VALU CO-OP’s Commitment to Anti-Racism
As an organization whose membership includes people of many different racial identities each of us is feeling the weight of white supremacy, racist violence, and police brutality in different ways. Some of us have needed space for self-care, and to care for our loved ones. Some of us need to put in the time to educate ourselves, our families, and friends. All of us need to stand against white supremacy, racism, and police brutality in measurable, actionable ways. We have taken the past few weeks to consider how to best support one another, and how to actively work to tear down systemic racism; knowing that this work is ongoing, and that we must continually work to undo white supremacy within our decision making processes as our organization grows.
The following VALUes come to mind as we navigate this moment:
#11— In our mission to end neoliberal, colonial, and capitalist exploitation, we take an intersectional approach. We work to dismantle systems of oppression including white supremacy, cis-hetero-patriarchy, and ableism.
#8— We have an ethical responsibility to share resources, redistribute power, and use our artistic practice to serve our communities.
#4— We strive to be connected and accountable to ourselves and our communities, through challenging injustice by embodying self-reflection, patience, and flexibility.
#5— We celebrate and draw strength from our differences.
VALU CO-OP was founded upon anti-racist, anti-oppression values. When we incorporated, we founded our constitution on a minimum of 50% Indigenous, Black, People of Colour (IBPOC) representation within our membership base, and on our Board of Directors.
The leadership that our IBPOC members bring to our organization is invaluable, and strengthens the work that we seek to cultivate. We also recognize that dealing with issues of race is labour for IBPOC members, and as an organization we compensate this work as paid labour. We are sharing this information because we believe that in claiming to stand in solidarity with IBPOC communities, we must continually interrogate white supremacy in our own organization, and strive to find ways to undo systemic racism, by also supporting our IBPOC members' labour.
We recognize that white supremacy is the dominant social structure under which we live and work. By centering IBPOC voices and leadership at the core of our decision-making processes, we hope to contribute to the long process of dismantling it.
Worker co-operatives are a strategy of survival under neoliberal capitalism. They require the active participation of their members to make democratic decisions together, destabilizing hierarchies and oppressive systems from within. By the nature of our organization’s structure, we are working to hold space, to speak out, to listen, and to continually work to upend white supremacy and all forms of oppression. Have we gotten it right every time? No. Do we have more to learn? Always.
To that end, we continuously reach toward a greater understanding with generosity and accountability to ourselves, our members, and our community. The most important thing we feel we can do is to leverage our position and our resources to fight the injustices that colonial, neoliberal capitalist dominance inflicts on our world.
VALU has made the following commitments moving forward:
Implementing a training program to help current and future white members of VALU CO-OP to unlearn white supremacy and anti-Black racism.
Non-Black and Non-Indigenous POC co-op members have formed a caucus to work on anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism within our organization and our communities.
Revisiting our Group Agreement before each General Assembly meeting, ensuring that implicit biases and expectations are made explicit as we navigate decision-making in an intersectional, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive way.
In recognizing that the labour of community outreach to racialized communities disproportionately falls on IBPOC folks, we commit to greater participation of our white members in our Community Projects working group, ensuring that the onus of responsibility for community accountability and engagement is not being carried disproportionately by VALU CO-OP’s IBPOC members.
Leveraging our production model to support mutual aid efforts on a permanent, continual basis. This includes offering our skills and resources to groups and organizations doing the work in defunding the VPD and RCMP, supporting Black and Indigenous people, and dismantling white supremacy within our community. If you would like to know more about what we’re offering in this regard, please take a look at our Services Page, and/or reach out at info@valucoop.ca
