 Hi, my name is Gabriel Guillaume. I'm the president and CEO of Livwell, Colorado, and I'm excited to be joined here by Tameka Butler, the executive director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust. And Tameka was fantastic today in speaking at our Healthy Eating and Active Living Summit that we've held over the last two days. Really talking to us about a variety of different things, including community, including land use, and including racism, which is an important topic here as we really discuss what's getting in the way of healthy eating, active living, and a lot of other healthy behaviors. Tameka, you had so many wonderful things to say. I've got a long list of questions, but only time for a few. I really thought some of the things you said about the difference and distinction between allies and accomplices was really important to hear, particularly for the group of people in the room today. Could you elaborate a little bit on the distinction and how you see that being really important in moving this work forward? Sure. So as I talked about earlier, I think that everybody's on a journey and everybody's on a different journey, and there are different steps to that. A lot of folks are just actors in this fight against isms. They're just showing up as the well-meaning person, the well-meaning liberal, the well-meaning dude who respects women, the well-meaning whatever it may be, but they're just acting and they're not really doing anything actively to change the landscape. And when you graduate from that, you move on to being an ally. And so it's not that being an ally is bad in and of itself, but in order to truly be an ally, it has to be more than a noun. It has to be a verb. You have to actually do something. You can't just be passive. And so some folks, you might hear a comment in a room and you might say something in that moment. You might go home later and write something on Facebook about how what the person said was wrong. So you're doing something, but you're not necessarily always shifting the dynamics and you're not always saying something. And I think the real step, what I was saying earlier is we're at a time where we need more than allies. If that's where you are on your journey, we appreciate it, but we need more. We need accomplices. And so we need people who are really trying to shift the narrative, who are really trying to break free of the constructs and who are really trying to change the way that society oppresses folks and they're doing work to dismantle those structures. And so they're actually accomplices and most important, they're willing to lose something. They're willing to risk something. And they're willing to go all in and be co-conspirators and dismantling white supremacy. And if you're not at that level, then there's still work to be done. Right, right. That's an excellent point. I think for me and a lot of other of my white colleagues, both within the organization at LiveWell and others, first start with this realization of, wow, I've had a lot of great things happen in my life and privilege actually may have played a role in that, not just something I accomplished on my own. That is kind of an early stage as you become an accomplice, hopefully. How do you use that privilege? How would you see people effectively using that privilege to create real change? Because that's a lot of the tool a lot of white people have is that privilege to start with. You're absolutely right. And there's that moment, that realization for so long. But I worked really hard. And no one's saying that folks didn't work hard. It's just think about the folks who aren't white, who aren't cisgender, who aren't, you know, from educated homes or both parents were there. All these different things that make privilege. I have privilege because of my education, because I grew up with both of my parents in the home. So there's this realization where it's, you know, not, I didn't work hard. It's I worked hard, but there's folks who have to work harder, and that's because I have some privilege. And once you have that realization of, oh, yes, privilege is a thing, I think what a lot of folks do is start feeling guilty. And when they start, you know, apologizing and saying, it's not, it's not my fault. I'm not the one who did this bad thing. You know, they were my ancestors, or it wasn't even my ancestors. And folks get really lost in the apology and the guilt of all of it. And I think once you start being an accomplice, it's realizing that privilege. It's acknowledging it, and it's not doing it once and then moving forward. I always think of it just like being gay. You know, you got to come out a lot. It's not like you just say it once. For me, you know, people know when I walk in the room, but for many people it's not just that you say it once and then you never have to say it again. You're constantly having to out yourself, and you constantly have to out yourself with privilege. And you constantly have to acknowledge that you know you have it, you know it plays a role, and you know that it impacts the way you move about the world. And then when you're in the space where you're able to do that regularly and get past the guilt, it's how do you use that? How do you use it to be an accomplice, to dismantle white supremacy? How do you use the fact that there are some rooms you can get in that I can't get in? And when I'm not in that room, but you're in that room, how can I trust you as my accomplice to still be doing that dismantling work? And so do you just feel guilty and do you say, you know, this is just overwhelming? I'm not going to do any of this work. I can't do it. I'm not the right person. I'm just not going to speak. Or do you really use that to move forward? You know, I think that one privilege that many of us share is that we work in institutions that get to try to move this change forward. And for many of us, we are working in communities. We're listening to community. We're learning from community. We're trying to encompass within our work what community is seeing as relevant in their community. But I also know that that can get convoluted at times, right? And so one of the things that I was thinking about when I heard more about your organization was you were doing an incredible job of listening to the community about how to change a piece of land, what to do with that piece of land, and ultimately improving that piece of land. Do you get pushback on your contribution to gentrification that may result as a result of improving that piece of land? How do you deal with it? We definitely do. And I think part of the issue is the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, I think is an organization that builds parks and gardens. I think we do it better than any other organization. I think we put the community and we put equity and we put racial justice and food justice. I think we put those things first. But we're still not perfect and we're still an institution with privilege. I get paid a really decent salary to do that. And I'm still relying on community members to help me do my job. And though we have a model where we, you know, pay stipends and we try to, once the park is built, go back to community members and hire those folks to be groundskeepers. I know my paycheck is more than the groundskeeper. And he or she is probably on the ground every day doing, you could argue more for that park and more for that community than I am in my office in downtown Los Angeles. And so I think it is tough because what we have to realize is that privilege and power work together. And what often happens is sometimes we are the folks with the power and sometimes we are the folks without it. Sometimes we're the folks with privilege and sometimes we're the folks without it. And you're constantly switching places and it's how do you not play victim always and how do you step up when you're the one with that. And I think for us it was this intentional push and continuing to push ourselves. And this next year we're going into a strategic planning process. And part of the reason we're going into a strategic planning process is because the world is changing from when we started 15 years ago. It doesn't mean racism and displacement wasn't around 15 years ago. But we're in a different place in our country, that's just true. And so maybe 15 years ago we could have been a park organization who's doing everything right. But what's our lens on homelessness? Are we the kind of park developer that builds a bench with an armrest in the middle so people can't sleep there? Are we the kind of park developer that engages homeless folks in our community engagement meetings? What are we doing about the cost of housing? Are we thinking about how our park is elevating property value? Or do we say, you know what, that's a housing issue and you know what, that's a homelessness issue. And you know what, that's a transportation issue. And so I think it's being willing and it's tough because the golden rule of a nonprofit is not to have mission creeps. And so it's tough to be core to your mission and be aware that you don't want to take on multiple things. I always tell my staff, we don't want to be mediocre at a lot of things. We want to be excellent at a few things. But being excellent at a few things means we still have to be informed. And so how do we make sure that we're not allowing ourselves to just be in a silo of just parks or just gardens or just food justice and really thinking about the other issues because the folks who are using our parks, the folks that are using our gardens, they have all of those issues that impact their life. That's right, yeah. I think it's also very indicative of this balance between being issue-based and place-based because place has all the issues in one place. And issue is extremely relevant to certain things, but you only have this limited way in which you can engage. And that's been something I think a lot of organizations are trying to address. What I've seen and I'm curious to get your thoughts on is more of the nonprofits that have their very clear idea of what they're doing, but participating in these broader coalitions that are trying to look at the broader picture and bring each of their own talent to those issues so that as a coalition they can be more place-based. Curious to know how you guys are doing that. Same way. I think for us it's really making sure we're comfortable with the spaces we're in. And when we can add our expertise, volunteering that expertise, but knowing that we don't always have to lead in those spaces, we don't always have to get the accolades, we don't always have to get the grants. And how do we make sure we're in the right collaborative spaces and we're honest with ourselves about when those collaborative spaces are becoming places where it's just you go to be seen and the work's not getting done and making sure we best utilize our time. And I hear folks, right, like I'm the first one to say it's all about community, but I'm also the executive director of the organization. So I have to make real decisions about resources and strategies and whether or not we can be yes at every table. And so I think for me it's also listening to my staff. I'm like, we have to be at this table. This is an important issue. And they're like, we don't have the capacity. And our community, like that is an issue and we do need to talk about it, but there's this other thing that is more of a priority. And so I think my number one lesson is, again, staying aware and staying connected, but staying nimble and staying flexible while also staying core. And that's why to me being an ED isn't easy. It's the best job in the world and it's the hardest job in the world because none of us get into this work just because it's because we care. It's because we see the issues and the reason so many nonprofits get into trouble is because it's hard for us not to say yes because we want to help. And we have to realize that if we're at capacity and if our staffs are burned out and if they don't understand why they're showing up at a particular collaborative space, none of us are going to be doing our best work. That's an excellent point. I think right now, and I hope it's out of reaction to what community is demanding that more and more nonprofits, at least here in Denver, are taking on this commitment to racial equity. And yet, I would say the vast majority of nonprofits in our state are still run at the executive director level and in the board by white leadership. What advice do you have to those leaders about how to really create a racially inclusive organization? So one of the reasons I got into nonprofit management is because it was interesting to me on an intellectual level. So before I did this, I was an employment lawyer and I was a civil rights legal aid employment discrimination lawyer. And before I went into nonprofits when I was leaving law, I was actually thinking about getting a PhD in organizational management because these questions are actually the questions in addition to structural racism and community gardens and parks. These are the issues that really matter to me. And that's why I say it takes every level of the organization and it takes really examining all of our practices. You know, when you're a hospital or an agency whose mission is to be in low income communities of color and you do that but then you don't hire anyone from those communities, you don't actually give as much back to that community as you're taking from that community. So you're in that community and you're serving that community but the folks who are coming to see you never see anyone who looks like them. So in some ways you're reinforcing this narrative for them that to be successful you still have to look different than them and be willing to give back. And so we have to really think about what are the small things we do? What are the small ways that we measure success when we write our job descriptions? When we say what we're looking for? When we talk about how important it is to have this skill or how important it is to be able to do this? Who are we excluding from jump? Who are we just not even talking about? When I first started at my organization I got the offer I was really excited and I said all we need you to do is a background check and I said I'm happy to do the background check and I can understand if you all have a policy that anybody who's going to be working with money like an executive director has to do a background check but do we do them for everybody? And they said, you know, yeah we do and I said why? They said, I don't know, I think we've always just done that and I'm like yeah we have a program at a high school is that why we do it? Is it just for the people who work at the high school? Does the school district require us to do it? Yeah but I don't know that that's why we do it for everybody and it's those kinds of questions what are the small things that no one on my board was trying to exclude anyone? Half of the people on the board are new and they just inherited the policy and so they don't know why it's there but who are we unilaterally just signaling this might not be the job for you. The little words you put at the bottom of a job description we encourage who you encourage to apply. My first day I changed it and I changed it to say more than we encourage diverse candidates to apply. It's explicit, it says no matter nationality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation you know and it's longer but I want it to be clear that those things matter to us and so it's all of those things on your website. When I was coming up in San Francisco as a legal aid attorney our website has a button you can press and it translates everything fact sheets you know blog everything to Spanish press another button it translates it to Mandarin who are we saying that we accept and then once those folks feel like they're in affinity with our organization who are we developing who are we pushing out because they're not you know they're not professional in the way we think they should be professional who are we saying you know they just can't do the things we want them to do and who are we investing the resources in to provide the professional development support and mentorship to get them to a point where they you know ascend to a board or they ascend to lead the organization and those are the things we have to think about. That's a great point. Thank you so much for the time that you spent with us and for everything that you're sharing and thank you so much. Really appreciate it.