COVID-19 INNOVATION LAB
Overview The Black Feminist Future (BFF) Innovation Labs serve as space to convene diverse Black feminists from various movements and identities, to imagine together, emerge shared assessments, and vision liberatory solutions. In response to the devastation of COVID-19 in Black communities, BFF convened the COVID Innovation Lab (CIL) with the belief that Black feminists were best positioned to surface the systemic issues, and cultivate and advance visionary solutions during these times. The CIL included three online gatherings from May 2020 July 2020 facilitated by Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute. Participants represented multiple movements and interests from reproductive and racial justice, disability justice, housing, food, climate- and economic justice.
The COVID Innovation Lab was one component of a multi-pronged strategy to understand and grapple with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Black people. In addition to convening this cohort for discussion, Black Feminist Future also conducted 1-on-1 interviews with 15 movement leaders and a targeted survey reaching over 600 Black women and gender expansive folks. This report is a brief synthesis of the discussions and offering from the Covid Innovation Lab. Each two hour session was designed as a cumulative process that would first build connections, then create a shared intersectional analysis of the crisis to finally determine future and potential collective actions.
Art by Cece Carpio
Session One Session One set the context and gave participants a chance to get to know each other and their work. Attendees engaged in activities that shared their connection to Black Feminism. They cited a number of brilliant Black Feminists such as Octavia Butler, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Pat Parker and Mary Hooks. In addition to naming our collective lineage, participants began building a Black Feminist analysis of the current moment by sharing their own experiences of navigating life for the first couple of months during the shelter in place orders. A large portion of attention and energy went to caring for family, supporting transitional households and fighting for community control while dreaming land dreams and integrating healing practices into their work. Session One also involved a scavenger hunt that allowed participants to name and visibilize the breadth of Black feminisms from which they regularly draw inspiration and education. Items that showed up during this activity were ancestral altars, paintings of Sojourner Truth, feminist texts such as “Killing Rage” by bell hooks and Audre Lorde’s “Sister Outsider.” Lastly, we asked the group to name the intentions and values they wanted this experience to hold. This information provided a collective vision for our engagement and gave us a baseline of the values from which to work. Examples included learning from and aligning Black femininst strategies, bringing the creative and inspiring to the strategic and tactical, and creating a vision for how to rebuild this country in a way that recenters Black women, girls, femmes and gender expansive folks that can be used as a blueprint for change.
Session 2 In session two, participants identified the systems, structures, beliefs and cultural practices that led to and have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. They also forecasted potential future implications with and without feminist intervention. Concurrent with and perhaps shaping popular understandings, participants drew connections between the way existing inequities dating back to slavery, Jim Crow, and colonialism have exasperated the impact of the crisis on Black communities. As one participant shared, “COVID is a stress test, compounding what is already wrong.” From life-threatening risks for work, un/under-employment, displacement and inadequate health care to educational deficits, extreme stress and unnecessary deaths - this crisis reveals how gendered, ableist, racialized capitalism devalues and exploits Black women and gender expansive people’s social and reproductive labor. As one participant stated “we have to earn every part of our humanity, ” working in a way that not only upholds not our families and communities, but the entire nation. And every part of Black people’s lives has been impacted by this crisis. Every hardship has been made harder. Participants shared burdens and concerns extending from family care and safety to health, work and finances, education and access to technology, state violence, immigration, food, housing and land. Using health care as an example, participants analyzed how massive and decades-long divestment in healthcare and public health have led to a destabilized infrastructure and an inadequate response. In Black communities, the
Session Two cont'd hospitals are underfunded with limited personnel or technological capacity. The majority Black feminized workforce in hospitals didn’t have adequate protective gear putting them and their families lives at risk. Reproductive healthcare clinics faced pressures to close further curtailing access within hostile political environments. Furthermore, public health messages were muddled between misinformation and lack of effective outreach into Black communities. Many people were left somewhere between fantasy and disbelief. False notions that Black people couldn’t get the virus increased a lot of Black folks' exposure, while leaving others unclear of how to keep safe in the face of a deadly threat. Other public health messages placed the blame for illness and susceptibility on the personal habits of Black folks without accounting for the complex of racist structures that left many communities without adequate food supplies, green spaces or parks to support healthier outcomes, nor did those messages take into account the need for an adequate governmental response. Participants also grappled with the lack of conversation about disability justice within Black communities. This disconnection mitigates advocacy and access to what people need to survive and thrive without isolation or stigma. Without feminist intervention, participants feared there would be justified medical neglect and abuse, as the public health infrastructure continues to struggle. Fortunately, participants went beyond systemic and cultural failures to highlight the ingenuity and abundance of Black women and gender expansive folks. There was a shared sense that this is a time of transformational change. From mutual aid networks, organizing, and re-education, participants leaned into examples of self-determination and power building traditions stewarded by Black feminists that can move Black communities into a desired future. To continue with the example of health care participants, talked about organizing mass healing and education alongside the creation of community-owned healing spaces. We also talked about engaging in local budgeting processes to ensure resources flow in the areas of our need and choosing versus what the state values.
Session 3 Learnings & Outcomes The COVID Innovation lab began as a four session engagement. Due to the eruption of direct actions across the world due to the latest episodes of police brutality, we reduced the number of gatherings to 3 sessions. There was an intention to hold issue specific conversations amongst the invited attendees. While this wasn't able to happen during the Innovation Lab, it is still an important opportunity for many movements. There are several hallmarks to the solutions generated by the Cohort. These solutions were steeped in self determination, community control and intra community support. Below you will find the solutions given by the Cohort and recommendations from ESII of possible action BFF can take. These fall into three categories Create, Disseminate and Convene: A Black Feminist CDC. CREATE: The third session of the Innovation Lab was designed to illicit ideas on Black Feminist solutions to the COVID crisis.The attendees were asked to comment on 20 issue areas that were raised during their second session. Participants were asked to start with naming what they are seeing happening in the world and what may be possible. We found that most of the small group time was spent outlining and uplifting work that is happening. This tells us that there is a need for an intermediary to support the sharing of Black Feminist trainings and tools. Cannon of public resources generated and collected by BFF Examples of resources could include:
Create Disseminate Convene: A Black feminist CDC
Session Three How to start a tenants union Protecting my rights during a pandemic Reproductive health care at home CONVENE: ESII recommends the following. BFF should embark on a series of issue specific conversations to clarify a collective Black feminist lens. These convenings are baseline content for BFF to share in a narrative offering around COVID. Community Connection/ Cultural Interventions Archiving and suggesting ways folks are evolving and iterating cultural DISSEMINATE: "Redistribute skills and knowledge amongst ourselves that don’t rely on systems that were designed with our death in the first place." Here are some ways that BFF may lean into these practices of self-determination and communities of practice. Support the growth of connections, amplification of concepts and theories, and intentional political development. Below are bodies of work that BFF can take a role in that continues its movement placement as a convener, information sharer and theorist formation. Build this around the agents of social reproduction - PAY CAREGIVERS! Black feminist economy Support the reimagining of movement work by uplifting /building/engaging is the amplification of Black Feminist economic principles Create a national Black feminist budgetIncrease worker cooperatives, particularly for areas of care and essential services Redistribution of resources through community practice and stewardship (philanthropy as a false solution) Support the divestment from economic models that exploit us and the proliferation of alternative economies
Session 3 Healthcare ( outside of the state agencies) Amplify and disseminate information about healthcare clinics, toolkits for how to create a community clinic and community reproductive care Strategies for returning to community care such as home abortion, home birth and miscarriage information in this moment to give folks a vision of what’s possible Cultural practice “Now might be a good time to rethink what a revolution can look like. Perhaps it doesn’t look like a march of angry, abled bodies in the streets. Perhaps it looks something more like the world standing still because all the bodies in it are exhausted because care has to be prioritized before it’s too late." Johanna Hedva Cultural practice as movement strategy Afro-futurism as a practice (a school of afrofuturism) BFF should ensure that there is an element of future dreaming art & culture that grounds their solutions Center care Biotechnology Study, watch & recommend interventions around these trends, particularly the culture of surveillance Resources Mural - participant notes from each session Session 2 graphic notes Session 3 graphic notes THANK YOU to all the participants of this COVID Innovation Lab! In particular, we want to honor the memory of our dear comrade, Elandria Willams, who reminded us of the preciousness of our beings and just how far generosity and care reaches. Participants: Aimée-Josiane, Aleese Moore-Orbih, Andrea Ritchie, Anshantia Oso, Asanni Armon, Asha Carter, Carlin, Catherine Labiran, Danielle Thomas, Dazon Dixon Diallo, Elandria Williams, Glory Kilanko, Jamala Rogers, Jamarah Amani, M Adams, Mary Anne Adams, Natalie Jeffers, Nourbese Flint, Preye Cobham, Rachel Herzing, Sevonna Brown, Shana M. Griffin, TL Lewis, Yamani Hernandez; BFF Staff Crystal Ogugua, Dani Constable, Paris Hatcher ; ESII Team - Mia Herndon, PG Watkins, Sage Crump