Collective Journal

Liberation Collective

Founder Meeting Summary

Our latest gathering marked an important moment in the evolution of the Liberation Collective.

We came together not simply to revisit who we are, but to ask a harder question: how do we begin turning our shared values into shared action?

At the center of the conversation were the three values that continue to ground the Collective:

Reciprocal Trust, practiced through distributive leadership

Gratitude, practiced through restorative practices

Generosity, practiced through gift economics

These are not intended to be statements on a page. They are practices we are challenging ourselves to live within our own organizations and within the Collective itself.

From community to solidarity

A central theme of the meeting was the difference between being a community and building true solidarity.

We are rooted in social justice and recognize that many of our organizations are confronting different expressions of the same underlying systems of control, violence, inequity and greed. Our individual missions matter deeply, but the growing conviction of the Collective is that none of us can fully realize those missions in isolation.

Solidarity therefore means more than gathering together. It means intentionally discovering where our work intersects and finding ways to act together.

What do liberation and legacy really mean?

The conversation opened important questions rather than forcing easy answers.

Liberation was described at many levels: freedom for individuals and communities, freedom for leaders to pursue meaningful work without constantly struggling for survival, and freedom from systems that reproduce injustice.

We also questioned how concepts such as liberation, legacy, labor, economics and organizational life can themselves be understood in ways that do not reproduce colonial or hierarchical assumptions.

Legacy emerged not as the preservation of our organizations, but as something more powerful: leaving future generations with greater freedom, stronger relationships, more resources, and fewer battles to fight than those we inherited.

One reflection captured this especially clearly: before we can build a legacy, we must also ensure that the people and organizations doing this work are able to survive and thrive.

Practicing the world we hope to create

Another strong insight was that social justice work can itself become exhausting, adversarial and defined by what we are fighting against.

Our three values can serve as a North Star.

If we oppose systems built on domination, violence and scarcity, then we must continually ask whether the way we organize reflects something different. How we do the work matters as much as the work itself.

The Collective is therefore not only seeking to change systems. We are experimenting with a different way of leading, resolving conflict, sharing resources and being in relationship with one another.

A clear desire for action

There was strong energy throughout the conversation around beginning to do things together.

Rather than waiting for every structure, funding mechanism or definition to be complete, several founders encouraged us to identify the natural intersections among our organizations and begin there.

Possible areas mentioned included education, youth, social justice, environmental justice, special needs, policy and systems change.

This suggests an emerging model in which groups of founders might come together around shared areas of concern, develop collaborative initiatives, seek resources together and demonstrate the principles of the Collective through real work.

The message was clear:

We do not need to work on everything together. We need to discover where our work naturally connects and begin.

The tension between urgency and relationship

At the same time, the meeting acknowledged an important tension.

There is urgency. Many of us are working in communities facing very real harm, and there is an understandable desire to move quickly.

But collaboration without trust can reproduce many of the problems we are trying to change.

The challenge is therefore not to choose between relationship and action, but to find ways to build relationships through meaningful action.

The wisdom, experience, networks and time that each person brings to this Collective are themselves extraordinary resources. Our work now is to learn enough about one another to understand where those resources can become mutually reinforcing.

Sustaining the people who sustain the work

Perhaps one of the most powerful themes came through in the closing reflections.

Many of us know what it feels like to work against overwhelming odds—to feel isolated, exhausted, discouraged or uncertain whether the effort is making a difference.

Coming together matters.

The Collective is becoming a place where people doing difficult work can reconnect with others who understand that experience, recover energy, hold joy and sorrow together, and return to their communities reminded that they are not alone.

In that sense, one of the most important things the Collective may do is:

sustain the people who sustain movements.

Moving toward September

The September gathering represents an important next step.

The current intention is to use our time together to deepen relationships while also advancing concrete work around three key areas:

Membership — clarifying what it means to participate in the Collective and the different ways people and organizations can belong.

Publication and documentation — determining how we tell the story of this work, capture what we are learning and share it with others.

Endowment and resources — exploring how financial sustainability and gift economics can support the Collective and its organizations.

There is also an opportunity to begin identifying collaborative projects that can move from conversation into practice.

The question before us

The Collective is still emerging. Not everything is settled, and that is part of the process.

But the direction is becoming clearer.

We are building an ecosystem of people and organizations rooted in social justice, connected by shared values, and committed to learning how to work together in ways that reflect the future we hope to create.

The question now is not only:

What do we believe?

It is increasingly:

What can we build together that none of us could build alone?

And perhaps underneath all of it remains the question that has continued to guide our work:

What does love look like in real time that we do not yet know?

Our next chapter is about discovering that together.