Thread by @emily_ladau

[THREAD]
Planning an event? Cool!
Aiming to center voices of marginalized communities? Fantastic!
Not paying the people you're asking to present? Let's discuss.

I recently got invited to keynote an event at an Ivy League school & was told there's no budget for travel or a fee.

The request was from an undergrad org. Apparently, this Ivy League institution's policy makes it so they're "unable to pay for any external costs."
Interesting. When I was in (a much smaller) college, I planned an event for an org & budgeted a few thousand to pay our speaker.

As a disabled woman, I'm often asked to do the work of sharing my story and experiences to educate others. I'm passionate about doing this because I'm a big believer in the need to raise consciousness around the disability experience and the issues that impact our community.

I agree to speaking/interviews/etc. whenever I can. I'm the type of person who hates to say no. In part, I'm a people-pleaser, but more importantly, I worry that turning things down essentially means I'm turning down opportunities to shift stigmatizing perspectives on disability.

I know I choose to take on tasks like speaking/writing as part of my job.
But that's just it. It's part of my job. I don't just spit out words and hope for the best. I spend hours brainstorming, researching, writing, refining, practicing. I pour my heart and soul into what I do.

Each time a piece is published or a talk is given, my words and my experiences are no longer just my own. They're laid bare and made vulnerable to all kinds of feedback, no matter how emotionally fraught that might be.

So the work continues long after the job is "done."

Because of all that goes into what I do, I've lately begun to make good on a promise to myself to stop agreeing to free labor and think more critically about when to donate my time and efforts. There are still many things I happily do on a volunteer basis. That's important to me.

It's also crucial to note that I'm in an incredibly privileged position to be able to decide when I will agree to do something unpaid. Being asked to provide free labor disproportionately impacts disabled people of multiple marginalized identities.

Ironically, after I told my boyfriend about being asked to keynote for free, he pulled up this article from an Ivy League publication about charging for speaking: hbr.org/2018/05/how-mu…

It's pretty sensible in highlighting "earning what you're worth" vs. when to speak unpaid.

Institutions and organizations that claim to value diverse representation must practice what they preach. Payment is an indicator of valuing work.

@slooterman wrote a great piece on this that I edited for @rootedinrights. (Of course we pay our writers.) rootedinrights.org/if-you-really-…

It's time for well-established institutions and organizations to put their money where their mouth is. And it's not just because I need to earn a living. It's because I will not perpetuate devaluation of the labor of marginalized communities.

Stop virtue signaling. Start paying.