How to Be an Ally 101

Goals

• Tangible list of practices
• Leveraging privilege
• More POC & Women — less "white dudey"
• Combating our structural privilege as web devs
• Leveraging nerdiness
• Remember why we're doing this and who for
• What does it mean to be a community-based business
• Figuring out how to do philanthropy
• Going beyond "social responsible" and "green"
• People who say "media justice" not necessarily "social justice"
• How to involve w/o tokenizing
• Serving social justice orgs vs BEING a social justice org
• Not being "monied outsiders"
• Being an ally

Discussion

• Earning money and providing jobs. How is it a social justice act?
• Working with things as they are rather than how you think they should be
• "There is no clean money"
• How do you know that you are really serving the goals of people you're working for / with
• This comes up a lot around pricing and estimating
• Sustainability of service provider
• Where money comes from to pay us makes a big difference. If it's a big foundation or donors.
  • Am I removing money from the community? Am I being neutral? Am I putting value into a community?
• What does it mean to be a true partner with an organization?
• How do you measure whether you are adding value?
• Gentrifying issues
• Declaration of intention rather than just anti- discrimination / racism / etc
• Actually listening enough to know what an organizations core goals are and evaluating a project against that instead us simply a single projects goals
• It is possible to make change

Practices

• Don't bury your head in the sand about how much people are paying you. What value are you giving them? Is it worth it for them?
• Acknowledge power dynamics
• These are the things beyond financial interest that we care about when dealing with clients
• Ask questions even if they make you uncomfortable

Report Back

• Remember why we're doing this and who for
• Serving social justice orgs vs BEING a social justice org
• Combating our structural privilege as web devs
  • Am I removing money from a community? Am I being neutral? Am I putting value into a community?
  • How else to measure effectiveness
• Actually listening enough to know what an organizations core goals are and evaluating a project against that instead us simply a single projects goals