Who would have thought becoming a competent business owner would involve an examination of the ‘color lines we have in our heads’ and learning about restorative justice? In today’s mentoring session, Nancy and Mike discuss how you can start removing ‘color lines’ when you are hiring people, negotiating salaries, building cultures of inclusivity, and writing workplace policies. Not a business owner, yet? There are ideas in this mentoring session of how you can remove ‘color lines’ in your life right now, even if you are not a business owner.

If Black Lives ALWAYS Matter, how, as leaders, can we tailor a restorative justice principle of the Black Lives Matter movement for the businesses we’re running: “to commit to collectively, lovingly, and courageously working vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension all people. What if we intentionally build and nurture a beloved community, through our businesses, that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting”?

Where do we start? Maybe you start with something simple, like inviting someone of another culture to dinner. Maybe, by having conversations with others unlike us, where you can hear what life is like for them, you will become part of building what Krista Tippett describes, in one of her podcast shows, as The Resilient World We’re Building Now.¹ Learn more by listening in to this mentoring session.

Mentoring Tips and Resources:

1. Krista Tippett, www.onbeing.org; February 18^th, 2016: The Resilient World We’re Building Now podcast episode. She interviews co-founder of the Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors and Dr. Robert K. Ross, a physician and leader helping redefine public health in terms of human wholeness: trauma and resilience.
2. MPR Radio Program – Fresh Air with Terry Gross, www.mpr.org. Aired January 17, 2012: Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America. Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, interviews legal scholar and attorney, Michelle Alexander. Michelle is also the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
3. BlackLivesMatter.com 2013 co-founders: Patrise Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza.
4. YouTube.com interview with Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter, Opal Tometi (June 12, 2015 https://youtu.be/ho_v_iN-JM8).

Download this episode. (right click to download)

Black Lives ALWAYS Matter, Episode 16