A Note: We, BYP100 staff, want to provide our members, staff, board, and the movement community with a rich document that outlines and names the things that brought us to this particular moment, a beginning outline of the way forward, and an invitation to you to join us in this work.
We, senior staff, are writing these blogs with support from other staff, members, and boards. As we write and coordinate others’ efforts to do so, we may need to delay the release of an anticipated blog for 1–2 days. We ask for your grace as we navigate this. Our commitment is to conclude this series by March 19th.
Right now, this looks like this:
- February 22nd: Part I: This Moment
- NOW: Part II: Conflict & Courage: Staff Transitions, Misalignments relating to politic and transformative justice + Chapter Transitions
- March 10th: Part III: Money: Budget, Access, & Accountability
- March 10th: Part IV: Our Commitments
- March 17th: Part V: The Way Forward
We are also figuring out what videos or other media might look like to accompany these long-ass blogs.
In all instances, we will also host open meetings with staff through March 19th:
- Wednesday, March 3rd at 6pm CST/7pm est w/Nzinga & Dee Dee
- Saturday, March 6th at 1:30pm CST/2:30pm est w/Nhawndie, Darializa, Hannah
We will make space to discuss what has been happening and how we want to move forward during these times. We will answer questions, offer clarity, and ask questions to membership. We want to have conversations with you.
On Friday, March 12th, and March 26th at noon, DeeDee will host office hours, and we encourage all members to utilize this time to bring questions, proposals and get to know your National Director.
Please respect everyone involved with making this time by showing up on time.
More Context
“And who will join this standing up and the knees who stood without sweet company will sing and sing back into the mountains and if necessary even under the sea: we are the ones we have been waiting for.” -June Jordan
We are one year into a pandemic that has ravaged our communities while within a racial capitalistic system that won’t let up. We have joined millions in demand to defund police and uprisings across the country. We have witnessed the growth of the white nationalist movement. In the midst of this, we have been forced to reckon with what it means to be an abolitionist organization in practice- how challenging it is and has been to address sexual violence and patriarchy in and outside of our organization, and what it means to create space for people to be accountable to those who are survivors of violence, without police and prisons. And in this process of addressing these challenges, gathering and sharing more resources for all folks involved, tensions regarding our decision making processes and communication of those processes, our organizational goals, strategies, and tactics, and the role of BYP100 membership, staff, and boards have risen to the top.
As BYP100 staff, we continue to be thankful at this moment to all y’all who stay showing up and stay in the struggle with us; the OGs who have been around, the new folks who might be thinking “WTF?!”, our staff who often seem caught in the middle, and our boards, who are members of this organization or deeply connected to the founding of rich work of BYP100 and Black liberation. To all y’all: Thank you. We see you. We hear you. We appreciate you.
We are using all these moments to build consistent practices that deepen our connections to each other and expands our understanding of our shared and different experiences and needs (individually, collectively, and historically) in a manner that allows us to meet our mission and live our shared values through our organizing work.
What we are learning, understanding, and struggling with at BYP100, but also what we can observe from movement and people history, is that not everything has an immediate, easy, or obvious solution. Still, all things can be centered in principled struggle. Our work in these moments is to identify strategies and tactics that are true to our organizational goals and capacity that will help lessen or better deal with these tensions when they erupt. It is in our acknowledgment of the tension and how we will move through it. It is to support our members, staff, and board in the construction of spaces where they and we can wrestle with what may be impossible right now or feel in opposition (misaligned) of who we say we are or want to be while continuing to imagine and engage in the work necessary to build power.
For those things that we can explicitly work to solve or resolve, BYP100 must find more ways to engage more widely the BYP100 community (members, ALL staff, boards, and our partners) in the problem solving, doing and evaluation. In all instances, we have to BE better at communicating our:
- truths (our history and outcomes),
- politic and ideology (what we believe at this organization),
- the decision-making process and expectations (how we get to decide what we do),
- organizational goals (what we want to achieve), and
- local and national work (strategies and tactics).
BYP100 is not alone in trying to address these challenges. Organizations such as Dream Defenders, Black Lives Matter chapters, and many other groups hold similar conflicts as we speak. In July 2020, adrienne marie brown wrote an article on how she sees these dynamics playing out across our movement in this current political moment. We don’t say this as an excuse or to defer responsibility, but to ground ourselves in knowing that BYP100 is always operating in a relationship with the contradiction.
In this blog series, we want to provide more organizational context because even before the pandemic, BYP100 was in a moment of transition and internal inquiry while battling a growing sense of collective burnout/tiredness. All of this was amplified by the pandemic and later the political moments leading to the election.
We also want to name or provide ways that we will acknowledge, address, and communicate resolution or next steps of tensions or requests articulated in letters, emails, and other communications from members, staff, and board. We end with what you can expect next.
This is A LOT, so we have split it into two postings to give folks space to break up the reading:
Part 2.1: BYP100 Staff & Transitions
Part 2.2: Misalignment & Tensions
Part 2.1: BYP100 Staff & Transitions
Back at 1: National Director
BYP100 has been in a place of steady, exhilarating, and exhausting growth since its inception.
In 2018, Charlene transitioned out of her role as BYP100’s Founding National Director (it was publicly announced at the 2017 National Convening). A Hiring Committee was created that included board members from both boards (BYP100 Action Fund, the 501c4, and BYP100 Education Fund, the 501c3), staff, and Dr. Cathy Cohen. In creating the job description and subsequent conversations, two things felt like non-negotiables: 1) hiring only from membership and 2) the person hired had to relocate to Chicago. Until very recently, even with members, staff, and board inviting folks directly to engage and apply, we have not been successful in our efforts to hire from within the membership. In this instance, three members applied for the National Director role. D’atra “Dee Dee” Jackson and Janaé Bonsu were two of the applicants.
As the interview process began and the decision was narrowed down from three candidates to two, the hiring committee began to seriously debate moving from a single director model to a co-director model. This felt like the best strategy given that both final candidates were strong organizers, showed visionary leadership at the local and national level, and deeply grounded in BYP100’s politics. There were major areas of growth needed to hold this growing organization and a real lack of experience in some key functional areas specific to a national or executive director role. Because we are BYP100 and we believe in folks’ potential and our ability to manifest the reality we want, we chose to shift from a single director model to co-directors. We believed (and still do) in Janae Bonsu and D’atra Jackson’s leadership and power-building potential. We felt that not only would they be able to compliment and offer support to each other, but they would also move us forward and beyond what we even thought possible. It was also clear that they would need access and support from members, staff, board, and others to close the gaps in their experience for this to be true. They were hired based upon this belief in their potential and the understanding that we, their BYP100 community, would be co-conspirators in their skill up.
From the beginning, their path forward was difficult yet extraordinary in so many ways. BYP100 is forever changed because of their leadership. But the truth is that 1) it takes a new leader on average 2–3 years, some say more extended, to learn and settle into their role in the best of circumstances, and 2) we did not hold or foster their leadership as we promised. It was unfair to them, but also to all of us. But still, they did what Black folks always do! They continued. They pushed through their own limitations and understandings to show up for each other and the organization while actively expanding their available skill sets to be the leaders BYP100 deserves. They sacrificed and shifted personal relationships and priorities to be more present, more in work. Unfortunately, Janae, also a Ph.D. candidate, had to make a brave decision between completion of her academic course work or continuing as a National Co-Director. In September 2019, Janae transitioned from this role to that of organizational consultant, where she continues to support BYP100 through the She Safe We Safe Campaign and other projects.
For DeeDee, this meant that not only was her primary partner and supporter in work gone, but her duties, responsibilities, staff supervised, and the overall number of personalities and people she engaged with quickly doubled. While this was happening, the everyday and extraordinary also continued to happen, tensions and conflicts continued to brew, and staff transitioned. Most things in this organization are not simple fixes; they require time and trust. Leadership is about courage in the face of uncertainty and a grounded commitment to the work of our futures.
Staff Transitions
In 2014/2015, BYP100 raised enough funds to build a small staff of super committed, young Black people. Since then, we have shaped and reshaped staff structure and been in a struggle with what it means to be a member of the staff of BYP100. Questions around expectations, accountability, commitment, and integrity are ongoing questions, not to mention what it means during a pandemic. As the organization has grown, our expectations grew. We haven’t collectively made enough spaces to discuss the impact of the growing expectations of being one of the very few Black member-based organizations, radically left, National, and develops through a Black Queer Feminist lens. So when it comes to doing the work, we have put enough pressure on ourselves to be everything for Black people. We feel that commitment. We practice that commitment.
However, the expectations between being on staff and being a member have not been clarified. The lines are blurred and complex. We are getting closer to defining, but the impact of this has also led us to this point of tension and accusations of “the consistent pattern of pushing out non-senior leadership staff that long predates the pandemic,” as mentioned in the Collective Call for Accountability. For most members, BYP100 is a political home. It’s also a place of work for young Black people. BYP100 staff are workers, mostly from poor/working-class families. As a workplace, we have political goals and commitments that need competency, skill, and discipline to impact. BYP100 deserves impactful and compassionate staff and leadership for the sake of building power.
As we get closer to building the staff and leadership we deserve, our discipline needs to show up in our work and accountability and responsibility to the work, not just rhetoric. This means clarifying what happens when people do not do the expected work. The impact of not achieving the expectations contributes to the burnout of other staff, internal tensions, and lack of direction. We also want to recognize that the pandemic has made our capacity smaller, which means expectations have shifted and will shift again. There is a culture of perfectionism at every single level of this organization that is impatient and debilitating. Folks have different experiences as staff and may transition for various reasons. We have processes, imperfect ones, but procedures for what happens when folks do not meet the expectations most needed in the organization. Folks have many experiences of being on staff and many reasons for transitioning out of staff. Since October 2018, there have been 17 staff transitions for many reasons. The majority have not been terminated. Some were not a good fit. Some went back to school. Some have been terminated. Some for health and/or family reasons. Folk also get tiiieddd. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is opportunity in every single transition. The issue is the lack of communication around transitions, which we are still figuring out. What is the middle ground of protecting people’s futures and communicating about folks’ departure? We hope the new personnel committee can support us in solving this issue.
Consistently, when there are disagreements on accountability, strategy, and decision making, staff have been frozen and immature in our leadership, too afraid to be real until it is too late. It becomes inconsistent and messy, even across teams.
We acknowledge that we have failed numerous times in these efforts. We know this is not ok. It serves no one. It is exhausting for everyone.
We know that we must do better.
We understand and apologize for the harm this has caused to those directly engaged and those observing.
We want specifically to apologize to BYP100 staff whose ability to be in their work and their own leadership was compromised or hindered by our inability to move forward in these moments.
We are creating ways of working and being in conversation/community with each other that are more consistent, expansive, and honest. This year we will have more conversations with each other around what we, as individuals, want to do (periodt) and what parts of that can happen here at BYP100.
We are still in a place of transition with staff, with everything. In 2021, four staff members transitioned:
- Kyla Hartsfield, Durham Chapter Organizer
- Courtney Sebring, Creative Communications Director
- Kiera Hereford, Operations Coordinator
- Mariah Monsanto, She Safe We Safe Organizer
- Jai’ Shavers, Southern Regional Organizer
We recognize the gap left by these spaces, and in the interim, if you have questions or need support related to:
- healing and safety, for yourself, your chapter, or creating a member led space, please contact Taylor at taylor@byp100.org.
- chapter PEX and money needs, reach out to Nzinga at nzinga@byp100.org.
- organizing work, please reach out to Nhawndie at nhawndie@byp100.org.
- membership, please reach out to Hannah at hannah@byp100.org.
- communications and media, please reach out to Dannie at dannie@byp100.org.
