hey HAUSmates: Black Fridays Make Their Return

Black Friday. Like many my first thought when I hear Black Friday is the chaotic capitalistic celebration of deep discounts to get consumers to spend their holiday $ at big box retailers. Sure, that’s a thing and we can have a whole conversation about the hows and whys and whats about that version of Black Friday but that’s not what we are doing. We are reclaiming Black Friday and cultivating a courageous confluence of community, culture, creativity and connection through coworking by donation for BIPOC folx …and also of course, productivity, but that doesn’t work well in our alliteration.

Yes, that’s a whole big thing to say and a lot of companies are using buzz words like community, culture, BIPOC and inclusive. So here’s what we mean when we play with all those great C words, or rather, here’s how we reclaim Black Fridays.

We hold space … period.

It actually isn’t a lot but it is very intentional and highly effective.

We open our doors and welcome folks in for day passes and coworking in a lot of ways (see membership levels and space access opportunities HERE). Just being in our space we ask everyone to de-center whiteness and patriarchy and show up for each other. Black Friday we do this even more intentionally by not just de-centering those problematic systems that are prevelent in everything all day long, but by centering and celebrating BIPOC community, connections and experience. Every Friday is Black Friday when we invite Black and Brown folks in to our space to cowork by donation. First we intentionally invite community and center the experience of BIPOC to share our resources and theirs and belonging in space. Then we remove $ as a barrier of entry acknowledging that each of us on our journey have something valuable to contribute whether energy, support, connection or holding space for a yourself or a fellow coworker. Finally, we get out of the way and let the day unfold as it needs. Sometime we have 2 or 3 extra coworkers quietly checking things off their list, sometimes we have a full house. Sometimes we break into story telling, Sometimes we share extra resources through the support of a sponsor. Always we celebrate the bounty and beauty of how people show up for themselves and each other.

Black Fridays at openHAUS are awesome and we are really excited to bring them back after being slow and cautious for our community through navigating COVID protocols.

You Belong