White text on a black background that reads: CityHive's Sttements on Anti-Black Racism and Commitment to Anti-Racism. The CityHive logo is at the top

The widespread activism and organizing in Canada, the United States and around the world has brought racial injustice to the mainstream. This movement is not new: Black activists and organizations have been organizing and working for decades to dismantle racist systems that give rise to state violence and to rebuild just systems and institutions. Now, more than ever, organizations like CityHive must deepen their commitment to supporting and amplifying Black voices, and to deconstructing the systems of oppression that we operate in. Black lives matter.

CityHive recognizes and is unpacking how it has benefited from white supremacy and perpetuated racial injustices through its existence, both internally and externally. Our initiatives and learnings in anti-racism work to date have often come at the expense of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of colour) youth members and staff. We acknowledge the deep history of racism that exists in spheres directly related to our vision and mission, including the spheres of “city-building”, public engagement and sustainability movements. We also acknowledge the historical and present role of civic institutions, the non-profit sector and governance systems in perpetuating racism and anti-Blackness. 

In acknowledging our complicity, we recognize our responsibility. As an organization whose theory of change exists on the premises of: reimagining our traditional power structures by bridging younger folks and institutions; enhancing representation in decision-making processes; making civic processes more accessible and safe; being responsive to the needs of youth; and building the capacity of young folks to engage in civic processes, our work cannot be done without anti-racism as our guiding principle. Raising critical questions on equity related to city-building is an important part of our work, especially because we are often in spaces where we are one of few youth-led organizations represented. 

Here are some immediate and long-term actions we are taking as an organization to ensure that we are explicitly centering anti-racist principles in our work. This plan and these commitments will continue to evolve as we deepen our equity-centred learning and action, as well as our unlearning of organizational structures that reinforce systems of oppression. We share this as a measure of accountability with our community, including all of our youth participants, partners and beyond:

  • Staff development: All staff previously were required to embed JEDDI (justice, equity, decolonization, diversity and inclusion) into their learning plans; all staff are now embedding anti-racism and learning about Black history and systemic anti-Black racism to be further informed in our work. We are actively creating space at team meetings to discuss and share learnings, and are taking on professional development opportunities  together. We are also including anti-racism learning and resources in our staff recruitment, on-boarding and retention processes.
  • Current programming: In our current programming, together with our partners at the Centre for Dialogue and SFU Public Square, we have paused our weekly Distant not Disengaged series to create space for our regular attendees to attend events and prioritize learning that centres Black voices, and we are collectively planning how we can ensure we move forward with these events in a way that reflects our new and renewed commitments to anti-racism. For our other current programs, we are creating facilitated space for participants to explore themes of anti-racism.
  • Future programming: We are committing to working on
    1) Ensuring that all program participants learn about and understand power structures, anti-racism, anti-oppression and decolonization through their program experience with CityHive. This includes inviting and compensating external facilitators and co-developing curriculum across programs with program partners.
    2) Developing a framework to embed anti-racism and equity into how we design and collaborate on programs with our partners. This framework will centre a decolonial and anti-racism approach in our programs, and also increase the accessibility of our programs for BIPOC youth. The process of creating this framework and defining what accessibility looks like will include actively collaborating with partner organizations that work with BIPOC youth, as well as working with BIPOC youth as equal partners in the design process.
    3) Budgeting to hire BIPOC youth, experts, and/or consultants to deliver on points 1 and 2. 
  • Centering anti-racism in advocacy spaces: Through the spaces where we are invited to offer a youth perspective on issues, strategies or engagement processes, we will ensure that we routinely advocate to include components that address systemic racial inequity. Where possible, we will step back and have BIPOC/Black youth in these spaces.
  • Governance & operations: Our organization has a JEDDI (justice, equity, decolonization, diversity, inclusion) committee to guide this work. With the support and generous contributions of LEVEL, we are committing to working with external consultants to adequately compensate those with expertise to support our organization in acknowledging its gaps and creating action plans,
  • Partnerships: We will continue to seek out, work with, compensate and recommend Black-led organizations, speakers, and service providers.
  • Ongoing learning: We will hold space in the workplace far beyond the next several weeks to continue to learn together about what anti-racist work looks like for CityHive, for our team as individuals, and for city-building more broadly.
  • Accountability: We are developing a structure and process for reporting baseline data/metrics and updates that document our progress in our anti-racism work. This will help keep us on track for taking immediate and long-term anti-racist actions, and it will help us be accountable to our community. As part of this, we are also allocating resources internally to support this work. Once we have developed this, we will share it with our community, including participants and partners.

We commit to doing this work and centering anti-racism in the long term, far past this moment, and are grateful to our community for holding us accountable. We acknowledge that we are in an ongoing learning process, including recognizing the intended and unintended consequences of our actions or inactions. We commit to acknowledging and rectifying harm. We encourage everyone within our community who is at the start of their learning journey to stay tuned to our channels for resources, events and opportunities to further your learning too.

With gratitude and in solidarity,

The CityHive team