To the @gdiphilly community: here's a thread on my perspective on current events.
You may be aware of what’s been happening in the GDI national community currently – if not, please check out the #causeascene podcast (player.fm/series/causeas…) featuring @shanisebarona.
You can also read about additional incidents here: technical.ly/delaware/2018/… and here: medium.com/@amlyhamm/refl…
As an organizer for @gdiphilly for the past three years, I want to be really transparent. The GDI Philly team has been incredibly upset about what has been happening and we’ve been talking about how to address this and how to be better.
We have some ideas on steps to implement and we acknowledge that it will require much more work and brainstorming to truly center the experiences of the members of GDI Philly who are from marginalized and underrepresented communities.
Suzie, Amber and I LOVE the GDI Philly community. We want to support you. We want to be here for you. We want to be better for you. I, individually, want to be better for you and better for me.
We spent a long time yesterday coming up with a letter to best articulate what’s been going on and how we feel about it, which you can see here: docs.google.com/document/d/1dO…
However, there have been a lot of conversations happening at the national level among different chapters that prompted us remove the section about action steps we’d like to take.
Many chapter leaders have been stepping down, and each of us has even considered it for ourselves. (For the record, I’ve been planning on stepping down in January to move on to other personal projects, which GDI leadership is aware of.)
Because we don’t know where the organization stands or our place in it, we aren’t comfortable/ready to share the local chapter’s strategies for next steps.
It’s important to me to be transparent with you. GDI Philly has been such a huge, positive part of my life and I want to be here to support each and every one of our members. Our members are what makes our community.
If you’d like to chat about it and are comfortable, please reach out.
