Inclusivity Statement, Resources & Action Items
Structural Equity is a complex combination of interrelated elements consciously designed to create, support and sustain social justice. It is a dynamic process that reinforces and replicates equitable ideas, power, resources, strategies, conditions, habits and outcomes.
~Annie E Casey Foundation
At ICADV we continue to reflect on our responsibility to address systemic racism, and to promote racial justice within our work. As we observe the one year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin and mourn all of the people of color who have been killed by police violence in communities across the country in the days since, ICADV is releasing our organizational equity statement describing our commitment to racial justice, and our organizational equity plan—a blueprint that outlines the actions that we will take within our organization, and with our stakeholders to honor and embody that commitment.
We believe that to be effective, efforts to move power and to center equity must be undertaken with transparency. We are sharing these documents so that our stakeholders will understand our commitment, can join us in this work, and can help keep us accountable to it.
Equity Statement 2021
The Board of Directors and staff of the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence celebrates diversity and are committed to cultivating an organizational culture of inclusivity and belonging for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, religion, zip code, nationality, immigration status, health, intellectual or physical ability status.
We believe this commitment requires critical evaluation of our policies, procedures, practices, strategies and norms to ensure that we actively work to rectify our historically exclusive foundation and advance the needs of communities that have been marginalized. This is only achievable when the needs, voices, leadership, and experiences of traditionally marginalized communities are included and valued. We will work to ensure our board, committees, and personnel are more representative of the diversity of the survivors and communities we serve. Our commitment extends to transforming the narrative that we endorse when providing leadership and guidance to stakeholders. We are dedicated to transforming the communities that we serve by redressing the inequitable distribution of power, resources and respect for the groups and individuals that have been traditionally marginalized in Indiana. We understand that ending historic anti-black racism includes dismantling the white supremacist systems and legacies that exist in our country and investing in and uplifting the leadership of all people who have been marginalized by those systems. We commit to creating space and prioritizing time and resources to allow for emergent leadership among people who have been marginalized by supporting their self-care, personal and professional growth, and development.
We believe that to achieve our mission of preventing and eliminating violence we must also use our influence to end oppression. We challenge ourselves to embrace innovation as we work to end systemic oppression and look towards creating thriving, supported communities. We commit to doing our work with transparency and invite our communities and stakeholders to hold us in accountability. The organizational equity plan adopted by the Coalition’s board of directors describes concrete action steps that we will take across all areas of operation to enact our commitment. We know that undoing these structures and creating true equity in opportunity will take time and we are committed to being part of the change, within ourselves, our Coalition, our communities, and the state of Indiana.
Click here to link to our Equity Organizational Plan
Click here to link to our 2022 Equity Report
Click here for our 2021 Equity Statement
bit.ly/ANTIRACISMRESOURCES: This document is intended to serve as a resource to white people and parents to deepen our anti-racism work. If you haven’t engaged in anti-racism work in the past, start now. Feel free to circulate this document on social media and with your friends, family, and colleagues.
RACIAL EQUITY READING LIST
FROM THE BARNARD CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON WOMEN
26 Ways to Be in the Struggle Beyond the Streets
Resources and reading lists
- Study this policing timeline from Critical Resistance
- Use the Prison Culture essential reading list from Mariame Kaba
- Visit Transforming Harm, a resource hub about ending violence created by Mariame Kaba
- Use this syllabus, Institutionalized Racism: Understanding George Floyd’s Death in Context from JSTOR
Recommended Books
- Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture by Angela Davis
- Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis
- Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter edited by Christina Heatherton and Jordan T. Camp
- Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Colorby Andrea J. Ritchie
- The End of Policing by Alex Vitale, free e-book available from Verso
- From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation by Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor
- More on policing and incarceration from Haymarket Books
Audio and Video
Watch/Listen to “A Class Rebellion: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on How Racism & Racial Terrorism Fueled Nationwide Anger,” Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor on Democracy Now! 6/1/20
FROM THE DESMOND TUTU PEACE LAB AT BUTLER UNIVERSITY:
The New York Time 1619 Project is an important intervention and corrective to the US history you may have been taught, as noted by Jake Silverstein the in the introductory essay: “Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/20/magazine/1619-intro.html
If your time is short, start with Nikole Hannah-Jones, “The Idea of America.” You can read all of the different essays that are part of the 1619 Project here:
The Idea of America, by Nikole Hannah-Jones
Capitalism, by Matthew Desmond
A Broken Health Care System, by Jeneen Interlandi
Traffic, by Kevin M. Kruse
Undemocratic Democracy, by Jamelle Bouie
Medical Inequality, by Linda Villarosa
American Popular Music, by Wesley Morris
Sugar, by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Mass Incarceration, by Bryan Stevenson
The Wealth Gap, by Trymaine Lee
Hope, a Photo Essay, by Djeneba Aduayom
400 Years: A Literary Timeline
See also:
Erica Buddington on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/ericabuddington/status/1266531249914601472
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Prescriptions for what we can do to change policing practices here: “New Era of Public Safety. An Advocacy Toolkit For Fair Safe and Effective Community Policing:
https://www.obama.org/wp-content/uploads/Toolkit.pdf
There are also many antiracism resources here: https://www.obama.org/anguish-and-action/
Quick reads/viewing that contextualize, document, humanize the current situation include:
Ibram X. Kendi, “The American Nightmare”, June 1, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-nightmare/612457/
An article from Gen-Zine that was written by BLM youth activist Abeer Tijani. It is powerful testimony: https://www.gen-zine.com/post/your-silence-aids-and-abets-violent-oppression
A wealth of facts and statistics on disproportionality are provided this piece by Brian Resnick, “Police Brutality is a Public Health Crisis”, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/6/1/21276828/pandemic-protests-police-public-health-black-lives-matter
Mark Greif, “Seeing Through The Police”, https://nplusonemag.com/issue-22/police/seeing-through-police/
Watch: “Before You Call The Cops” The Tyler Merritt Project/Now This. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKeITMzMn7w
Watch: “Get Your Knee Off My Neck”, Jenifer Lewis’s spoken word poem in honor of George Floyd, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV-5ff1dyos
Books:
- Charlene A. Carruthers, Unapologetic: a Black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements (Beacon Press: 2018).
- Mathew Desmond, Evicted. Poverty and Property in the American City (Broadway: 2017).
- Ibram X Kendi, Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Bold Type Book: 2017)
- Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele. When they call you a terrorist : a black lives matter memoir (St. Martin’s Press: 2018).
- Ijeoma Oluo, So you want to talk about race (Seal Press: 2018)
- Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press: 2014)
- Barbara Ransby. Making all Black lives matter: reimagining freedom in the twenty-first century (University of California Press: 2018).
- Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Liverright: 2018)
- Bryan J. Stephenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (One World: 2015)
- Ujima: The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community
- Black Lives Matter
- Wherever you are, you can connect with the local Black Lives Matter chapters;
- In Indianapolis, see Indy10 Black Lives Matter
- IndySURJ: Showing up for Racial Justice
- To find your chapter in other areas go to the national organization website: https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/
- The National Bail Fund Network by State: https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/nbfn-directory
- For Indiana: https://bailproject.org (This is the option for donation recommended by Indy 10 Black Lives Matter)
- Campaign Zero