Liberation requires your imagination, creativity, and innovation. In fact, liberation is a work of art. Adrienne Maree Brown tells us, “Art is not neutral. It either upholds or disrupts the status quo, advancing or regressing justice. We are living now in the imagination of people who thought economic disparity and environmental destruction were acceptable costs for their power. It is our right and responsibility to write ourselves into the future. All organizing is science fiction. If you are shaping the future, you are a futurist. And visionary fiction is a way to practice the future in our minds, alone and together.”
If you are leading for liberation, you are a futurist and a pioneer. The first step is to start imagining a workplace where success is defined by how many people are thriving, innovating, and experiencing belonging. What are people doing, saying, and feeling in the workplace you imagine? The next step is to disrupt yourself and release any conditioning that tells you, “It has to be this way or that way.” Release mindsets and behaviors that tell you, “This is impossible,” or, “We do not have the time, talent, or resources to make this happen.”
“Art is not neutral. It either upholds or disrupts the status quo, advancing or regressing justice. We are living now in the imagination of people who thought economic disparity and environmental destruction were acceptable costs for their power. It is our right and responsibility to write ourselves into the future. All organizing is science fiction. If you are shaping the future, you are a futurist. And visionary fiction is a way to practice the future in our minds, alone and together.” — Adrienne Maree Brown
At Lead For Liberation, we believe that consciousness creates. In order to create liberation for yourself and others, you must be experiencing liberation in your own consciousness first. Where in your own life can you expand your own experience of thriving? Where would you like to experience more creativity? Do you experience belonging for yourself? Do you know how to create it with others? To what extent are you available for co-creation and interdependence? In what places and spaces in your life are you still perpetuating aspects of white supremacy culture? Do you have the tools you need to support your own disruption?
As Adrienne posits, we are living in a world designed by someone else’s imagination. That world is dying and a new one is waiting to be born. We are the birthers. Who must we become in order to imagine and believe this new world is possible?
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