Community Impact Circle
Racial Justice - 2021
Many of us continue to ask what we can do to ensure a more just society. The Racial Justice Community Impact Circle is a place for donors to unpack their own privileges and biases, reflect on their abilities to effect change, and move beyond transactional philanthropy to transformational work.
There is a spectrum of stages to becoming an anti-racist: Awareness — Acknowledgement — Acceptance — Action — Commitment. This group aspired to work along the continuum, beginning with self-exploration, foundational social justice learning, and discussions to tune or collective critical thinking.
Members spent the second part of the year meeting with community leaders and non-profits for in-depth conversations on specific issues. Each member was provided the space to travel their own path, with the expectation that they would challenge themselves, seek greater understanding about their role, examine the power dynamics of race in philanthropy, and commit to concrete allyship with Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color.
A list of resources, including readings, nonprofits, and podcasts can be found here: Racial Justice Resource Page
The Flock page for current members’ ongoing discussions can be found here: Flock Racial Justice CIC
Framework + Timeline
The circle met monthly over the course of one year. Each group member committed to giving $10,000 to non-profit organizations of their choice by the end of the cycle, bringing the sum of the group’s investment to racial justice to $100,000.
We hosted an optional trip to The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama for interested members.
Montgomery is not only home to the Equal Justice Initiative, but also to the Civil Rights Trail which includes Martin Luther King’s Baptist Church, the State Capitol (the final destination on the march from Selma to Montgomery), and the Civil Rights Memorial Center.
Session 1 - Nov. 2020 | Exploring culture & identity
Session 2 - Dec. 2020 | Actively relearning history
Session 3 - Jan. 2021 | Unpacking Unconscious Bias
Session 4 - Feb. 2021 | Interrupting opPression
Session 5 - Mar. 2021 | Building & applying a racial justice lens
Session 6 - Apr. 2021 | Reimagining the criminal justice system
Session 7 - May 2021 | Racial justice & the Environment
Session 8 - Jun. 2021 | ECONOMIC JUSTICE
Session 9 - Jul. 2021 | EDUCATION & ADVANCEMENT
Session 10 - Aug. 2021 | Democracy & Policy reform
Session 11 - Sep. 2021 | reparations
session 12 - Oct. 2021 | Reflection, goal-setting, & Commitments
Circle Facilitators
DAEMOND ARRINDELL
Daemond Arrindell is a poet, performer, and teaching artist. After more than ten years working in social services, eight of them managing the King County Crisis Clinic’s teen hotline Teen Link, his passion for spoken word poetry took center stage and his energy into his art and arts education. He is a faculty member of TAT Lab: the Washington State Teaching Artist Training Lab; Freehold Theatre - co-facilitating poetry and theater residencies at Monroe Correctional Complex for men for 12 years; Adjunct faculty at Seattle University and Tacoma’s School of the Arts; Writer-In-Residence through Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools Program and Skagit River Poetry Foundation.
Daemond’s teaching focuses on the complexities of identity: owning who we are, how society sees or doesn’t see us and how we function within those realities. Whether facilitating groups of high school students, adult educators or incarcerated populations, his objectives remain the same: to think critically and creatively; to honor individual voices, especially those who have been disenfranchised, overlooked or ignored; to reflect on what makes us unique and special and celebrate it. In the process of building space for those voices and stories, it became necessary to address the systems of oppression that empower some and disadvantage others as well as their current and historical context. This led to a more formal and intentional bridge between arts education and social justice work.
TINA LAPADULA
Tina is an East Coast transplant and warrior for education justice. For more than 15 years she poured most of her creative energy into Arts Corps, the award winning arts and social justice non-profit she helped found. She has collaborated with The Frye Museum, The Museum of History and Industry, Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival and Northwest Folklife to curate exhibitions and events that elevate the art and perspectives of young people. As a teaching artist, Tina has taught at performance and storytelling Centrum Arts, Seattle Children’s Theatre, The University of Washington, and in a multitude of schools and afterschool programs.
These days she serves as the Arts Education Project Manager for the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and as a consultant with HeARTWork Collective, facilitating workshops on racial equity and the arts. Tina supports the growth and development of teaching artists locally and nationally, most notably as a faculty member for the WA State Teaching Artist Training Lab, as the former chair of the Association of Teaching Artists, and as a member of the national advisory committee for the Teaching Artist Guild. Her writing and opinion have been featured by Americans for the Arts, The Teaching Artist Journal and The National Guild for Community Arts Education.
More about heartwork collective
HeARTWork Collective is a consulting entity, officially formed in spring of 2016. Tina LaPadula and Daemond Arrindell began facilitating racial equity and social justice workshops as a team in 2014, working with schools, community partners and arts & cultural organizations around Seattle. We come to the work of social justice from a unique perspective and approach, bringing our creativity, teaching artistry and community development work into play.
As facilitators we strive to build shared language and frameworks to ensure understanding, and that can be utilized and built upon in workplaces. We challenge partners and participants to step outside their comfort zones, and remind our collaborators that inaction is just as much a choice as action. We, the HeArtWork Collective, consider ourselves to be lifelong learners, and do not ask anything of our partners and allies that we do not practice ourselves.
We are excited to be in a critical learning community together where we can look at where we have been historically and intentionally look forward to how we can build a more socially just world.
If you would like to learn more or join future Racial Justice Community Impact Circles, please email our team at philanthropy@brightonjones.com.
Explore other upcoming Community Impact Circles.