BYP100 envisions a world where all Black people have economic, social, political, educational, and spiritual freedom. — BYP100 Vision
As a young Black organization whose sole purpose is to see Black liberation for all Black people in this lifetime, we always exist in a space between reality and possibility. How do we make our realities more possible with the tools available to us? The truth is that we all operate within the same system that we are actively trying to abolish. The contradiction we are navigating is utilizing the tool of non-profit status to build funds to make our organizational goals more achievable and tethered to the success and longevity of our non-profit. The tension that exists within this conundrum is always brewing at the surface. It simmers around conversations and questions about our electoral politics and work, our healing and safety practices, and organizational structures. When tensions are brought to the surface, they are conflated and challenging to sort through and get to the issue’s root. This summer and fall, the tension erupted into dissent and has created questions around misalignment of our mission, vision, values, and work and resulted in the dissolution of chapters and exiting of members.
As we think about these existing tensions, we also think about what it means to be in the committed practice of:
- developing young Black folks from a spectrum of lived experiences and all the trauma that comes with their individual lives and our collective experience as Black folks along the diaspora through Black Queer Feminist Lens’.
- building power with and for all Black people, not just comrades and those that have shared politic, but those who don’t know, understand and are not interested in learning what Black Queer Feminism is or means.
The Freedom Forecast
Before we can talk about perceived political misalignment, we need to talk about our strategic plan, the Freedom Forecast.
The idea of a Strategic Plan was first introduced at the 2016 Leadership Intensive. The goal was to have “a vision for moving forward that could support leadership transition and consolidate the power and momentum of BYP100’s first five years to manifest freedom in the face of fascism” page 16 of Freedom Forecast. We wanted to assess our work so far, clarify our alignment across states and regions, and make a plan for what would come next that was grounded in the assessment. We wanted to create clear goals or areas of work that chapters and members would engage in but ensuring that they could name the work that felt most relevant to both capacity and their communities/areas of work.
Collectively, the Strategic Planning Team spent about 2,000 hours strategizing, gathering data from members and movement partners, and developing a comprehensive analysis of the data. The Freedom Forecast was birthed from their labor, and with it, our Pillars and Keys to Freedom. The Pillars drive our work. The Keys to Freedom specify how work could happen, again leaving space for members and staff to make interpretations specific to the community and work.
The Pillars are:
- Organizational Capacity
- Community Building
- Black Political Agenda
We released the Freedom Forecast at the 2018 National Convening, where the Strategic Planning Team facilitated a series of workshops with members, including plans for socialization within the chapter. DeeDee, who later became the Co-Director, was tasked with operationalizing the plan with staff by creating organizational goals, strategies and tactics.
As of the end of 2021, our Freedom Forecast will expire and we need an updated strategic plan that aligns with all of the organization’s moving pieces. We intend to do an overall organizational assessment and evaluation of BYP100, including our Freedom Forecast. We invite members to inform this process, and we will create a Google Form for interested members to complete.
Misalignment
Why is this relevant now?
It is relevant because the question of misalignment specific to the work we hold and move has become a lingering tension, especially in the wake of the 2020 election. The Freedom Forecast was a massive undertaking that engaged our broadest spectrum of member voices ever, most of whom were still members of the organization when tensions reached their height. We felt strongly that this was our due diligence process to align or realign our work and that members were engaged. We also thought that The Freedom Forecast, specifically the Black Political Agenda, named the diversity of desires around our work. We believe that many strategies and tactics will aid us in getting free and that people should be free to practice those strategies and tactics as they see fit as long as it doesn’t shift or change our mission, vision, and values. At this moment, it feels that we are negating the work and findings of the Freedom Forecast for dissent or a desire to dictate a way of engaging or being that feels counter to BYP100 and our belief in people’s political freedom.
Historically, BYP100 has participated in electoral work where there are interests and needs. While voting is one of the most overt and sometimes only political engagements, our people have space and opportunity to practice; it is not everything. We want our people to be able to do so safely and with ease, even if we ourselves choose not to vote. Electoral work is also a tactic that can aid us in 1) base building — building people power and 2) our policy and advocacy work. It is about strategy, a plan for winning on the issues we fight for, not just rhetoric around the issues.
When there have been disagreements around these fundamental values or understandings, rather than negotiating what happens next or making space for conversation, we’ve frozen. Then, when the work comes back up, generally from members who want to move the work, we proceed at an accelerated and unsustainable pace to make the work happen. We also have not returned to acknowledge and address the tension that existed before moving forward. When this happens, more tension builds. We even miss things. Sometimes big things. We also become culpable in creating a culture that burns our people and us out.
An example of this happened last summer when the Action Fund Board released their intent to move forward with an electoral strategy, which included additional staff capacity to hold this work; the plan was met with opposition that ultimately stopped the work in progress. Yet, in the weeks leading up to the election, three chapters and national members engaged in electoral work, and that work was supported by staff. There was lots of confusion around who makes decisions and who does not.
Our commitment from now on is to make intentional space with members for principled disagreement regarding our strategies and tactics in a way that isn’t an indictment of people’s values. We will create more intentional spaces for members, staff, and board to plan, implement, and evaluate the work. However, with this, we must also have and communicate a process for how things must move in a particular or significant political moment when staff and member capacity or appetite for the work are limited or simply not present. And building power is the motive and the purpose for BYP100; we mustn’t stray away from this for the sake of agreeing.
Transformative Justice
Transformative Justice is a way of practicing alternative justice which acknowledges individual experiences and identities and works to actively resist the state’s criminal injustice system. -Philly Stand Up!
Tensions have also repeatedly surfaced around our healing and safety work. There is never a moment within this organization where staff, members, and board are NOT actively engaging in this work. But it all takes time, emotional capacity, resources, and patience. While we are building our community of practitioners and our budget has exponentially increased, folks’ time, capacity, and appetite continue to be thin.
Each time, we shift and adjust to our current culture and capacity. When staff transition and are holding work, including healing and safety work, there will be things lost in translation or simply not happening for many reasons.
Some aspects of our work that we acknowledge can be emotionally heavy to hold or feel misaligned. Such as when we say that we are survivor-centered, but in the next breath, create a process that provides the doer of harm an opportunity to re-enter the community and space. Or when we shy from creating (or sharing) databases or tags in our internal systems to identify them. Or when we refuse to institute a policy requiring folks to return BYP100 swag and gear because they are in a process.
We understand why these things seem counter, but it also feels that we are being asked to give up on Black people and replicate the systems of harm that we are actively seeking to abolish.
When we say that there has to be a way back, a point of re-entry — we do not say without work or observable transformation, nor do we say when. We provide opportunities that make it possible, but the responsibility to meet the conditions is on the individual who committed the harm.
Consistently, we practice new and different ways to navigate our Healing and Safety work. When something is not working or is challenging to practice, we adapt and adjust. In 2019, we entered a process to mirror our Strategic Plan Process to revise our Healing and Safety Manual, which houses our frameworks and institutional resources. Some key findings were that, as with all our work, we needed to create new ways of being in community and holding accountability together. We released the revised manual at the National Convening that year. However, we were not successful in socializing the manual’s information as we hoped due to folks’ capacity and appetite changing. In the fall of 2020, we released a proposal for building, practicing, and evaluating the work that provided sustainable and explicit opportunities for healing, learning, and joy. Opportunities that folks and chapters could engage in at their leisure or as necessity dictated — opportunities that expanded our overall offerings. Never have we invested or been able to invest so much of our financial resources in this work. In the original 2021 Budget, we budgeted over $200,000 to support this work.
Our commitment is to continue to grow, get into deeper practice around this work, and better communicate the work that is moving or that we need to happen to hold this work.
DC & Atlanta Chapter Sunsetting
While the BYP100 staff and many members are saddened by the DC and ATL chapters’ decision to sunset because of the growing tensions and political misalignment, we understand their choice. We will continue to support members’ work in the ATL and DMV area. Since receiving the letters, staff has contacted members in our database based in those areas to get more information on this decision-making process and offer folks the opportunity to share how they would like to continue to be in a relationship with BYP100. We also set up office hours to communicate sunsetting chapter members directly. Folks chose not to attend the 1st office hours, and there was much to discuss.
At the end of the day, this is a time for recommitment and clarity. And if we are to be courageous in the face of uncertainty, let it be clear what we are fighting so damn hard to transform. We’ll see y’all on the freedom side. All members wishing to remain committed to BYP100, please complete our Membership Contact Information form sent via email.
Here are some things BYP100 staff have been reading or listening to in order to find joy, get grounded, and learn:
- The Awesome Responsibility of Revolutionary Leadership, by James & Grace Lee Boggs
- Snowfall, show on FX & Hulu
- We Do This Til We Free Us — Spotify Playlist by Mariame Kaba based on her new book!
- Megan Thee Stallion’s NPR Tiny Desk Performance
-BYP100 staff
