The Justice Walk Travelog - May 2023

Leadership development rooted in equity and justice

This month's walking... Recently a coaching partner told me about a colleague she respects, “She treats me like a person first, my position second.” 

Stopped in my tracks by that encapsulation of belonging, I asked her to pause for a moment. “She treats you like a person first. How do you experience her doing that? What makes you feel like you are being treated like a person?”

  My partner’s answer came quickly, “She always asks about my kids and my family. She asks how my weekend was.” She slowed down, “It’s really simple things, actually, but it must be rare for people to do that for it to stick out in my mind so clearly when it happens.” 

She stopped for a moment. “Oh no. I really need to examine my own style and practice. When I’m going into meetings, do I meet people as people or do I jump right into “business mode” as soon as we’re in the same room?”

I haven’t been able to get this conversation out of my head. I don’t want to. The heart of equity, belonging, and justice work is re-humanizing everyone. Seeing each other as people, not positions, or any other label. How am I signaling to people that I do NOT really see them, in ways I have no idea I’m broadcasting? What practices can we adopt to see people for their full selves and let them know they are seen?

Posed that way, the work sounds hard and complex. But my coaching partner’s examples were so simple. “How is your family?” “How was your weekend?” Letting someone know, “I recognize and honor that you, like me, are more than whatever role you are playing in this meeting, in this momentary encounter.”

Years ago I picked up another simple humanizing practice from author Barbara Brown Taylor, making eye contact.* It’s especially powerful with those we usually shy away from seeing - those who ring us out at cash registers, who deliver packages, who wait for the bus, who ask for spare change. Think of all those we studiously avoid making eye contact with. Those we are socialized to see as “less than.” We clearly know that making eye contact means something or we wouldn’t work so hard to avoid it. Those are the people I try to see. 

“She asks about my family, my kids.”

Such a little thing. Such a huge impact. 

  Do you have someone who treats you as a person first? Who you know sees you?  

How do you know? Can you thank them for making you feel seen?

I’d love to hear from you. Let’s get a list of other “little” things we can do to let people know we SEE them. 

*(Some folks’ neurotypes mean that, for them, making eye contact is challenging and even painful. They have lots of other ways to honor people’s humanity. One way we can treat them as people first is by respecting the ways that work for them to acknowledge other's humanity and have their own humanity acknowledged).

In a prior newsletter I shared Temu Okun's website that expands upon her white supremacy culture essay.Recently, a group of racial justice leaders, 

Sendolo Diaminah , Scot Nakagawa , Sean Thomas-Breitfeld , Rinku Sen , and Lori Villarosa, discussed their concerns with the piece and how it has been used in the field with The Forge.  I encourage you to read the article and engage with the critiques, particularly with the way the concepts and ideas can be oversimplified and weaponized.(Okun created the website to go along with the essay partially to add nuance and push back against the weaponization of the concepts).For me, this is a reminder to engage with tools carefully, consciously, and with gray areas in mind. It is also a reminder to continually check in with each other, "we are both using this term, can we check to see if we mean the same thing when we say it?"Interested to hear what you all think...

An image of a check-list of 10 easy things to do to improve digital accessibility.

Recently, Meryl Evans posted something on Linked In in honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, aka GAAD.  Since I found it really helpful, I wanted to share it with you. This is her post from May 18, 2023:I hope every person and organization has made progress toward building a more inclusive world in the past year. I offer speaking and training to educate people on how to create accessible workplaces, products, and services AND take action.Here are 10 easy ways you can take action to make progress in accessibility and disability inclusion. It's OK not to do it all. The key is progress over perfection. Make progress every day. It's possible you'll go backward. It happens. Dust off and try again.It took me a bit of time to make things a habit such as alt text, describing myself, saying "This is Meryl speaking." If you forget, fix it and give yourself a little grace. If you see someone forget, educate them and give them grace.Pick one or two things. Practice them more than once. When you feel like you have them down, pick the next one or two things. Progress over perfection.⏹️ Add image descriptions to images and describe them in context. The key is to be descriptive yet concise. There is no one right way to do it. Just start doing it.⏹️ "This is [your name]" when you speak on a group call. Someone may be listening rather than watching.⏹️ Create a transcript for your most important or next podcast or audio clip. It's important to format the transcript by creating short paragraphs. It's hard to read a big block of text.⏹️ Add accurate plain captions to your most important or next video. Refer to the caption cheat sheet for more on this.⏹️ Offer at least two modern communication options. This applies everywhere. You can require people to fill out the contact field on a form as long as you give them choices (email, phone, text). Websites need to provide two modern contact options. A fax number and snail mail don't count, y'all.⏹️ Capitalize the first letter of each word and abbreviations in hashtags and usernames. It helps to do this for URLs too. But some URLs may be case-sensitive. Test the URL.⏹️ Use a free tool to check color contrast on your content and images. A lot of websites use poor color choices for the background and the text. It adds friction to the reading experience.⏹️ Avoid ALL CAPS in all content because it has no visual shape and feels like yelling. Sentence case is the most readable.⏹️ Add a blank line between paragraphs to improve readability.⏹️ Avoid abusing emojis 👎 like👎 this 👎nightmare. Screenreaders describe the emoji. And It can be hard to read a sentence with emojis showing up in between words.I encourage you to check out Meryl's website or follow her on Linked In to learn more. 

Quick reminder to follow me on Linked In - button below.Have a question? Drop me a line at [email protected]