“Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” –bell hooks
One of the most notable descriptors of trauma-informed care is shifting the question of what is wrong with you to what happened to you. While certainly less harmful than asking what is wrong, for RYSE Youth Center, asking what happened still falls short of affirming and recognizing young people of color’s fortitude and agency. Asking what happened continues to render the problem in/on the individual, overemphasizing behavioral change while foregoing the ever-needed scrutiny and emphasis on systems change.
RYSE’s work with young people occurs in the context of atmospheric trauma. Our members live, die, navigate, hustle, struggle, and succeed within a context of persistent danger, distress, and dehumanization. Within this context, we already know what has happened and to large extent, what is happening. We have the science, the understanding of adolescent development, allostatic load, and hypervigilance; of the embodiment of chronic stress and health impacts of adversity. On a daily basis, we see the burdens of inequity, pain, and insidious racial trauma they bear. We also see the fortitude, tenacity, resilience, and resistance it takes to survive when living with persistent stress of social identity threat and racial trauma.
When young people come to RYSE, or when we meet them at school, at the hospital, or in court, we make sure they know we are glad to see them, that we love them however they are, that we love them while they grapple with and determine where they want to go. We thank them for entrusting us to support them. The question we do ask is how can we better support or be there for them. How can we make their way to and with RYSE safer, more predictable, less vigilant, and more fulfilling?
By asking what we can and should do as an organization, we are better able to understand, address, and adapt to the complex and dynamic realities of our members. What is shared is their lived expertise, their priorities, needs, and interests as described and defined by them. This then is what drives and enables RYSE to enact programs and supports for each member while simultaneously cultivating a sense of community and collectivity. A beloved community.
When we engage from a place of recognition and reflexivity, we understand we have to work to gain and sustain the trust of our young people, not the other way around. We have to be ready and willing to change our behaviors as an organization, to support and mobilize our partners and stakeholders to do the same, and to work from and towards a place of mutual accountability and support. A place of beloved community.
So what does beloved community look like? Below are some of RYSE’s key learnings and offerings. We would love to hear from others what it looks like for you.
Creating Beloved Community: RYSE’s Key Learnings and Offerings
- We acknowledge and address the social ecologies of violence and dehumanization
- Name and validate young people’s experiences.
- Tell young people we love them.
- Foster social emotional learning AND socio-political development.
- Make race/ism and positional power central to the work.
- We work across roles and systems
- Prioritize people not programs.
- Implement radical inquiry.
- Commit to healthy struggle and vulnerability.
- We avoid simplistic moral frames
- Good vs. bad coping.
- Perpetrator vs. victim.
- Zero tolerance policies.
- “At-risk” frames.
- Overemphasis on behavioral change.
- We heal ourselves, together
- Practice self-care AND collective healing.
- Discuss our wounds, make repairs.
- Bear witness and be adaptive.
- Celebrate, laugh, and have fun.
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