Exploring BADT's Core Values Together (Part 1: Anti-Oppression, Justice, and Inclusivity)
Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings is committed to operating from a values-based lens. As a community, we are building and growing and living out values that contribute to liberation for all. You can find our core values here. Please note that this is a living, changing document, which is periodically edited to reflect ongoing conversations in our field and our growth as a community.
This blog and the following two will offer a deeper exploration of our values. We offer ideas for exploring each of BADT’s core values in your own life. We also acknowledge that none of these practices are one-and-done sort of things. Living values-first is an on-going, emerging practice. Thank you for engaging in this work alongside us!
Anti-Oppression
We recognize the ways in which systems of oppression impact the lived experiences of individuals based on their identities, privileges, and social locations. Our work centers liberation from these oppressive systems, not assimilation within them. We invite ourselves and others to confront the ways in which they are complicit in upholding systems of oppression.
Ideas for Exploring Anti-Oppression
Create a positionality or social location statement. This handout from the University of Michigan and this exercise from The Learning Network offer a few examples for getting started. When you introduce yourself on social media or in a physical space, offer a statement about your positionality.
Make self-reflection practices part of your everyday routine. Unlearning systems of oppression requires getting still, quiet, and reflective. It also requires being in touch with your body. Dedicate yourself to daily practices that contribute to personal and collective healing. Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad is a great tool for getting started with racial justice. Additionally, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem offers powerful body-based practices. Another practice to consider comes from Mia Mingus, a Transformative and Disability Justice educator; this guide walks you through four parts of accountability.
Engage with history beyond what you learned in school. Whitewashed history keeps us from acknowledging the truth of systems of oppression. Explore books, podcasts, and trainings to deepen your understanding. We recommend the book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts.
Justice
We acknowledge that justice is complex and subjective, and do not subscribe to one single school of thought as a training organization. Our trainers and students alike, grapple with ideas of what justice truly is, and what it can look like for individuals and communities.
Ideas for Exploring Justice
Journal, vision, reflect, and create on the topic of justice. Put pen to paper, dance, daydream, and so on. adrienne maree brown offers this powerful perspective: “all organizing is science fiction.” Thus, encourage yourself to be playful, curious, exploratory. Return to your personal vision of justice on a regular basis.
Engage in community conversation. Keeping your social location in mind, show up to listen and/or contribute to what the most marginalized folks in your community are saying. Here, we must also consider intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw. This is a way of understanding the ways that multiple forms of oppression compound, such as race and gender or disability and sexuality. Witness and hold the visions of justice that arise amongst your communities. Allow this to grow and expand your own understanding of justice.
Consider whose safety is being protected within the systems you are a part of. Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity offers this justice-focused question: “Whose safety is being sacrificed and minimized to allow others to be comfortable maintain dehumanizing views?” Ask questions, shed light on the answers to these questions, and demand change. Systems include family, neighborhood, school, doula association, city, and so on.
Inclusivity
In alignment with our value of anti-oppression, we recognize that not all people are equally seen or served by the field of birthwork. We center and uplift the needs of those who are often ignored, including but not limited to BIPOC, queer and trans folks, and those with specific access needs.
Ideas for Exploring Inclusivity
Explore the representation you are bringing into your life, home, family, and other systems you are a part of. Notice who is represented in the books you read, the shows you watch, and the places you frequent. If you are not already, make intentional efforts to engage with media and establishments that uplift and serve people and communities who are Black, Indigeous, people of color, queer, trans, disabled, under-resourced, neurodivergent, living with addiction, formerly or currently incarcerated, without access to stable housing and/or healthcare. In the context of the US where we are based, this also means representation of folks and communities who are non-English speaking, bilingual or multilingual, immigrants, undocumented, living in rural areas. For folks who hold identities of privilege, this is particularly important work. This guide from Rider University is a great tool for exploring privilege and intersectionality.
Listen. Always listen deeply. Listen to the voices of folks who hold different and same identities as you. Rather than preparing to say your part, deeply listen and receive the words of the person you are witnessing.
Notice and name who is not in the space + who is not (safe) in the room. In the systems you are a part of, make a practice of noticing who is in the room, and who is taking up space. Even more importantly, notice who is not in the room and who is not taking up space. Then, consider who may be in the space but is not experiencing safety there. Hold these systems to the demand for inclusion.
Take It Beyond the Screen
It’s time to take the work beyond the screen. Individually and collectively we can show up for the world we believe in, the world we want to live in, the world we know our future deserves. This blog series is an invitation to explore our core values in deep and meaningful ways; the ideas presented in this article are simply food for thought, not strict guidelines.
If the ideas shared here feel new and uncomfortable, we invite you to sit with that discomfort and just be curious. Where is it coming from? What is the discomfort trying to protect you from? Then, consider the next step you are willing to take.
Furthermore, we honor the ways you are already practicing these values in your lives, and we would love to hear from you-- what other ideas and practices would you add to this list?! Connect with the BADT community on our IG.
Finally, be sure to subscribe to our mailing list below to catch the next blog in our core values series!