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Listen actively

Take care of you; take care of us

Consent to learn in public

Step up, step back

Assume positive intent; seek clarity when needed

Own your impact

Bring joy and curiosity to the group

Make the best use of our time

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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White Fragility article by Robin DiAngelo(or her book)

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White Fragility article by Robin DiAngelo(or her book)

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Seeing White podcast (1 episode and/or whole series)

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Seeing White podcast (1 episode and/or whole series)

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it's an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of "whiteness" come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels ne

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Get your copy of
Dear White Friend.

Melvin Gravely eloquently accomplishes what many have undoubtedly wished to do: talk openly to someone we know about race in the United States today. Gravely uses significant experience as a business and civic leader to express a rare balance in this timely message. Dear White Friend is a forthright, collegial conversation via chapters in the form of letters, each with a combination of personal reflection and meaningful hard facts. Gravely challenges the reader but without judgment or indictment. His depth of thought, deftness of expression, and clear, layman's terms make for an urgent call to begin to close the gap between races in America.

The book presents an invitation to understand three questions at the heart of the issue: What is really going on with race in our country? Why must we care? And what can we do about it together? In the end, Gravely calls on us to ask ourselves, "What is my role in all of this?" After reading Dear White Friend, readers will understand why their answer to his question can change everything.
Order Now:

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Melvin Gravely eloquently accomplishes what many have undoubtedly wished to do: talk openly to someone we know about race in the United States today. Gravely uses significant experience as a business and civic leader to express a rare balance in this timely message.

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Here are some Instagrams that focus on DEI and the outdoors. Please add more!

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Here are some Instagrams that focus on DEI and the outdoors. Please add more!

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@unlikelyhikers

@latinooutdoors

@intersectionalenvironmentalist

@wilddiversity

@pattiegonia

@blackforager

@futureearth

@indigenouswomenhike

@nativesoutdoors

@outdooradvocacy

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On a sweltering day earlier this summer, Marcellus Cadd was standing in a trendy neighborhood in downtown Austin.

His phone told him he was 20 feet from an object he was honing in on using GPS coordinates. He walked over to a bank of electrical meters on a building, got down on one knee, and started feeling underneath.

"Holy crap, I found it!" he said as he pulled out a small metallic container. Inside was a plastic bag with a paper log. Cadd signed it with his geocaching handle, "Atreides was here."

Cadd is one of more than 1.6 million active geocachers in the United States, according to Groundspeak, Inc., which supports the geocaching community and runs one of the main apps geocachers use.

Every day for the past three years, he has taken part in what is essentially a high tech treasure hunt. It's a volunteer-run game: some people hide the caches, other people find them.

But soon after he started, Cadd, who is Black, read a forum where people were talking about how they were rarely bothered by the police while geocaching.

"And I was thinking, man, I've been doing this six months and I've been stopped seven times."

As a Black person, Cadd said those encounters can be terrifying.

"Nothing bad has happened yet, but the worry is always there," he said.

It's not only the police who question Cadd. Random strangers - almost always white people, he says - also stop him and ask why he's poking around their neighborhood.

Geocaches are not supposed to be placed in locations that require someone looking for them to trespass or pass markers that prohibit access. And by uploading the coordinates of a cache page to the geocaching app, the hider must agree that they have obtained "all necessary permissions from the landowner or land manager."

Still, Cadd avoids certain caches - if they are hidden in the yard of private homes, for example - because he feels it could be dangerous for him. And while hunting for caches, he uses some tricks to avoid unwanted attention, like carrying a clipboard.

"If you look like you're working, people don't tend to pay attention to you."

He writes about encountering racism on the road on his blog, Geocaching While Black. He's had some harrowing encounters, such as being called "boy" in Paris, Texas. Or finding a cache hidden inside a flagpole that was flying the Confederate flag.

Such experiences may be why there are so few Black geocachers. Cadd says he often goes to geocaching events and has only ever met one other geocacher in person who is African American (though he has interacted with a few others online).

Bryan Roth of Groundspeak said that while there is political and economic diversity among the hobbyists, people of color are greatly underrepresented. He said Groundspeak often features geocachers of color on its website and social media, in order to encourage more to participate in the game.

Geocaching is built upon the idea of bringing people to places where they wouldn't be otherwise. Roth, who is white, acknowledged that race can play a role in how people poking around such places are perceived.

"Geocaching is just one small part of that. It will take a fundamental shift in society" to get rid of that bias, he said.

Roth said he hopes that as the game becomes more popular there will be less suspicion of geocachers.

For Cadd's part, he said he gets too much joy from geocaching to let bias drive him away from the pastime.

"I've seen so many things and I've been to so many places. Places I wouldn't have gone on my own," he said, adding that he hopes his blog will encourage "more people who look like me to do this."

"There's a certain joy in being Black and basically going out to places where you don't see a lot of Black people. And being there and being able to say, 'I'm here whether you like it or not.'"

Cadd has already found more than 3200 caches since he started, including at least one in each of the 254 counties in Texas. His lifetime goal is to find a geocache in every county in the United States.

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Geocaching While Black: Outdoor Pastime Reveals Racism And Bias

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On a sweltering day earlier this summer, Marcellus Cadd was standing in a trendy neighborhood in downtown Austin. His phone told him he was 20 feet from an object he was honing in on using GPS coordinates. He walked over to a bank of electrical meters on a building, got down on one knee, and started feeling underneath.

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The nation's wild places--from national and state parks to national forests, preserves, and wilderness areas--belong to all Americans. But not all of us use these resources equally. Minority populations are much less likely to seek recreation, adventure, and solace in our wilderness spaces. It's a difference that African American author James Mills addresses in his new book, The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors.

Bridging the so-called "adventure gap" requires role models who can inspire the uninitiated to experience and enjoy wild places. Once new visitors are there, a love affair often follows. This is important because as our country grows increasingly multicultural, our natural legacy will need the devotion of people of all races and ethnicities to steward its care.

In 2013, the first all-African American team of climbers, sponsored by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), challenged themselves on North America's highest point, the dangerous and forbidding Denali, in Alaska. Mills uses Expedition Denali and its team members' adventures as a jumping-off point to explore how minority populations view their place in wild environments and to share the stories of those who have already achieved significant accomplishments in outdoor adventures--from Mathew Henson, a Black explorer who stood with Peary at the North Pole, to Kai Lightner, a teenage sport climber currently winning national competitions. The goal of the expedition, and now the book, is to inspire minority communities to look outdoors for experiences that will enrich their lives, and to encourage them toward greater environmental stewardship.

James Edward Mills is a journalist and media producer. He specializes in stories about outdoor recreation, environmental conservation, acts of charitable giving, and practices of sustainable living. He has worked in the outdoor industry since 1989 as a guide, outfitter, independent sales representative, and writer. Learn more about him at joytripproject.com.

224 pages, 5.5" x 8.5", 12 color photos, paper bound, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-59485-868-0

SPORTS/OUTDOOR ADVENTURE. Rights: World.

An American Ascent - Film Trailer from Distill Productions on Vimeo.

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The nation's wild places--from national and state parks to national forests, preserves, and wilderness areas--belong to all Americans. But not all of us use these resources equally. Minority populations are much less likely to seek recreation, adventure, and solace in our wilderness spaces.

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast

subscribe to Code Switch podcast

As the weather teeters between 1997 DJ Jazzy Jeff and 2002 Nelly, we've been spending a lot of time staring out the window, wishing to be anywhere but inside: the beach, the pool, the basketball court, Grand Teton National Park.

Well, maybe not that last one. Truth is, people of color aren't heading to national parks in droves. In fact, according to the National Park Service, last year about 80 percent of all national parks visitors, volunteers and staff were white.

And as this Funny or Die video gets at, REI-inspired activities like mountain biking, skiing and whitewater rafting don't really pull in the POCs, either.

But hold on a sec. People of color hang out outside all the time. Aren't we the champions of cookouts, supreme at summer block parties? Critics of anti-loitering laws say they're aimed at keeping us from hanging outside too much, and Mexicans and Mexican-Americans make up the vast majority of people who work the land for food.

Oh, right. Those last two are where it starts getting complicated. There are real reasons, both historical and contemporary, that can make stepping outside in your free time while black or brown a politically charged move.

At the same time, there are some really interesting organizations and individuals pushing the boundaries of what "being outdoorsy" looks like, and we wanted to know what they're up to.

So join us for the Code Switch Podcast, Episode 2: Made For You And Me, as we explore what it means to be a person of color outdoors. Listen as you hike, garden, or stare blankly at the walls of your windowless cubicle, waiting for the weekend.

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Code Switch Podcast, Episode 2: Being 'Outdoorsy' When You're Black Or Brown

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast subscribe to Code Switch podcast As the weather teeters between 1997 DJ Jazzy Jeff and 2002 Nelly, we've been spending a lot of time staring out the window, wishing to be anywhere but inside: the beach, the pool, the basketball court, Grand Teton National Park.

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Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States

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Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States - Kindle edition by Zimring, Carl A.. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States.

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Erasing Institutional Bias: How to Create Systemic Change for Organizational Inclusion

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Erasing Institutional Bias: How to Create Systemic Change for Organizational Inclusion [Jana, Tiffany, Diaz Mejias, Ashley, Gilbert, Jay Coen] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Erasing Institutional Bias: How to Create Systemic Change for Organizational Inclusion

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How can we have a real conversation about systemic racism and white supremacy, especially at our workplace with power dynamics involved? On today's podcast, Hawa Mire, strategy and equity consultant and community organizer, walks us through how we might build up our muscles and emotional intelligence for having these important conversations.

Myths that Hawa wants us to leave behind

1. If I do better individually, racism and oppression will go away. Racism permeates our society and culture on a systemic level. While individual actions matter immensely, recognizing systemic racism and oppression exist and continue to exist is a starting point for us to tackle and dismantle white supremacy together.

2. Only bad people will do racist things. Everyone has blindspots and unconscious bias perpetuated by systemic racism. Assuming that only bad people are racist pigeonholes conversations about race to be about individual character and risk neglecting the whole picture of systemic racism and power dynamics at play.

Hawa's tips on building up your muscles for talking about race, racism and white supremacy:

1. Get out of passive learning. Reading a book is very different from engaging with real people and engaging with the community. Get out there to engage in experiential learning and connect with people and understand their lived experiences.

2. Don't react to a conversation with the sole intent of self-preservation. Conversations about race and racism are much more complex than one person's good or bad. Allow people to come talk to you about their experiences without making the conversation about you. Respond mindfully and don't be afraid to recognize you don't have the language or answers.

3. Recognize you're responsible for the harm of your action and words. Intentions and outcomes can be very different. Having good intentions does not automatically preclude you from inflicting harm. Take responsibility for the impact and outcome of your actions and words.

My favourite quotes from this episode

Post your favourite quote on social to share with us!
"It's hard for people to get out of this sense of: I'm only a racist if I'm a bad person, not racist if I'm a good person. When you start the conversation around white supremacy there, you don't get very far because people are much more interested in preserving their sense of themselves. If the conversations involve BIPOC people responding rightfully about their lived experience, then suddenly we've got groups of people having conversations about themselves, but only one of those groups of people has any significant power to change the condition of the other." "In the context of a work environment, a charity, or an organization especially charities and nonprofit, what often happens is that staff or clients bring forward concerns around race and senior leaders bring in unconscious bias training. And what that does is it, it suggests that everybody in the room has the same level of power to engage in uncovering their bias, and it's just not the truth. We have to recognize the power dynamics: some of us have the power to do things about our bias, and some of us don't."
Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you're not, I want to encourage you to do that today. We have even more great interviews coming and I don't want you to miss an episode. Click here to subscribe in iTunes!
Resources from this Episode

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The Small Nonprofit Podcast: Dismantling white supremacy in the nonprofit sector with Hawa Mire | CharityVillage

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How can we have a real conversation about systemic racism and white supremacy, especially at our workplace with power dynamics involved? On today's podcast, Hawa Mire, strategy and equity consultant and community organizer, walks us through how we might build up our muscles and emotional intelligence for having these important conversations.

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Here's a website that explores the characteristics of white supremacy culture, and how it appears in our day-to-day lives.

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The original piece and therefore this website builds on the work of many people, including (but not limited to) Andrea Ayvazian, Bree Carlson, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Eli Dueker, Nancy Emond, Kenneth Jones, Jonn Lunsford, Joan Olsson, David Rogers, James Williams, Sally Yee, as well as the work of Grassroots Leadership, Equity Institute Inc, the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, the Challenging White Supremacy workshop, the Lillie Allen Institute, the Western States Center, and the contributions of hundreds of participants in the DR process. As noted elsewhere, any wisdom you find here is credit to all those who informed and influenced

Sharon Martinas, who at the time was facilitating the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop, suggested I add the antidotes. The characteristics marked with an asterisk* indicate those that Daniel Buford, who at the time was a lead trainer with the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, ​asked I credit to him when the original article was written.

​the original article and this website. Any fault or shortcoming is mine.

The original article offered this Partial Bibliography:
Notes from People's Institute for Survival and Beyond Workshop, Oakland, CA, spring 1999. Notes from Challenging White Supremacy Workshop, San Francisco, CA, spring 1999. Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? NY: HarperCollins, 1997. Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words. NY: Context Books, 2000. Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism. PA: New Society Publishers, 1996. Anne Wilson Schaef, Living in Process. NY: Ballantine, 1998. For complete bibliography, see complete workbook for dRwork's Dismantling Racism process (2016).

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Sometime in the late 1990s, I arrived home after a particularly frustrating consultation with an organization I was working with at the time. In a flurry of exasperation, I sat down at my computer...

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I love Vu Le's insight on systemic issues in nonprofits in general and on DEI topics specifically. His articles are insightful and fun to read.

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Before you quote Dr. King, here are some things you can do to be less of the white moderate he warned about

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[Image description: Picture of MLK marching in 1968 with other people, many holding signs with various messages, including “We march for jobs for all now!” “We demand voting right…

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This summary comes from a DEI consultant I have worked with.  I found this to be succinct and helpful.  

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This summary comes from a DEI consultant I have worked with.  I found this to be succinct and helpful.  

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Brick Gardens Annual Report

We believe that we can help develop healthy communities and thriving neighborhoods by bringing agriculture back to main street America. Brick Gardens helps close the food access gaps by growing fresh food locally. Brick Gardens helps empower local residents and communities with new jobs, learning programs, and community improvement projects. Brick Gardens is dedicated to feeding communities and transforming neighborhoods, first targeting food deserts and opportunity zones across the Cincinnati, OH area.

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We believe that we can help develop healthy communities and thriving neighborhoods by bringing agriculture back to main street America. Brick Gardens helps close the food access gaps by growing fresh food locally. Brick Gardens helps empower local residents and communities with new jobs, learning programs, and community improvement projects.

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Who we are

The Ron Finley Project

We envision a world where people know nutrition and where it comes from. Where all ages embrace the act of growing, knowing and sharing the best of the earth's fresh-grown food.

The Ron Finley Project is teaching communities how to transform food deserts into food sanctuaries, and teaching individuals how to regenerate their lands into creative business models. We envision and want to facilitate a world where gardening is gangsta!

Gangsta: projecting strength on one's own terms, hip, cool, innovative, revolutionary, resolute, vital, the cutting edge.

See What We do

Mission

If you grow together, you grow together

RFP's mission is to grow strong communities that think presently, act intentionally, and lay the groundwork for something beyond what we can see.

Help us spread this dream of edible, urban gardens, and nourish our neighborhoods one city-block at a time.

Join The Movement

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Who we are The Ron Finley Project We envision a world where people know nutrition and where it comes from. Where all ages embrace the act of growing, knowing and sharing the best of the earth's fresh-grown food.

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Click the button below to read a message from MAP Youth, Janya, who shares what her experience was like while working at the Massachusetts Avenue Project.

Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) is a nonprofit urban farm located on Buffalo's West Side. MAP employs youth year round and teaches them job readiness and leadership skills through farming, our Mobile Market, kitchen and nutrition education, as well as food policy and civic engagement.

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Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) is a nonprofit urban farm located on Buffalo's West Side. MAP employs youth year round and teaches them job readiness and leadership skills through farming, our Mobile Market, kitchen and nutrition education, as well as food policy and civic engagement.

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It's our anniversary!

2023 marks Keep Growing Detroit's 10th birthday + the GRP's 20th anniversary! In celebration, we're collecting stories, poems, recipes, photos, reflections, and art, all about the love you have for your gardens! We'll collect them into a yearbook distributed at the end of the year Annual Celebration. If you have a garden story, send it over to info@keepgrowingdetroit.org with KGD Love Story in the subject line.
Check out our first story!

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2023 marks Keep Growing Detroit's 10th birthday + the GRP's 20th anniversary! In celebration, we're collecting stories, poems, recipes, photos, reflections, and art, all about the love you have for your gardens! We'll collect them into a yearbook distributed at the end of the year Annual Celebration.

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Urban areas are centers for energy consumption and a key source of greenhouse gasses. Cities account for between 60 and 80 percent of the world's energy consumption and generate as much as 70 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Cities are also prone to an increased number of climate events, food sustainability issues, and much more.

TUGI's mission is to inspire and empower youth to achieve urban sustainability though a gardening-based educational program. In order to achieve these goals, we have designed a year-long program that engages youth in environmental education as well as urban gardening in both the fall and the spring time. ​

TUGI has a growing chapter base of 60+ chapters located all around the world. If you are interested in starting a TUGI chapter or volunteering whether remotely or in person with our workshops and programs check out our chapters and volunteer pages. We have a number of projects currently running and would love for you to join.

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Urban areas are centers for energy consumption and a key source of greenhouse gasses. Cities account for between 60 and 80 percent of the world's energy consumption and generate as much as 70 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Cities are also prone to an increased number of climate events, food sustainability issues, and much more.

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Wild Rice Restoration Project at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute

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Dream of Wild Health - We grow seeds and we grow leaders

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Our nonprofit relies on donations to further carry out our mission. Donate to help support healthy and traditional food access in the Twin Cities Native American community.

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All My Environmental Heroes Are Black Women

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My hope is that when more Black girls around the world can easily see themselves reflected, they’ll know they belong in the world of environmentalism.

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Join a Rethink Outside™ event to connect with Rethink Outside™ partners, learn about compelling storytelling, and activate your Rethink Outside™ narrative.

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Join a Rethink Outside™ event to connect with Rethink Outside™ partners, learn about compelling storytelling, and activate your Rethink Outside™ narrative.

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Access to and ownership of land for farming is a challenge for many farmers who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color. Structural socio-economic inequalities and historical discrimination in credit markets, state and federal programs, and real estate are just a few of the barriers that challenge the economic viability of BIPOC farm operations. Land access is a necessity for building food sovereignty, without which BIPOC communities cannot fully embrace their food history, agricultural practices, and knowledge to produce healthy, culturally appropriate foods.

Join Rethink Outside™ to learn about land conservation initiatives that address these historic inequities and create alternative systems for fostering stewardship and land ownership to support thriving BIPOC communities.

This is an open webinar - all are welcome and registration is required. The webinar will be recorded.

Speakers:

- Kierra Hyman, Triangle Land Conservancy
- Camille Samuels, Ph.D. student & Rethink Outside™ Fellow
- Cee Stanley, Green Heffa Farms

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Access to and ownership of land for farming is a challenge for many farmers who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color. Structural socio-economic inequalities and historical discrimination in credit markets, state and federal programs, and real estate are just a few of the barriers that challenge the economic viability of BIPOC farm operations.

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Michigan Nonprofit Association Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Assessment

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Michigan Nonprofit Association Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Assessment

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Assessment

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Assessment. Online registration by Cvent

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Justice Dept. Will Investigate Environmental Racism in Houston

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The inquiry, part of an administration-wide racial justice initiative, came amid claims that the city has ignored illegal dumping in Black and Latino areas.

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New Logo, New Look

Introducing our new logo and colors, designed to build on our traditional look and feel, while conveying our evolving energy, commitment, and momentum in serving Native communities. ...

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Home | First Nations Development Institute

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This article was featured in One Great Story, New York's reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

If you met me, you'd probably ask what pronouns I use. You'd ask me because my gender identity is not that clear - to you, at least. I wear light makeup and paint my nails and, depending on the occasion, might be in a slip dress with a kitten heel. And yet, if you heard me speak, you'd probably assume (correctly) that I was assigned male at birth (AMAB, in the current jargon; I was also, of course, assigned the name Brock). You might assume, based in part on my voice and disposition, that I date and sleep with men, like a gay man (also correct). And so you'd ask what pronouns I use because it's considered the polite thing to do now - an accepted part of our perilous new social-justice social contract - and you don't want to offend me with your ignorance and you do want to flatter yourself with your deft ally-ness, all the while probably thinking, especially if you're over 30, Oh goodness, the world is so different now.

And I'd politely respond, " They/them is fine," with a smile. Maybe a somewhat forced smile, because I've come to dread this whole interaction. If I'm feeling game, I might even ask for your pronouns, though chances are, unless perhaps you're my age or younger - I'm 24 - they will be exactly what I'd expect. By the end of the ten-word exchange, I'd be a little exhausted and you'd be a little on edge. And if I had to guess, you'd still probably fuck up my pronouns the next time you use them. You almost certainly would when I'm not standing right in front of you.

I have been using they/them pronouns for about four years now, since I started identifying as nonbinary ( enby, to use the jargon) as an undergraduate, and am a little proud to say that my generation was the one that forced - finally - the entire world, or at least the good-intentioned, progressive part of it that I am fortunate enough to reside in, to acknowledge something many queer people (and feminists and restless square pegs of many varieties) have long sought: freedom from the bright-line tyranny of gender and its accompanying expectations. In this case, starting with some of the most basic elements of the English language: the pronouns he and she. There's power in sloughing off both of them, and some fun, especially when I see how befuddled the whole thing can make people. There is a certain satisfaction in making this confusion you seem to be having - What box to put Brock in? - your problem, not mine. I've thought enough about it.

This all seemed very exciting in the Trump-tainted years, during which I was a gender-studies major in college, determined, as one is at that age, to find themself and stick it to the toxic Man. Just a few years later, they/themness is everywhere. The "pronoun go-round" is the new icebreaker in schools and at the office. Your resistance-leaning co-workers feature their pronouns in their Slack bios and email signatures and Zoom panels. Joe Biden ("he/him") and Kamala Harris ("she/her") have billboarded theirs in television interviews. And capitalism and the culture industry have been happy to co-opt it. It's on the reboot of Sex and the City, Star Trek: Discovery, Grey's Anatomy, and the animated cartoons Steven Universe and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Peacock announces a new horror flick called They/Them starring a bunch of he/hims and she/hers and describes the movie as a "queer empowerment story."

You certainly can't avoid it during this year's Pride Month. There's a Manhattan Mini Storage billboard that reads MAN-HATTAN, SHE-HATTAN, THEY-HATTAN, WE-HATTAN. It's on $15 T-shirts for Target's 2022 Pride collection that read SHE HER THEY THEM HE HIM US. There are THEY/THEM face masks available on Etsy. Even Walmart.com peddles pronoun kitsch. Earlier this year, the Museum of Sex sent a promotional email with the subject line "Valentine's Day Gift Ideas for 2022 - LOVE LOCK DOWN for Womxn, Men, He, She, Him, Her, They, Them, Xe, Xyr, Yyrself and Xirself." Another promotional email subject line: "Men's & Non-Binary Engagement & Wedding Bands." (You know what doesn't sound at all romantic? A nonbinary engagement ring.) A publicist sent me - addressing me on the mailing label as BROCK COLYAR, THEY/THEM - a free sample of what are supposed to be nonbinary razors. ("After all, hair is hair," says the letter; I beg to disagree.)

It has gotten so ubiquitous that it's pissing off the crypto bros: In early June, Jesse Powell, chief executive of Kraken, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, told his staff they had best conform to whatever pronouns they were assigned at birth, whining, "It's just not practical to allow 3,000 people to customize their pronouns." He also suggested that people who don't conform to his various conventions should just quit. Pronouns have become a talking point in right-wing media, from The Wall Street Journal ("This ostensibly benign practice helps to normalize a regressive ideology that is inflicting enormous harm on society") to the podcast Red Scare, where one of the hosts, Anna Khachiyan, considers it a symptom of the "decline of western civilization." Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has also in the past couple of years gone on the record getting worked up about the First Amendment implications of regulations designed to prevent language discrimination.

The Powells and the Alitos think they are losing something - some settled sense of the world, presumably with (to use the jargon) cisgendered men like them ruling wisely over us all. It clearly makes them crazy that seemingly everybody's teenager (and even my cousin's dog, according to my cousin, anyway) uses they/them pronouns now. The UCLA Law think tank the Williams Institute reports that 1.2 million adults in the U.S. identify as nonbinary. As for young people, a 2020 survey by the Trevor Project concluded that about one in four queer youth use pronouns that aren't exclusively she/her or he/him; in addition to they/them, there are those who use she/they and he/they or dozens upon dozens of "neo-pronouns" like ze/zir and fae/faer. (If you're dizzy because you keep thinking, But it's just not grammatically correct!, please know that English speakers have been using they as a singular pronoun on the written record since probably the ninth or tenth century. If you found someone's phone at a bar, I'm sure you would have no problem saying, "Someone lost their phone!")

All of which should be good, right? And yet I've begun to wonder what exactly I was trying to accomplish when I started using they/them pronouns and insisting you do, too. In cities and states where it's not so easy to talk about your pronouns all the time, Republican politicians are passing legislation targeting trans youth and their parents, censoring classroom discussion (a.k.a. "Don't say gay!"), and even trying to ban minors from attending drag shows. Could all of the energy put into enforcing pronoun culture among people already generally sympathetic have been better spent elsewhere?

I also wonder whether today's clunky pronoun etiquette has played a role in stunting my self-understanding as well as my self-confidence. I worry that in the end, they/them is just another dead end that mostly serves to annoy some people and make others feel better about themselves. Is something that has become enormously widespread actually a failed queer experiment, less a civil-rights triumph than a trend that blew up too quickly and makes us all feel persnickety? If this is a step toward some other utopic, gender-blurred society, when did it start to alienate me?

I don't remember the first time I met an enby or someone who used alternative pronouns, or even the first time I felt it resonated with how I understood myself. My first coming out, after all, felt like a much bigger to-do. I grew up in Middle of Nowhere, Tennessee, and even though everyone there suspected I was gay - I built most of my personality around a love for Stevie Nicks and had watched gay porn since I was 12 - for whatever reason I didn't think I was. Instead, I maintained crushes on my best girlfriends and eventually dated one. (She would go on to date a girl instead, who transitioned to a man, and then after they broke up, she started dating cis men.)

Then I went off to college, where, unlike back home, there were lots of openly queer people who quickly identified me as one of their own. I didn't hesitate to kiss the first boy who ever danced with me. (It turns out he was "straight," and years later we'd sleep together, immediately after which he'd start posting photos of himself in dresses on Instagram; what I'm trying to tell you through these seemingly unrelated escapades is that nothing about any of this is simple or easy to understand, even for those involved.)

But you've heard this story before - about the small-town boy who downloads Grindr and finds the people he wants to fuck, many of whom want to fuck him, too. With that confidence, I started to learn what I wanted for myself. Although being "masculine" - or presenting that way online - is a popular sexual marketing tool among the gays, it was never going to be for me. I started wearing makeup and more jewelry and perusing the women's section of thrift stores. But what I learned as I tinkered with my personal presentation is that the "masc4masc" gays didn't always want to hook up with someone who didn't conform to their version of homomasculinity, with its cropped tees and jockstraps. (Honestly, I just found it all a bit tacky.)

Perhaps subconsciously looking for answers to why I didn't feel at home among many of those who shared my supposed sexuality, I began pursuing a major in gender and sexuality studies, taking classes on feminist and queer theory and reading all the things they have you read at a fancy liberal-arts school with classes like "Feminism in Trumplandia" and "Queer Modernisms," such as this from Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: "There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results." In other words, gender is a construct, yadda yadda yadda, and gender is a performance.

This classroom knowledge - plus the privilege of being a twinky white kid living on a college campus in the moneyed northern suburbs of Chicago - felt like it gave me freedom to play. I didn't feel like a man, or a gay man, especially of the varietal I found around me. But I didn't feel like a woman, either. What I wanted was to be free of anything that would label me distinctly male or distinctly female. I wanted my gender to be nothing, null, nada. After all, that Butler quote begins, "There is no gender identity." Therefore, couldn't I just forgo one?

There was also the fact that midway through my first semester at college in 2016, instead of getting the first woman president we all assumed we were going to get, we got - well, you know who we got. During that initial year in office, Trump's administration rolled back LGBTQ+ rights, in part through erasure. For example: removing any mentions of queer people from government websites, revoking protections for trans students guaranteed by Title IX, and announcing that trans people would no longer be allowed to serve in the military. The left's response was to insist on queer visibility. Out of power politically, they could at least control some things. Like ... pronouns.

At Northwestern, a task force was formed to discuss and research the experience of "gender-queer, non-binary, and trans (GQNBT)" students, faculty, and staff, and when its final report was released the following year, 2019, "respecting and affirming names and identity" was at the very top of its list of recommendations, above creating gender-inclusive restrooms or addressing health-care needs of the gender nonconforming. Admittedly, some of the impetus behind "respecting and affirming names and identity" involved encouraging the school to honor trans students' chosen names, but there were also several pronoun-specific directives, like "Ensure that pronouns appear in course rosters." Learning pronoun preferences suddenly became just as important as learning first names - a nightmare, one could imagine, for a professor with a room of 100 moody first-year students. One caveat from the report: "Be prepared to respond to shifting best practices and adjust as social and cultural standards shift."

It wasn't just on campuses, of course, though the momentum certainly started there. Shit was changing real fast all over. By 2019, Merriam-Webster named they its Word of the Year ("Lookups for they increased by 313 percent over the previous year. This curiosity is remarkable for a venerable old pronoun," the dictionary noted), and the American Psychological Association officially endorsed its use (in an example, the APA spelled it out as simply as possible: "Kai is a nonbinary person. They attend university in their home state of Vermont and are majoring in chemistry"). Jessica Bennett, later to be named "gender editor" at the New York Times, wrote a piece headlined "She? Ze? They? What's in a Gender Pronoun?" and then declared a "new gender revolution." After all, only a few years before, in 2015, even The New Yorker's Ariel Levy was side-eyeing the practice, writing in a profile of Transparent creator Joey Soloway, "It would sound crazy, for instance, to describe Soloway by saying, 'They are my favorite director.' " In the same article, the poet Eileen Myles, who has since adopted they/them pronouns, was quoted tripping over someone else's, acknowledging and excusing it away with, "It's not intuitive at all."

By 2018, I was eager to join in on the hype and decided to start identifying as nonbinary. At that moment, it felt sexy and radical, like I'd discovered a shiny new paper clip in the lip. I also smoked cigarettes, painted my nails black, and listened to a lot of Bowie ("Rebel Rebel''). This too was kind of a punk provocation.

Plus, in that era of Trump and Me Too, I had just been sexually assaulted for the first time, and what worse to be in 2018 than a man? Don't get me wrong: I didn't feel like one, but at the same time I didn't really want to be one, either. It was a political declaration. Identifying as nonbinary was my way of saying to everyone else, "I'm not playing your game." As the activist and artist Kate Bornstein said to me recently, "The sneaky magical thing about that word, nonbinary, is that it doesn't say what you are. It only says what you're not." And as a friend told me not long ago about their decision to identify publicly as nonbinary, "I'm not asking you to consider my gender as much as I am asking you to spend a little time considering yours."

But the pronouns, for me, were always beside the point. I never led with them; it felt like announcing a new haircut that nobody had yet noticed. The way I'd gotten a grasp on my weird, sticky feelings about my body was by experimenting with my presentation and the kinds of people I pursued romantically, not telling other people how to refer to me when I wasn't around. (Another perplexing thing about the pronoun tedium: How often do you have to use somebody's pronouns in front of them?) This felt like a personal discovery, and my unwillingness to wear my pronouns on my sleeve (literally, like on a name tag at some campus meet and greet) clearly bothered people. At the time, I was particularly close with one of my professors, whom other professors were constantly approaching nervously to ask how they should refer to me. She would tell them, "I'm not sure. What do you want me to do? Ask Brock about their sex life, too?" I treasured that response, not only for its refusal to abide by the norm but also because, subtly, it did just that ("their sex life").

When the pronoun go-round became the norm in the classroom, I began sharing only my name - "Hi! My name is Brock" - but more often than not, a do-good cis person would remind me to please share my pronouns. It felt like an unnecessary spotlight on my difference, which was already visible to anyone who looked at me at the time (it takes practice to figure out eyeliner).

Then, on the first day of an internship at Ms. magazine, I gave it a try. When it was my turn in the go-round, I said, "Hi! I'm Brock, and I use they/them pronouns." The next day, my editor told me my job for the summer would be writing about "male feminism." I learned that new pronouns wouldn't do much to change the way I was perceived by others.

When I graduated from school and began my first job out of college, at this magazine, "What are your pronouns?" became the first thing many of my new co-workers asked me - proudly, hip as they were to this representative of the incoming generation. I would usually say, "They/them, but I'm really not that precious about it," because I didn't want them to think I was some kind of Gen-Z Gender Police here to sow discord in their workplace. Plus I learned that people liked me more if I didn't make a big fuss about it, and I secretly enjoyed watching people bumble over their words in front of me, which felt like sweet payback for the same people constantly telling me about all their trans friends and family members. That was part of the fun. I was, I thought, forcing them to think.

Privately, I've often also told myself it was my privileged duty - as someone, for whatever reason, not terribly easily triggered - to be other people's workshop. I was, effectively, a safe space for them. And maybe they would do better the next time they met a nonbinary or trans person. I justified my flippancy with a 2019 opinion piece by the Black feminist Loretta Ross in the New York Times arguing against callout culture. In it, Ross tells a story about accidentally misgendering a student during a college lecture. Unfazed, the student responds, "That's all right; I misgender myself sometimes." Ross, in response, writes, "We need more of this kind of grace."

By then, the pronoun thing quickly became oppressive. (Admittedly, my presentation also became more refined: better shoes, better hair, better eyeliner technique.) At work, people began asking me about them even more often, sometimes on a weekly basis. There was a sign placed outside the men's room and the women's room at the office that said RESTROOMS ARE BINARY. PEOPLE ARE NOT. (Do you know what's not binary? Single-stall restrooms.) Every barista, every first date, every stranger at a party, every best friend of ten years, and (in a sign this had truly gone mainstream) my mother inquired about my pronouns. Do you know what ruins sex? Asking for pronouns directly before, during, or after getting naked; I've experienced all three. All of my friends' moms ask them about my pronouns and then my friends recount the conversations to me ... again and again and again. Now that I have my byline in this magazine, I have become Googleable. Type my name in the search bar and "Brock Colyar pronouns" is one of the autofills. I've watched people I don't know discuss my pronouns on Reddit threads and in TikTok comment sections. (Does my algorithm know my pronouns?) I go to a party where I overhear a close friend accidentally use he/him to refer to me. I then hear another person, someone I'm not that close to, lay into the first person. I'm not sure whom I should be more offended by, but everybody is embarrassed. I've been consumed by pronouns.

Many of the nonbinary people I've spoken with recently feel similarly underwater. For some, there's a sense that constantly asking about pronouns is a way for straight people to virtue-signal their wokeness. Ben, who previously worked for a company where putting pronouns in email signatures was the status quo, told me that when they switched jobs to a less self-consciously progressive organization, their co-workers quit getting them wrong. The unwoke, without all that lefty pressure, were simply less worked up about it. Another person phrased their experience this way: "It's constantly straight people freezing up and stressing out. Like, How do I be an ally? " There is nothing enjoyable, in other words, about being a small-talk roadblock. "I can't relax because you can't relax. It makes it not fun for me," said Beau, talking about their experience with pronoun culture at work. Sam, another nonbinary person present for the conversation, told me they don't always insist upon their pronouns in the office for exactly these reasons: "Although the people I work with are very nice, they're also 45-year-old women who are gonna fuck up and make it super-awkward when they fuck up. 'Oh my God. I didn't mean that.' 'Oh my God. I'm so sorry.' 'Oh my God. Are you offended?' I don't want to deal with that."

However, advertising their pronouns was helpful when Sam explained their gender to friends and family: "I present pretty femme. When people meet me, they're going to think I'm a woman, but that's simply not the case. How do I let somebody into that experience without being disgustingly vulnerable?" The solution: they/them pronouns. The problem: The pronouns then become a hang-up for titillated and nervous cis people. They ask for your pronouns, usually not once but a number of times. Still, "If you know my pronouns," Sam continued, "you know very little about me. It was never about the pronoun. We're doing it for other people. In an ideal universe, I don't need to have a pronoun." Another nonbinary friend, Nic, added, "What I prioritize more is how people relate to me. Do you see me as me and not this thing, this word?" Which reminded me of those first days at work, when my new co-workers would ask for my pronouns before they asked where I was from, what school I went to, where I was living in New York, or what my ambitions were as a journalist.

Do you know what ruins sex? Asking for pronouns directly before, during, or after getting naked; I've experienced all three.

Christopher, who presents as femme and used to work in a job where they had to deal with the public all day long, told me the bombardment of pronoun questions sometimes made them feel even more uncomfortable than a misgendering. "I go to work. I'm wearing a miniskirt. Everyone asks me for my pronouns. To me, what that means is 'I see that you're a man. And I see that you're dressed in a woman's costume. And I would like to know whether or not you want me to participate in the fantasy you're having,' " they said. "I don't think my answer should fundamentally change anything about how we're interacting right now. And the fact that you're so desperate to know is weird."

Of course, on the other side of this hang-up are all of the well intentioned trying desperately not to fuck up. "I think a lot of the conversation has been around 'What do I do if I get it wrong?' I think people are afraid of making mistakes," says Alfredo Del Cid, the head of learning and development at Collective, a California-based consulting firm for issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (Collective is a vendor for Vox Media, which owns New York).

Which brings me back to Loretta Ross's grace. Part of the reason this is a lightning rod for the left and the right is this specter of the angry queer, ready to yell at you for getting their pronouns wrong. Which is understandable - it takes a long time to figure some of these things out, and screw everyone who can disregard all of that work with a quick he or she - and at the same time is partially grounded in truth (though society is always ready to frame its outsiders as wet blankets, as the scholar Sara Ahmed has written about extensively, there's a reason my Twitter handle is @UnhappyFem). But for me personally, it has always been perplexing why our gender has become so predicated on the experience of injury. What exactly is empowering about going through life with a reservoir of internal anger, ready to explode on anyone who doesn't understand our admittedly complicated relationships to our genders? The gender theorist Jack Halberstam, who admits to also being "loosey-goosey about pronouns," told me about a recent experience of being misgendered at a doctor's office. Rather than getting upset, he chose instead to think about the receptionist who had done the misgendering. "I can't say to that woman in the office, 'How dare you?' This is her job. I need to be generous about what she's doing all day as well, not demanding on every level that I am comfortable."

Meanwhile, maybe in an attempt to inject some humor back into the conversation, all of this has become a meme on the queer internet. I scroll through Twitter: "I'm the first non-binary person to have a little tummy ache," "He/him sun, she/her moon, he/they rising," "Working in a tea shop is the most non binary job," "Orville concert was a transformative experience ... bunch of Bushwick they/thems screeching 'Yass vibrato!!' " Trident gum, the brand, tweets out, "he/they of the day: spearmint Trident gum."

Quietly, my friends and I deploy our own they/them jokes. Most have to do with stereotypes and sex. At drinks with a nonbinary former hookup, they define the stereotype: "People who survive on their parents' money, putting on a shit ton of crazy makeup, floating around Bushwick, being hyper politically correct." They continue, "There's so much of my personal life that's embedded in word politics," meaning they can't figure out what their boyfriend should call them (definitely not "partner" at this age). Another friend, who was recently told they were a hookup's first "penis person" - which is only slightly better than something I read about in a confessional on Instagram, "good they" - and I begin using the word joyfriend as a joke, but then it starts to catch on.

It doesn't help my headache that many representations of nonbinary people in the media are social-justice-warrior characters like Che Diaz, the "queer, nonbinary, Mexican Irish diva" on And Just Like That ... Avie Acosta, a genderqueer former model, told me, "People don't want to sit with ambiguity and mystery. There's no poetry to Che Diaz." There's also a meme of one person responding to another person correcting their misgendering of the actor Ezra Miller: "Right, thanks! They keep assaulting people, women mostly." These are the cringe struggles of representation. And what's there to say about Jonathan Van Ness?

These days, it feels as if an identity that, not long ago, felt unique to me in most rooms I entered has gone mass. Yes, part of what I'm personally upset about is the fact that this thing I loved isn't so alt anymore. But more than that, it feels as if pronoun culture has contributed to nonbinary becoming just the third gender after male and female, more static and concrete than its original fluid intentions. The same nonbinary person who complained about nonbinary stereotypes lamented to me, "I don't want to be a homogeneous normcore mashing of the two genders." Ben hoped, "If man or woman can mean so many things, then so can nonbinary. " We all became nonbinary to escape gendered expectations, and now we're stuck again. I can't help but think that the walking-on-eggshells battle for pronouns is turning my gender into a human-resources-approved corporate product, more neutered than neutral, and, maybe above all else, profoundly unromantic. Next time, just call me by my name.

Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the June 20, 2022, issue of New York Magazine.

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This article was featured in One Great Story, New York's reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. If you met me, you'd probably ask what pronouns I use. You'd ask me because my gender identity is not that clear - to you, at least.

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Diamond Thompson and Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier 04/17/2023

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WHAT IS THE LIVING WAGE CALCULATOR? Today, families and individuals working in low-wage jobs make too little income to meet minimum standards of living in their community. We developed the Living Wage Calculator to help individuals, communities, employers, and others estimate the local wage rate that a full-time worker requires to cover the costs of their family's basic needs where they live.

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"I just want my people out here": A growing number of initiatives in Detroit are working to redefine outdoor activities as acts of liberation.

Ian Solomon is founder of Amplify Outside, one of several initiatives emerging from Detroit to help eliminate obstacles to people of color accessing nature. (Photo by Nick Hagen / Planet Detroit)
This story is published collaboratively with Planet Detroit as part of the Equitable Cities Reporting Hub for Environmental Justice, an initiative led by Grist and Next City.
Detroiter Ian Solomon began building a deep relationship with the outdoors while attending college in Arizona for broadcast journalism. He'd never been in a place with such access to mountains and nature before, and he quickly fell in love.

But during his forays into the wilderness, he often felt like he was entering predominantly white spaces. He soon began to see the outdoors as a privilege to which other Black and Brown people should have access. His efforts led him to launch Amplify Outside, one of several initiatives emerging from Detroit to help eliminate obstacles to people of color accessing nature.

According to a study by the Outdoor Foundation, 72% of outdoor participants in 2020 were white. Black and Hispanic Americans are both underrepresented in outdoor recreation activities, and just 38% of Black Americans ages six and over participated in 2020, down from 40 percent in 2019.

There are important reasons for this, according to Solomon. "A lot of our history as being Black Americans in the outdoors is kind of negative - you think about slavery and lynching," he says. "There's a lot of access barriers for Black people outdoors, but sometimes it's just as simple as we don't know where to go and we didn't know this was an option."

The disconnect with nature for Black and Brown people goes beyond access. Scholar Carolyn Finney, author of "Black Faces, White Spaces," notes that Black Americans' relationship with the outdoors and the environment has historically been dictated for them.

"The idea that as African Americans - being held captive, being made to work the land and engage with non-human nature under the threat of the lash or death, being someone else's property (like the property that they worked) - that's gonna have some impact," Finney explained in a podcast. The dominant narratives on how we should interact with nature - mostly involving conservation and preservation, concepts created and enforced by white authorities - are also at odds with how many Black people understand nature, she says.

The idea to launch an organization to help people of color access the outdoors hit Solomon on his 23rd birthday while camping with a friend in Colorado. Feeling "overjoyed and overwhelmed" about the beauty of the natural environment he was experiencing, he thought to himself, "I just want my people out here."

He envisioned joyful Black and Brown bodies relaxing near a campfire with their tents, amid a feeling of peace and relaxation - something he felt that people of color deserve, especially amid an ongoing pandemic that has caused so many to turn to nature.

So he decided to make his vision a reality. He started by launching Amplify Detroit with social media accounts on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter in 2021. He soon gained a following by bringing the beauty of the outdoors to screens to display possibilities for Black and Brown people they might not have imagined for themselves.

The posts feature Black and Brown folks enjoying camping, paddling, fishing and more, along with facts about parks in Michigan, distance from Detroit and how to get there, and information about the natural lands within the city.

Amplify Outside's tagline is "Black Recreation is Black Liberation."

"At the end of the day, we're all humans, come from the earth, and are naturally inclined to have this strong connection to nature. And it's beneficial for our health - mentally and physically," Solomon says. "So when it comes to reclaiming our relationship to nature, what we're really doing is reclaiming power."

Solomon's first step was conducting a survey of Black locals to gauge their interest and relationship to nature and better understand the barriers preventing them from enjoying outdoor recreational opportunities in Michigan.

The two-part survey, which captured opinions from over 200 Black Michiganders, concluded that Black people are interested in being outdoors. About 85% of those surveyed said they were "very interested" in the outdoors. "People want to do this - they just don't know how," Solomon says.

A lack of resources and accessibility were the two main barriers the survey identified. Many Detroiters lack reliable transportation and confidence to navigate areas outside their immediate environment due to a lack of comfort caused by racism. Metro Detroit was ranked the most segregated region in the nation among regions with a population greater than 200,000.

Solomon says that many survey respondents feared that they "just feel like I'm gonna be the only Black person there" if they ventured outside of their neighborhoods into regional parks.

That was how Sheba Rogers felt when she thought about trying kayaking. So she was excited to attend the annual Browns, Blacks and Kayaks event held by Black to the Land Coalition, another Detroit-based group that focuses on providing cost-efficient outdoor activities for Black and Brown people.

Rogers initially attended because of friends mentioning the event, and later reflected on the beauty in the intention Black to the Land had seemed to set. "I think the intention [was] rooted in something much deeper than just an event. It was rooted in education, exposure, grounding, and our well-being," she says.

The organization hosts several events throughout the year that cater to Black and other people of color, including opportunities for hiking, camping, kayaking and other nature-centered events. Their annual Browns, Blacks and Kayaks event is a staple event for them. It offers affordable kayaking, food options, and plenty of space specifically for Black and Brown people to simply "be" in nature.

Participants said the experience went beyond just kayaking as an activity. "You saw a family set up in their tents, just hanging out for the day. It was a time to really relax and not just come for one thing and leave," Rogers says. "We looked into the water and we saw fish, and we saw turtles and it was just very intimate to be that close to the water like that."

For Rogers, having an organized activity to cater to people of color helped her overcome her reticence about trying a new outdoor sport.

"I feel that it is 100% important to have Black-centered spaces," she says. "Being that it was a Black-centered space, we could fully relax. And I think it will continue to cultivate more people coming out to this kind of space. Because I think it was done with a sense of who we are and what we need, in a very authentic way."

Solomon plans to use his survey results to build solutions to the challenges preventing Black and Brown people from enjoying recreational activities. The organization is raising money to create a mutual aid fund to support those who want to engage in outdoor activities but don't have the means.

"We'll have tents, sleeping bags, and everything else you would need to have an outdoor experience. We'll also have cash for gas because, again, there is a big economic barrier, although the outdoors is free," he says.

In the meantime, Amplify Outside has hosted meetups for hikes with like-minded organizations like Outdoor Afro to create a sense of community for Black and Brown people. Solomon says people of all ages and experiences attend walks and leave satisfied and ready for the next event.

"I hope that this kind of work starts larger conversations that go beyond outdoor recreation and really get into what we need as a community for liberation," Solomon says. "So, as much as this is about having fun outside, it's also about attacking these systems that have kept us back as a community has affected our physical and mental health."

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Detroit's Black-Led Organizations Are Cultivating Access To Nature

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"I just want my people out here": A growing number of initiatives in Detroit are working to redefine outdoor activities as acts of liberation. Ian Solomon is founder of Amplify Outside, one of several initiatives emerging from Detroit to help eliminate obstacles to people of color accessing nature.