In Solidarity

written by Emily Artale with input from all Lotus Staff.

We vehemently condemn acts of violence against people of color. We wish to add our voices to the growing list of those who will strive to be better allies to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).

From Crested Butte News, photo by Nolan Blunck.

This past weekend I attended a Black Lives Matter (BLM) rally in my hometown, Crested Butte. It was well attended – a couple of hundred people for a community of around 3,000. A brass band from Denver, Brothers of Brass, came along with spoken word artists from around the state. There was a lot of discussion and positive energy. What stuck out to me the most was a comment made by my friend and the event’s organizer: “…There is nothing more important right now than the fact that people are getting murdered because they look like me.” She’s right. While we are usually focused on the health of our planet, we mustn’t overlook the dire need to contribute to the health and safety of our people.

We want to do our part. We want to be better humans and grow and listen.

Here is what the Lotus team is committed to doing:

We will continue to educate ourselves on our country’s history, identify our own internal biases, and focus on becoming better listeners.

We have participated in local marches and rallies, we are initiating discussions with members of our communities, and we are reading books, articles, and blogs, and listening to conversations that will help us better understand our roles as allies. We will research opportunities for our staff to participate in equity training so we can be more prepared to incorporate equity into all of our current and future projects.

Books that we are reading include: Racing to Justice, The New Jim Crowe, So You Want to Talk About Race, Stamped from the Beginning, Raising White Kids, Farming While Black, and White Fragility. Please let us know if you have any book recommendations!

Through this process, we hope that we will be able to lessen our naivety and contribute to a more equal community. And we will pass along what we learn.

We will recognize Juneteenth as a paid holiday and match employee donations to organizations supporting, promoting, and elevating BIPOC communities.

Starting in 2021, Lotus will be adding Juneteenth as a paid holiday for our employees to recognize and celebrate the official end to slavery in the United States. Additionally, Lotus will create a program that matches employee donations to organizations that align with our employees’ personal commitments.

As we continue to grow, we are committed to learning how to increase our team’s diversity, and we will continue to welcome and invite those with different perspectives to join our industry.

We are four white women. While we are proud of our woman-founded, women-owned, and women-led company, we realize that we are missing representation from BIPOC communities, the LGBTQ community, and those in possession of a Y-chromosome. We have consciously chosen to be a small company and, therefore, we grow slowly. When we decide it is time to expand our team, we will investigate why our previous job announcements did not reach or seem inviting to BIPOC communities. We will strive to ensure that our job announcements reach a broader audience.

We will advocate for inclusivity and equity considerations in all of our work.

Since the onset of our climate action planning work, we have tried to include discussions around environmental justice and equity. At times we have been more successful than others. We will strive to look for additional equity partners to better inform our work, and we will strongly encourage our clients to look closely at inclusivity and impacts on BIPOC communities and other vulnerable groups. Voices from these communities have been historically left out of many climate conversations even when these communities bear a greater brunt of climate change impacts. We honor the wisdom from BIPOC communities, and we will always invite them to the table during our climate discussions so that we may learn and grow.

Finally, we strive to honor and acknowledge the Native and ancestral peoples and history that have been displaced in the lands where we work. In this way we aim to recognize the history of colonialism and the impacts it has had on BIPOC communities.