Care & Justice Policy

By entering any of the online spaces of From The Ground Up 2: Taking Action Now, you agree to the Care and Justice policy. We do not tolerate any harmful, oppressive or abusive behaviour that excludes, threatens or disrespects others. We will remove any persons from the online space who do not act in accordance with this policy.

Summary

• Respect each other! 
• Ensure participation of all. 
• Do not make assumptions about other people’s identities and experiences.
• Don’t be defensive. Listen and learn.

→  Reach out to our accessibility team at our accessibility desk during the gathering, or at [email protected].

Why a Care and Justice Policy?

Climate Justice is social justice. The effects of the climate crisis are affecting to the greatest extent those that have been structurally oppressed throughout history and continue to be marginalised today. As we are socialised in a very unequal world, we all inherit implicit privileges, prejudices and behaviours that harm marginalised communities. This includes people of colour, women, LGBTQIA+ community, disabled and working class people, among others. We want to amplify the voices of these communities and believe that climate justice will need to confront societal issues of sexism, racism, ableism, classism, homophobia and transphobia. 

Although we won’t be able to generate a safe space for everyone, we are asking you to contribute to make our event as safe as possible. From the Ground Up seeks to foster an environment where everyone feels safe from oppression; an environment that is empowering, engaging and transformative. By entering any of the online spaces of From the Ground Up, you agree to behave in accordance with this policy. 

Holding a global online event comes with many challenges. While we recognize that creating a complete safe space is not yet possible,  our team believes that creating a Care and Justice Policy is an important step towards an environment where everyone feels included and safe from oppression.

Ground Rules
Our Care and Justice Policy is to be followed on any online spaces within the global gathering, including online meetings and webinars, our slack, and our facebook, instagram and youtube spaces.

• Respect each other!
  • Don’t engage in behaviour that excludes, threatens or disrespects others on the basis of: gender identity, ability, immigration or citizenship status, ethnicity, age, nationality, sexuality, religion and belief, working status, income, class, appearance. 
  • Think about how your words might exclude or harm someone. 
  • We are not tolerating threats or attempts of violent behaviour, verbal abuse, including oppressive language, insults or generalisations of groups.
• Be aware of your privileges: Watch out for invisible hierarchies and challenge them. Keep in mind that aspects of your identity (age, gender, level of experience etc. ) might affect the way others respond to you.
• Don’t make assumptions about other people’s identities or interests. 
• Ensure participation of all: We are actively seeking to promote a space where those who hold a lot of privilege reflect on their position and step back to give others the space to speak up. Avoid using jargon and acronyms and encourage diversity of participation.  
• Encourage and engage in listening and reflection: We are all learning to undo our often unconscious harmful behaviours and can only do so by listening and learning from others. Take on feedback as an opportunity to learn. We can also support people to take on criticism. Let’s make sure we don’t leave it to marginalised people to explain their pain to us.

What are we doing to ensure safer spaces? Which support structures are in place? 

• Our facilitators will remove any participants engaging in excluding, threatening or disrespectful behaviour. 
• We will also engage participants to encourage awareness of privileges, assumptions and hierarchies, and call on participants to reflect on those. 
• Shortly before and during the gathering, we are running an accessibility desk with a team member who can address concerns and questions.
• We established an Accessibility Channel on our Slack as a listening space, where concerns and problems can be raised. This channel is moderated by our accessibility and awareness team. 
• We have established an accessibility and safeguarding team- feel free to reach out on slack (#accessibility) or directly to Tess Humble under [email protected].
• We will ensure an open and inclusive feedback process both during and after the global gathering. 

Accessibility 

Please email [email protected] if you require any support in advance of the meeting.

Language

• Unfortunately, due to limited funding we are not able to offer live translation for all our events. We will provide Spanish translation for some of the events and French and Portuguese upon request. 
• Recognising that many of our participants won’t be native English speakers, we want to remind speakers and participants to use clear, simple language, to speak slowly and to avoid jargon.  

Disability 

• Our website is a work in progress and we continue to try to improve its accessibility standards. 
• We will make presentations available (beforehand/ upon request). Screenshare mode does not allow screen readers to access the content

Bandwidth

• We are aware that not everyone will be able to access a good internet connection. 
• Therefore, we are trying to stream on youtube and facebook and reduce  video whenever possible. Participants can also follow the proceedings on our whatsapp broadcast or over slack 
• We also would like to encourage participants to use the call in option on zoom if this is available. Please be aware that this might charge from your local provider. , 
• Ask participants to close video/ no large videos that require bandwidth

Content Warnings 

• Please name any content warnings at the beginning of your sessions and specific content warnings to the program managers at [email protected]

Let’s keep each other safe so we can be dangerous together.

References

Young Friends of the Earth Scotland: Safer Spaces Policy
Climate Camp Scotland Safer Spaces Policy
Edinburgh Anarchist Feminist Bookfair