"Yeah, I Said It: DEI is Dead.", March 2022

After decades of learning new terminology, scholarly work, attending workshops, completing surveys, and checking mandatory boxes, the change we demand has yet to be institutionalized. On every imaginable metric, progress remains elusive. Why?! At a certain point, cognitive dissonance applies - how many more decades must we try the same approach yielding the same results? The current structure leaves organizations defining their own ailment and specialist: Power. Equity advocates and professionals suffer from the "one-soldier-at-a-time" approach (isolation), presumption of incompetence, and too often leaving the battlefield wounded and alone: No power. The time has arrived: we must rebalance power and re-define strategies that result in substantive change.
How do we re-balance power to the hands of those with compassion? How do we move beyond theory and words into practice and process, and do so joyfully? Join us as we celebrate what we know, and the birth of the Future of Equity. You are not alone. 
March 29, 2022 Learning by Julia
Before continuing full speed ahead with DEI as it currently exists, we take a knee. First, we acknowledge water: we call them the seven seas but in actuality, they are one. It's a matter of perspective and convenience, and so is advocating for equity. We call upon Zora Neale Hurston's recount of High John the Conqueror: no matter where we suffer, at our depth of sorrow he brings us laughter and song. How? Because we know our capability. And, we laugh because others don't know and it's time they did. 
Beginning the circle we ask in turn, "Re-reading the description [above], what brought you here tonight? What did you want to hear said or say yourself?" We are furious, and many times fully ready to shake / slap / punch some sense into the next...Performative Ally, Conveniently Ignorant, BLM T-shirt Wearing, Buzzword Slinging, Privileged, Secret Supremacist who dares impede progress with their know-nothing selves. 
But, we don't. We could, but we chose love. We slog on, feeling caught in the middle, trying to feel included, and say things like, "I don't want to say I've given up hope," with a full stop. The change we usher shall not be rooted in fear, and no amount of money shall placate mediocrity in equitable practice. We are Practitioners, we activate and practice equity. It's an everyday rehearsal to overcome our childlike masculinity, to be the first to pause and say, "Is this ever gonna work? That's not how Equity is done." We're not interested in changing the current system. We're building a new one.
We break, drink the water of life, and return to say that self-governance holds our keys, the designated driver while we out here drunk on oppression. How can one be clean surrounded by filth? We instead consciously choose to surround ourselves with those who are willing to learn in public as we raise the bar of equity. We ask, "What would you tell future equity advocates how to do it differently?" Best now is a list in the order we shared:

• Respect the minds of young people. Respect the family and don't be grateful for scraps (wow, 3-day weekend...)
• Have your go-to people, we need synergy. Don't fear job loss, you will find another: new ideas, new places.
• Be unapologetic in expression, feel your emotions as you call it out.
• Equity is a relay race, education is lifelong. Take joy in your identity, and take a break!
• It's a marathon, you are not alone and we need you whole. Demand, expect, institutionalize and do that from any seat.
• White supremacy was more entrenched than we thought, and we almost gave up. But how fast it unraveled, oh the tipping point!
• I wasted no time entrenched in the bowels of cynicism, it had value. And, I believe it's not going to be this way in the future. Shame will not help us change.
• Find your tribe! Celebrate! Vent! And lots of self care.
• Be kind to yourself, no one can solve it all: It's why we have each other.

Fahamu Pecou’s self-portrait painting with his bare back to the audience is a forceful introduction to the issues of power in the exhibit. The work’s brilliant canary yellow background, the artist’s chocolate brown face in profile, and his white pants hung low like the B-boys — in many ways this is a typical Pecou image. He often casts himself in various situations and stances; his attire ranges from garb associated with hip-hop to the dandy. Pecou spins off of magazine covers to create his paintings. In Many Rivers, he takes a layout from the important anti-Apartheid magazine of the 1950 and 60s, Drum Magazine, as a point of departure. Pecou appears slightly hunched, carrying a heavy load of jute rope and large-scale bells, with falcon feathers entwined, the latter, possibly a symbol of his spirit animal or guide. In traditional African cultures the drum is an essential communication tool; therefore, its implication here is all encompassing as a symbol of African retention by the artist. Credit: https://www.theartblog.org/2017/03/high-john-the-conqueror-aint-got-nothing-on-me/