Dear Inner Activist Community,

‍We are witnessing necessary and transformational change that has been catalyzed by the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Nina Pop, and Tony McDade and countless other Black, queer, and trans people in the United States. We have also been witness to the recent murders at the hands of police of Chantel Moore, a Nuu-chah-nulth woman, as well as Regis Korchinski-Paquet, an Indigenous-black woman in Toronto, Ontario.

We are heartbroken with grief and we are livid with anger. We are tired but the work must get done. We are at a loss for words and this is not the time to be silent.

The Inner Activist holds up and honours the activists, organizers, and leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement who are making countless sacrifices and risking everything in their call for an end to police brutality, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism. We stand in solidarity with their demands to defund and dismantle the police state in every community. We echo their call for justice for each murder that has robbed Black families and communities of their leaders, their healers and their loved ones for 400 years on Turtle Island.

In our “Canadian” context, we also recognize and condemn the erasure of black communities, their history and resistance as well as the violence they have endured at the hands of the settler-colonial state. We cannot do this issue justice without simultaneously acknowledging and condemning the ongoing genocidal violence endured by Indigenous people on Turtle Island. We will work in solidarity with Black and Indigenous communities in dismantling white supremacy and undoing the global colonial project that is at the heart of the oppression endured by Black and Indigenous people.

We are asking ourselves, how will The Inner Activist show up for this work? We begin by renewing our ongoing commitment to supporting and centering Black, Indigenous, and people of colour in the pursuit of justice and call for freedom. We will continue to offer spaces for capacity building, healing, and transformative leadership for the long haul. We will amplify the knowledge and teachings of Black and Indigenous people who have  always provided the foundation of our liberation movements around the world.

To our Black leaders and community, we see you and we stand with you. We invite you to call on The Inner Activist. We are committed to showing up. Reach out to either of us at tahia@inneractivist.com or jorge@inneractivist.com for access to the support and resources that are available to us.

To our non-Black racialized community we ask you to join in this Movement for Black Lives. You are likely reflecting on your community's struggles and pain at this time too. Do not let this moment pass without diving into the deep inner work that is required to understand that we cannot know freedom until Black people know freedom. Connect with the liberation practices rooted in your culture, your faith and ancestral traditions, have the difficult conversation with your family, listen with all the senses available to you, exercise humility in your learning,  tend to your nervous system, build authentic relationships of reciprocity. Do not let this moment pass without making real and concrete contributions to the movement.

To our white allies, we also ask you to join The Inner Activist in meeting this moment. There is a clear call for you to step up against anti-Black racism. Are you going to do the work? Lean into what you are feeling, seeing, experiencing. Don’t think, debate, rationalize, explain this one away because that costs Black people their lives. Take action! Consider the ways that Black people continue to dignify you by teaching you all that you know about racism. Put your learning into action, abandon your comfort, fund the movement, use your privilege to protect Black bodies on the front lines, compensate and pay for Black expertise and labour, make demands of the political institutions that exist to protect and serve you at the cost of black and brown communities.

If you are a leader of an organization, this is not business as usual. Show up by stepping aside and give Black leaders access to your resources and infrastructure - no questions, no applications, no hoops to jump through. Begin the steps to center and hand over power to Black, Indigenous and people of colour on every level of your organization. Do not be the "white moderate" that Dr. King warned against.

To our entire Inner Activist community, we see your rage, your power, your fatigue, your pain. We are with you now and we are in this for a lifetime.

In solidarity,
Tahia, Jorge & The Inner Activist Team