Intent and Impact (plus shifts as I go to school)

things will look different moving forward

1. Changes in the newsletter

Hi, friends! This email is going to some folks who signed up for Diversity/Equity/Inclusion in the Workplace content, some folks who signed up for either spiritual devotions for progressive activists and people of color or content about ancestors and activism, and some folks who signed up to follow my PhD journey. I hope this newsletter is of interest to you whichever way you found it.

In 2021 and 2022, I generated a LOT of content for social media related to who I am as a DEI consultant, but also who I am as a person committed to building beloved community. So once a month for free, I’ll be sending out some of that content intended to inspire, encourage, or motivate you. 

Once a month I’ll also send out a newsletter to paid subscribers related more specifically to some specific intersectionality content (that is, what I’m learning about showing up well in the workplace with different groups of people who have historically been marginalized in the US).

Probably four times a year I’ll also send an update on what I’m learning at school and how it’s contributing to my eventual project of establishing a multi-faith religious left think tank. 

SO, if you only want a monthly free newsletter, you don’t have to do anything.

If you want to get additional DEI content, HERE is where you can contribute. (This is replacing my patreon; it’s an experiment I hope works well for everyone; we’ll see!)

If you become a “founding subscriber” you’ll get an e-book of “Meditations and Motivations for Anti-Oppression Activists in a (Not Always) Anti-Oppression Workplace!”

And if you refer people to my substack, you can get paid content for free; here’s how!

So that’s the big update on how the newsletter will work moving forward. I hope it ends up serving you well. Feel free to let me know if there’s any particular content you’d like to make sure I cover either here for free or in the paid articles.

Thanks for reading this far! Now for part 2 of 3:

2. Want to send me off to school in style?

I can only take three suitcases to school with me (and as you’re reading this, those suitcases have just made the trip from SFO to BWI so I can have some family time with my mom before school starts in less than two weeks). A friend said, “you know, some people would have fun getting you some “back-to-school” supplies for your new apartment in Philadelphia!” Most of my stuff is staying in Oakland with my roommate while I’m away. If you’d like to get me a few things I’ll need, here are some options!

HERE is my Target Back-to-School Registry! :) I’d be grateful for any items you can afford to send my way (the new address is in the registry) or gift cards so I can buy a few essentials (and study break snacks; are those considered essential?)

I also wouldn’t complain about easy-to-prepare food or homemade food cooked by someone else, so if you get together with a friend or two, I’d love a box from HungryRoot to make simple but healthy and delicious food, or a gift certificate to Shef so I can get homemade food from Philadelphians of all sorts of cultural backgrounds!

And if you aren’t in a position to do any of those things, THAT IS SUPER RELATABLE! A lot of us are struggling to pay bills and support family and I respect how you keep showing up for this work.

Thanks so so much.

And now, FINALLY, the content for this month:

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3. Intent and Impact.

At least eight years ago, I was part of a coalition meeting where we were strategizing around an affordable housing campaign that was driven by low income Black and Brown renters in Oakland. It was hosted by an organization called ACCE, and they invited us to try on their own communication guidelines during the meeting. One of those guidelines was “honor intent.” I loved this. It felt really important. We were all on the same side but not always on the same page, and conversations could get heated really quickly, because we were dealing with issues at the very foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: people need shelter. The folks at ACCE had chosen to give each other the grace of saying “even when you say it wrong, I know you showed up here because you’re invested in me, so we’re going to work it out based on that assumption.”

I was so inspired by that framing that when I was invited to give a presentation to a mostly white, mostly middle class audience on how to have hard conversations about high stakes issues, I taught them what I had learned from ACCE.

And then I realized that had maybe been a mistake. 

“I love that, because people are always jumping down my throat for saying things wrong when they should know I mean well” was an example of the statements that I overheard in small groups later in that session.

So when I think about intent versus impact now, I also pay attention to context.

I open up a lot of workshops, and especially trainings on culture, conflict, and power, by sharing my favorite set of ground rules for multicultural engagement. Some staff from the Oakland Peace Center saw it when they went to a Kingian Nonviolence training at the East Bay Meditation Center and asked if we could incorporate it into the life of the OPC.

Here’s the list. EBMC is a multi-class, multiracial, multi-gender and orientation and disability space. Which means they’ve had lots of experience with navigating multicultural engagement and how hard it can be. 

So one of the agreements in this list is “Understand the Difference Between Intent and Impact.” Interestingly, this is a concept I think corporate ethics trainings were addressing before nonprofit and spiritual communities. Which isn’t to say corporations do it better. Just an observation.

The reason I love EBMC’s guideline is they are often working with people who will only be interacting in this one session, or maybe encountering each other a few times a year. Some people at EBMC are developing deep relationship, but most of us are showing up for a sangha or a sit sporadically, and their guidelines serve us well. 

I attended an online discussion group of an article about decolonizing moral injury work. (Shout out to mentor Rita Nakashima Brock for her powerful work in this arena, from whom I have learned so much.) The woman facilitating our conversation, Kristine Chong, offered another guide for engagement, and the phrase she used that has not left me in two years was this:

“Trust Intent; Name Impact.” 

This group was only coming together once, but we were all people deeply invested in the work of addressing moral injury, so this paradigm was the right one.

I also have a not fully formed thought on how the conversation on intent and impact is showing up in non-profit spaces that I share mostly to generate conversation.

I remember a conversation I had with a staff member once who was incredibly frustrated with me. We went back and forth a lot as I tried to figure out what would help us find our way back into relationship and address the other person’s concerns. Finally something struck me and I took the risk to say it out loud.

“The value of placing impact over intent matters a lot to you,” I said.

“You’re right about that,” the other person said in a tone that conveyed this was the source of their frustration with me.

“But here’s the thing,” I continued. “I’ve tried to do everything you’ve asked me to. I’ve tried to respond to requests and make adjustments in order to honor what you’ve said is needed. My impact has been pretty good. But I don’t think you’ll ever be able to trust my intent, and I think that’s actually what a lot of our conflict is over.”

My colleague took a long pause to consider that. I’m not sure they agreed with me but they were willing to give it some thought.

And I think that’s a tension in social movement spaces a lot more than we realize, especially in spaces where someone has authority of some sort. There are still plenty of situations where leaders want their intent to count for everything. And there are also situations where intent and impact have gotten muddled. I think in the days to come we’re going to have to work on that. And maybe more shared leadership and more shared accountability and responsibility will help us move from that space to ACCE’s space of “honor intent.”

It is important for us to take seriously our impact, and to own it. That shift has been SO IMPORTANT, because sometimes it’s the only tool in the workplace to address the ways privilege shows up…because it’s only some people whose intent we’re supposed to honor, while others are judged only on their impact and not necessarily fairly on that.

And as we build that muscle, let’s pay attention to which version of intent and impact guidelines will serve our group.