Challenge #17 – Better Together: Allyship to Pride Communities

Across Turtle Island and in various regions around the world, PRIDE month is celebrated with various public and private events, parades, and parties. Our social media feeds become flooded with colour, while corporations rainbow-wash their communications in acts of performative allyship.

This month, we’ve invited DJ and Community Organizer – Daniyah Shamsi – to issue the June 2022 Coworking IDEA Challenge. 

Daniyah shares her deep knowledge and experience of living, working and organizing in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES). In a particularly moving conversation, Daniyah expertly weaves us through so many of the core issues our LGBTQIA2S+ family and friends are facing day-to-day, while they may also be managing generational trauma, as well as ongoing discrimination, lack of access to healthcare and other essential services, homophobia and threats of violence.

Daniyah is a key organizer of Downtown Eastside Pride, and  this article from The Tyee in 2021 elevates the importance of her work in making PRIDE accessible for those who are typically excluded and marginalized.

“A Lot of Us, We Can’t Be Loud and Proud” – Written By Jen St. Denis, for The Tyee (August 2021)

As the article explains, the artwork within this blog post also captures the beauty and talent in the DTES graffiti community and the importance of the messages these artists are sharing – messages of love, equality, human rights, inclusion, protection, safety and community. The June 2022 IDEA Challenge video should be added to your list as essential viewing, as Daniyah covers so many important topics including why she believes we need to protect Trans Youth:

“They are so brave, and are really our future. They’re the ones that will take us to whatever this next level of understanding is.”

Daniyah reminds us to ignore the corporate rainbow-washing and instead to focus on the actual message of Pride: 

“Creating a world where people are safe, to express who they are, to be who they are, and to love who they love.”

In our roles as community leaders, business owners, teammates, social enterprises, friends, family, coworking members and neighbours, we have many opportunities to create this world.

This month, we challenge you to think about what it means to be an ally as we begin Crowdsourcing and Compiling a List of actions we can each take in our coworking spaces and within our businesses and organizations to practice Allyship to Pride Communities.

Take the Challenge and contribute your ideas and actions to this shared google doc.
At the end of the month we will gather to discuss the crowdsourced document, and to share what we’ve learned through the process.

Please register to join us for the free Coworking IDEA Conversation on June 29th with Daniyah Shamsi – it’s a perfect opportunity to dive deeper on the topics we’re exploring this month, and to ask our expert facilitator any questions you may have.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Photo Credits: www.theclayman.com, Daniyah Shamsi and HEPH.