Support Letter from Faith Briggs
Community First
For some of us, our very existence in the places we find ourselves and our ability to continue to [full of hope and in spite of attempts to delegitimize us] navigate this world daily, is radical.
This week incredibly strong women of color and queer bipoc leaders in the outdoor space (oh how i love my people ✨ your shine cannot be dimmed) moved a previously existing written call for the leadership of the SHIFT Festival in Jackson Hole to step down into the social media space. Via stories and posts, the larger community learned more of the controversial nature of the festival.
The leadership of Shift is seemingly incapable of curating the healthy space for dialogue that they proclaim to be creating among conservation and outdoor activists. Despite not being at the conference myself, my love for my community leads me to stand by them, leads me to reach out to them, to hear their stories, to believe them, knowing that these hearts are led by love and in an effort to open doors of dialogue for all of us. On all accounts (letters and further details are available here: https://bit.ly/2V8JIt6) the leadership of Shift has failed its participants, specifically those in the Emerging Leaders Program. Their failure plays out in many ways.
SHIFT Leadership, if you take on the responsibility of inviting people, with a focus on cultural relevancy, to dialogue and then are ill-equipped to facilitate, lead, and moderate that dialogue and it constantly devolves into unhealthy and unproductive, hurtful and triggering conversations for the very leaders called to be in this space, then you have failed them. On all accounts, this is what has consistently been the case. And leadership, namely Christian Beckwith, it seems, has not taken adequate steps to do better, despite having years to do so. Feedback from multiple years revealed similarly traumatic experiences for participants, many of whom have not felt comfortable speaking up.
If SHIFT wants continued support from the community, they need to find leadership that can actually carry out their stated mission. If not, then it is not a lie and it is a cause of the fragmentation in this work that it asserts itself to be fighting against.
And it is not a space for us.
Reminder: we do not have to be everyone’s teacher, everyone’s token POC friend, token panelist, token co-facilitator and the person with whom they seek to be a token “ally.” That is not our calling or our responsibility.
If there is one thing I walked away Outdoor Retailer with this year, it was the question as to why so many POC activists were being pulled into white women’s attempts to navigate their own privilege in their organizations instead of doing the work we need to do in our communities. Yes, we want to do this work and support these conversations in multiple spaces where power and privilege convene, but should we do it to our own detriment? In these situations, when I find myself exasperated and exhausted with no clear path for change laid out at the end of the discussions, I am forced to question with whom I do emotional labor. Since OR I have readjusted to make sure that my focus is my work, my art, my community of co-conspirators and that I use my tools of choice to do this work. This is one thing I do know, if any space is not already doing the work, we do not need to be in that space.
They [Shift leadership] have not adequately proved that they are doing this work.
My immediate response was: Boycott.
But I also understand why this conversation has to happen, our friends are taking on the role of being the canaries in the coal mine. They are warning us so that we do not fall into the same trap that Shift has pulled POC Queer Trans leaders and friends into for the past few years. Yes, it feels good to be invited. Yes, seeing organizations and individuals want to tackle the hard work encourages us.
I appreciate those who have had these experiences sharing them with us, so that we are not similarly lured into these dark spaces with promises of change making conversations only to be met with what can only be called a hot mess. In the end, SHIFT has not shown that they are ready to truly work with the Leaders they’ve invited.
I want more inclusivity in the outdoors and thus I will work towards it, in my own way, using my talents and skills, accountable to my community as an artist.
I do not believe we should have to compromise our mental and physical health to fight for this. Yet that is so often a part of the struggle. In this instance, and in any other we choose, you have the right to refuse.
I want each of us to follow our passions. As I like to say, find something to be a broken record about. Be that thing. Do that work. Spark and share that joy with others. We shouldn’t feel the need to fit ourselves into ill-fitting spaces created by out of touch individuals who feel the need to lead efforts when they are unfit to do so. We don’t need to be at these panels and these conferences and these places that don’t serve us or our communities.
I would rather be in community with all of you in the spaces that we create ourselves, curating and leading our conversations and hopes and dreams and efforts and struggles ourselves.
Thank you for your work, your voices, your labor, your shining examples, taking these hard roads and having these messy convos. I expect that all of us, the homies leading the charge and the homies that have been and remain in the board, will continue to move forward in uniting efforts while rooting out the BS and making sure we don’t make space for it. Particularly not allowing our fear or our kindness to prioritize white male rich privileged voices over those that truly need and deserve our efforts for uplift.
While I was not at Shift myself I have been reading and listening and trying to educate myself so that I can adequately support my community. I hope that my voice has added to the efforts and that my degree of separation from the event itself has not caused me to unintentionally detract from the efforts.
#WONTTAKESHIFTANYMORE
💕 ya’ll brave souls. thank you,
Faith E. Briggs
