Principles for Taking Action on Racial Justice
Community Food Strategies uses 10 racial equity principles, developed by Dismantling Racism Works (dRworks). These principles are a vital part of creating more equitable food systems, and have deeply supported our process of assessing and shifting our team’s culture towards anti-racism.
We have created explanations and suggested steps to help you integrate each principle into your food council work.
They will support your council in continuing to create relationships outside of your organization, engage in difficult conversations with internal stakeholders, and encourage intentional action around anti-racism.
While the principles build on each other and work together, they are not in any specific order. You can start with the first one listed or with the one you’re most drawn to. It may be helpful to skim through all of the principles first before you dive into one more deeply.
We invite you to use them with imagination, finding ways they can support the equitable culture you’re looking to create.
Change is possible. Food is a way to bring people together to make it happen.
Acknowledgments:
This tool was assembled using Dismantling Racism Works (dRworks) 10 Racial Equity Principles. We would like to thank our partners at dRworks and CEFS Committee on Racial Equity in the Food System (CORE) team for allowing us to use and adapt their tools for this food council network. Their resources and training have been invaluable in our work.
1. Work on All Three Levels
Racism manifests in our society on three levels:
- Individual: Individual acts
- Institutional: Policies, practices, procedures
- Cultural: Beliefs, values, norms
Even without individual acts of racism, the white supremacy culture embedded in our institutions and dominant culture will continue to create outcomes that are racialized — unless we work to disrupt the systems that drive our implicit and explicit actions, practices, and policies.
From Principle to Action
Awareness, access, and accountability are crucial to disrupting racist systems and creating a just food system.
Awareness starts with you. The first step is recognizing how your council works interpersonally as well as organizationally. Ask yourselves:
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PERSONAL
How are the individuals within your food council working to become aware of the ways you’re perpetuating racism in attitudes or behaviors?
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INSTITUTIONAL
How are people of color and the organizations they lead excluded, financially exploited, underserved, or invalidated by your food council?
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CULTURAL
How do your food council’s beliefs, norms, and ways of being together validate whiteness or invalidate people of color and the organizations they lead?
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2. Use Organizing Mind
Based on the idea of “each one reach one,”
We begin by looking around to see who’s with us, then building relationships with those people. Next, we add people with perspectives we’re missing (such as farm workers or minority business owners).
Organizing Mind is based on the idea of “each one reach one,” as a way to create community, solidarity, and movements. It helps us to focus on who and what is within our reach, so we can build a larger group of people working towards transformative change.
From Principle to Action
A more equitable food system is supported by connecting with each other to cultivate relationships and encourage communication.
Broad, diverse coalitions come from groups that include individuals from outside of our go-to networks — especially with people who have lived experience in issue areas you would like to support.
To create these types of groups, ask yourselves:
A more equitable food system is supported by connecting with each other to cultivate relationships and encourage communication.
Broad, diverse coalitions come from groups that include individuals from outside of our go-to networks — especially with people who have lived experience in issue areas you would like to support.
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Who do we have an authentic relationship with already that could help connect us to people/organizations where we can listen, learn, and build relationships?
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What can we gain from these different perspectives, and how can we incorporate these lessons into the work we’re doing?
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Who is missing from the conversation? Map your network and think about how to expand your relationships to include the voices of those most impacted or excluded.
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3. Identify Explicit Goals
What does racial justice really look like?
When people in communities or institutions make a racial equity commitment, they often have little to no idea of what that commitment means in terms of their role, their job, or their responsibility.
This principle asks us to tie the “talk” of social justice to explicit goals, so people and communities have a clear sense of what racial justice looks like up close and personal.
From Principle to Action
A clear goal helps bring people together. Food systems work has many entry points; to take action we need to make it clear on which piece we’re working.
Clear goals help us know what initial steps to take, where we’re making progress, and where we may need to change course.
A more equitable food system is supported by connecting with each other to cultivate relationships and encourage communication.
Broad, diverse coalitions come from groups that include individuals from outside of our go-to networks — especially with people who have lived experience in issue areas you would like to support.
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Start by looking at your Community Food Snapshot or other disaggregated data to get a better idea of where your community is starting from in the context of race and food.
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Set an explicit commitment that encourages your team to question the status quo and move towards equity-focused action.
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Develop a change or equity team that will help set intentions, carry out goals, and hold your council accountable to equity principles.
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4. Build Power on The Margins
Strong equity goals are best designed when they speak to, serve, empower, and engage those on the margins.
We are all connected. When policies and programs are enacted to help those on the margins, we’re framing goals and strategies that benefit all of us, both directly and indirectly.
Story from the Work: Youth Leaders of Color
From Principle to Action
To build a more equitable food system, we must recognize the marginalization that occurs due to the inherent racism of systems.
Food councils can play a role by committing to build trust and relationships with the people who have systematically been left out of the conversations and decision-making.
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There is power in community. Spend time building relationships by attending outside meetings and events, and listen to (and act on) what people have to say.
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Encourage co-leadership and individuals to support the council in different roles. Step back and let others step up.
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Develop a multi-racial food council, along with guidelines and values for how you will work together collaboratively.
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5. Think and Act Collectively and Collaboratively
We save and are saved by each other. By design, the dominant culture ensures that we have lost our collective impulse to the service of racism.
We must look to those people and communities whose resilience has preserved that impulse for guidance. Teaching each other and ourselves to collaborate and act collectively helps us build strong and authentic relationships and operate from a place of communal wisdom.
From Principle to Action
Bringing together diverse groups in a structured way allows food councils to address complex issues, like building an equitable food system.
Food systems work is complex and intersectional, which creates a great opportunity to better understand root causes and work together toward common goals.
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Be cross-sector, build your skill in naming why and how each sector connects, and ensure you’re incorporating all of the elements and stakeholders of a community-centered food system.
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Create a shared vision, values, and language that allows everyone involved to have a clear idea of what the collective group is working towards.
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Create a safe, trusting space for dialogue that supports the emergence of a collective voice.
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6. Accountability to People and Principles
Accountability is a form of solidarity. It allows us to reconnect through the power of authentic relationships, and is a form of discernment around expressing shared values or principles.
If we are just accountable to people, we can get in trouble if the people we’re accountable to are acting out of systematic conditioning. This is where our principles help keep us grounded.
If we are only accountable to principles, we tend to lose sight of the human element. Our relationships can help us understand the nuance and complexity of honoring our principles.
From Principle to Action
Who and what we are accountable to directly relates to the decisions we make about how we spend our time and resources.
Food councils should strive to have accountability to the community by staying accountable to the people most negatively impacted by the food system, as well as accountability to one another within your council.
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Be cross-sector, build your skill in naming why and how each sector connects, and ensure you’re incorporating all of the elements and stakeholders of a community-centered food system.
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Create a shared vision, values, and language that allows everyone involved to have a clear idea of what the collective group is working towards.
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Create a safe, trusting space for dialogue that supports the emergence of a collective voice.
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7. Know Yourself
Knowing ourselves means that we can show up more appropriately and effectively in the work, and ask for help when needed.
It helps us understand how we are showing up in a space with our different identities, privileges, and lived experiences. This informs how we engage with different communities in ways that everyone might feel respected. We do this by calling each other in rather than out.
From Principle to Action
Being able to answer the questions, “Why do you work with a food council?” and “How do you work towards an equitable food system?” is critical, both individually and as a collaborative.
In order to answer these questions, it’s important to do the continuous work to know yourself and your council. Racial equity trainings, readings, and open dialogue help us to know ourselves and each other better as our identities relate to the intertwined nature of food systems work and racial equity work.
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Use the Power Flower activity to assess the cultures represented in your organization.
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Ask yourselves: “What is the dominant culture of your food council/organization?” And “How do you think that culture impacts who you work with and what work you do together?”
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Provide ongoing opportunities for learning, and create space for dialogue, active listening, and reflection.
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8. Take Risks and Learn from your Mistakes
We can take risks more wisely through collaboration and accountability
Failure to take risks because we’re afraid of failure or our own vulnerability does not serve us or others.
We can take risks more wisely through collaboration and accountability, which avoids putting others at risk without their knowledge. Failure to learn from our mistakes is the only real mistake we can make.
From Principle to Action
To accomplish the goals of raising equitable practices within your food council, risk taking is essential. However, shifting into a process that acknowledges systemic injustices can be challenging, both emotionally and structurally.
Making a commitment to working through fear allows for a culture of thinking outside of the box. How can your food council create practices that encourage risk taking?
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Design an activity or tradition within your group processes (such as Story Circle) to learn and share in a safe space.
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Take 5 minutes on the clock to vision/brainstorm together about what your food system work would look like if you had a culture that embodied this principle.
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Practice vulnerability and self care, and ask for help when needed. No one gets it right the first time, and that’s okay.
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9. Transparency
Ask questions like
“Who is speaking and being heard during meetings?”
“How are decisions being made, and who makes them?”
Transparency is a principle of communication. It can help people understand complexity and nuance.
Transparency is useful when we find we are caught between conflicting values or options. Rather than force ourselves to take a position, we can make the tension transparent and work collectively to make choices about how to face the tension and learn from the choices.
From Principle to Action
Developing intentional practices around transparency can create a process of developing trust within your group, even if it causes tensions initially. Your council can incorporate transparency practices within your planning, implementation, and assessment processes.
First, assess your culture of communication. Ask questions like “Who is speaking and being heard during meetings?” “How are decisions being made, and who makes them?” and “What are your equity-based policies on salaries?” Make these answers and the reasons behind them transparent.
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Use shared drives, such as Google Drive, to keep documents.
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Make a practice of sharing your budget with your full council and your community.
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Use Circle Forward to encourage more transparency in creating shared leadership.
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10. Seek Connection
Ground your actions in a desire for connection; choose love.
We live in a culture of fear. Fear shuts down our ability to be creative, compassionate, and brave. Fear also divides us and pits us against each other.
Notice when fear shows up, name it, and seek ways to feel it, address it, and choose a way that builds connection and relationship. Ground your actions in a desire for connection; choose love.
From Principle to Action
Working to add and multiply rather than to subtract and divide is a path towards creating spaces where more voices have the power to craft our community decisions.
For councils, seeking connection allows for deeper relationship building. Connecting and building relationships based on shared values can inspire councils to find common ground. Intentional multi-racial coalition building that centers on Black and Brown communities is possible, if there is intentionality around seeking deep connections with those communities.
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Encourage a shift away from either/or thinking and encourage conversations and actions that connect and build collaboration.
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Build accountability by having conversations with one another is an open and transparent way, such as having conversations on the spot or working to build a more full understanding of a situation.
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Show up for others: visit farmers’ farms, attend community work days, and attend others’ meetings.
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Acknowledgments:
