Tupac's Changes is Still Very Good and (Very Unfortunately) Relevant

I recently listened to Tupac's Changes for the first time in a very long while.

When this song came out it was the age of dubbing songs off the radio onto a blank tape, and I would fully sit and wait at the radio, ready for them to play this one so I could tape it. I distinctly remember listening to it over and over on my walkman while rollerblading around a campground where my family was on vacation.

Despite being a person who is big into lyrics, I never really learned anything beyond the chorus to this particular song, though. (A chorus I still instinctively quote: whenever someone says "that's just the way it is," I can't help but reply "some things will never change.")

This time, I heard the words. Effffff, friends. Listening to this song that I associate with carefree summer vacations and realizing that it's really about racism, police brutality, and cycles of poverty and that it is STILL horribly relevant today? That's a thing.

CHANGES

by Tupac (ft. Talent)

I see no changes, wake up in the morning and I ask myself

Is life worth livin'? Should I blast myself?

I'm tired of bein' poor and, even worse, I'm black

My stomach hurts so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch

Cops give a damn about a negro

Pull the trigger, kill a n***a, he's a hero

"Give the crack to the kids, who the hell cares?

One less hungry mouth on the welfare"

First ship 'em dope and let 'em deal to brothers

Give 'em guns, step back, watch 'em kill each other

"It's time to fight back," that's what Huey said

Two shots in the dark, now Huey's dead

I got love for my brother

But we can never go nowhere unless we share with each other

We gotta start makin' changes

Learn to see me as a brother instead of two distant strangers

And that's how it's supposed to be

How can the Devil take a brother if he's close to me? Uh

I'd love to go back to when we played as kids

But things change, and that's the way it is

(Come on, come on)

That's just the way it is (Changes)

Things'll never be the same

That's just the way it is (That's the way it is, what?)

Aww, yeah-yeah (Hear me)

(Oh my, oh my, come on, come on)

That's just the way it is (That's just the way it is, the way it is)

Things'll never be the same

(Never be the same, yeah, yeah, yeah, aww, yeah)

That's just the way it is (Way it is)

Aww, yeah (Come on, come on)

I see no changes, all I see is racist faces

Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races

We under, I wonder what it takes to make this

One better place, let's erase the wasted

Take the evil out the people, they'll be actin' right

'Cause both black and white are smokin' crack tonight

And the only time we chill is when we kill each other (Kill each other)

It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other

And although it seems heaven-sent

We ain't ready to see a black president, uh (Oh-ooh)

It ain't a secret, don't conceal the fact

The penitentiary's packed and it's filled with blacks

But some things will never change (Never change)

Try to show another way, but you stayin' in the dope game (Ooh)

Now tell me, what's a mother to do?

Bein' real don't appeal to the brother in you (Yeah)

You gotta operate the easy way

"I made a G today," but you made it in a sleazy way

Sellin' crack to the kids (Oh-oh), "I gotta get paid" (Oh)

Well hey, well that's the way it is

(Come on, come on)

That's just the way it is (Changes)

Things'll never be the same

That's just the way it is (That's the way it is, what?)

Aww, yeah (Hear me)

(Oh my, oh my, come on, come on)

That's just the way it is (That's just the way it is, the way it is)

Things'll never be the same

(Never be the same, yeah, yeah, yeah, aww, yeah)

That's just the way it is (Way it is)

Aww, yeah (Aww, yeah, aww, yeah)

We gotta make a change

It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes

Let's change the way we eat

Let's change the way we live

And let's change the way we treat each other

You see, the old way wasn't workin'

So it's on us to do what we gotta do to survive

And still I see no changes, can't a brother get a little peace?

It's war on the streets and the war in the Middle East (Ooh, yeah)

Instead of war on poverty

They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me

And I ain't never did a crime I ain't have to do

But now I'm back with the facts, givin' it back to you (Ooh)

Don't let 'em jack you up, back you up

Crack you up and pimp-smack you up

You gotta learn to hold your own

They get jealous when they see you with your mobile phone

But tell the cops they can't touch this

I don't trust this, when they try to rush, I bust this

That's the sound of my tool, you say it ain't cool

My mama didn't raise no fool (Oh)

And as long as I stay black, I gotta stay strapped

And I never get to lay back

'Cause I always got to worry 'bout the payback

Some buck that I roughed up way back

Comin' back after all these years

"Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat," that's the way it is

That's just the way it is (Just the way it is, yeah, yeah, yeah)

Things'll never be the same (Yeah)

That's just the way it is (The way it is)

Aww, yeah (Some things will never change, oh my)

(I'm tryna make a change)

(You're my brother, you're my sister, yeah)

That's just the way it is (The way it is, the way it is)

Things'll never be the same (You're my brother, you're my sister)

That's just the way it is, aww, yeah

Some things'll never change

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

Accountability

"Accountability feels like an attack when you're not ready to acknowledge how your behaviour harms others."
- Tamara Renaye

(I am pretty sure this applies to all of us at different points in our lives!)

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

Stopping Time

Photo by Jose Fontano.

Renowned theatre director Daniel Brooks has been living with stage four lung cancer (stage four is the last stage) for two years.

In an interview on CBC's q, he talks about the real-life moment that forced him to face his pending loss of time while on vacation in a spot he had gone every single year with friends.

"I looked at the water shimmering in the light and I thought, 'This may be the last time I look at this', and I realized I couldn’t do anything with that. So what if it was the last time? How does that help me? What am I going to …? How am I going …? I can’t lock it away. I can’t own it. I can’t … I can’t do anything with this moment other than be in it. And that revelation at that time has been an enormous aid to me in the ensuing almost two years now since I’ve been diagnosed.”

I love this.

We can't lock it away.

We can't own anything.

Whether we know we have a limited amount of time left or not, literally the only thing we can do is live in the moments we have.

(This interview and quote brought into my life by Vancouver-based theatre critic Colin Thomas' newsletter. It is an excellent read if you are into theatre, creation, or ideas.)

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

I Have a Theory

I have a theory that women are "better at noticing details" because we are taught from a very young age to scrutinize our faces and bodies by the square centimetre.

— Andrea Loewen (@ms_andreajoy) June 27, 2020

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

I Am Writing This Instead of Yelling At Twitter

(NOTE: The author of the tweet in question has made their entire account private since I wrote this post! Sorry you can't go through and see the whole thread.)

I read a Twitter thread and it really annoyed me and so I am going to unpack it here.

This is the first tweet:

Not having children is a form of privilege, and it's one we don't talk about nearly enough.

— isaacs (@izs) June 26, 2020

He goes on, over way too many tweets that I am kind of embarrassed I took the time to read and then review for the sake of a rebuttal that he will never see nor care about but I need to get off my chest, to describe how the job of parenting is a burden and people who don't have kids get to live in blissful ignorance to this and yet children are needed for society to continue so... privilege.

Here's where he has a point:

1) Raising kids is really hard work, and seems to have gotten harder as the years go on and we learn more and more about the 'best' ways to raise kids. Also, parents often feel alone, isolated, and unsupported in this hard work and that's a very real problem.

2) The patriarchy means that this work still mostly goes to women. This is also a very real problem.

3) We may feel a love for our pets that seems akin to love for children, but ultimately, pets are not children.

4) Just because people often choose parenting doesn't make it easier.

Great. That's out of the way.

Here's where he is effing ANNOYING:

1) The whole choice thing. Yes, procreation is necessary to the furthering of our species, and on an innate, evolutionary level that's probably a big part of your drive to have kids, but really, you wanted kids because you had strong feeeeeelllllliiiiiiiings. (I realize that many people don't feel they have a choice in the matter. This is a problem, for sure.)

2) I don't think privilege generally is a thing you can opt into our out of.

3) Speaking of choice, there are people who can't have kids (by birth or adoption) for a number of reasons who desperately want them. They may have more free time, but they may also live in deep hearbreak. Where does their privilege lie?

4) Parents are, indeed, less happy than their childless/childfree counterparts while their children are young, but then once their kids are adults they are actually much happier than others. So I guess parents with adult children are the ones with privilege???

Masks, But Make it Fashion

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Haute Glue (@fashioncandrag) on May 9, 2020 at 11:34am PDT

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

Pandemic Advice That's Really Life Advice

Photo by Elsie Zhong.

One beautiful thing that happened during the pandemic was that everyone suddenly started taking their mental health a little more seriously. The little buffers we built up in our lives that either boosted or helped us ignore our well-being were snuffed out and we were left to stare at our own dang selves. WEIRD. UNCOMFORTABLE.

Cue the avalanche of mental health tips that began circulating around. One such list, that was surprisingly good, came from the City of North Vancouver's Recreation and Culture Department.

There are a few pieces of advice I am trying to carry forward now that life is looking a lot more "normal" where I live.

Give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and a wide berth.
Each person will have moments when they will not be at their best. It is important to move with grace through blow-ups, to not show up to every argument you are invited to, and to not hold grudges and continue disagreements. Everyone is doing the best they can to make it through this.

This connects to the post I wrote towards the beginning of the pandemic about how it was giving me the perspective to deal with micro-rejections.

When life was all topsy-turvy, it may have been easier and more obvious that everyone was struggling and may not be at their best all the time. Turns out, during regular life, struggles also happen and there are also times when we are not a gleaming and pure embodiment of our best selves. I have a wild notion that maybe people require compassion all the time? Including ourselves?

Help others.
Find ways, big and small, to give back to others. Support restaurants, offer to grocery shop, check in with elderly neighbors, write psychological wellness tips for others—helping others gives us a sense of agency when things seem out of control.

As the pandemic has morphed into a fight for racial justice, helping others is even more key.

It's easy to feel like the problems are too big and we can't really make a difference, but even small (but concrete) acts of help can go a long way. Not only does it provide the aforementioned sense of agency, but it connects our lives to something and gives us meaning! (Also, it helps other people and I bet they appreciate it.)

Find something you can control, and control the heck out of it.
In moments of big uncertainty and overwhelm, control your little corner of the world. Organize your bookshelf, purge your closet, put together that furniture, and group your toys. It helps to anchor and ground us when the bigger things are chaotic.

I may make my new motto, "when you don't know what to do, organize a closet."

Remind yourself daily that this is temporary.
It seems in the midst of this quarantine that it will never end. It is terrifying to think of the road stretching ahead of us. Please take time to remind yourself that although this is very scary and difficult, and will go on for an undetermined amount of time, it is a season of life and it will pass. We will return to feeing free, safe, busy, and connected in the days ahead.

The pandemic isn't the only thing that's temporary. Everything is temporary. Maybe reminding yourself of the fullness of this fact gets too big and too scary too fast (life is temporary, a life-sustaining climate is temporary), but on a micro-level it can be very comforting. Everything changes.

Whatever your circumstances right now, they will change. Sometimes, you can help move them along. Other times, you enjoy them while they are around. Other times, they are a weight you bear for a time. Yet other times, you both keep changing, but in a way that keeps you together.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

SUMMER! DANCING!

I just saw this gif and loved it so much I want it to be everywhere.

Giphy made by Fandor.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

Don't Forget to Include Joy in Your Fight for Racial Justice

Photo by Thought Catalog.

If you are one of the many (probably white) people waking up to the need for racial justice and trying to educate yourself about all the problems Black, Indigenous, and other racialized people face, you might feel like your life has just become full of one atrocity after another.

While it is CRITICAL to remember that being exhausted, overwhelmed, and depressed from reading about injustice is nothing compared to actually experiencing it, it is also critical that we don't see BIPOC folks only through a lens of suffering.

If we only observe the misery of any particular group of people, we get a pretty damaging, one-dimensional view of who they are.

Remember: JOY is a thing! And it matters! Seeing and celebrating Black and Indigenous joy, sovereignty, and fun is vital to the movement.

So how do you do that?

Simply mix joyful and beautiful content made by and about BIPOC folks in with the tough stuff.

On Instagram, look up the #indigenouspride, #blackboyjoy, and #blackgirlmagic hashtags. Follow some artists whose work you just love (some of my faves are @coilyandcute @makerchamp @ohhappydani and @holysmoookes)

On Netflix, watch an old school Queen Latifah or Will Smith rom-com, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Beyonce's Homecoming, Michelle Obama's Becoming, The Last Dance, #blackAF, Nailed It, or some standup by a Black comedian.

Check out some podcasts: 2 Dope Queens (now finished, but still funny and brilliant), Tell Them I Am, Coffee With My Ma (some episodes are tougher than others), Scam Goddess, or The Nod.

Basically, pick your medium of choice and then look up BIPOC creators working with it and read/watch/view/listen to their work! Google is your friend. You are allowed to search "Black indie folk musicians" or "Indigenous comedy writers" if you don't know where to start.

Oh. And don't pirate their work. For pete's sake.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sharee Miller | Coilyandcute (@coilyandcute) on Jun 12, 2020 at 2:53pm PDT

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

This Week in Church: The Race We're In

Welcome to the series wherein I share my take-aways from church. The things that, I think, are beneficial to all of us to know or think about, whether or not we believe in any church-related things.

This week in church we talked about racism.

I am at my parents' place this weekend, and so I watched their church online with them. It was the first message in a series called The Race We're In, responding to current events and racial injustice.

Honestly? At first, I was skeptical at how they would handle it. This an overwhelmingly white, suburban, middle-class church where the members are mostly conservative in their values. The pastor, however, may not have gotten everything "right" from a social justice perspective, but he speaks directly to the problem and his (and the church's) role in it.

He describes the blindspots of those at the top of the privilege chain, names white supremacy, and recognizes that he has benefitted from these things. He names Canadian and American victims of police violence. He does all of this simply, without drowning in guilt or justifications.

This week in church we talked about where to place yourself in a story.

We looked at the story of The Good Samaritan. If you've never heard of it, it's one of Jesus' parables. It tells of a man who gets attacked and left for dead on a road. After that, three mean encounter him: first, a religious leader and a prominent member of the upper classes, both of whom ignore him and continue on. The third person is the Samaritan, a member of the lower classes and a race that was despised by the dominant Jewish culture in the area. The Samaritan helps him.

Usually, when this story is told, we are meant to place ourselves in the position of the Samaritan and use this as a call to help those in need. This time, the pastor suggests we (we being people who are part of the predominant, white society in Canada) place ourselves as the dying person in the ditch, needing to be saved.

Now, there are some issues with this image: white folks as innocent victims who need saving instead of perpetrators of harm, needing the very people we oppress to do the work to save us. That's not right. However, I believe the point that the pastor was trying to make is that we need to first listen to the voices of those who have been oppressed. We are broken and need to take in what has been said by Black and Indigenous people, really integrate it, and let that be the first step in lifting ourselves out of this oppressive role and making real change.

Watch it

Since their church services are on Youtube, you can actually watch it if you want!

(If you do choose to watch the video, I HIGHLY suggest skipping to about 5:27, unless you want to watch a really eye-rolling skit about how men can't talk about their feelings on Father's Day and a prayer for fathers that only sort of recognizes that not everyone has a great experience with their dad.)

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

Read It: 100 Demon Dialogue

I just came across Lucy Bellwood's 100 Demon Dialogue project, where she drew 100 comics about conversations with her inner demon.

First of all - I have loooooooved the idea of actually chatting with all my dark voices (instead of just trying to ignore them when they worm through my brain) and haven't really tried it. Will do it. (Or rather, want to do it. Might do it. We'll see. Intention is there, though.)

Second, these little conversations are so relatable. Here are some faves:

Read them all!

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

How to Honour Someone

My friend posted this on her Instagram and it was just so beautiful, I had to share it. (With permission of course!)

It’s been difficult to explain this concept to white folks and friends. To know someone is to honour every part of them. So if I say I am a Palestinian, Arab, Muslim woman who’s a Canadian citizen, then that’s who and what I am. It’s not up to anyone to label me immigrant or conversely to say, “I just see you as you.” To know me is to honour me, and all the specific and relevant and complex facets of my identity. I refuse to deny any of these intersections. I refuse to stay silent when every facet of me is not seen, heard and supported.

That’s what liberation means to me. To honour every single person as they are—not who they were in the past and certainly not who we make them out to be in our minds. So perhaps in addition to asking our friends how they are, maybe we should also take a minute to understand who they are at the present moment.

Black lives matter.
Black womxn’s lives matter.
Indigenous lives matter.
Trans women are women.
Trans men are men.
That’s that.

Specific things that struck me about this post:

- There are whole categories of conversations that are difficult for folks from different backgrounds to have with the white people in their lives. Sure, there may be some specific white folks who are easier to talk to about it than others, but, if you are white, how does it make you feel knowing that your BIPOC friends might feel exhausted at the mere idea of discussing these topics with you? Let's resist the urge to bounce the blame back on them and sit with it a minute.

- Are there parts of my loved ones' identities that I mentally gloss over? Ignore? Wish weren't there?

- Are there mental categories I put them into? Based on what?

- The question "what does liberation mean to me?"

- Am I holding anyone I know and love to some image or standard of who they used to be? Have I forgotten that people change?

- More insidiously, am I holding these dear ones to some imaginary version of who they are that I have made up in my head?

- What does it really mean to see a person as a whole, complex being? What changes?

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

Failing at Life

Giphy

You cannot fail at life.

Yes, some things will make you feel happier about your life. Like your life is more or less meaningful. Like you are more or less competent.

You can fail at a task. You can fail to meet a goal. You can fail to express the values you want to express.

These things add up to a major contribution to what your life is, but they are not everything. At every moment, you make the best choice you can given what is available to you. (That includes not only the external context and what you know, but also how you're feeling and your internal needs at the time.)

You are a person. You cannot fail at being a person.

You have a body. You cannot fail at having a body.

You are living your life. You cannot fail at life.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

A Friendly Reminder That Intention is Basically Meaningless

My life just recently served me up a friendly reminder that intention does not trump perception. It really doesn't matter how good your intentions are, if someone perceives your actions as harmful, then they are harmful.

That's it. You can intend whatever you want, but whether you actually help, entertain, or harm depends on how you are received.

Honestly? It can really suck.

It's not fun to find out that something you were doing for one reason is actually being perceived differently. Especially if you thought you were helping and you were actually harming. Especially if you can't just explain yourself, "fix it" and keep doing the thing.

My initial reaction was to dig in on my intentions: they were good. Very good, I think. Good enough that once I explained them to people, many would agree with me.

Sometimes, you can do that. Sometimes, you can talk to the one or two people you've impacted and once they understand your intention, their perception will change. You are no longer harming.

Sometimes, however, you just have to stop. (I mean, if you care about other people. You are free to choose to knowingly harm people and accept whatever consequences come from that.)

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

You Can Always Re-Write It

I recently read some writing tips from Malcolm Gladwell. Some, honestly, are total bunk, like his assertion that if you are talented, the world will definitely find you and you will be successful. Some, on the other hand, are great!

Here is my favourite that applies many (but not all!) areas of life:

“Just start writing and then work it out. You can always re-write it. You can change it. That’s the great luxury of being a writer. We’re not surgeons. The world does not hold us to our first pass. You know, if we kill the heart patient, we just get to operate again, ten times, before we get the operation right. So make use of that extraordinary freedom and just get stuff down and come back to it.”
-Gladwell

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

Bringing That Big COVID Energy

Giphy

I think COVID may have completely changed my capacity for busyness.

This past weekend I had two things: on Saturday, a stagette for a friend. On Sunday, a birthday celebration.

(Insert here the necessary disclaimer that both gatherings were fully pandemic-style and followed all the rules for what we are allowed to do in my province to gather safely! As a result, both were also relatively chill backyard gatherings.)

Today? I am DONE. I feel like I could use a full day off to recover from all that socializing. All those two whole things that I did over the course of a weekend.

It's Big COVID Energy: summoning everything you've got to essentially sit in a backyard or park with some people and then feeling totally drained from the effort.

It's sort of like when I was in deep grief over the end of my last relationship and had no energy to do anything, except that now I am not heavy-laden with all that sadness. (Thank goodness.)

Actually, the fun truth is that last year around this time I was emerging from that mourning and embarking on a Summer of Fun to reclaim the joy in my life. Meanwhile, this summer I, along with the rest of the world, have been constrained back into a life that closely resembles last year's grief-laden existence.

What an on-the-nose reminder that we truly never know what is going to happen.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

Make an Anti-Racist Strat Plan for Your Life

Photo by Clay Banks

Even the people who email me an at-home workout three times a week are talking about it: Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, and white supremacy.

We are in a moment of accountability.

Or rather, we are in a moment of speaking up that will hopefully turn into real accountability.

The thing I keep wondering is, how do we make sure it lasts and isn't a fad?

Here is what I have come up with as a privileged white lady who also loves plans and lists: we all need to come up with an anti-racist strat plan. For ourselves.

For the unfamiliar, strat (strategic) plans are generally multi-year plans that organizations make to determine what directions they want to go (strategy) and then how they will get there.

Strat plans prompt companies to ask themselves what their business needs to thrive and achieve its mission and then make a plan to get there.

You can google it and find a hundred different ways to make a strat plan. Some are really complicated, some are basically fancy to do lists. Here is a version I am going to suggest to you:

ANNOUNCEMENT: ch-ch-ch-ch-CHANGES

Photo by National Library of Medicine - History of Medicine on Foter.com
No known copyright restrictions

Dearest dear ones!

Change is afoot.

At the moment, I am not talking about the sweeping changes we so desperately need to the global systems designed to perpetuate racism and destroy our planet. I am talking about this little blog.

Years ago, I needed to get myself writing every day and wanted to build up a consistent presence, so I created a structure for a blog that was once haphazard: Cute! Mondays, Inspiration! Wednesdays, Learning! Fridays, and Singalong! Weekends, with a couple of days in there for me to post about whatever the heck I wanted - probably something about mental health or feminism.

It worked! I had a post every day and was getting up at 6 am to write. This habit kept me going through some really rough times and (hopefully) gave you something to read every, or at least most, days.

It has, however, also been a barrier. Other writing or creative projects I want to do get shunted aside because I have to keep filling the structure I put in place for this blog. My morning writing time has also become more like work. This isn't a terrible thing--it's work I love to do and discipline is a thing.

If it had become my ACTUAL work, that would have been a dream scenario. But it didn't, and it means that I am sitting down every morning with the goal of getting posts out instead of exploring an idea or just writing something.

THAT'S NICE, WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN?

I'm not sure yet.

I know that breaks the rules of announcements. You aren't supposed to announce that things are changing without saying what they are changing into, but that's where I am. For now, I have decided to throw out the rules I made for myself here and just sit down in the mornings to write stuff. Probably most of it will get shared here.

What you need to know is that if things seem weird or inconsistent, there's a reason. I'm experimenting. In public. In realtime. That's kind of scary, but heck, we'll see what happens.

Chances are I will have a really hard time mentally turning off the structure and drive to fill it, so maybe things won't look too different for a while. Or maybe it will swing wildly in another direction before settling into something that works. I DON'T KNOW. That's the idea.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

Learning: Let's Dig into Defunding the Police

No More Money for the Police: A NY Times article on

"More training or diversity among police officers won’t end police brutality, nor will firing and charging individual officers. Look at the Minneapolis Police Department, which is held up as a model of progressive police reform. The department offers procedural justice as well as trainings for implicit bias, mindfulness and de-escalation. It embraces community policing and officer diversity, bans “warrior style” policing, uses body cameras, implemented an early intervention system to identify problematic officers, receives training around mental health crisis intervention, and practices “reconciliation” efforts in communities of color."

"The solution to ending police violence and cultivating a safer country lies in reducing the power of the police and their contact with the public. We can do that by reinvesting the $100 billion spent on policing nationwide in alternative emergency response programs, as protesters in Minneapolis have called for. City, state and federal grants can also fund these programs."

Building a Police-Free Future: An FAQ

"The people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises. Rather than strangers armed with guns who do not live in the neighbourhoods they're patrolling, we want to create a space for mental health service providers, social workers, victim/survivor advocates, religious leaders, neighbors and friends."

To Continue to Partner with Police is To Be Complicit

“While some people point to some police services as ‘better’ it does not change the fact that police do not hold each other accountable,” he said via email. “Systemic change is needed in lieu of piecemeal reform.”

'Defunding' police, funding mental health resources will save lives: experts

“We have made police officers into the people who respond to all sorts of forms of social difficulty,” he said. “At what point do you say, these things aren’t policing?”

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

Inspiration! Roundup: Black and Indigenous Artists to Love and Be Challenged By

MIRIAM MOSQUEDA

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Miriam (@vientoxsol) on May 25, 2020 at 9:17pm PDT

NATASHA CUNNINGHAM

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Natasha Cunningham 🇯🇲 (@aboutnatlife) on Mar 21, 2020 at 10:34pm PDT

CIARA LEROY (PRETTY STRANGE DESIGNS)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ciara LeRoy (@prettystrangedesign) on Mar 10, 2020 at 12:33pm PDT

JEKEIN LATO-UNAH

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jekein Lato-Unah (@jekein) on Mar 11, 2020 at 1:23pm PDT

DANIELLE COKE

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by DANIELLE COKE (@ohhappydani) on May 12, 2020 at 1:54pm PDT

KACEYKAL!

View this post on Instagram

beauty is in what grows from you. the flowers just accentuate it.

A post shared by KaCeyKal! (@kaceykal) on Feb 6, 2020 at 3:02pm PST

KARLENE HARVEY

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Blergh Blergh the Destroyer (@holysmoookes) on May 31, 2020 at 4:33pm PDT

KENTURAH DAVIS

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kenturah Davis (@kenturah) on Jul 31, 2019 at 1:05pm PDT

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!