Get What You Need When You Need It

“How do you reimagine the whole thing? It’s the individual and the collective efforts. You have to be grounded as an individual, even if your life is chaos. Even if the systems have made your life chaos. You can remind yourself that ease is a birthright, abundance is a birthright, this earth is a birthright.”

— Sara Gray

Framing my previous post on cultural words

In my last blog post, I shared how I approach the concept of equity and other big “cultural words” like leadership, compassion, and investment as a continuum of conversation, thought, and action. I wanted to offer this context before sharing more from my amazing conversation about equity with one of my dearest friends of 20+ years, Sara Gray, Senior Director of Communications and Marketing at the National Equity Project (NEP). 

My conversation with Sara is part of my birthday equity walk, and you can learn more about my equity walk and how you can participate by reading this blog post. Sara and I discussed the cultural word equity and the many ways that this word translates into action, thought and pursuits both at her organization and as a person practicing equity. You do not have to have listened to the conversation, which you can find on my personal Instagram account, to continue reading and learning. I do recommend reading the first post in this series to help ground my thoughts and takeaways here.

Below is the first round of thoughts and resources from my conversation with Sara.

Sara and I have been friends for over 20 years, 17 of which Sara has spent at the National Equity Project.

Defining equity provides a baseline for our practice of equity

For any of us who feel like the term equity is so big and nuanced to even attempt to articulate, the National Equity Project, where Sara Gray has spent the last 17 years of her career, offers up a definition to ground us. Their definition establishes a common baseline to begin to build our equity practice, or to bring into our practice should we already be on the journey. A baseline allows us to cross-check our actions, our thoughts, and our work, and though the practice of equity is not linear in motion, the baseline definition provides a reference point to check our progress.

The National Equity Project defines educational equity as "every child receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential." Sara expanded this notion of equity more broadly and it is this definition that we came back to throughout our conversation: equity is the ability to get what you need when you need it.

I invite you to pause and think about this statement with me for a moment. How do you feel reading this definition? What comes to your mind at first glance? What questions do you have? Where do you agree or disagree with this definition and why? I encourage you to give plenty of space to consider this definition as you read through this post.

Who advocates for what we need when we are young?

Sara noted that within this definition, the concept of getting what you need when you need it plays around in her mind a lot, especially as the mother to two young and incredible children. Sara asked us all to look back at when we were very young: how did someone even know that we needed something? In order for someone to know that we need anything at all in the first place, Sara emphasized that “you have to be known, you have to be cared for in order for someone to know you are NOT getting what you need in this world.”

Sara reflected on her opportunity to participate in the Gifted and Talented program throughout her public school education. The Gifted and Talented program drew from a place of excellence that should be the standard for everyone. Imagine if we all pulled whatever resources it took for excellence to be the standard for every single child. Sara spoke about how all students deserve to have their interests encouraged and cultivated the way her’s were as a child. At the same time, Sara reminded us that parents who want their children to have this kind of education are fighting for that, but the system we’ve designed allows for their needs to stay unmet because of their zip code.

Much like we took a moment to pause to consider the definition of equity, I would like us all to take a collective moment to take note of our first reactions when we bring up the notion that all children deserve excellence in their educational experience as a practice in and articulation of equity. How do you feel?

For me, when I think about educational excellence as a standard, I return to the definition of love by M. Scott Peck as noted by bell hooks in their 2001 book All About Love: love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is an act of will — namely both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” When we meet the requests of all the parents whose children are not receiving the kind of educational experience they deserve and that they are asking for, then we are all in love, and we are choosing love. We are ensuring we all get what we need when we need it.

I encourage everyone to become familiar with the National Equity Project (NEP). There are resources and tools for everyone, including tools to support the healing process of adults. NEP provides tools for us to learn to take a breath, and to examine our own systems so that we can see what is causing harm, even if that harm might be benign. We all deserve the space to examine our harm if for no other reason so that we do not keep incorporating it into how we are present or our future.

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Resources Part I

Throughout our flowing conversation, Sara and I mentioned many books that we turn to in our practice of equity. By learning from others who write about equity, love, systems change, hope, and design, we practice equity. Of the resources listed below, which have you heard of before? Did any of these resources make it onto your reading or “to research” list?

• All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

• The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity & Love by bell hooks

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer 

  • This book is on my home library shelf, but I have yet to read this. Sara noted this book is about re-indigenizing our land. If the concept of re-indigenizing our land is new to you, or if you are interested in learning more, this is a great opportunity to subscribe to podcasts, newsletters and profiles created by our indignenous communities. I always suggest The Red Nation as a starting point.

  • Sara noted that in Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer stresses that capitalism works best within a scarcity mindset. We live within a normalized mindset that teaches us to fear that there is not enough for everyone, regardless of whether there is actually enough or not. When we act from a place of fear to get what we believe we deserve, how does that shape our thoughts? How does that shape our actions? From another perspective, when we begin to understand there is more than enough and then some for everyone, we can let go of that scarcity mindset.

  • In her practice to challenge the scarcity mindset, Sara reminds herself and her socioeconomic peers: you will have what you need, but it might mean you don’t have exactly everything you had before when we begin to think and act from a place of abundance. When beginning to practice the mindset that you will and do have everything you need, at first it might feel like something is being taken away from us as we reset. An abundance mindset means things cannot be exactly as they were before, and we probably really liked what we had before. We’ve been taught to act against anything being taken away from us. The practice of the abundance mindset asks us to really slow down and challenge ourselves to ask, is there something that is truly being taken away from me, or is this just different? There could be something that you like that just isn't good for the earth, or isn’t good for others around you. Sara encourages us to slow down and interrogate these things.

• Sonya Renee Taylor is the Founder and Radical Executive Officer of The Body is Not An Apology and an award-winning poet, activist, author and leader. Sonya reminds us that “normal never was”. When we think about coming out on the other side of the pandemic, what does that look like? The racial unrest that so many of us have felt our whole lives, or the status quo that was harmful, never felt normal to us, but to the “dominant caste,” as Isabel Wilkerson notes, it felt quite normal. As we decide what “normal” looks like, we have an opportunity to include more voices and perspectives to center those our system design has harmed and ignored.

• Nikole Hannah Jones is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and recently filled the newly created Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University. In any equity journey, I believe that becoming familiar with the work of Nikole Hannah Jones is critical. In her own words on her website, Jones says, "I see my work as forcing us to confront our hypocrisy, forcing us to confront the truth that we would rather ignore.”

• Paid Leave for All is a national nonprofit that is fighting to ensure that all of us can take time off from work when we need to take care of ourselves, our children, our parents or others we are responsible for without fear of losing wages. Personally, for years I worked shift positions and had low-paying work, and taking time off for being under the weather seemed like a luxury. The struggle, stress, and hardship lived each day by anyone who has to go to work or face zero dollars in their wallet is real. I can attest to that, and it brings me back to our definition of equity that I want to be a reality for everyone: may you get what you need, when you need it.

I hope you found this first set of resources thought-provoking, helpful, and maybe even a little challenging. I am inspired by Sara who challenges her own thoughts about system designs and does the work to consider how we can truly shift to an abundance mindset.

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I have one more blog post planned that will wrap up my conversation with Sara. In the meantime, a reminder that this set of content is a complement to my Birthday Equity Walk. The purpose of this content is to share more about equity and I want to tie that back directly to Food Recovery Network. My goal is to activate enough monthly donors to get to $1,000 / month in recurring donations, which will help underwrite part of FRN’s employer-paid health insurance costs. You can learn more about my Birthday Equity Walk by reading my LinkedIn article.

With love,

Regina

PS. I want to leave everyone with the imagery that Sara discussed within the concept of Freedom Dreaming (my next blog post will share more). Sara brought into the conversation the work of her incredible colleague at NEP, Brittnee Meitzenheimer, and recommended reading a blog post Brittnee wrote on the topic of Freedom Dreaming. Brittnee’s thoughts led Sara to share the following: “A world full of ease, a world full of easeful things. And you know what easeful is because you know when you feel it, and you know when you don’t feel it. Everyone deserves an easeful life- not an easy life, but we deserve a system that allows things to function with ease.”

Food Recovery Network's solutions to feeding those in need includes food recovery AND systems change

As part of our systems change work, Food Recovery Network advocates for policies that will support the economic security of the 42 million people who are currently food insecure. We also understand that the underlying causes that enforce such vast economic disparities affect our student leaders, who lead the charge to recover food in their communities and support their neighbors. FRN’s strategic framework guides our method for FRN to contribute our unique offerings to fight for the intertwined economic and food security of these 42 million people. 

Two years ago, we publicly announced our strategic framework, FRN10X, to help us achieve our goal to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US. Within this framework, FRN continues the foundational work our student leaders, alumni, and dedicated stakeholders have done since our founding in 2011: recovering surplus precious food and donating it to those who are food insecure and hungry. This is our bedrock work and reflects our deep commitment to ensuring that all people, including current higher education students, have access to the food that they deserve. We know that we’re successful in accomplishing our bedrock work when we’re contributing to the reduction of the 26 million tons of surplus food produced annually in the commercial and institutional sectors - think food from farm fields, grocery stores, corporate dining halls, and higher education dining halls.

While we continue our bedrock work, through our newly focused systems change work FRN is working to reduce the number of people in the US who are food insecure to zero. We’ll know that we’re successfully contributing to this work when the 42 million people who are currently food insecure achieve economic security. When people are economically secure, they can obtain the basic necessities to live like food, shelter, healthcare, and education. To reduce the number of people who are food insecure, FRN engages in strategies outside of recovering surplus food. We’re focusing on these efforts because we know that access to food, while a basic human right that we continue to fight for, does not necessarily support a person’s overall economic security.

FRN is engaging in systems change work because of the potential to directly impact our student leaders and alumni today and in the future. Our systems change work involves interrogating our existing systems for elements rooted in racism, inequality, sexism and other structures that build into the system the very disparities we are constantly trying to solve for at FRN. I have said it a thousand times: 42 million people are not food insecure because they have simply consistently made bad decisions with their money or their lives. The myth that people are struggling or are poor because of their own moral failing or unwillingness to work hard has been told for as long as the US has existed and it is so old, many of us don’t even consider the myth’s origins. Many of us also believe that myth, especially when we believe we have seen examples that justify it.

Forty-two million people are food insecure because their wages have been suppressed, because many of us carry medical debt due to lack of adequate and affordable health insurance, because of lack of access to actual healthcare, and because for many, the leap to advancement to obtain better paying jobs through higher education has saddled us with crippling student debt. And we see time and again that people of color are disproportionately affected by these factors.

Two areas of our systems change work that are part of the path to fighting for economic security, and that specifically affect our student leaders, are an increased minimum wage and the examination of affordable higher education. When students graduate, they can carry student debt that stays with them and their families for generations. While pursuing their degrees, students also work hourly wage jobs, and after graduating often take jobs that pay by the hour. The current federal minimum wage is low enough that it contributes significantly to the economic insecurity of our students.

As we dive deeper into our systems change work, we will continue to have conversations about our work and approach and invite you all to be in conversation with us. We’ll also continue to highlight our powerful partners who are working to ensure the economic security of those who are food insecure and will put forward actionable steps for all of us to take to redesign a system that supports all of us.

Resources to learn more about our systems change work

• Read my recent blog post where I talk more about FRN’s commitment to the fight for $15 campaign. FRN is committed to supporting an increase in the federal minimum wage because our students work in jobs that pay hourly rates and will graduate and enter into a workforce that also offers a suppressed hourly rate. The current minimum wage is a system that prevents so many from achieving economic and food security.

• The image below is our Results Count Framework, FRN10X. To learn more about this framework and how we use it, go to Roundtable Talks to watch any of the public conversations we’ve had about FRN10X. If you have questions about the framework, please be in touch directly with us, and look out for our next Roundtable Talk in late summer 2022.

Framing Cultural Words as Actionable Pursuits

When we are talking about equity, it can be fun, it can be with love and “it has to be [done with all of these things], otherwise, it’s not.” — Sara Gray

I love to talk about words that encompass big cultural pursuits. Words like compassion, leadership, investment. These are words that deserve deep consideration, conversation, and activation to fully understand the pursuits they stand in for. We also need to consider their context in the past, present and future, because when you “freeze frame”, as I like to say, on any one moment, chances are high that you’ll miss their full texture and meaning.   

Recently I created an entire campaign around another “big” word, equity. I wanted to spend time exploring the word equity and how its meaning encompasses the pursuit of equity. What does equity look like, and what does it sound like? How do we do equity? Can partial equity be achieved, and can equity exist in the presence of inequitable activities? The list of questions goes on and on, and this campaign was an opportunity to dive into these questions and to build my own practice of equity.

To further my practice, in early January I spoke with Sara Gray, Senior Director of Communications and Marketing at the National Equity Project, on Instagram Live. For the past 17 years Sara has worked at a national nonprofit whose mission is to support systemic change to increase the capacity of people to achieve thriving, self-determining, educated, and just communities. It felt like a great practice point to dig into the term equity - as a verb, a noun, a practice, a state of being - with Sara.

It’s an understatement to say Sara dropped an immense amount of knowledge for us all during the conversation. I was so touched by the conversation because of the deep thinking and care present that is so clearly habitual to Sara. I was moved to seek out the resources Sara mentioned as part of my own continuous learning, and I went back through the conversation to list the resources for all of us. I’ll share these in my next blog post, and I hope these spark inspiration and action for you as it did for me.

Before you read the next post with our resources, I have FOUR asks of you:

1. Share with me what struck you about my conversation with Sara. You can find the recording here on my personal IG!

2. Consider becoming a recurring monthly donor to Food Recovery Network. The conversation with Sara is part of a series of conversations I’m hosting about equity to underscore my pursuit to activate enough monthly donors for FRN to reach $1,000 per month in recurring donations. This would be used to help underwrite a portion of FRN’s employer paid health insurance costs. You can learn more about my Birthday Equity Walk by reading my linkedin article.

3. Become familiar with the National Equity Project. I am hopeful to have a second conversation with Sara on FRN’s platform later this year.

4. At the start of this post I wondered, how do we talk about words that represent big cultural pursuits? How do you talk about these words? How do you make these words into actionable pursuits? I think about this work of activation as a practice, and one way to talk about these big cultural words is, with and in love, to just start.

I would like to end with the definition of love that I read in bell hooks’ 2001 book All About Love, taken from M. Scott Peck: love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is an act of will—namely both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”

With love,

Regina

FRN and the Poor People’s Campaign: a powerful partnership working towards economic security

Result: recover food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US

FRN’s strategic framework has one singular result: to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US. There are many unique contributions FRN is working toward to achieve ending enduring hunger as we know it in the US. One of two indicators that we aim to achieve to reach this result is to ensure the economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure in the US. 

If you’ve attended any of the Roundtable Talks hosted by FRN this program year or even skimmed our email updates, you know about our framework that we’re calling FRN10X. If this sounds unfamiliar or new to you, I encourage you to look through our Roundtable Talks webpage and to sign up for our newsletter because there is a role for each of you in the movement to recover food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US.

Strategy to achieve result: Powerful Partnerships

We have three strategies to achieve our indicators and our ultimate result, one of which is to develop powerful partnerships to help grow our network from 4,000 to 40,000 people in the next 10 years. Please consider this your formal invitation to be part of this movement. We know that including more people in our work through powerful partnerships will expedite our work to get more precious food into communities experiencing food insecurity. 

Time and again we have seen that when FRN fosters and engages relationships with other organizations, the resulting partnership helps us accomplish our goals faster and with a greater impact than we would have accomplished on our own. Here I want to highlight a new powerful partnership that FRN developed with the Poor People’s Campaign this year.

Indicator to achieve result: economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure

Though we partner with the Poor People’s Campaign at the national state levels, I want to discuss our national partnership here. To achieve the systems-level change of ensuring the economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure in the US, we need to first understand the reasons why so many millions of people are struggling to the point where they do not have consistent access to the food they and their families deserve. We especially need to understand why, when we know that more than 12% of the entire US population does not have enough food to eat, we continue to allow this to happen.

At a policy level, when we understand how policies allow or encourage people to go hungry, we can change those policies so this is no longer allowed to happen. This is how we came to partner with the Poor People’s Campaign to push for policy change that improves the economic security of poor people in the US, many of whom are food insecure.

Fostering a Powerful Partnership with The Poor People’s Campaign

This year the Poor People’s Campaign Policy Director Shailly Barnes joined me as a guest speaker for a conversation I hosted about community disinvestment. At the national level, Shailly discussed what we can all do from a policy perspective to ensure the economic security of the millions of people who are working so hard each and every day, but who do not have the resources to acquire the food they deserve consistently. Shailly talked about permanently implementing the child tax credit that for a short period of time lifted many children out of poverty. She also noted that making the earned income tax credit permanent would significantly support working families. I agree with her and I encourage all of you to learn more about the particular fights to make these two tax credits permanent.

FRN partners with the Poor People’s Campaign on another proposed policy change that we believe will help ensure the economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure: the fight to adopt a federal level $15 per hour minimum wage.

FRN is joining the “Fight for $15”

FRN has joined the “fight for $15”, which seeks to update the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour. We’re joining this critical push to support fair wages for hourly workers because our network is composed of young people, current students and alumni, dining staff, and farm workers alike, who are often working hourly wage positions and deserve a fair wage for their work. We need to be sure their time is compensated fairly so they can pay for their rent or mortgage, food, transportation, education, and other basic life necessities. There are millions of people working multiple jobs in the US for a federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Our neighbors and loved ones working hourly for $7.25 per hour have children, they have elderly parents they’re taking care of, they have hopes and dreams that further education can support them to achieve. However, they will not begin to advance upon those dreams, let alone have consistent access to food and housing while stuck in the rut of poverty and being working poor that $7.25 per hour almost certainly ensures. Morally, we have an obligation to stop this crisis of continuing to hold so many people back, including the many incredible people that the food FRN donates feeds every single day.

I will continue to talk more about the fight for $15 that FRN has joined in future blogs, so that we can share more of the details about what a federal minimum wage increase like this can mean. In the meantime, I wrote this blog post with more information and action steps that came from my conversation with Shailly Barnes and others dedicated to ensuring our communities thrive. This is a good place to start learning about the struggles of so many people in our very neighborhoods who are working hard every single day to get by.

Another resource I want to share is a report written by Shailly Barnes, along with Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, Josh Bivens, Krista Fairies, Thea M. Lee and Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis produced in collaboration with The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The report first appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of American Educator and I picked it up when it appeared in The Economic Policy Institute website. The report is called “Moral Policy = Good Policy: Lifting up poor and working-class people — and our whole economy.” The report reminds us, and asks us to consider, that “this inequality in the United States did not happen suddenly and cannot be explained as the consequence of individual failures; rather, decades of public policies brought us to this point, making the rich richer at the expense of everybody else. When we fail to meet basic needs for food, housing, and health care for everyone, when we fail to invest in education, safe communities, and fair elections, the health and well-being of our entire nation is compromised.”

Lastly, I hope you can sign your name to the pledge to fight for $15, and join our newsletter to stay updated on this topic, FRN10X and our work to feed more people, faster. As always, I hope you will share your thoughts with us, too.