<aside> 👋 Hi from Sascha, acework's Product Lead

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<aside> ℹ️ This is where you find all notable changes at acework.io and accompanying thoughts.

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➡️LinkedIn

Platform Changes 2020-06-03 🎁

And also: ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻 #BLM

<aside> ⏬ Scroll all way down for the TL;DR summary

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Dear distributed connected world,

this was supposed to be an uplifting product announcement. That is until George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by merciless police, held down pleading for breath over eight excruciating minutes, an officer's knee crushing his thorax. While we had been safe at our desks at home preparing our latest platform update. Privileged or not: We are not willing to shrug this off. We do not accept anyone getting killed by racist institutional violence today as yet another contemporary variety of strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. This is not a moment to talk about business and go on as usual. Even less so as a people first company. This IS business. Ours. Everybody's.

<aside> ✋🏾 There is no neutral position towards racism: silence in the face of injustice is complicit. All lives cannot matter until black lives matter. Not only in the U.S. – anywhere.

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At the same time symbolic acts of woke virtue signalling and armchair activism will neither end white supremacy nor any other atrocity. Let's make an actual difference.

Here is in a nutshell what the pale privileged ones amongst us can do:

1. 👉🏻Listen, Read, Learn

   • We found ‘10 Steps to Non-Optical Allyship’ by Mireille Charper helpful and concise for starters.

   • On Allyship and Performative Wokeness by Eric Peterson is worth reading not only for coining “performative wokeness”. It is clear and actionable for any privileged person striving to behave in a way that's supportive.

     One of the important jobs an ally can take on is to amplify the voices of the unheard. (…) An ally will say as little as possible and then cede the floor. (…) The performatively woke person takes up a lot of space. The ally makes space. It’s a crucial difference.

     Thanks to Jessy Hallison, Engineering Manager at Ecosia for sharing this gem and several others. (She is currently hiring by the way – alas, location-bound).

2. 👉🏼Have uncomfortable conversations with both yourself and with others (again: check Peterson's article). The point is not to have any racist thoughts or prejudices. Sadly, we all do in varying degree. The point is to recognise them, mark them, inspect them, learn, and adapt.

3. 👉🏽Make space (if in doubt just step back, listen, eventually ask)

4. 👉🏾Amplify black voices

5. 👉🏿Walk the talk ⇒ put your money and actions where your mouth is

• Support antiracist initiatives by action or donation, write to your political representatives, … Here is two collections to get you started: 1️⃣EU ⇒ Act now ****(compiled by Charles Ahmadzadeh, bunch.ai) 2️⃣U. S. ⇒ blacklivesmatters.carrd.co (by Nico aka @dehyedration)
• Hire and promote more People of Colour. (Make no mistake: de-biasing is hard and needs deliberate continuous action.)

Still with us? Ready for more? Step out of your comfort zone of and into the ⇒ Shareable #Antiracism Resource Guide. We can do better. 💫

silence…