CounterPulse recognizes that the mechanisms of white supremacy and capitalism exist to structurally privilege white people and white cultural norms. This is done at the expense of harm to Black people and people of the African Diaspora, Indigenous people, and other people of color (BIPOC). We acknowledge the ways white supremacy intersects with homophobia, transphobia, sexism, classism, ableism, and other forms of oppression. Diversity of cultural production and creative visioning is central to our mission. CounterPulse is an artistic home that is true to our artists’ practices, visions, and cultural & community affiliations.
The values in our Theory of Change anchor our efforts to disrupt systems inherited from legacies of white supremacy and racial capitalism. With our value of Radical Spirit, we center the development of imaginative alternative social systems and world-building. With our value of Mutuality, we prioritize mutual accountability and benefit in our collaborations.
We commit to the following:
- Prioritizing selecting members of historically subjugated peoples as CounterPulse’s artists, including Black people and people of the African Diaspora, Indigenous people, and other people of color; people with disabilities; the poor and working class; our neighboring community within the Tenderloin; and Queer and Trans folks.
- Addressing and challenging organizational hierarchies by including external curators in artist selection processes who represent the communities of artists we aim to serve.
- Providing ongoing training and opportunities for discussion of Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, & Liberation (DEAL).
- Auditing internal organizational power dynamics through DEAL evaluation.
- Working with external consultants and implementing changes to practices, policies, and structures based on equity audit findings.
- Facilitating ongoing artist and audience feedback sessions to better inform our programming and curation.
- Providing ongoing programs that are free to the public and ensuring that all programs are No-One-Turned-Away-For-Lack-Of-Funds (NOTAFLOF).
- Offering ongoing free art-making workshops that are of, by, and for our Tenderloin neighborhood and neighbors.
Defining Racial Capitalism:
Originally coined by Cedric Robinson, the term Racial Capitalism identifies the ways in which economic power is derived from the global subjugation of Black and brown people. To quote Robinson directly:
“the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions, so too did social ideology. As a material force, then, it could be expected that racialism would inevitably permeate the social structures emergent from capitalism.”
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Header photo from Driven Art Collective’s 2023 Combustible residency program, “Digital Milk: Metaphase 0”. Photo by Emily Smeyja.