If you don’t know already, Just Roots Consulting, LLC is a Certified LGBT Business Enterprise and social enterprise (we have a triple-bottom line where some of our profits go to supporting LGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs of color).
And like everyone and everything around us, Just Roots is going through a season of change and transformation.
Since 2018, we have worked with dozens of organizations and thousands of people across the United States "to become industry leaders in workplace equity, inclusion, and diversity." These folks committed time and resources to exploring their own personal and workplace biases, educating themselves on the systems of oppression that create these biases, and acquiring tools to reshape how power works at their institutions. For each of them, our team analyzed and recommended, taught and coached, invited and coaxed, trying to build individual's and team's capacities for radical anti-racism and anti-oppression at every level.
Unfortunately, most companies across the US and around the world that invested in DEI, DEIB, JEDI, or other similar acronyms in recent years are largely unchanged in meaningful and sustainable ways due to fear of reconciling and reimagining their relationships with power as it exists within white supremacy and capitalism. As a result, most are likely very unprepared for what is happening now in terms of the anti-DEI / anti-”woke” backlash, and what is coming in the near future under the current federal administration, late-stage capitalism, and emergent climate catastrophe. Many have preemptively complied with bullying and fearmongering, at the cost of trust, security, and loyalty of multiply marginalized employees and customers.
We firmly believe all aspects of life should be equitable, fair, accessible, and inclusive of all people because of who they are, not despite it. We know that the way we’ve gone about our work moved some needles, but it’s not doing enough to co-create the new liberatory reality we all desperately need and deserve.
"The only lasting truth is Change."
We agree with Octavia Butler that Change is inevitable. The question becomes whether you are part of the Change that is made, or if it makes you.
In response to the ever-changing and ever-worsening conditions of our world, our Just Roots Team is taking time to reground, reassess, recalibrate, and reimagine our role in the collective work of healing ourselves, each other, and our world together.
Like everyone else, we are in process. Here is where we are right now:
We believe that white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and racial capitalism (which is to say, capitalism) are in their death throes. They are lashing out wildly and violently because they are dying. We all have front row seats to the sad, terrible final act of this centuries-long play.
We know things will get far worse before they get different.
People who love justice, who love love, and who love life must band together and be in solidarity with each other. Our connection is our power, and it is our best antidote to the abusive systems that seek to destroy us and everything we love.
The Just Roots Team is not intimidated by bullying and fearmongering around anti-DEI, anti-immigrant, anti-transgender, anti-”woke” ideology, rhetoric, and policies. The harms caused by these are very real and will get worse. We also understand that it is an inevitable part of the Great Turning in our time on the Clock of the World – the enormous unnatural beasts of white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and capitalism must die in order for something new to be born in their place, and they will not go quietly into that good night. We must do everything we can to survive its demise.
Our calling to the work of justice is sacred, and we are not going anywhere.
We insist on being co-agents of change for a present and future that centers people, the planet, culture, beauty, justice, and love. We invite you to be co-agents, too.
Moving forward, we will seek out and prioritize projects that are:
Creative: inspire our individual and collective imaginations, playfulness, and eagerness to try new things and grow from what we learn along the way
Generative: increase our individual and collective capacity to create
Nourishing: replenish our individual and collective hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits
Collaborative: invite nonhierarchical partnership in thought, vision, creation, and action
Fierce: courageously, righteously, and unapologetically push envelopes, walk edges, and speak Truth to power
Transformative: promote irrevocable change within us, between us, and throughout our communities and larger world.
We’re still figuring out exactly what this looks like, but our favorite ideas include:
Starting a conversational podcast that exposes the myths underlying and sustaining white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and capitalism, with a focus on how we as individuals and communities of people can resist, heal, and imagine something radically new and different for ourselves and our descendants
Offering meditations to find centering in ourselves during these troubling times
Publishing books on our favorite topics, like:
Debunking myths of white supremacy and imagining new and more just mythos together
Supporting white* (bodied / passing) executives to become the anti-racist leaders their organizations and communities need and deserve
Promoting the 5 D's of Anti-Racist Leadership
Re-opening access to our acclaimed and updated Beyond Good, an intensive anti-racism program for white* (bodied / passing) executives and managers to:
Learn the history of white supremacy and racial capitalism in the US
Explore how it shows up in your experiences as white* people
Practice radical candor, vulnerability, and compassion
Build your tolerance for discomfort around this essential work of honest self-examination, healing, and growth, and
Start to imagine and practice a new kind of leadership that embraces equitable definitions of power, transparency, and accountability.
In addition to these specific projects, our team members are also actively exploring ways to get plugged into this moment, and invite you to do the same! Some ideas to get started:
Call your state and federal representatives to let them know your outrage about:
The new administration’s unconscionable mistreatment of immigrants and tearing apart of families
The demonization and escalating erasure of transgender, non-binary, and gender expansive people in every aspect of public life
The erosion of women’s rights to their bodies, personal sovereignty, and suffrage
The swift disregard and dismantling of checks and balances, gross and irreparable invasion of privacy of ordinary citizens by unelected and unaccountable tech billionaires, and blatant destruction of any semblance of democracy we had left.
Let your voice be heard about proposed changes to rules and regulations of federal agencies that may harm communities you care about! For example, you have until March 17, 2025 to submit public comments on the US Dept. of State's passport applications, which will directly impact transgender, non-binary, and gender expansive people's ability to get federal documents that accurately reflect their gender identity and travel safely outside of the US! Click on each of the links below to submit a comment about how changes to these different application forms could negatively impact you and people you care about:
Show up whenever and however we can for local rallies, protests, marches, and boycotts against fascism, oligarchy, and patriarchy. We understand that access to these things varies for each person for a lot of reasons -- get creative, and connect with others who can help you come up with ideas to support in whatever way you can!
Support local efforts to protect immigrant community members from ICE (e.g., attending know-your-rights trainings on what to do if you see ICE agents, sharing red cards with local immigrant communities, etc.)
Connect more deeply with your local tribal communities to support ongoing rematriation and decolonization efforts
Support mutual aid and non-carceral peer support and advocacy efforts in your local communities
This is one leg of a very, very long marathon, and we (collectively) are only just getting started. The Just Roots Team actively welcomes collaboration, camaraderie, and co-conspiracy with others who are doing the same!