitionist futures now.

We do this through collaborative and participatory approaches to change strategy, thought partnership, facilitation, coaching, and evaluation.

Everything we do is grounded in collective political education, subjugated knowledge, and experiences with learning and unlearning through grassroots organizing.

We share this with the people and groups we work with—and encourage you to build deeper ecosystems of care and support beyond our work together.

How We Move Through the World

We strive to disrupt capitalism, neoliberalism, colonialism, and white supremacy through our day-to-day practices.

  • Continuously strive for a balance between rest, joy, labor, and praxis. This includes physical movement and having fun with people we love and respect. This also represents time to slow down, think, and act intentionally. This is a way to reclaim productivity and the systems that demand that we generate profit.

  • We refer to labor as consulting and organizing in service of dismantling systems of oppression and disrupting the status quo. This change work represents a balance between strategic reform and resistance (that is more emotionally draining), with reimagining and building a different world (that is more generative and energizing).

  • What this looks like in practice is slower paced, reflective, and contextually grounded projects. This means projects where we build relationships with you.

  • We work to disrupt systems of oppression and simultaneously imagine and create new ways of practicing and being with one another.

Principles

  • Disruptive and Centers Diverse Lived Experiences

    We use a range of approaches to change strategy, thought partnership, facilitation, coaching, and evaluation. And we strive to challenge top-down, carceral, capitalistic, and colonialist practices. The cross-disciplinary lens and diverse lived experiences that we and those we partner with bring to the table ground us and drive our practice.

    The distinction between professional and personal is a false dichotomy. We believe that the personal is political. This means that there is no way to disentangle our personal experiences from systems of oppression. This also means that our personal experiences reflect the sociopolitical structures in which we live. Our lived experiences shape and guide our politics and how we move through the world.

  • Holistic and Contextually Grounded

    We focus on understanding the historical, political, cultural, social, and economic contexts where we work. We do this to develop holistic understandings of injustices and change efforts to address them. This knowledge helps reveal false assumptions, learning opportunities, strengthening what we do.

  • Collaborative and Participatory

    We will work with you to develop a partnership that centers the beliefs, issues, and questions you and your communities care about. And we will collaborate with you to interpret information and make meaning together.

    We work this way because we not only value diverse knowledge and lived experiences but believe this approach creates more meaningful and useful reflection and learning. We enjoy collaborative and participatory approaches to our work — meaning jointly sharing power and decisions with partners. But, we decide what this actually looks like in partnership with you.

  • Real-Time Learning

    We embed learning throughout our work together so that you do not have to wait until the end of a contract to glean insights. This means that we help you think through your big-picture, strategy questions. We do this because we want our work together to be valuable and useful immediately and in the long term.

    Our work goes beyond providing “tangible” deliverables. We listen and sit with you when you need to talk through strategic decisions. And we help you think intentionally about how to integrate what we learn together to strengthen your practice, make pivots, and navigate times of upheaval and transition.

  • Reflexivity and Reflection

    Reflection is woven throughout our work to inform strategy, decision making, and ongoing improvements. This means that we will make pivots and reframe our work together as needed.

    And we practice reflexivity. This means that we examine our own assumptions, positionality, and privilege — and consider the context in which our work happens. We do this because these things inform our practice and shapes the form our work takes. We understand that nothing we do is ever neutral or value-free.