NY Launch Pod: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod, the New York Press Club, award-winning podcast highlighting the most interesting new startups, businesses, and openings in the New York City area. I’m your host and New York attorney Hal Coopersmith, and in this episode, we are talking all about social justice, again! We check in with Hannah Weitzer, the founder of SeaChange Collective. We first to Hannah on episode 56, and a lot has changed during the pandemic to highlight social justice in and outside of New York City, and SeaChange Collective is at the forefront of all those changes. Here is Hannah Weitzer.
Hannah Weitzer: How many people of this group do we have on our staff, um, and a recognition that we need to be increasing the number of people of color and on staffs, and certainly in leadership positions, but also beyond that, it’s not just getting more people of color on staff, but how do you actually reshape your organizational institutional culture so that you’re shifting power dynamics and that you’re actually changing the way you operate, not just sort of checking a box of representation.
NY Launch Pod: But before we go to the interview if you haven’t already remember to sign up for our monthly newsletter for unique content and insights at nylaunchpod.com and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite listening app. And we have a sponsor RezCue, New York State’s premier residential rental compliance platform. Have you rented out residential property in New York State? If so, odds are, you are not compliant with the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act enacted by New York State in 2019. And if you don’t follow the law, your tenant may be able to legally stay in the property beyond the length of the lease and many more consequences, RezCue is designed to solve all those problems and more go to rezcueme.com and enter in some basic information and rescue takes care of the rest. So you can relax and be a more profitable landlord. That’s rezcueme.com. And with that, let’s go to the interview with Hannah Weitzer and her business partner BC, on another episode of How You’re Doing.
NY Launch Pod: So stepping back onto the New York launch pod, we have Hannah Weiser and BC of sea change collective. And just a reminder for everyone. What is Seachange Collective?
Hannah Weitzer: SeaChange Collective is a women-led, and gender expansive collective that works with organizations and individuals of all shapes and sizes to better align social justice values and, and practice in their work.
NY Launch Pod: So you first step onto the New York Launch Pod in 2019, I imagine a lot has changed even in a short amount of time, in the social justice world. What has changed for SeaChange collective and your mission?
Hannah Weitzer: I’ll start and then BC, pass it to you. So a few things have changed in the past two years. Of course, one big one for everyone has been the global pandemic, which of course has had a lot of impacts and how everyone works and operates on a day-to-day basis. So early on in the pandemic, we shifted all of our work as many people did to fully virtual. And that has meant, you know, reformatting our, the way we work, new thinking about new tools. Also, new opportunities to think about disability justice models, and there’s certain access needs that were a challenge when meeting in person, this person thinking a lot about physical access, but now also being on virtual platforms all the time, thinking about audio and visual access and sort of what other, barriers might there be to people fully engaging in our programs and how can we, create spaces that, that invite in all types of folks.
Hannah Weitzer: Another advantage actually that we found doing work virtually is that we’re able to reach people and broader geographies. I think we talked a lot about, you know, why New York is such a great place to do social justice and equity work. A couple of years ago, that’s still true, but it’s also been really phenomenal that when we have a virtual workshop, people can join from Mexico, from Germany, from Morocco in the UK, and California. And those are all places where people have been able to, to connect with us. And one last piece that has been, I think, really valuable about working virtually, is that we’ve had to break down our work into smaller pieces. We used to do a lot of full-day workshops or even, you know, multiple-day intensive workshops. And that was kind of the design of a lot of people’s work that, you know, we do a staff retreat and we bring everyone together for a few days and we dive really intensely into a topic and say, this year, this quarter, it’s going to be social justice and equity. And then we spend a couple days like really deeply involved in, and then we go back to our regular work and our regular routines. And it’s actually, we found a really big advantage of breaking it down into smaller pieces, giving people time to digest, to take what they’re learning back to their regular day-to-day work, see how it integrates, what comes up, what new questions they have and then reconvene maybe a week, maybe two weeks, maybe a month later, we work on sort of different timelines to continue.
BC: Yeah. I mean, hard to add to that, but I’ll just share that, you know, I think we’ve grown, you know, more connected to our core values. We think about what it means to be intersectional and our understanding of identity and structures of oppression. I think we’ve also, one of the biggest ways we’ve grown is just by growing the team in a way that reflects and mirrors the world in an intersectional way, that accounts for many of the identities of the folks that we’re actually working with and gearing our services towards. So that’s been really monumental and in what it means to move to a different chapter of SeaChange.
NY Launch Pod: So one of the things that has popped up in the past couple of years since you’ve been on, I think social justice has become more of a focus in the world. I can think about it in my own professional experience, at least in terms of real estate, we’ve moved away from a master bedroom becoming a primary bedroom. What are some other examples that have kind of come up in the work that you’re doing or things that you’re seeing in the past couple years particularly as social justice has become more of a focus.
BC: That’s a great question, Hal. I think we’re just seeing more variation in response to different, you know, issues that we see coming up. If we think about the, one of the main issues that we’re moving through right now, COVID-19, the pandemic. We’ve seen that because people are, have been inundated with social justice language and pedagogy understanding systems, and how they play out. I think folks have been really hesitant to critique different communities for their decisions around the vaccine, whether it be getting vaccinated or not getting vaccinated. And I think it’s partially because we’re realizing that we don’t know at all about all of the, identities, and different lived experiences of people. And there’s so much that needs to be taken to account, right? It’s not easily, it’s not as simple as, go get the vaccine, right. We’re seeing with this intersectional approach that people are taking now, we’re really getting to the deeper questions about, CDC, about people’s beliefs, about health equity, or health inequity rather. And it’s just complicating things.
NY Launch Pod: Why don’t you expand on that a little bit more, because at least from an outsider’s perspective, and a lot of people’s perspective, people may say it’s easy, to get, to get the vaccine. Other people, of course, obviously, do not have that perspective and that’s kind of led to that, debate. And then among the people that do not have the perspective of get vaccinated. Now you’re talking about the social justice side. So can you, can you help us understand a little bit more about that? And what see changes doing in terms of that?
BC: It’s a great question. I think the social justice comes in when we think about the treatment of people and, the understanding of their various decision-making. So to be specific, right, I I’m a black American born and raised in the Bronx, New York, and many members of the Bronx have not have chosen to not get the vaccine. Why also, because the Bronx houses the poorest congressional district of the US, the regular person’s relationship to, hospitals and health services is a meek and small the services that we have are less than adequate. And I think that really shapes people’s understanding of the health industry as an industry. And it breeds distrust in places like the CDC, because we have so many histories and long narratives of different ways that the CDC and the government has worked together to further impoverish our communities, right. We can even go back a couple of years to the HIV/Aids epidemic and how black gay men were stigmatized and told lies about them from the CDC. And so we have examples, you know, maternal health outcomes for black women that are so, so low because of lack of understanding, on health practitioners and of, of race and racism, right? And so if you, you know, the common person who’s black in the Bronx, you know, is told that getting the vaccine is going to be helpful and that in order to do it, and you have to stand on an eight-hour line, miss work, get fired, for, you know, something that we don’t really actually have a connection to, right? Like the CDC hasn’t done anything, you know, to, a layman on the streets in their lives in order to, you know, benefit. And so why would I make, such a risky decision that could impact, feeding my kids when I could not, when I could just wear a mask and, make sure I’m okay and protected that way. And that’s what we’re seeing. I think we’re seeing so many folks who’ve come across and had difficult relationships with the medical-industrial complex, saying, taking a stand and saying, I’m going to protect myself in a different way. And I think some of our responses, right, but social justice responses, there is the understanding that there’s histories of oppression that make people weary of taking the vaccine. And also, I think on our end, when, as myself, someone who is vaccinated, I have the intricate, someone who’s vaccinated and from this area, I have a responsibility now to share why I’m vaccinated, right. To share, you know, a narrative that might be different from my counterparts, but, in, in my opinion, it’s informed and it’s the optimal safety, you know, option.
NY Launch Pod: So now that you’re sharing your narrative, in terms of being vaccinated and helping other people understand why a community may not be vaccinated, how are you working to bridge that gap and is SeaChange involved in that?
Hannah Weitzer: Yeah, I wanted to come in and also just as a point of clarification and SeaChange in specifically working on that vaccine access and in any way, shape or form, I think it’s just an important connection to how issues of social justice and questions around oppression and access and narrative and trust, permeate, every aspect of our society. And the pandemic has really just laid that bare. I think hypothetically if a community-based organization in the Bronx who was working on vaccine advocacy and access were to come to SeaChange and say, Hey, can you help us figure out how we can reach more communities? Then we would have a role in helping them think through some of those questions that they maybe aren’t asking themselves. Well, what, you know, what are you doing to build trust with the community? What are you doing to repair past harm that may have happened between the community and existing healthcare providers so that people can, feel safe and comfortable coming to get the vaccine? So it’s about, we’ve talked about this with you I think in the past, so much of our work is thinking about how do you center the voices and needs of the people most impacted by the problem you’re trying to solve? So whether that’s global health and vaccine access or education, or, technology usage, you know, who are the people who are most impacted and how are you elevating their voices in a really authentic way.
NY Launch Pod: And so what has been most of the focus since we last spoke?
Hannah Weitzer: So I’d say there’s been a couple areas of focus. One area that we’ve been working in for a long time is what we call grounded program design, which could be around vaccine access. It could be around, arts education. It could be around civic engagement, work in New York City. But again, thinking about as you’re designing programs, projects, campaigns, how do you understand who the communities who you’re working with and for are, and how do you center the voices of the people most impacted and design programs that will really serve their needs and elevate their voices and get also whatever goals you’re hoping to get for. I’d say another area that we were working in before and has increased a lot over the past year-plus, especially I’d say sort of during and following the peak of the Black Lives Matter uprising of last summer is increased work around understanding identity, positionality, privilege, and power. So thinking about how do we better understand how we see ourselves in our multiple identities, how others see us when we show up in spaces virtual or in-person, how does that impact the ways that we make relationships, the ways we build trust, how do we disrupt some traditional and often harmful power dynamics about whose voice traditionally holds power, and how do we create space for other voices? So we’re getting a lot, of organizations, as well as some city agencies, unions, you know, various other folks who are coming to us really for more support in thinking about how do we reshape power in our organizations. And I think part of that, you know, sort of another trend that we’re seeing everywhere, I’m sure in your industry as well is thinking about representation, right? How many people of this group do we have on our staff, um, and a recognition that we need to be increasing the number of people of color and on staffs, and certainly in leadership positions, but also beyond that, it’s not just getting more people of color on staff, but how do you actually reshape your organizational institutional culture so that you’re shifting power dynamics and that you’re actually changing the way you operate, not just sort of checking a box of representation.
NY Launch Pod: And the last time you were here, you talked about SeaChange, being a collective part of your name, and particularly in a somewhat amorphous organization, how has being structured as a collective meant for your mission?
Hannah Weitzer: It’s still an exciting process of figuring out what it means to be a collective. But we grown a lot in the past two years. We were three people when we last spoke, we are now five, what we call full members of the collective who participate in shared decision-making around our policies and practice, you know, everything from what types of projects we work on to what we charge folks. And we also have four freelance facilitators who work with us on a more ad hoc basis. And I’d say it’s been really valuable having more perspectives. We’ve also really focused in the past couple of years on making sure that our collective is made up of majority of people of color. We work in a co-facilitated model and make sure we always have two facilitators who represent different identity backgrounds whenever we’re running a workshop. So that we’re bringing different experiences, different perspectives, different backgrounds, and just being able to work together to muddle through sometimes some of these tough questions that we encounter in doing our work, both sort of in the work itself, but also in the process piece, how we do the work, how we think about it, how we operate in an equitable way. It’s really valuable having multiple minds together on that.
NY Launch Pod: And we talked about how social justice has become an important focus in society now, and what it’s meant, particularly in the past two years, I think, a lot of current events certainly highlighted that, but on the flip side, I also feel like, and maybe you see this as well. There’s been a bit of a backlash, not in the sense that it isn’t important, but maybe that, you know, a lot of social justice and, inclusivity, and some of the things that you may be focused on are, too much for organizations. Have you seen any backlash and if you have, have you kind of worked through that?
BC: That’s a great question, Hal. I don’t know, and Hannah please chime in, I don’t know that I’ve seen, I mean, I’ve seen national backlash. I mean, we’re looking at, you know, Texas, the critical race theory debates that are now being taken to courts across the US, like that is an example of a tangible piece of backlash. Like we do not want our kids to learn the foundational aspects of, you know, race in America is, demonstrated racist backlash. But I, I’m not located in Texas. I’m not based there. And I think when you’re where there’s a little bit of space from that on the Northeast. And so I think what I’m feeling in the climate of social justice more now than ever is actually kind of like a commercialized packaged up version of justice that we can like sell in a really watered down way to the public. I think specifically to the recent, like a news article that talked about a show that’s coming out called the activist and how, you know, you have celebrities competing for, you know, I don’t actually know what the premise of the show is, but really it’s taking things that, you know, we at SeaChange hold near and dear, and like making a game out of it, in a way that is, it doesn’t even feel like it’s authentic, right. It feels kind of inauthentic. And, you know, the celebrities chosen to participate weren’t particularly known for their justice work, in the ways that we see social justice. And so I’m definitely seeing a lot more of this, let’s make social justice mainstream. We’re missing some of the integral nuances to make it authentic.
Hannah Weitzer: I think building off what BC said, you know, for the most part, an organization or a company that’s run by somebody who’s really opposed to this work that probably isn’t seeking out our services, but within an organization, you have a lot of different people with different life experiences and different levels of openness and reception to these ideas and maybe want some social justice tools, wants some anti-oppression tools until it makes them uncomfortable. And we certainly have been in processes, whether it’s like in the middle of a workshop or, you know, in the middle of an eight-month, nine-month, year-long process, working with an organization where someone gets uncomfortable because what we’re talking about and the changes that they would have to make to how they operate are more than maybe what they expected. Maybe it means they have to give up more power than they feel comfortable because they’re used to having a certain amount of power and decision-making, and to really authentically create space for other voices means that you do something somebody else’s way, and so we certainly see struggles around that of like, oh, well, we were, we were really excited about all of this, and now it’s getting a little bit harder. I think we also see that we do a fair amount of work talking about white supremacy culture. And we talk about it in that language. And we, we reference, a piece of work by a scholar, Tema Okun that’s fairly popular, and has made the rounds in a lot of different circles that identifies some common characteristics of white supremacy culture, which range from power hoarding to sort of an artificial sense of urgency, paternalism, worship of the written word. And so we’ve, we work with a lot of groups, around thinking about having these show up in, in lives. How do you embody these characteristics? Where are you even unintentionally perpetuating them? And what would it look like to reshape your organizational culture and your personal practice to move away from these? And sometimes people are really open to that in theory, and it’s really, and then it can becomes really challenging and in practice.
BC: Well, a part of it is that we’re working, you know, it’s when we’re doing the work of social justice going in with an organization, to help them solve, some issues it’s really culture work, we’re shifting the culture of the organization when we go in and provide political education and it’s as if you know, the culture or something that you’ve been in for five years, drastically changes, there’s understandably some anxiety, fear around what’s next and around “am I, how am I going to show up, and command authority in this role, in this new order and this new culture that we’re developing.” And that’s, I’d say that’s what we receive from folks like, hesitancy fear, and that fear-based you know, that, that fear, I think, manifests in many different ways, whether it be, we don’t want to do this contract anymore, which is the word to drastic way, but that could manifest or, heavy, intense pushback, right. That kind of slows down the process and is typically the opposite of what people, you know, are asking for.
NY Launch Pod: Okay. So we last talked to you two years ago, and you had predictions for the future. What are your predictions for the next two years?
BC: That is a hard question. Well, you know, we got all of our predictions, right two years ago, we talked about, you know, a huge social justice, racial equity, black lives matter uprising. We knew that was coming. We knew the pandemic was coming, just kidding.
NY Launch Pod: Everyone knew that.
Hannah Weitzer: Everybody knew that, I mean, I think we’re, we already are starting to see, you know, a little bit of the, the wave of energy around social justice, racial equity anti-oppression work that peaked last summer into early fall, you know, summer 2020 into fall, 2020 for anyone listening in the archives years from now, has, has already dialed back a bit, right? Like it was the topic of conversation sort of across so many sectors of society. And, and then a lot of people lose interest and move on. But I do think it has not sort of receded back to pre-uprising levels. I think there’s also been a tremendous amount work by activists and organizers for years and years and years, not new to last summer, but that foundation exists and what’s strengthened. And I don’t think these conversations are going away. And I think we’re going to have to all of us as individuals and as places of work and as communities, figure out how to have these difficult conversations and how to work together to deconstruct power, in order to make a more equitable and just society for ourselves, both on the macro level, but also on more micro-levels. And I see that continuing over the next two years.
NY Launch Pod: Well, that is a wonderful note to end things on Hannah, BC, thank you very much for stepping back onto the New York Launch Pod. How do people find out more about you and SeaChange Collective?
Hannah Weitzer: Thanks, Hal. People can find out more about SeaChange collective at our website seachangecollective.org. We’re also on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
NY Launch Pod: And if you want to learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you can follow us on social media @nylaunchpod and visit nylaunchpod.com for transcripts of every episode. Hannah, BC, are you super fans of the New York Launch Pod?
Hannah Weitzer: Super!
NY Launch Pod: If you’re a super fan like Hannah and BC please leave a review on apple podcasts. It is greatly appreciated and.
