Episode 152: Strategies to Keep Workplace Inclusion Strong in Uncertain Times

0:00:07 - Felicia Jadczak Hi and welcome to the she Geeks Out podcast, where we geek out about workplace inclusion and talk with brilliant humans doing great work, making the world a better and brighter place. I'm Felicia.

0:00:16 - Rachel Murray and I'm Rachel, and it's just us today. Yeah, lucky listeners.

0:00:24 - Felicia Jadczak Just the two of us. No one can hear me sing. Oh, don't sing, don't I?

0:00:28 - Rachel Murray guess you can, because, why not? Safe space To all of our lovely listeners. We want to ask how are you? And encourage you to reach out and email us at hi at inclusiongeeks.com or hello at shegeeksout.com. Really either works.

0:00:45 - Felicia Jadczak Anything works. It's all us, it's just us, it's us.

0:00:49 - Rachel Murray We wanted to have this first conversation of 2025 because we are coming back this year, which is very exciting to talk about the state of our work in 2025. You may or may not have heard there has been some changes. There have been a couple of news items, but, in all fairness, Felicia and I have seen this process happening over the past year plus, so it's not that it was a sudden shock to us.

0:01:24 - Felicia Jadczak No, and I mean, and I think even just the question how are you doing, how are we? It's such a loaded question, especially these days, but I was on a community call earlier today actually for DEI practitioners in the greater Massachusetts area, so I guess, like New England really, and one of the topics that came up during that conversation was, again, just that right Is that for folks who are in this work and doing anything tangentially related, this is not a surprise. I think the surprise and the shock and you know the shock and awe and fear and all that is just the speed and swiftness at which we seem to be catapulting ourselves towards anarchy.

0:02:06 - Rachel Murray Yeah, I think it wasn't so much a surprise. I mean, if we remember back to his last administration, he had already done a lot of work to cut out DEI in government work. What has been not necessarily surprising to me, but I think maybe to others, is the speed with which he has pushed corporates so private sector to also fall in line and for private sector to so willingly sort of succumb to the fears around frankly, around litigation frankly around litigation and yeah, and I would say even like not to like nitpick on word choices or anything, but I would say it's not even, I think, a major push at this moment.

0:02:52 - Felicia Jadczak It's more to, you know, reference one of our favorite shows, game of thrones. It's corporations willingly bending the knee in advance and that's disappointing but, you know, on the flip side there are certainly lots of tales of organizations and corporations that aren't doing that. Costco, I think. Today I saw McKinsey is deciding that they're doubling down on DEI. There's lots of others out there as well.

0:03:16 - Rachel Murray And plenty that are not getting press.

0:03:18 - Felicia Jadczak Yes, absolutely, and so I think that's important to remember and uplift, because, I mean, you and I both have seen, I think, really a wide range of reactions in our field, not just sort of across the board in general corporate America, but even in our field. We've seen a lot of reactions that range from. You know, the sky is falling down and I'm closing up shop. Goodbye, Good luck. It's been nice to. Nothing's changed. We're still doing the work and people are out there doing the work and what's the big deal? And that's obviously a really very widespread range. We're somewhere in the middle.

0:03:52 - Rachel Murray I guess on any given day. Yeah, we're still here, and the purpose of this conversation is really to support you listeners, whether you are working in a company that maybe is grappling with these issues, or if you personally are thinking about how this is maybe impacting how you show up at work. We wanted to just provide a few ways to think about this at this time, knowing that when this comes out, who knows what it's going to look like? We're recording on Galentine's Day actually so wild, but so true. We're recording on Galentine's Day actually so wild, but so true. So, as of February 13, 2025, we do want to share some tips.

0:04:32 - Felicia Jadczak So, I don't know if, Felicia, you want to kick us off. Well, I think first maybe before we even get to the nitty gritty tips is just reiterating what you said, rachel, which is like we're still here, right, we're still here, we're doing it. One thing that I really appreciate about you and working with you for the past over 10 years now at this point, is the work has evolved so much in terms of what we have been doing so far already. And one phrase if anyone's ever worked with us or hung out with us, you've probably heard us say something around this theme which is that we've always said we'll keep doing this work until we can't do it anymore. Now, we thought that that would mean that we fixed all this stuff, not this situation, but I still think that holds very true for today. We're going to keep doing this work until we're not able to, for whatever reason, and the same goes for the podcast. So we're figuring out what that means because, like you said, things are changing so quickly and we are adjusting to it too, and so, even with these tips, they may be obsolete by the time you hear them. They may be even more relevant than ever, but we're here to try to figure out what's going on for us and for you all and supporting you listeners as well.

So, with that being said, I guess the first thing is just really one thing that we have been doing and I think different DEI practitioners are taking different approaches to this angle but we have been playing around with the language that we're using, and so one of the things that I love to say is let's slip the spinach in with a smoothie, so you know what. You don't want to eat your greens? Great, I'm going to grind them up and put them in something sweet for you, and that's kind of how we think about this work. So you don't want to talk about racism or whatever? Great, let's talk about civility, which is literally what people are shifting towards. You know hot from our front desk.

So let's talk about civility. But guess what? What that actually means is we're going to still talk about microaggressions. We might just not talk about it in that explicit of terms, but it's still coming across and I think, as a DEI organization and as practitioners, that's always been kind of the nature of the work. It evolves. We use different language, we use different terminology and you talk a lot as well, rachel. I know about meeting people where they're at, and I think that really exemplifies kind of how we're thinking about this work right now. We're trying to meet the moment where it's at, even if we don't love where it's at.

0:06:47 - Rachel Murray Yeah. So as we see the language shift, just yeah, noting that that does not mean that we are watering down the actual work, so yeah. So thank you for sharing that. And I would say another tip, I guess suggestion for folks is really think about why you're doing this work. So reconnect. It can be really sort of overwhelming, but and even when things look maybe a little bit darker than we would like, I think focusing on that personal, deep value reason why you get up in the morning. What is it that you're doing? Why are you putting clothes on in the morning? How are you showing up and why? What is it? Is it about supporting your colleagues? Is it about making sure you're just feeling like you're doing the right thing? Is it that you are thinking about the world in terms that are maybe beyond money? What does it mean to do this work for you? So I think that's an important piece to this as well to this as well.

0:08:04 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, and I think when you say things like doing the work, obviously that's going to mean something different for everyone. Folks like us. We're talking about that in a certain angle. I've been hearing and I know we've talked a lot about ourselves personally, about where we're choosing to spend our money and our dollars and, okay, great, we're not going to shop at whatever it is. I'm like I came and pick one of the terrible companies that's out there Target, okay, yes, anyone who's a long time listener of this podcast in particular knows that I was like such a ride or die for Target.

Such a ride or die, to the point that my last apartment before I moved out to Western Massachusetts, I literally told my now husband I was like it has to be within walking distance of a Target. That was one of my top criterias. I don't shop there anymore and I'm choosing to spend money in other places. And I think we also have to be realistic. Some of you might live in a place where you can't not afford to shop at a Walmart or Target because that's the only thing available to you. Right, you have to deal with your realities. But I've also been seeing a lot of folks talk about organizations like PBS, for example, which is shifting in their how they're addressing this moment. And the reality is PBS is very heavily federal funded and so if they want to survive, they have to make certain choices. And so, thinking about what are those choices that we're making and how do we want to sort of show up in that way, and I think a lot of that to your point of like reconnecting with the why, but also reconnecting with what grounds us, because I don't know about you Well, actually I know about you because we talk about this a lot, but like it is, it is a lot and it's so tempting to just doom scroll and get super overwhelmed by the news. And I'm not going to lie, I will probably continue to get super overwhelmed by the news at various points in time over the next whatever timeframe we're looking at.

But I think on the flip side, what's been really important for me is just thinking about okay, so what can I do to alleviate that? Even if it's just a little bit so for me, I'm really trying to make sure I continue going to my local pottery studio, which is great because you cannot be on a screen unless you really want to destroy it with clay and water. So it's getting my hands dirty, getting you know, creating, making things. I've been attending so many of these community circles and practitioner webinars and check-ins around that front because it feels good to just connect with other people who are again in this and thinking about things in some of the same ways, and then reconnecting with friends too and just saying let's go out and get a drink or let's go for a hike or get outside or do something around that frame. So that's kind of what I've been thinking. But what are you doing, rachel, to ground yourself these days?

0:10:47 - Rachel Murray Yeah, I thank you so much for talking about like the sort of getting a hobby. I feel like that is definitely something that is important.

So critical these days, yeah, and it's something that we had started to think about, I feel like last year too is like okay, it's important to do the work. Know that you're grounded. And I just want to make one point too as far as aligning our values with where we spend our money, I want to make sure that there's no shame either that we are in this soup of late stage capitalism, where we are all complicit in it, and I think it's very easy for us to blame ourselves for every financial choice we make and every employment choice we make too. So if you are listening and you're like oh my God, I work for Amazon and they're doing terrible things and I feel really bad, cut yourself some slack. We still got to pay them bills. If you can find another job, great. The market is kind of wild right now. So, like, do not add to the chaos with judgment on yourself on top of everything else.

0:11:49 - Felicia Jadczak That's such an important point because I think like and there are such extremes right and like you will hear, like you should not work for these companies or spend any money, and I think it's just is really case by case, and like it's so hard to make these fast and absolute rules because just we live in this capitalistic terrible society.

0:12:08 - Rachel Murray Yeah, we are in the soup, so you know and it's, and we are not the ones that are all powerful, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, I would love to think that making this one choice, but if we don't do it all collectively, which is really hard for us as a country to do, it's hard to make that kind of impact. I will make a plug. I think February 28th is like Buy Nothing Day.

0:12:28 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah.

0:12:29 - Rachel Murray I saw that, yeah, so if you have that opportunity, I think Buy Nothing is actually a fairly low bar, easy thing to do, so that hopefully can be done, but that's okay, and if you can't, either you know don't destroy your own peace and comfort and safety.

0:12:44 - Felicia Jadczak Yes, but if you can, then it's a great collective action.

0:12:47 - Rachel Murray Absolutely that's right. But back to your hobby thing. Yes, so I volunteer at the San Diego Zoo and that is my happy place and they do amazing conservation work and I swear to God if I come back as anything. I think I want to come back as one of the lovely animals at the San Diego Zoo they have. I know that there's some people who are very anti, but I think they have a really nice life and it feels a lot safer than being out in the wild and getting eaten by something.

0:13:15 - Felicia Jadczak I was going to ask. I was like, so you wouldn't want to be just running on the plains of somewhere, nope.

0:13:20 - Rachel Murray I'd definitely be the one in the back getting eaten. You're like three meals a day. Thank you very much. Thank you. Same space with three meals a day.

0:13:28 - Felicia Jadczak Delightful I think about that with. We both are cat owners and one of my cats is a rescue who was feral on the streets of Brooklyn, new York, as a kitten, and we always joke because he literally marched himself inside and was like this is nice.

0:13:46 - Rachel Murray I'm not leaving.

0:13:47 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, and I feel like that would be like you if you were reincarnated.

0:13:49 - Rachel Murray You were like yeah, I'm good, no thanks, 100%, 100%. So yeah, that's probably my main thing. I do want to talk a little bit too about the, the news and the staying informed, but not doom scrolling, which I think.

0:14:05 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, tell me what are the answers.

0:14:08 - Rachel Murray What's the secret? Well, I will say one thing and AOC said this, and I'm a strong proponent of this, I've been this way for many, many years is to remove notifications from your phone. You don't need a push alert from the New York Times telling you about the latest garbage that is happening in the world. That's just not going to be helpful. So ingest the news on your own time. I struggle with this as well. I am on a computer all the time and it's very tempting for me to just pop onto the Guardian or pop onto some news just to see what the wildness is. But if you can try to limit it, so I have you. It's like staring at the don't stare at the sun. Get the nice solar glasses, don't burn your eyeballs. Look at it for like a second, yeah, and then like, look away. And I also want to strongly suggest that you be really aware of where you're getting your news sources.

I personally have seen a huge shift in media coverage from before January 20th to now. On the main news outlets, whether that's CNN or CNBC, there has been a noticeable lack of any sort of protesting that's happening. There's no coverage on that, which I think is very disturbing. It really is. So I've actually been looking, I've been very carefully and this is a great example of we're in the soup right and social media is really problematic and Meta is an awful, awful company and yet I will stand by my. I don't have Facebook, but I will stand by my very selective, highly curated Instagram feed that is absolutely a part of my echo chamber. No doubt I am under no disillusionment. I'm very clear on that. But what I am getting is news that I can then go and fact check and that is going to be relevant to me and what I want to see.

0:16:01 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, I think that that trust element is important because trust has been broken in a lot of spaces, including news channels and news outlets. I'm the same way, so I don't have to worry about push notifications because I don't have any news apps on my phones, thank God. But, like you, I have eyeballs and I get very distracted by scrolling on all the different platforms. And, like you, I still have a lot of social media accounts in various places for various reasons, and I can talk about that later. But one of the things I want to mention is again, like the sources is really important. So what I have found personally has been really helpful is I know you and I both read the Guardian, which I find to be a great viewpoint because especially it's outside of the US, and so it gives a much more objective viewpoint into what's happening both globally as well as within our country. I think, as far as trusted sources that I find really amazing right now are Rolling Stone, teen Vogue, wired those are three top tier, telling it like it is speaking truth to power news outlets. I mean again Teen Vogue like, honestly, if you've been doing anything in the last five, eight years, like you already know, but if you don't know. You've got to check them out, like you'd think they're just. They're not just a teeny bopper magazine. They're really doing amazing journalism. So I think those sources are great.

I know there's also a lot of really great newsletters out there as well, so we both read Heather Cox Richardson's Letter from an American. There's your Local Epidemiologist, which I have been reading ever since 2020, in the early days of COVID, which I think is fantastic. There's a couple of sub stacks out there that I'll put links in the show notes, but there's a few that I follow that are doing things like reporting on FDA recalls, which is not a thing anymore, but they're reporting things like that, like what medicines and drugs are out there that maybe we shouldn't be using. Dr Jen Gunter is doing a lot of really great work around women's health in particular. There's the Invisible Woman sub stack, which is still out there, and that's an amazing book if you haven't read it, which has been out for a while. So there's a lot of great, I think, individual places to find news that I think are still trustworthy and relevant and helpful. But yeah, I mean I don't read the Times or Washington Post. I mean, talk about democracy dies in darkness, like major eye roll.

0:18:16 - Rachel Murray Yeah, it is a really interesting time and I think so much about how, on the conservative side, this is how Fox News built. Their brand was around distrust of the media, and I do feel a little bit like, oh my gosh, have I become that? But on the other hand, the whole reason why we're kind of in this is because there's been an overall distrust in institutions. So here we are and we have more tips, though Don't go in. In fact, this is a perfect one to get to. Don't go anywhere.

0:18:49 - Felicia Jadczak Just on that note, what I just was reminded of. So I think you actually may have shared this with me, rachel, and let me know if that's the case. But was it you who shared the? I believe she's South Asian, a poet who was talking about the darkness of the tomb. Yeah, so we'll have to look her up.

I don't remember her name off the top of my head, but this very powerful clip that I saw from Rachel, where this woman is speaking and she's I think it's like spoken word poetry or she's just an amazing speaker, but she was basically saying like we have to reframe our thinking. It's not the darkness of the tomb, it's the darkness of the womb, and this is going to be a rebirth. I just thought that was so powerful and I've been coming back to that imagery a lot in the last few weeks because it does feel very dark. But maybe this is just we're evolving and we're going through change and rebirth, and it's messy and violent, but it's also going to come into something new. And it's messy and violent, but it's also going to come into something new. So that's, I guess, like my little sliver of hope that I'm clinging to, because, you know, the reality is that if we just completely give in to despair and fear and feeling overwhelmed and not caring anymore, then that's when we will have truly lost. Like, that's just the reality of it, and it is so hard to not give in when it seems so terrible. So I know that when Trump was elected, the rate of suicides and trans and LGBT teens went up skyrocketed, and I know there's so much fear and literal despair out there right now. But I also think that on the flip side again, it's about how do we build community, how do we lean into each other, how do we make sure that we're taking care of each other?

And one thing that I've been doing which I don't know if it's a source of hope necessarily, because it's probably just more stress for me, but I have gotten really involved in my local government lately. So I was appointed a few weeks ago to city council in East Hampton, where I live, which is exciting, and it's like a whole other job that I'm doing now, for very little to no pay and lots of stress. But the reality is what we talked about a lot and what we learned eight years ago when Trump initially got elected, was that we cannot impact federal level, international level laws and executive orders and changes like that. Right, we are not in those kinds of positions, but what we can do is impact our friends, our family, our community, the people that we know our neighbors with our community, the people that we, you know our neighbors with, and so I think that's what I've been really choosing to lean into, because I can see that, okay, you and I are doers, we want to do stuff, we want to take action. We can't just sit back and so we're taking action through inclusion, geeks and our work and the kind of thing we're talking about right now, but we can also take action, whether it's getting into local government.

I was just talking with a friend this morning on Instagram where she was posting a bunch of stories and she was talking about some of the stuff that's happening and she was kind of balancing it with, like taking joy in what's going on, but also talking about the realities of Elon Musk and Trump and what's going on.

And she was saying that it's in part because she realized that a lot of her family members had no idea what was happening and they thought that Musk was just like a kooky, fun guy who's hanging out with Trump and no clue what is happening and she was like I'm trying my best, even if it's just an Instagram story, to try to both not break those connections, because it's important not to just get rid of it but to just keep it going and try to like infuse some of that information and that different ways of thinking into different spaces. So I think again, just like, whatever that hope is for you whether it's again going to the zoo and volunteering, whether it's making art, whether it's calling a friend, like I think, just even calling friends the last few weeks has been really powerful to just check in and listen and talk, because everyone's going through some variation of something right now.

0:22:56 - Rachel Murray Yeah, yeah, I think that's true, and I'm going to acknowledge the fact that there are people out there that are genuinely incredibly excited for what is happening. Oh sure, and that is a reality, and so if you are one of those listeners and you're like, I don't even understand why everyone is freaking out.

0:23:12 - Felicia Jadczak So why are you?

0:23:12 - Rachel Murray listening. Well, you know it's possible. Maybe other people are like curious about you know still what this is.

0:23:23 - Felicia Jadczak Email us at hienglishiangeekcom and hopefully don't be nasty.

0:23:27 - Rachel Murray Thank you, yeah, please don't be mean to us if you do decide to email us and disagree with what we have to say. We've gotten plenty of those already.

0:23:36 - Felicia Jadczak Your comrades are going to take care of it Hilarious.

0:23:41 - Rachel Murray Speaking of, I would like to go into this idea. So we know that there's pushback, right, we know there has been pushback for well over a year now probably going on two years now on the concept of DEI at work. Why are we doing this? Why can't we all just show up? And probably my frankly least favorite, but seems to be most potent concern is everything should be based on merit, and DEI is not merit-based. And so when you're confronted with that right as you're trying to do the work and trying to show up for folks, what is it that you can do to address those issues, whether that is from a colleague, whether that is, let's say, if you are in executive leadership but your CEO, for example, maybe is not a fan of the work, or if you are a CEO and your board is giving you problems, or how do you stay true to your values and articulate these concerns that you have in a way that people can hear it? Yeah, flesh, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

0:24:48 - Felicia Jadczak Or You're like give us all the answers.

0:24:50 - Rachel Murray Yeah.

0:24:51 - Felicia Jadczak I don't have all the answers. I have some answers. I mentioned earlier. I was part of this practitioner community call this morning and this was one of the topics that came up and the takeaway was that saying anything is better than complete silence. So, even if you can't say much, even just saying it's real wild, it's very complicated, or we're working on thinking through what this means or whatever it might be, that's better.

If you're in these kinds of positions, especially within corporations and organizations, then just completely ignoring the reality, which is that, no matter what the makeup is of your organization, there may be people who, like you said, are happy or devastated, whatever in between. People were collectively going through a very traumatic time right now because there are just again so much change that is happening. And even if you voted for Trump and you're so happy, you're still probably reeling a little bit from what is happening. And where are we going with all this, so giving some sort of touch point to say we're here, we're figuring it out and it's okay to not know, and I've been thinking a lot about how a lot of the lessons that we learned in 2020 from COVID response and Black Lives Matter and George Floyd's murder and all the social unrest that was happening at that timeframe. A lot of the same lessons that we implemented and learned and kind of put in place then I think are very relevant now.

So again that goes back to the communication piece. It goes back to making sure that you're checking in with your employees or, if you're an employee and you're not in a position of leadership or management or power, you're checking in with yourself, with your colleagues. It can be really basic. It could just be like we said how are you doing and knowing? That's a really loaded question, but asking the question anyway. It could be giving, if you're a manager or a leader, giving your employees a little bit more flexibility, because I don't know about you, but it's really, really hard to just sit down and do a day's work like quote, unquote, normal, the distractions are there. So giving some flexibility allowing for maybe pushing out timeframes or deadlines.

Some organizations are reeling from the fact that funding has been cut and they may not know like there's layoffs that are happening across the board. So there's just a lot of stuff that's up in the air right now. So, taking care of each other, if you know someone who's looking for a job, trying to leverage your network. Just again, all the things that sound really simple and basic on the face of it, but they're actually really important. And these simple, basic things, because they're sometimes viewed as so simple, tend to get left by the wayside. So I can't emphasize it enough Talk to your people, send a note out.

If you're a leader, this is where you can practice being a little bit vulnerable and saying like, hey, I don't know what's going on either. I'm figuring it out too. I'm worried, I'm anxious, but we're going to figure it out together, or I'm here as much as we can be, whatever that might look like. If you're in a bigger organization, then you probably have resources built in already, so like an EAP program or access to mental health or whatever that might look like. Those are resources that perhaps you already have in place that you can emphasize and remind people that they have access to them. And I think communication is really what it boils down to a lot of times is just communication. And even if, let's say, your board or the rest of your leadership team is like how could we say something? We don't know what's going on. We have to go through all these PR forms and get it vetted and all that stuff. That's fine, sure, but you can still say something, even if it's minimal, right?

0:28:27 - Rachel Murray Yeah, I love all of that, and just plus one to everything that you said I think that's so true is just keeping those lines of communication open and providing opportunities for feedback. And I'll just add that I think, sort of going back to that meritocracy concept, I think we don't have to sacrifice our values because the concept of DEI is under attack, and the reason is because the reality is, meritocracy has always been at the forefront of the work that we are talking about. It is literally about making sure that the most qualified person is the person in the job, not the person who has a particular identity, and that is typically what we have seen over the course of humanity is that the people who are put in positions of leadership and power are people who typically look like themselves, and it's a constant loop. So that's why it's always been about to be very frank, it has always been about the white man and it has just been perpetual. And so the actions of the civil rights movement and my gosh even like you know, and even like the late 19th century up until now is there has been in the workplace a push to try to get people other than that, to get rights, like not even leadership, right, but just like safety rights, right, like 40 hour work week, healthcare, for better or worse, as it is now, and so that's always been what this work is about. And so I would say that if you're having feelings around, concerns around oh my gosh, is my company going to get sued or if I say the wrong thing, okay, well, maybe don't just focus on race or gender. Talk about it in broader terms. If that is helpful to you, it's still going to yield the same result. It's still going to yield the same outcome, which is we are all on the same page.

We want the most qualified person to be the person doing the job. We want to make sure that that is what that is, and that's not going to always be a white man, and that's okay. And that doesn't mean that you know there's going to be less pie for that person. I like to say, you know we talk a lot of people talk about, like there's fear around, like the amount of pie that's being consumed, right. So it's like, oh well, you know, if I give some pie away, then there's less pie for me. So it's like, oh well, you know, if I give some pie away, then there's less pie for me, but in my mind my analogy is well, if I'm getting the most qualified person to do this job, guess what? We're going to be able to bake more pie for everyone. We all are going to get more pie.

0:31:02 - Felicia Jadczak I love that. It's like well, let's not get somebody who doesn't know how to bake, but like, is the baker's cousin, let's get someone who's a really good damn baker. And then we'll just keep baking more pie.

0:31:19 - Rachel Murray It's not that hard, although it is. Obviously. It's that fear of loss of power and control that is ultimately where we are today, and so that's why I'm just like would really encourage whether you are in that majority identity or not, to continue to have that push for that conversation around what meritocracy is and how it is related to the work that we do. I've written about it many times. I've got my fist in the air about it.

0:31:43 - Felicia Jadczak We could go on forever, but I think it's such an important point is that what we are seeing is such an in stark relief the reality of what happens when people who have historically and presently had power and privileges for so long, the idea of giving other people power is so difficult because their power is designed, by the way it's set up, to have others be disempowered. And so I think part of it and we talk a lot about types of power and how this all plays out too and part of it is not understanding that there are different ways to experience and enact power and that there's a way where it's collaborative, to use the pie. Now, it's collaborative power where we can all have it together, but we're so like as a society and a country, we're so locked into this structure which needs people to be disempowered in order to function.

There's I'm going to totally blank on the name of the author, but there's a short story that has been popping up in my feeds recently, and maybe it's Shirley Jackson, I can't remember, I'll have to look it up. But basically the story is that there's this utopian society and it's all amazing and everything is perfect, but the way that it runs is that they pick a child who they take and lock away in a dark room and basically starve. And that's the way that the society is able to function, because it's only so amazing by being built on suffering of one person, in this case. And I just have been thinking about that story a lot lately because I think it goes to this point of we need to figure out how can we get to a better place in these new frameworks and with new ways of being together.

0:33:36 - Rachel Murray Is it the ones who walk away? It might be Amalas Might be.

0:33:41 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, yeah, that's intense. I know it is intense, but it's just it's been like popping in my head so much lately. But you know, I think the other thing I want to talk really quickly about, too is like this you said it earlier like this sort of backlash attack, whatever you want to call it on DEI, it's not new. Like we, as folks in the field, have seen this coming since I would say mid-2022 at least, and so again in this conversation I had earlier today, other practitioners were saying the same thing. They're like it's not shocking. We knew this was coming. There were a lot of signs out there. But part of it is too.

This is just the latest thing that people have fixated on to be angry about. So a few years ago it was CRT critical race theory. People were like that's a legal thing. Why are you freaking out about kindergartners who are not going to be dealing with this? But that was like the big thing that everyone was going after. Now it's DEI. It's going to be something else tomorrow, but the unfortunate thing is that I think the scary thing, rather, is that we don't want the next thing to be specific groups of people, which is where it seems like it could be going, but there's always been something that people are fixating on to view as the other with a capital O, and this is what is currently in the crosshairs of being othered as something to be scared of or to be angry about, and in the work that we do and as a facilitator if I put that hat on a lot of times what I think about and what I've thought about in the last you know however many years I've been doing this work is there's certainly always resistance.

It might look different, it might show up in different ways and it might be really obvious or really subtle, but it's always about trying to figure out what is the root cause of the resistance. Because I can't tell you how many times I've had a training or a conversation or whatever with somebody who, let's say, like a middle-aged white man or older person and they're so anti the conversation. But if you start to have a chat and you start to unpack a little bit of it, you're like where is this coming from? And then you start to understand the kernel that's inside, that feeds all this negativity and fear and violence and hatred.

And I think that what gives me hope still is that I think that in the last couple years, we were so violently and abruptly thrown into as a society, talking about race in particular, society talking about race in particular, and it was on the heels of having our first Black president Obama, and I think that we were not ready as a society which that's a whole other discussion and I won't get into that at this point but we were not ready for it, but it happened, and this is again part of this backlash against that.

So what we need to figure out is okay, what is the unifying factor? That's going to actually be something that we can agree on and to talk about. That really is going to highlight what's going on in our society right now, and I really truly believe that, if not for what happened with the election in the US, I think it would have been disability, but that's fallen by the wayside. So I think that now it's going to be class disability, but that's fallen by the wayside. So I think that now it's going to be class. I think socioeconomic class is going to be the one thing that can potentially really unify all of these different groups of people, no matter what their thoughts are on DEI or wokeism, or race theory or whatever it might be, because that's what we're really seeing. We're getting pushed into this discussion. So that's my thought on that.

0:37:11 - Rachel Murray Yeah, I mean, you know how I feel about that. I think so much about that is correct. You know, I saw someone with a great sign that said I'm not on the right or the left, I'm on the bottom with so many other people.

And I think that that is ultimately it has been. A lot of these culture wars, as we all know, have been a distraction that has been perpetuated by the people in power that love that we are divided because it helps them to continue to get all of the wonderful benefits of late-stage capitalism that they have. And it won't be until we, as a people, the 99% come together and realize that ultimately, what the issue is is that I think we are unfortunately going to continue on with these culture wars which, again, I will say that, while DEI may be on its face, because that is what the media perpetuates is simply about identity. It is so much more than that. It is that. It is so much more than that. Also and I will just echo what you said too, and we will definitely put that many things in the show notes and Valerie Kaur, I believe, is how you pronounce her last name K-A-U-R. The video.

I absolutely believe that we are in a time of evolution and it can feel like death. I mean, that is what evolution does feel like. It is evolving. So I would say we are cautiously optimistic about the future and we know that we are in for some pain. Unfortunately, we got to do this the hard way, not the easy way, as one of my favorite people said recently, baratunde Thurston, who I love. So we'll do it the hard way and we'll get there and we'll get through it, and we know that you lovely listeners will also get through it with us. We'll be in community with you.

0:39:05 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, I mean again, at the end of the day it's about staying connected and not giving in to isolationism or fear, like, okay, give into it a little bit, but then check in with somebody. Thanks, then go for a run.

0:39:19 - Rachel Murray Get strong.

0:39:20 - Felicia Jadczak Play Animal Crossing.

0:39:22 - Rachel Murray Oh my God, I have to say so. Felicia knows this. So back in the beginning of the pandemic, I, like many, many other people, got Animal Crossing and I actually recently decided to wipe out my old island and start anew here in 2025. And I was playing the other day and my husband said to me he goes, no one can hurt you here. And I just think about that now it's the funniest thing Slayed me, yeah. So find a place where no one can hurt you. And I will just say just remember that you personally, and businesses and teams that continue to stay in your truth and your values of fairness and inclusion, you will come out stronger in the end, and we will do this in community. So, in all seriousness, please do not hesitate to reach out to us If we can be of any support. If you want us to talk about anything else, if you want us to reach out to anyone else, tell us. We're here, we're in this. Really, what I love is this interesting place of evolution, so this is a great time to connect with us.

0:40:40 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, it's such a time of possibility and I know it might seem hard to think of it that way, because it also feels like a lot of loss.

0:40:49 - Rachel Murray It's a probability.

0:40:50 - Felicia Jadczak It's a probability like a lot of loss and it's it's a problem. It's a problem, but you know like there are so many opportunities that are going to become available to us collectively and individually, and I think that you know, again to your point, if we can just make it through whatever this next chunk of change of time looks like, together we will get to a better place. I really, I know we both really truly believe that.

0:41:10 - Rachel Murray So I agree, chunk of change, but just no pennies. But that's okay. Rip the penny, RIP penny. Well, thank you so much for listening. We want to make sure that you are subscribed to our newsletter. You can find us at inclusiongeeks.com forward slash newsletter. So subscribe to our pod so you can listen to all the fun other episodes that we have from our archive.

0:41:37 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, and you know, don't forget to rate, share and subscribe. It really does make a big difference in the reach of our podcast and our work, which is still continuing, as we have said. You can check us out on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn. We're actually also on Blue Sky and Threads. That's yours truly so if you see it being super active.

Just know that I'm probably playing Animal Crossing and trying to avoid the reality of the world, but we're there too. And, yeah, just keep in touch with us, stay up to date on all things, Inclusion Geeks, and stay geeky.