Celebrating our Strengths and Building Equity Leadership

Be Strong Families staff and board came together for an in-person retreat October 19 and 20 in Lake County, IL. This is the first in-person staff-board retreat we have held in more than 6 years. The theme was “Be Strong Together: Celebrating our Strengths and Building Equity Leadership.” As a whole group, we watched the incredibly rich documentary Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity produced by World Trust. From Shakti Butler, the director of The Way Home: Women Talk About Race in America and Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible , Cracking the Codes was developed to propel America to talk about the causes and consequences of systemic inequity. The film features moving stories from racial justice leaders including Amer Ahmed, Michael Benitez, Barbie-Danielle DeCarlo, Joy DeGruy, Ericka Huggins, Humaira Jackson, Yuko Kodama, Peggy McIntosh, Rinku Sen, Tilman Smith and Tim Wise.  

Perfect for an organization that specializes in conversation, the film was designed for dialogue: asking viewers to discuss the causes and consequences of systemic inequity. We did this by watching and stopping the film after each section, doing some individual journaling and then using “anchor buddies” for dyads. These conversations assisted with disentangling internal beliefs, attitudes and pre-judgments within us that impact our relationships, and it also assisted us with building the skills necessary to the structural drivers of social and economic inequities. We debriefed as a large group asking: Where do we go from here? Be Strong Families re-affirmed its commitment to anti-racism as part of its Equity, Diversity and Inclusion efforts.  

Here is the trailer and some clips from the film: https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/cracking-the-codes-the-system-of-racial-inequity/ and we strongly encourage streaming the whole thing available for purchase through World Trust https://www.world-trust.org/cracking-the-codes.