Every year, June marks a time where we can celebrate resilience and love with our LGBTQ+ community. Pride allows us to celebrate our right to love who we want to love and be who we want to, unapologetically. It has been half a century since the fateful protests at the Stonewall Inn, and we, both as members of the community and as allies, know that even though those protests are over, the battle for equity continues.
"Equality means more than passing laws. The struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community, where it really counts."
Pride
Every year we rightly take note of and celebrate the great strides taken toward the world we all wished we were in, but also acknowledge how cripplingly behind we sometimes are in our thinking and practices, and too often forget what is most important. This is one of the reasons we as a company are standing and will continue to stand with, support and protect the community, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, etc. This is our call to action. This is our pledge to do better and be better.
We are standing with the LGBTQ+ community not just during Pride, but every day. We say it, and will continue to say it everyday; Black Lives Matter, Trans Rights are Human Rights. We stand with communities who are shamed or shunned for being different. Not just during times of injustice, but every day. Always.
In order to make sure our promise is maintained, today we are making a pledge to you, a pledge to ourselves. A pledge to be better. A pledge to do whatever we can to support, celebrate and protect, no matter race, gender or sexuality.
Here’s our pledge:
- We will work on actions. Words are just words without any action behind them. From today, all members of staff will display their personal pronouns on their social media profiles, as well as including them in our email signatures.
- We will continue to educate ourselves. We will watch movies, read books and continue to immerse ourselves in experiences of someone radically different from ourselves. We will pro-actively educate ourselves on queer-culture, history and current affairs. We will then make efforts to talk, discuss and learn from each other in order to grow individually and collectively.
- We will be conscious. We acknowledge that it is not the responsibility of those who identify with any particular characteristic to educate others. We will continue to educate ourselves and be conscious of burdening members of the community.
- We will call out discrimination. It is important for everyone to be proactive in this movement. Calling out discrimination on any level from friends, colleagues or other members of the community to help educate and support those affected by the words. We will not allow any form of discriminatory language, behaviours or actions in our workplace, personal lives, etc.
- We will not make assumptions. For the longest time, straight and cisgender have been the norm, and we need to make sure we move away from this ideology in order to build and maintain a more equal landscape. We will not assume, in words or actions, that what was once perceived to be normal, is in fact the norm.
- We will apologise. We’re trying everyday to better ourselves for the sake of our community, but we are well aware that we may make mistakes. When that happens, we’re going to apologise, ask for further education and clarification to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and move on.
- We will live our values. We will live this pledge everyday, and challenge decisions which do not align with our values, even if that means disagreeing with clients. We will continue to celebrate diversity, and provide support when inequalities are encountered.
- We will become advocates. For better, safer, supportive working environments for all, regardless of their race, sexuality, gender, etc. From our advocacy, we will collaborate with members of the community when needed to provide resources to anyone who requires them.
- We will celebrate diversity. Our uniquenesses, our intersectionalities, our individual experiences give us an incredible array of points of view. We will take joy in that variety.
For us here at Cohesive, this isn’t a one size fits all solution. We have a lot of work to do, we know that, but as a team and a community, we want to be as inclusive as possible. We need to be good allies, we need to be able to provide our community with the tools they need to feel safe and supported within their workplace.
As a team, we will be revisiting these values frequently, and we’ll keep you updated on anything we change within our pledge. The next discussion for us happens on June 22nd, where we will be reviewing everything discussed in this letter as well as reviewing our recruitment policy to ensure it’s inclusive and equitable.
"When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful."
What do you think?