Accountability & Action
Land Acknowledgment
We acknowledge the forces of nature all around us and express our gratitude that we get to pass through this place as gracious guests.
We give thanks to all those ancestors who have walked before us.
We acknowledge what a privilege it is to walk on these same lands today, and we touch the earth with humility and gratitude.
Our Bay Area park sites have included numerous Native territories, primarily Muwekma Ohlone, Coast Miwok, and Graton Rancheria lands. In addition, we have worked on lands native to the Ramaytush, Chochenyo, Awaswas, Tamyen, and Karkin tribes.
Our greatest wish is that all people will one day feel safe and feel a true sense of belonging in these precious public lands.
We invite you to find out more about the land you are standing on. Visit https://native-land.ca/
Black Lives Matter
We believe that BLACK LIVES MATTER. In this time of intense upheaval, we want to participate actively in the fight for racial justice and social equality. We recognize this is a crucial moment to raise our voices for what we believe is right. We understand that our BIPOC friends, collaborators, family members, and community at large have suffered immeasurable harm and continue to suffer daily injustice due to SYSTEMIC RACISM. We are committed to supporting and uplifting the voices and stories of BIPOC people, at home in the Bay Area and across the globe.
We are taking the daily traumas of political chaos and hateful divisive leadership and the horrific injustices daily inflicted on black and brown bodies and psyche very seriously. We are committed to making spaces that feel safe and welcoming for all. We are committed to wielding our art as a tool for personal and social healing and transformation.
We are grateful for YOU, our community, for your voices, for your feedback, for your stories, for bravely sharing your truths to help shine light into our dark corners, to help illuminate our blind spots that we might see our shortcomings and strive to improve our practices and acknowledge past harms. We invite your story to join our circle. We bow with humility and reverence to the Native lands we walk on in our home here in California. We give thanks for the opportunity to learn and grow.
We are here for you, with you.
We are ready to do the work with you, for you.
We thank you.
We love you.
We Players’ Accountability Statement
Every day, national systemic oppression and racism are becoming more painfully obvious and unacceptable. Those of us who have had the privilege to function within the system must raise our voices and wield our privilege to fight and to end the injustice. We are committed to meeting the moment, and the theatre community that we celebrate being a small part of, must also ascend to meet this moment. On behalf of our extended community, We Players’ Board of Directors and staff take responsibility for our part in this system. Our doors, hearts, and minds are open to hear directly from any injured individuals who wish to share their stories. We honor restorative justice processes and we respect the sovereignty of each individual. We commit ourselves to ongoing inquiry into our intentions and practices, to learn from our shortcomings, and directly address - with a commitment to changing - any harmful behavior within our organization, and to use any influence we have in the industry to help others to do so as well.
The recounting and collection of stories from the BIPOC community about the unacceptable behavior they’ve endured from legacy white organizations and the leadership of those institutions is the foundation for The Living Document and We See You White American Theatre. These documents have made obvious the painful inequity and overt bias in our community. We extend our deep gratitude to all those who shared experiences, knowledge, and resources to both documents. We acknowledge the pain and cost of both time and emotional energy in the creation of these valuable guides to instruct and inform this necessary work. Thank you.
We're in the process of reviewing these documents item by item and creating an anti-racism company manual that is available on our website and will be issued to all actors hired to work with our company. This is a necessary addendum to the Community Guidelines that we implemented in 2012, our inaugural year as a 501c3 non-profit corporation. Our Community Guidelines is an ongoing work-in-progress, with suggestions from our community members, and an ongoing practice of self-reflection, informing edits and additions each year. So too, our Anti-Racism Manual is an active document that is evolving as we learn and grow and will be continually responsive to input.
Anti-Racism Manual
This is a working document. Please check back regularly for updates and further developments.
The most recent version of our Community Guidelines is here.
We are taking guidance from the Living Document to inspire the following commitments:
We: Acknowledge structures and histories of harm. We are committed to personal and organizational inquiry and training to inform progress.
Our staff is participating in a cohort of Bay Area theatre leadership with weekly meetings with an Accountability Workgroup. We honor and give tremendous thanks to those brave and generous people who are taking the lead as the Seed Planning Committee to organize and facilitate the workgroup and the sessions.
Our Artistic Director has begun a personal deep dive into a program around strengthening anti-racism practice for white people, and is grateful to be participating in an intimate work group this fall, 2020.
Our company leadership is engaged in active, ongoing conversation with our board of directors and time is allotted within each board meeting for the discussion, as well as individual conversations outside of regular meetings.
We: Commit to identifying and bringing an end to any harmful practices, programs, and contracts with individuals with a history of racist behaviors.
We are auditing our existing organizational partners and sponsors to ensure that they actively support equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Moving forward, we commit to partnership only with such organizations and individuals.
We: Offer financial transparency.
As a fiscally responsible non-profit, we have maintained a publicly accessible profile on GuideStar since our incorporation as a 501c3 in 2012. Our annual 990 reports are available there.
We: Intentionally recruit, meaningfully include, gainfully employ, and actively support BIPOC artists, staff, administrators, and decision-makers.
We are currently recruiting BIPOC leadership for our board and advisory circles and gratefully acknowledge the years of service by our BIPOC board members emeriti and our current BIPOC advisory circle members.
When live performance is once again possible, we will continue to seek out BIPOC artists for all facets of our creative team.
We have been making active efforts to make our audition process more widely accessible and welcoming to BIPOC artists. We honor the many BIPOC individuals who have shared their time and talent with us over our 20 year history.
We: Invest in historically marginalized communities, who have been excluded from white theater spaces and stages.
We acknowledge that our public parks and civic spaces are more hospitable to non-BIPOC and that people of color may feel less comfortable in these places that we have had the privilege of believing belonged to everyone. In order to fully recognize this disparity as part of systemic racism, we're committed to protecting and supporting our BIPOC collaborators and audience members in feeling safe in these spaces. We are investigating methods and practices, we are in discussion with our park partners, and we welcome suggestions and reflections from you.
We: Operate in direct relationship with the needs of our community.
In addition to the anonymous post show surveys that we send after each production, we also include a web form for anonymous feedback that is always available on our website.
We will continue to update you, our community, with ongoing and developing actions on this front. We invite and are grateful for any feedback that you have. We’re thankful for the opportunity to recognize past mistakes, to become ever more inclusive in our work, and to more deeply practice our craft by seeking to understand, represent, and fully feel the experience of others.