The BLUU Organizing Collective Board Announces a Leadership Transition
Beloveds:
Our commitment to decolonized and liberatory organizational leadership means putting relationships at the center of everything we do. As a leadership team, we care about each other’s struggles, celebrate each other’s successes, and genuinely want each other to win. Our work for BLUU is grounded both in our love for Black people and in the ways we’ve committed to show up for each other as leaders in this important ministry.
We are writing to share an announcement about a leadership transition within our Organizing Collective Board (OCB). We share this announcement after much collective conversation and discernment. While transitions are an inevitable part of any organization, we’re a small but mighty team, and we feel this so deeply.
We think it’s important that you learn more about this from the person making the transition. Below, you will find a letter from our Community Organizer Paige Ingram about her leadership transition.
We’ll share more about this transition at a later date, but for now, we want to honor Paige’s voice as she shares some changes on her horizon.
In love and faith,
The BLUU Organizing Collective Board
Hello my dear community,
I am thinking of all of us often as so many of us are taking stock of the last year and the impact it has had on us individually, our families, our congregations, and our broader Black community.
I wanted to share a personal life update with you all. I will be transitioning away from BLUU staff and the Organizing Collective board on March 14.
I became BLUU’s Community Organizer because I wanted to do everything I could to support our community to feel empowered, connected, and moved towards this new iteration of the Black liberation movement. I also needed support to understand my own organizing takeaways from the broader movement and uplift what I felt was missing in so many spaces: spiritual safety, ritual, long-term leadership development, and a true commitment to multi-generational organizing.
I wanted to share that I’m really grateful for all the ways you all have helped me do that — by digging into the hard questions and being willing to listen to our mistakes and our insights. Team Sankofa was a massive part of that learning. My leadership was transformed and it has been awe inspiring to see the massive transformation of the many beautiful humans who demonstrated what bottom up, leaderful communities are capable of. Aja, Atena, Mathew, QuianaDenae, and Whryne continue to demonstrate what relentless commitment to community and self really means.
In terms of what my transition means for the community, I am still most certainly a part of this community so I am not going too far away! I really wanted to highlight my gratitude for BLUU’s leadership as they support me in this process.
Feel free to reach out individually at the BLUU general email (BlackLivesofUU@gmail.com) if you have any questions! And you can always continue to reach out to me via social media.
“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God Is Change.” — Octavia Butler
