🌱 Expansive Timelines | Breaking from Task-Based Work
Part IV: Work, Wealth, and Productivity in 2024
Table of Contents
Welcome Back! 👋🏼
We wrap up our series on work with expansive shifts in work to achieve a Great Turning and shift towards a vision for a life focused on living. Plus, our latest podcast episode is out discussing mysogynoir at the presidential level and in work-places. Read on for more...
In Case You Missed It: 🌱 Frida's Way | Shifting to Slow Productivity
What You Can Expect
🎶 Resistance & Reciprocity Playlist
⏳ Expanding the Timeline
🎙 Misogynoir at Top of the Ticket
🌺 Harris-Waltz Digital Tricks at DNC
🗞 News with a Social Change Lens
🌱 Post-DNC Organizing
🌱 Resistance & Reciprocity ✊🏼 Playlist
Listen to our Spotify playlist! Activism and movement building requires joy, art, and imagination to thrive. This playlist is one of my contributions to help build restorative power. Enjoy some James Brown, Tracy Chapman, 2Pac, The Highwomen, the queen herself, Beyonce, and more.
When it comes to work culture, most of us can recognize that something’s not right. Whether it’s squeezing your personal life into a few hours at night after you’re exhausted from the day or “this meeting could have been an email.” we’re working harder despite the blessed automations and AI that are supposed to make our lives easier.
It’s clear that we need a new way to think about work and our lives. But it’s sometimes hard for folks to envision a life where work and wealth are not central. The idea of taking your foot off the peddle is scary for most. It’s easy to see why when you consider that the U.S. is notoriously lacking a social safety net. When the alternative is poverty which is increasingly becoming criminalized, it’s understandable that people have a deep-seated fear that drives them to work themselves to the bone.
Our wealth gap continues to expand, while we witness obscene wealth from the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the many bros that control our digital lives and increasingly government and economic policy. When our world is literally on fire and our society is controlled by fewer and richer people, it’s easy to fall into an anxious cycle of overwork to save the [insert mission here]. While I don’t expect that we can change work culture overnight, I do believe we can intentionally act to set the stage for a better future of work.
Expanding our Strategy
One piece to our overworked culture is that we are very task-based. The now ubiquitous task management software like ClickUp and Monday.com helps organizations keep track of tasks and move projects along. There’s nothing wrong with tasks, but only if strategy is central. It’s so easy to lose the strategy for the tasks 🌲. Work can easily become an endless supply of tasks that you’re checking through without really asking why. Plus, our work culture encourages our machine-style productivity.
A hyper-productive lifestyle does not allow for our full human experience. When we are too busy jumping from one task to the next, we lose our ability to think expansively. We are less strategic and more reactive.
For organizations working towards change, task-based work can bring people out of the reality of their work. when our near-sighted focus has us jumping from task to task, it’s easy to dehumanize and sanitize the outcomes, particularly with communications. Rather than using communications to connect and build relationships, it's easy to fall into the motions to churn out social posts, newsletters, press releases, etc. Stepping off the task wheel and intentionally shielding time for strategy will build stronger relationships and lead to better outcomes for organizations.
Expanding the Timeline
Joanna Macy’s advice comes to mind as a solution to helping us shift how we work to accomplish the larger things rather than just looking outwardly busy. It's no secret that the systems that harm have been in place for quite some time. Colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and its newer friend capitalism have been around for hundreds of years. They unfortunately won't go away over night (although that would be nice 🚪).
In her book, 'Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy', Macy outlines the need for a Great Turning, or a collective transition to a life-sustaining society. Part of her solution to larger social change work is a longer timeline. The narrow view of pseudo-productivity has us considering timelines within weeks, months, or a few years. However, for real systemic change to occur and last, we need a longer timeline. If our movement will take time and intention to shift society, then it also reasons that the organizations doing movement work would achieve better outcomes with more expansive timelines.
Dream without Chains
I feel like I’ve barely touched the surface of our toxic work culture, but I hope this series has brought new ideas or a shift in thinking around work. The last idea I’ll leave is with us the permission to dream.
We are stuck in a toxic work culture that most people don’t love so it’s hard to imagine something truly transformative, not just a little better. My vision is for a life focused on living. I would like us all to work less and live more when we work. I envision a world where people find work they love and everything is shared.
Whether you work at an organization or for yourself, consider the ways you can begin to build transformative change into your work life. We each have power in our own pockets of life. What can you help change about work?
Enjoying our newsletter? Subscribe to get our resources and support in your inbox weekly. I created Roots of Change Media to help busy communicators and activists practice intentional activism through a decolonized lens.
🎙 Shielding Black Women Against Misogynoir
As soon as Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee for President, Black women were warning everyone of the incoming misogynoir that would be directed not just at the candidate, but all Black women. I spoke to Heliana Ramirez, PhD, LISW (she/her), founder of Hostile Workforce Recovery, LLC about misogynoir at the presidential level and in the workplace. It's important that we all be more aware and build networks of community care to support always and especially during this time of increased racial violence and trauma. Listen to the podcast to learn more and reference the Black Women Toxic Job Suicide Prevention Resource Guide, which is packed with actionable advice.
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Sam Chavez
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Harris' New Twitch Channel
The new Democratic nominee debuted a Twitch channel with Kamala Harris’ DNC speech as its first broadcast. The Harris campaign has been smart about reaching core constituencies where they spend their time. Twitch is extremely popular with younger generations, especially men, a constituency that Democrats have been losing.
- One key principle of communications is to meet people where they are.
- Twitch saw 2.41 million viewers in 2023 with 53% from people 34 and under.
- Plus, it’s a way to reach young men who are being heavily messaged to from MAGA loyalists and Trump. 65% of Twitch users or over 1.5 million are men.
- I also love that they’re repurposing content they are already getting. Speeches and campaign stops are already happening so why not get video to extend the reach of your comments?
- It's a prime example of how organizations can find low lift ideas to expand to new audiences without creating extra work.
- They’ve already proven their digital chops. The KamalaHQ TikTok quintupled its followers receiving 232 million views and 33 million likes.
- 📸 The Roots of ‘Is She Really Black” Trope - Author, Ibram X. Kendi (@ibramxk), points out the origins and time throughout history where Black people were questioned if they were “really Black” based on a definition that was invented by slave owners and human traders.
- 🤓 The Root 🌱 - As with most things white supremacy, these tactics are not new and can usually be traced back to slavery. Misogynoir will be rampant throughout the election and if Kamala Harris becomes president. Begin to notice the language people use about Black women and why.
- 📚 Latinos Show Up for Harris - In a stunning turnaround, Latinos in swing states support for Democrats has surged. With Harris replacing Biden, support jumped to a 19-point lead from 5-points.
- 🤓 The Root 🌱 - We are a huge and growing voting constituency that Democrats have previously shown up for at the last minute. It's important for Democrats to speak directly to Latine folks. This is also a testament to why we organize for better even if we won’t get it all. The shift in polling shows that Biden stepping aside was needed.
- 📸 Afghan Women Too Intimate for Public Spaces - One year after President Biden’s callous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban have ruled women’s faces and voices are “too intimate” for public spaces. Women and girls in Afghanistan have been stripped of the right to education and more as the Taliban strengthen’s its state sanctioned hatred and repression of women.
- 🤓 The Root 🌱 - The movement against gender apartheid is growing and gaining attention. All across the world, patriarchy is attempting to reign in the freedoms that women have fought for. Gender apartheid is putting a name to the attempt to erase women from leadership positions and public society at large. Malala Yousefzai spoke to the meaning during her 21st Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg on 5 December 2023.
- 📸 Chappell Roan Claims Her Space & Autonomy - Unlike in high school, the queers have won the popularity contest in 2024. Chappell Roan, a drag-inspired queer singer, is at the top of her career. She recently come out with stories of fans grabbing at her and stalking her friends. She is in a long-line of women who the public feel they have a right to claim.
- 🤓 The Root 🌱 - This is my “leave Britney alone!” moment! It’s important to remember the human lives behind the celebrification of artists. Chappell Roan is a woman who loves to sing. That does not mean she signed an invisible contract with the public. Consent is always needed. As @ykreborn puts it, “Humanize being.”
- 🎬 The FTC Gets Non-Compete Clauses Banned - Earlier this month, the courts upheld the FTC’s ban on non-compete clauses from new job contracts starting on September 4th. The Head of the FTC, Lina Kahn, speaks to More Perfect Union about its implications for workers.
- 🤓 The Root 🌱 - If you can’t tell, I like Lina Kahn. More importantly, a Harris win means that she can keep fighting against corporate profiteering and greed. Billionaire’s are literally funding Trump’s campaign because they want to oust Lina Kahn.
And that's a wrap on this week’s newsletter! We hope you found this helpful in your work to cultivate lasting social change. Forward this to a friend and help democratize communications!
If you have any topics you want covered or have any questions, please reach out and let me know.
In Solidarity,
Sam Chavez
Roots of Change Founder
🌱 Seedling Member Zone
I break down the DNC Mania, take you behind the scenes organizing the March on the DNC, and how heart-first activist move forward towards November and beyond. In terms of the future of organizing, it's about organizing within and without the Democratic Party. Find our latest videos on our 🎬 Quick Bites page.
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