One of Yana's best qualities is that she doesn’t function as a superstar. The work is about the group she is working with, and her personality is neutral. She doesn’t use her charisma and personal power to get people to “move.” She holds the vision and the space that we all want to live more peacefully and harmoniously. Because of the wonderful neutrality and space that she creates, we do our best work. A genius, she is.
--Ann Fussell, Bellingham Cohousing
My personal mission statement and Theory of Change
Words are my primary tool to catalyze and strengthen collective justice and belonging in the world: I write, teach, speak and facilitate. My core values are solidarity, compassion, directness, lifelong learning, cooperation and systems thinking. My work and community building center the needs of marginalized and traditionally excluded people and the resiliency of our ecological and social worlds.
Principles that guide me
I am always learning; more often than not, I seek out marginalized voices as guides and mentors.
Community is both a powerful tool for progressive change, and a negative tool for regressive politics and beliefs to take hold. I focus my professional and personal energy on values-aligned people and organizations to make the progressive and radical ones more effective and sustainable.
Politics is how people do (or don’t) get their needs met. In this way, every project I work with is political, and I will name the broader political implications of what we do collectively.
Collective actions allow us to leverage a greater sphere of influence for action on climate disruption, creating sanctuary spaces, and fostering genuine material security.
Collective actions also provide space for direct, human scale mutual aid and mutual support.
I believe that racialized capitalism and colonialism are the root causes of many of our social and environmental ills.
I believe we can (and do) change our cultural and social understandings over time— my work is a catalyst for deeper, faster and broader versions of those changes.
I believe in frank, transparent, accessible sharing of knowledge, with a dose of vulnerability and humor about ourselves and the world.
Actions I take in alignment with those principles
I write nonfiction, fiction and poetry from a place of experience, vulnerability, practical hope and witnessing.
I teach, facilitate and consult ways that name root causes, and provide frameworks for new ways of relating socially and economically.
I live communally as a platform for living into my progressive and radical values on a daily basis, for personal growth, and for my own economic and social security.
I am active on social media, promoting progressive values and fact-based analysis, and naming systems-level themes as I see them.
Within my material capacity, I support other individuals and organizations who work in areas different from my current focus but just as essential to building a world of collective abundance and knowledgeable civic engagement. Currently those are independent journalism, legal challenges to fascism and anti-indigeneity, leftist political and mutual aid organizing, and resilient and equitable food systems.
these eight contextualizers sum up me & my work.
Curiosity...
is the grease in the wheels of personal growth and social change. Disagree? Get curious about why. In conflict? Let’s inquire as to the roots instead of throwing gas on the fire. Struggling? Let’s assume there are good reasons and work together to uncover them.
Compassion...
is a manifest thing, not a simple sweet thought. I believe that we are all in a journey of deep culture change, in a historical moment of social and economic collapse. Heavy stuff. The best lens I can bring to these times is to see that we are all in this together and we all make mistakes. Compassion means taking responsibility for how our choices affect others, and being kind when mistakes happen. It also means that I, as a practitioner, am under an obligation to help groups see themselves as having near-universal, understandable experiences of struggle and to normalize these experiences.
Effectiveness...
is critical because there's a whole lot of bad process out there. Often a lack of understanding about the need for consensual structure and discernment puts a cap on how much a group can concretely achieve and whether they can effectively address problems when they arise. I ground my work in data as well as experience.
Justice & Equity...
I place high priority on anti-oppression work, helping to create spaces that go beyond politely seeking diversity and into spaces that are authentic and welcoming of a range of people. I help groups look unflinchingly at power dynamics, and address harm when it manifests.
cooperative culture…
is my core framework. My default is to create cooperative, consensus-based systems and culture. That means that everyone is heard and taken into account, especially on decisions that affect them most directly. It also sees cooperation as a key tool for ecological and economic resilience and security. (It means a lot more: I co-wrote a whole book about this one!)
Relevance...
means that my work is practical, grounded in years of real experience with groups and developing sustainable systems, and checked against many peers in the field. If it isn't relevant, why do it?
Holism...
means that I integrate ecological, economic, social, political and personal approaches and technologies for a strongly holistic view of what real cooperation and sustainability take. It is also profoundly hopeful, based on seeing hundreds of successful projects that are already embodying a new world.
Humor...
because we gotta. It's a rough moment to be an awake human around here, and if we can't find the humor in our struggles, growth and daily lives, we're sunk.