 Welcome everyone. Thank you everyone for joining us. I am Dr. Michelle Villagran, San Jose State University Diversity Committee chair, and we welcome you to our next webinar in our 2020 diversity webinar series for our San Jose State University faculty, staff, students, alumni, and San Jose State University affiliates. This is our sixth webinar within our eight part series, and it is the second one for fall 2020. All of our presenters are sharing content around diverse topics which align with the goals of inclusive excellence, diversity, equity, and inclusion around topics relevant to the iSchool. You'll be able to find a full list of our upcoming sessions, topics, our presenters, and even the recordings of past presentations on our website. We also have them available as podcasts and on our YouTube page as a diversity playlist so you can see all of the diversity series in a playlist. So with that, let me introduce our speaker for today. Today's session is Beyond Platitudes, making EDI actionable. I want to welcome Mamosa Shah. Mamosa Shah is with the Skokie Public Library in Illinois, and she is an adult program coordinator. So with that, Mamosa, I'm going to turn it over to you. Good afternoon, or I should say good morning to you on the West Coast. Many thanks to the San Jose State University iSchool and to Dr. Villagran for inviting me to speak with you. My name is Mamosa Shah, and I'm a library worker, and I currently reside just north of Chicago, Illinois. As the adult program coordinator at Skokie Public Library, I develop, manage, and evaluate public events for adults in our community. And starting in late August, I also began coursework towards a master's degree in library and information sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign iSchool. So full disclosure, I am learning and growing alongside all of you as well. Since mid-March, the library reduced and then later reintroduced services in response to the outbreak of COVID-19. And so the nature of my work has changed. I continue to collaborate with wonderful colleagues virtually as we create online experiences to learn, connect, and support each other during this challenging time. So I just wanted to take a few minutes to acknowledge the land that we are upon and the forced removal of Indigenous groups. I currently reside upon land that at one time was and may be occupied by the following Indigenous groups, the Kikapui, the Peoria, the Potawatomi, the Miami, the Oceti Sakawan. Chicago is of course home to a large urban Indian population. And there are organizations that are Native run and led that I should acknowledge here, such as the American Indian Center of Chicago and the Center for Native and Indigenous Research, which is housed at Northwestern University. Of course, what I mentioned earlier does not get to the full extent of forced removal. And indeed many of the folks I've mentioned here are flourishing self-governing people in Oklahoma and the Plain States today. I recognize the unique privileges I personally enjoy due to colonialism. And note that my presence here is partly due to the removal of these groups. And I cite this acknowledgement of land and forced removal because in this presentation and throughout my work, I'm trying to recognize both past and present people. So I just wanted to take one moment to acknowledge to that the map is incomplete. It's crowdsourced and broadly researched. Such maps are just a starting point. And the source I'm using to identify this is really in the process of trying to inspire us to ask questions and to think about how we can connect more directly with local Indigenous organizations and elders. Some questions I'd like to address and keep in mind as well are, what am I or my organization doing today beyond this acknowledgement to understand Indigenous issues in my region? What can I do to further learn about and incorporate an understanding of the ongoing violence and trauma that lies at the heart of colonialism? And if Native voices, experiences, and perspectives are not represented among our organization's board or staff, let's consider why not. So today, we will be discussing parts of my particular institution's story. I will discuss how to create an equity, diversity, and inclusion committee. And drafting a committee charge statement, developing and setting goals based on organization-wide feedback, as well as ways to strategize how to continue learning on equity, diversity, and inclusion topics. You'll notice that I don't specifically mention accessibility here, although the library has an accessibility specialist on staff. It is indeed critical to think of how to integrate accessibility as well as EDI issues across departments so that we're not consistently siloed. And it is interesting to me that we have not yet renamed our committee to incorporate accessibility in the acronym, but we continue to keep abreast of that and understand how to be better about it. So thank you. So a few words about who I am. The image on this slide portrays a brown-skinned woman with blue and black hair standing in a room of plants, full of them, and wearing a red cardigan over a black dress. For this presentation, I will be using visual descriptions for any slides so that I can be more accessible to those reviewing the presentation on a device without video capabilities or anyone experiencing low vision. I am a first-generation immigrant settler of South Asian descent. I am an able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual woman from a middle class and uppercast background. My pronouns are she, her, and hers. And it's important for me to do this, to share with you who I am because I would like to identify the position from which I speak. My position indicates certain power that I hold, and part of the work is acknowledging how this power can contribute to pressure that I knowingly or unconsciously benefit from. The reason I am so invested and believe in doing this work is because I believe in working towards equitable, just, and inclusive spaces. It aligns with my personal values of justice and transformation. And in order to continue being this effective co-conspirator, I certainly need to recognize my privilege and reflect upon the ways I may or may not use that privilege. So who are we? The Skokie Public Library was built in the 1950s, this building, and debuted in 1960. This image that you see on the slide is of the library's east side, and it features mid-century architecture with some additions that were made in the 1970s and 1990s. The building is currently undergoing a major renovation, so the interior of the building is in the process of being made more accessible and responsive to community needs. Who are we and where we sit within this ecosystem of institutions working on diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion? Here's a few initial facts about our organization. We serve a suburb of 65,000 residents. We have a staff of approximately 160, many of whom are part-timers. We, according to the most recent Census Bureau statistics, have an immediate service population where 41% of those residing are foreign-born. And nearly 79 different languages are spoken throughout our community. We also continue to partner with organizations like the YWCA, our various school districts, and a national professional development organization known as SEED, to help develop and nurture community leaders in their understanding and their support of and strategizing around equity work. Public libraries like ours are vital for the cultivation of learning, curiosity, and growth for all ages, for people of all backgrounds. But how can these spaces be equitable and accessible when they haven't been historically? So what do we mean by equity and inclusion? Our strategic plan articulates that we are working on behalf of an inclusive community. It's one in which people actively seek to better understand themselves and others. Equity is a state for quality of being impartial or fair, and it's a recognition that in the North American context there are distinct socio-historical reasons for why injustice, specifically against black and indigenous persons, continues to exist today. This image shows people of different ages and backgrounds. They're exchanging markers and drawing at tables as part of a public event. In the background, there's a woman using her mobile phone to take a photo of a man with his drawing. I selected this image because the definitions I talked about just a few seconds ago don't really get to the heart of what inclusion and equity are about. It's about being seen, about being heard, it's about being able to take the tools and tell your own story on your own terms. So with that, I just wanted to ask briefly what accessibility, equity, and inclusion oversight do you have at your workplace? Do you have any task forces or committees? And feel free to add them to the chat box. So in response to your question, we have a DI Council at the college where I work. I'm working on creating a community of practice for EDI. I will also be forming a committee too. Thank you so much for doing that, Dr. Villagran. So going back to that, I love that there are so many efforts and different kinds of efforts being made at organizations. The kinds of efforts that make sense within the parameters of each organization's staffing, budget, and their particular communities in which they reside and work with. Those are things that are also, will also have a major impact on whether or not and how you determine to orchestrate and work towards equity and inclusion and accessibility in your particular spaces. So moving on, what is an EDI committee? So EDI in our lexicon here is abbreviate form for equity diversity inclusion. I've mentioned before, and I'll say it again, that it can and should work closely with accessibility, which is missing in our institutional acronym, but is referenced and consulted often in our work. In this particular image, there is a man who is actually our library's director, Richard Kong, and a woman holding up sides at State Stokey welcomes everyone and be nice to each other, treat others equally. And they are doing this demonstration while standing in front of the library, which documents the library's participation in a community wide anti racism effort with our local by WCA chapter. So forming an EDI committee. In this image, you will see a group of people of different ages, races, ethnicities, walking through the doors of an auditorium at the library, following a US citizenship ceremony. Stokey's immediate and surrounding service areas are comprised of people from all walks of life and all abilities. And as library workers, it is both our honor and our responsibility to understand and address their experiences. So what led to the formation of our committee? It started at the library in fall 2015 where staff from different departments convened to discuss and respond to macro and micro aggressions that they had either experienced from other patrons or staff. We agree that experiences of oppression due to racism and or other parts of identity do not belong in our community, let alone the library. Diversity and equity are fundamental values of librarianship, and that extends throughout our institution and how we work with our partners. So a little bit about cultural humility and why it matters and how an EDI committee can help steward the growth of it. In the book, Information Services to Diverse Populations, Developing Culturally Competent Library Professionals, Dr. Nicole Cook writes, librarians need to work toward eradicating the culture of silence that exists in many diverse communities, ensuring that all library users have positive and transformative library experiences for their patrons. So cultural humility is an integral part of this because it starts with an earnest look at yourself, how to put those values in practice and recognize how those values engage with others around you. As libraries, we have a responsibility to provide opportunities for learning and support and connection and space. And that learning, however, would be incomplete unless it encompassed a depth and variety of perspectives. This past spring brought a bounty of pink dogward and loom as seen in this image. Similarly, cultural humility asks us to consider the beauty and realness of us all from different perspectives and to recognize how oppression can suppress that beauty. So how do we do it? How do we form a committee? So I should start by saying that the committee started in late 2015, but in the four and a half years since, we still continue to deal with and work out how we actually engage. Certainly getting to be a committee can take anywhere from a few months to a year. Even then, one has to count for staff turnover, funding, and of course, the building of trust between staff. We are still learning how to engage with each other to plot new challenges and respond to our staff and community at large. All of this has been complicated by the pandemic in which many of us continue to work remotely and in circumstances that are incredibly uncertain, not to mention the many other situations that are happening for us throughout the country. The image I selected for this slide, there's a group of young people of different races and ethnicities sitting with two staff members, and one of the young people is talking. This particular conversation took place during a series we hosted called Together at the Table, where community members could drop in throughout the day to engage in conversation with fellow patrons or staff around a series of prompts. What does trust look like in practice? It's documents that are edited in real time. It's consensus building. It's admitting, owning up to, and improving upon mistakes. It sometimes means going against or bending policy to meet circumstances that are our reality today. It's checking on and reckoning with our personal biases. It means standing up to tone policing on behalf of those who have far too much to lose. It's holding space for pain. It's boosting the words of colleagues who don't get to sit at that table the same way as you. It's making sure that meetings operate on a knowledge goes story stayed modality. A note about trainings. We embarked on a series of trainings, and it should be understood before those trainings begin that they should be budgeted for and compensated accordingly, not only for the trainer, but also anyone attending the training. We should keep in mind that gathering and sustaining momentum for such an enterprise also demands unique emotional labor, especially for those of black people, indigenous people, and persons of color at predominantly white institutions. So doing the work. This image shows a woman looking at a display of books while a male staff member stands next to her. This was part of a public event in which we shared resources and select items from our collection on indigenous land treaties. Through the process of facilitating this event, we realized there is just so much for us to continue learning, especially with regards to indigeneity. Similarly, after a few fitful starts and challenges, the committee began staff training. I want to start by acknowledging that we made mistakes rather than start with a committee charge. We actually jumped in to professional development opportunities. We had this desire to create a shared vocabulary around what we met institutionally about equity and inclusion. And this shared vocabulary couldn't exist unless we were beginning to read, share, and learn in union. Parts and labor. This is a rather unfoddering but important image of pipelines that were gathered on a neighborhood block. It was part of a much needed stormwater drain project. This project likely required a lot of planning, digging, maintenance, parceling out of different tasks for different groups of people and contractors. I use this image in this example of the many parts of labor that aren't acknowledged but definitely part of what we have done at our institution. What does that mean work for us? We actually engaged with a consultant who had extensive experience in our community on developing equity diversity inclusion initiatives at the high schools. We also understand though that something like this is not always within everyone's budget. So if you do decide to commit to equity diversity inclusion training and support, make a commitment early on that there is institutional buy-in. And when there isn't institutional buy-in, try to think about ways that we can extend beyond the institution to start framing and recognizing the importance of having such work being done at our institution period. With the consultant's assistance, we developed a set of community agreements for discussions. Such agreements were used for our first committee meetings as well as for staff trainings. Committee meetings happened on a monthly basis at the time. We continue to incorporate ways to gather, review and evaluate staff feedback. Aside from periodic mandatory staff trainings, we continue to provide bimonthly opportunities to discuss different terms such as anti-racism or ableism. We use articles, videos, podcasts and other resources to help us get a grounding for the activities that take place within the space of our conversation. These discussions evolved from having a consultant to designate a staff from the EDI committee facilitate instead. And more recently, we have expanded upon that to try to incorporate others within our organization who are just as eager and excited to get involved with our equity work, but are not necessarily on the committee itself. Committee members were drawn from a variety of departments across the library, and oftentimes they were selected to join because of their unique positionality, whether as a part-time worker or depending on the audience or the nature of the work that involved perhaps collection development. So those are some of the ways in which different people joined the committee. And of course, in this time of COVID, we realized that it is even more important to continue engaging in ongoing discussions regarding equity, inclusion and accessibility. We attempt to do this via paid, scheduled small group discussions using Zoom. So a few lessons. This particular image showcases a steel-squan sculpture. It sits in a shallow pond of water in one of the library's central courtyards. Light often glimmers off of the sculpture, glass walls surrounded. It acts as a locus of contemplation for both patrons and staff. And just to give you a little bit of insight into my position, I have not been working actively at my library's building for nearly six months. So even looking at this image, I feel a tingle that, oh, there it is. There is this space that we have at the library where people can come together. Oftentimes, we will see patrons congregating along the side of this courtyard behind the glass, playing games of chess, reading, or just waiting. And it's such a lovely experience. And unfortunately, we're not able to do the same right now. One of the things we've learned along the way, though, is that any staff training needs to involve content warnings and a more nuanced approach to how we standardize them. For some people, oppression is a daily recurring fact of their life. Some activities that are asked of people during trainings may be harmful because they reveal identities that someone doesn't feel comfortable sharing at work. And it puts them on display and therefore unsafe and retraumatized. When working with a consultant, we recommend continuing to monitor what such training looks like and to continue incorporating valuable staff feedback from previous training to ensure that the learning is prioritized for all staff, not just those who happen to be white. Being purposeful about our training is key. So in this image, we see a young girl laying out a white t-shirt and preparing it for a tie-dying workshop that took place in one of our courtyards adjacent to the library's youth services department. Sunlight streams in from the west and highlights her face while she concentrates. In the summer of 2018, the EDI committee realized it needed to hit a reset button. We found out that EDI can mean a lot of different things for our staff despite the developing of a shared vocabulary. We also recognized how it affects the ways that we reach out to our community and work in synchronicity with them. EDI work in practice means reflecting upon our position of power as institutions and how that may impact accessibility. We determined that we needed to A, cite our core beliefs, B, designate what exactly the committee would continue focusing upon, and C, determine what the structure, roles, and makeup of the committee would be. In this image, we see a stack of gray metal canoes that are lying upside down in the bright sun. In retrospect, it might seem odd that a charged statement wasn't developed by the committee earlier, but it was in the process of doing the work that we realized that there needed to be a return to what we stand for. Following both committee-wide and small group brainstorming, we decided to acknowledge the existence of structural, institutional, and individual interpersonal racism and bias, specifically articulating it in a charged statement, to identify and clearly state who such oppression affects, to tie the work of collective liberation with that of the library's vision and mission, to require library staff to take personal responsibility for increasing their awareness of and engaging in anti-racism education. And of course, to practice a calling culture, we say call in, and we mean that of all staff as peers, because we need to understand that we can't do this work unless we are similarly approaching these issues with accountability and loving kindness. In this image, we see that that same tie-dying experiment from two slides ago is at the drying stage. There's colorful t-shirts that are ready to be hung dry along a string, hung to one side of the courtyard. Several young people are admiring their work. A staff member helps them hang their t-shirts. And similarly, I see a parallel between the ways that this group of young people have made these beautiful t-shirts and the ways that staff are being asked to really reflect on things that they're doing. Everyone is doing beautiful hard work day in and day out at the library. And we want to honor where they're at, but we also want to honor how staff can step back and take stock of their words. We wrote the committee charge and its core beliefs to be actionable by defining some primary focus areas. There will be parts of the committee dedicated to inclusion, how to create a sense of welcoming and belonging for staff and more broadly for a community. Training, people on the committee who could develop and facilitate ongoing EDI resources and training for staff in addition to our learning and training manager. Consultation where committee members could play a role in how we assess our services and how we made assist with the development of a library policy. Communication being transparent about what we learn and working with other libraries to create a community of practice in our region and throughout the profession with regards to EDI. Both worth and intentions are only a small piece of this work. Here we see a close up of a person's hand, poised and ready to draw on a page with markers and pens surrounding their workspace. We're continuing to convene ongoing conversations with staff. We've been talking about accountability for what we say versus what we ultimately do. We recognize our collective role in sustaining systems of oppression. Cross talk is just one way we intend to bridge the gaps between us and our varied experiences. We gather such cross talk with anonymous feedback forms where staff can share their comments about ongoing work procedures. Meanwhile, we're also the process of seeking assistance from a consultant to guide future work on how to create systems of accountability particularly with regards to situations that involve discrimination or harassment. Staff feedback also guides decision making as we think about our work, whether that's through inclusive collection development and advisory services, broadening the so-called pipeline of talent, rewriting job descriptions so they're less dependent on credentials, selecting diverse authors and or speakers to invite for public programming, and using universal design to make our spaces more accessible in addition to so many other initiatives. This image here was taken during a Civic Lab, which is a periodic pop-up exhibit and programming model in which we offer information, thought-provoking activities that support dialogue and engagement on issues affecting our community. For this particular pop-up, we asked patrons to consider what activism looks like in the wake of protests at Standing Rock Indian Reservation. During those protests, it was a process in which people were uprising against a pipeline that had been proposed to cut through land on the reservation. With regards to Civic Lab and other public program models, we can certainly look at and measure outcomes. But when it comes to inclusion, sure, we can say it could be out-kind base, but it's an ongoing practice and it requires collaboration and consultation. Yes, we can say we want a sense of belonging for staff and for community members when they come into the building, but it's not enough to just stop at that because we have to constantly check back in and recognize that it's just, it's a practice, it's a process. The EDA work is certainly, similarly, not done alone or in isolation. I'm going to pause here for a moment. I would love to hear from you in the chat what happens when you hear the word ally, what you think about, and to share your thoughts in the chat with us. And Mamosa, I will read them as they are posted for you. Great. Thank you so much. You're welcome. So some comments that have come in. Someone who stands by you and stands up for you when you need it. Someone who is, quote, doing the work, unquote. Action, continual commitment rather than an identity. Allyship is a process, not a static designation. Active support. Okay. Thank you so much for just indicating all those things. I know that the word ally has taken on a different case in 2020. So for the purposes of this conversation today, I am going to be using the word ally as a verb. What does allyship mean in practice? I'm referring in part to a 2017 article that was written by Wendy Ng, Cyrus Marcus Ware, and Alyssa Greenberg, in which they explore this concept in more depth. Their discussion focuses upon allyship in museums, but I see the same concept operating in libraries. Namely, how can we transform these spaces so that people from all backgrounds have agency and representation. Allyship centers the experiences of racialized and marginalized people in order to interrupt the status quo. Nurturing co-conspirators is key when it comes to allyship. Such nurturing takes place through yet another hotly contested term, empathy. But in order to cultivate strategies around allyship, one must first understand what it means to effectively respond to experiences via an empathetic lens. Certainly, there's the argument that, well, we are humans. We should all be subject to and understand and benefit from the same rights and privileges. And indeed, that is true, too. But I see empathy as a unique practice in that it encompasses contemplation, and that is very necessary for becoming a more effective co-conspirator. And before you move on, Mimosa, I want to read just a few of the other comments because several others came in, which I think are important to get on the recording. For one thing, Allie connotes someone continuously striving to stand with and support a group. Their work is never done. Someone always there to help and support, active support. Someone who is not directly affected by, oh, affected, but who steps up to support those who need assistance. Someone who examines their role in the system and works on self and group. And then a final comment, someone who listens effectively and believes others when they share their experiences so that they can provide adequate support. They ask how they can help and don't tell or make assumptions about what is needed. Thank you. Those are all wonderful. I especially love the last comment about listening and how to listen is a practice. And that is actually the last thing I'm going to say, I shouldn't say last, but next thing I'm going to say, which is listening and self-reflection. These practices can be improved upon over time at the library and especially while so many staff continue to work remotely or with hybrid work schedules where we come and see what another may be in passing. We've seen a thriving practice of smaller reading groups that are within departments or on teams where staff take it upon themselves to research resources and discuss their learning and community via shared documents and weekly calls. An example is some staff members have taken chapters of a book called Teaching for Black Lives and used that to have weekly conversations around particular topics related to the chapters and to reflect upon how the knowledge that is shared within those chapters as well as the conversations could influence their work at the library. Allergy shift also requires an ability to be at ease with or be willing to learn different pedagogical or facilitation strategies that strive to be anti-oppressive. Creating small nodes of practice is just one way to cultivate shared effort and responsibility. Accountability starts to spread across an organization the more we try to create these nodes of practice and it's further bolstered by our ongoing consideration of identities. I'm going to leave this question for you to all think about what strategies do you use to secure the support of co-conspirators at your institution? What does the so-called soft power allow for and what does it seem to just get frustrated by? So this is one of my favorite images and when I look at this image I feel sad that I wasn't actually able to attend this event because it was attending a conference for ALA. So what does all this equity work mean in the present moment that is characterized by multiple crises? In this image it was taken at a capoeira event in which two dancers dressed in white pants and red t-shirts are engaged in synchronized jumps while patrons observe in background. I love this photo because it reminds me of resilience and ingenuity. Capoeira was a dance created by enslaved persons in Brazil that combined self-defense, acrobatics, dance, joy, music, song, sadness, hope, and it continues to thrive in this very day. Since mid-March of this year a lot of our institutions have had to close and or modify their services entirely in response to COVID-19. The virus has disproportionately affected black, indigenous, and Latinx persons, leading to wide-scale food and housing insecurity as individuals are struck by illness and exacerbating the fundamental inequalities these individuals and these groups experienced prior to the pandemic. Ongoing climate change continues to lead to numerous catastrophes around the globe, floods, tornadoes, wildfires. Meanwhile, state-sanctioned killings of black people by various police forces across North America have led to a strong uprising and support for the Black Lives Matter movement. In such a context, what practices of resilience or sustainability could emerge now? Earlier this year in response to the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Albury, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and so many others by police forces, many cultural institutions issued statements in support of social justice. Such statements, they often rang hollow to a lot of BIPOC people who happened to work in these spaces. Those same people continue to endure rampant erasure, marginalization, low pay, and other forms of oppression based on their identities. In response, some of those BIPOC staff have released open letters expressing the mistreatment they've experienced using different social media platforms, sometimes citing themselves, sometimes choosing to remain anonymous. Heroically, many mutual aid funds have been created by staff in the face of layoffs and have prioritized paying funds to Black and or Indigenous people. The Museums, a site of social action or mass action collective, wrote a response to these statements with a corrective. They will be offering tools and support for institutions still reckoning with the oppressive spaces and practices that they continue to knowingly or unknowingly endorse. What mass action is proposing is an accountability matrix. And they write, this work is not about calling anyone out for the sake of it or public shaming. We consider each statement or lack of statement issued by a museum on the topic of racial justice as a public record, and as such it is an invitation for the public to engage in further dialogue on this topic. So, mistakes are made. Mistakes are made. How do we hold ourselves and our institutions accountable without burning out? Fostering a network of co-conspirators is key. Relying upon the concept of resilience alone won't help. It's through the nurturing of our colleagues in the struggle against oppression that we in turn strengthen our resolve while striving towards transformation. Here I cite a quote from Dr. Portia Moore, who wrote for the Inclusion Brog. She said, we cartographers for racial equity and inclusion in museums have been map making for quite some time. I love the work that I do, and yet I am tired of offering up my maps. Dr. Moore goes on to say that indeed it's at our institutions that will save us, we will save ourselves. And while I continue to speak on this topic on behalf of my institution, I want to emphasize this. In order to bring any equity roadmap to life, we need to garner support and understand from many different parts of our profession and beyond. The truth is, institutions will cater to a lot of different stakeholders, and in the process they will forget the healing that comes from building, charting and navigating and checking back a roadmap. We will have to remind them. So I want to pause here for some questions and to give you some questions to consider as well around shared values and principles. So I'm going to briefly and then we'll take some questions and then I wanted to read one last quote before we ended. So you can go ahead and place any questions you have in the chat. Please use an asterisk if you identify with BIPOC. And Mamosa, I'm actually going to go capture those four questions or five questions you had and see if I can place them in the chat from your slides. Absolutely. While individuals are thinking of their questions to ask you. And I'm placing them in the chat now this is just from the last slide there were at least like three questions. So that might get you thinking and questions or comments or additional questions you might have for for Mamosa. These are lovely questions. Thank you folks. I will come back one moment. And I'm happy to read them out loud if you'd like and then you can address them. Yes, that would be great. Thank you so much. I'm just waiting to see if a few more come in because we have I think four so far. Okay, so the first one I'm just going to go in order here. The first one. How do you balance getting quote institutional buy in and quote with pushing back against institutional inaction or slow action. Great question. When I think about institutional buy in. I think about having administrators on board willing to provide funding as well as a library board that is working in sync with your administrator. But of course, this is not always the case everywhere. So one of the things that I recommend is radiating within your department if that's possible or your team. And reckoning that your team is going to be the first place where you could effectively start to address and perhaps make some changes. Give time and specifically paid time for developing buy in another strategy that I would recommend is reaching out to other community partners and seeing where they may be at with regards to their equity work and trying to see how you could either listen to learn from or potentially collaborate when it comes to that. Wonderful. So here's another question. How do you do all the EDI work that is needed without putting all the work on employees from marginalized groups. That is a good question as well. And one that I struggle with the times because I do think that there will always be a level of performativity of our identities when we are working in predominantly white institutions. I think it is consistently checking back and reminding people with privileges, but specifically white people that they need to learn how to de center whiteness by also doing the work and giving space to those from marginalized groups to pause and move back to be in positions where they can be in decision making authority, but at the same time, note that in order for this work to be successful, they have to also undertake and reason and think deeply about their role in relation to developing policies or practices that are equitable, inclusive and accessible. Thank you. Here's another one. Are there or can there be statements not unlike land acknowledgement statements that address institutional racism systemic racism without taking away from land acknowledgments. That's a very important point. I, I don't quite have a full response to it because I also struggle with that question. And wonder how to incorporate a land acknowledgement and the force removal of indigenous persons without also taking away from the oppression and marginalation that people obviously feel because of their various identities. For example, if they're queer or if they are somebody who is differently abled or has an appearance that is not considered by dominant society be normative. I think that's one way can further explore. Let me go back. There's a whole bunch. I think I recorded at least six more here. So I'm just going to go now back to the list here. Next question. What advice do you have for creating an active and thriving EDI in an area where one may not be welcome. So to clarify an area meaning like the location of your institution or meaning that you have staff who are not welcoming of it. If you can clarify, clarify in the chat. The community. Yes, yes. Well, there's a couple of things to know here that diversity comes in many forms. And a reminder that when we as library staff library workers of all levels, make the commitment to start learning about and working towards more equitable practices policy that we are actively benefiting the entire community to it. And if it does not seem that way that we, for example, talk about whiteness mentioned it tried to de-center it that is in fact a very primary role that I think librarianship should strive towards. So yes, it is a hard place to be in if you are in a community that doesn't accept it. But I also think that it's hard to simply say that all members of community feel that way or that diversity is understood to be one way. It could be that there is just a misunderstanding of the ways in which diversity is experienced, the ways in which we encompass so many identities. Thank you, Mimosa. The next two questions I'm going to put together because they, they I think go together. First one, when you start started your EDI committee, did you select members or did you send out a call for interested people? And the second part is how large is your EDI committee? So I was actually not on the committee when it first started. I believe that they were members who were selected by administration and or others who had been expressly involved with the creation of the committee. Previously, the committee strived to have at least one person from each department. But then we recognize that was it necessarily going to happen always and that that number actually that we put out there about 12 was arbitrary. There are many others who could make our community work stronger. So currently we have 20 members on the committee, including our executive director, our safety supervisor and our learning and training manager and human resources manager. But then there are people from other parts of the organization that are part time staff, as well as staff who do more clerical work. So I think we are trying to strive for a diversity in terms of the types of work we do at the library. Thank you, Mamosa. We have four more questions, but I do see we have five minutes left and I know you had a closing and then do you want to share your contact information? Yes, I do. And I'm happy to continue answering folks' questions via email or if there is time after the webinar. So thank you. Going back to the slide, I just have one more thing to share really. So this is a part of a quote from the poet Ros Gay and specifically from his book of essays called The Book of Delights. We can't begin our journey, let alone follow any roadmap unless we foster joy. He writes, It astonishes me sometimes, no often, how every person I get to know, everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything, lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted, mother murdered, dad died in surgery, rejected by their family, cancer came back, evicted, fetus not okay, everyone, regardless always of everything. Not to mention the existential sorrow we all might be afflicted with, which is that we and what we love will soon be annihilated, which sounds more dramatic than it might. Let me just say dead. Is this sorrow of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness. Is sorrow the true wild? And if it is, and if we join them, your wild to mine, what's that? For joining to is a kind of annihilation. What if we joined our sorrows, I'm saying, I'm saying, what if that is joy. So I just want to thank you all for spending time with me today to talk about this and engage with me. I also want to thank the following individuals for their feedback. Adrian Lally Hills, Andrea Ledesma, Kate Livingston, Lee when Michy Ewan, Irwin and Nikhil Treveni. Thank you so much Mimosa. I have captured those four questions that were not addressed, and I will make sure to email them to you. And if those pan or those attendees want to also email you directly, they can but I'll make sure to send those to you. And if you can just respond to them. And then we'll add them on our website. Of course, removing any of the anonymous removing any identifiers, so we can have those answered. I'm really appreciative to you for your time. And I took several notes and one of the real key takeaways I kept hearing is accountability. So really looking at gathering that feedback on what not just what we're saying but actually what we're doing and also looking at those actions which is the doing and then strategies that we're actually using to make an impact or to actually identify with that what we're doing piece and how it ties into whether it's the committee the goals the objectives, the statements. So thank you again and you're getting a lot of thank yous in the chat. This will be posted within two weeks on our website. And I really appreciate everybody's attendance. So thank you again Mimosa and to all of our attendees. We appreciate you and hope to see you at our next webinar series on diversity topics. Thank you. Thank you everyone.