Surface Level
Adrienne Maree Brown in, “Emergent Strategy,” discusses Ruckus Society, an organization founded in 1995 that provides campaign groups for human rights and social justice with support and training to perform non-violent operations. She analyzes the organization and its transformation from a being focused upon “masculine action culture,” which failed to change communities from the core, but only solved the problem temporarily, forcing communities to reestablish connections into an organization that worked to develop strong community dynamics. Their first step to transforming their organization to create successful movements, was to incorporate a diverse workforce consisting of women and LGBTQ, people. After the emergence of the Indigenous People’s Power (IP3), to create leaders and experts in campaigns and creating change within communities working for change, whether they be socioeconomically inferior or underrepresented groups facing racial bias. Changes in the company are much like those suggested by Balsamo, who mentions how innovators and technology companies should be hiring more underrepresented groups of people such as women, LGBTQ, and ethnic minorities to gain new perspectives and ideas.
I really enjoyed reading about the strategies because as a STEM major with an interest in entrepreneurship I think these are all qualities that can be learned from and put in place in any company. Especially when speaking about healthcare when you combine technology with aiding diverse groups of people, these bullet point steps can be incorporated to benefit thousands of people, and communities, especially those that are located in third-world countries or low-income communities, that consist mostly of minorities to create a connection with the community and the company.
I believe that in the beginning of the class a lot of the time the focus of discussions was making certain aspects of society less patriarchal and more feminists, and while that is true, like Brown states, we must move from quick fix surface-change, to a more “vision-based, systematic change,” which means finding the root of the problem and changing small things such as including minorities into technological or even these organizations that help communities to become leaders in their campaigns and have a voice and create change. Now that we are coming to the end of the semester, we are able to better delve into the source of the problem without blaming reasons that are heard on mainstream media or as Brown states, “surface-level” reasons why we need diversity.
Ilayda Alkislar
digital feminisms 