Our Culture

In CRCAA, we begin every meeting, workshop, and event with meeting norms. Attendees must agree to abide by these norms when in CRCAA spaces. We do this because CRC teaches us that harm is most often caused in how we treat others. 

In other words: culture eats ideology for breakfast. 

These meeting norms are CRCAA’s organizational culture.

1. “Access is Love.” (thank you Disability Visibility Project!) We know that every person has essential skills, knowledge, resources, and talents to bring to this struggle. For this reason, we strive to make CRCAA spaces as accessible as possible. 
   

2. Sober Space: Given the history of how the State has exploited addictive, mind-altering substances to undermine the struggle for Black self-determination, all CRCAA-led spaces are sober spaces. We ask folks to arrive sober and refrain from bringing drugs or alcohol into the virtual space.
   

3. Respect Each Other: No hate speech, harassment, or abuse will be tolerated in this space. We uphold CRC’s principle that we all have “the right, the duty, and the obligation to claim self defense as a human right.”
   

4. Move Up, Move Back: We ask folks to be mindful of how much space you’re taking up and how much you’re actively participating. If you’ve shared a lot already in the chat, focus on listening. If you haven’t spoken up yet, consider pushing yourself to share some thoughts.
   

5. Practice Education: We honor and respect the knowledge and wisdom of the people who’ve been most directly impacted by white supremacy and anti-Blackness. We assume we all have something to learn from each other as well.
   

6. Practice Organization: Remember that we need each other to win, and we can’t organize people we don’t love.
   

7. Practice Contribution: This is a space to practice contribution over competition and control. We don’t puff ourselves up, we build each other up.
   

8. Practice Intervention: Each of us are responsible for proactively working to prevent and counter the persistent re-establishment of white supremacy. 
   

9. Practice Divestment: White wealth is stolen wealth. Divestment is a healing and restoring practice that benefits us as much as it benefits the folks we divest to. We commit to being transparent about what we have, why we have it, and what we are doing with it.
   

10. Brave Space: We embrace discomfort and principled struggle as pathways to dismantling white supremacy. We are “willing to be transformed in the service of the work.” We know that mistakes are inevitable; growth is always possible.
    

11. Direct feedback is a gift. In CRCAA, we combat liberalism. We put things on the table rather than beat around the bush. We strive for clarity in our communication and value principled, direct feedback and criticism for its relationship-building potential. You can reach us at info@the5methods.org. 
    

12. Speak from your own experience: We’re all here because we are struggling against white supremacy from the structural position of whiteness. We strive to name and own power and privilege dynamics when they surface in our group discussions, and to be transparent and politically conscious about where our experiences come from.