_Photo by _Den Heslop_ on Unsplash _
I’m not a businessman. I just happen to own a business.
I am a genderqueer Latinx human living in Portland, Oregon. I’m obsessed with business and business processes. I’m a trauma and abuse survivor and I furvently believe that information is highly relevant to my qualifications as a business expert.
I write with the context of history, which means I acknowledge that all of the benefits of both capitalism and democracy have been pried out of the unwilling hands of the poor, of people of color, of women and queer people and anybody who didn’t have enough power to prevent themselves and their earnings from being taken by the rich, who pretend they earned this wealth.
And insofar as someone like me has access to these benefits, it is my duty to take full advantage of that access in order to pry the door open for myself so that I can hold it open for others.
I refuse to believe, as I have been taught that ventures entered into as myself are side hustles, while ventures entered into on behalf or at the behest of people who are always more wealthy than me, and usually whiter than me are business ventures. Trade and commerce pre-dates whiteness in every context. It predates capitalism, and democracy and every other structure with which we measure our worth in this fucked up system where money matters more than people.
It is this tradition which I call on to write this blog, it’s this legacy I draw on. Not a white one, not a male one, and not the one we’ve been taught is “legitimate” business in the US, where I live on stolen land along with the rest of us.
I put people over profits, I believe in transparency, that communication is more important than internal timelines, and that rather than moving fast and breaking things, we should go slow and build things. Specifically, sctructures of professional association and practice that operate outside of the structures of white supremacy we have been tricked into conforming or reacting to.
Our collective liberation, the only way to make all our livings outside of this toxic profit model is to work together and use all our talent to dismantle the structure that holds us all down.
For the context of this blog, I prefer they/them pronouns and because I will be speaking (at times explicitly) about my own experience of life as a marginalized person, I won’t be including a lot of personal descriptors or individually identifying information.
If you happen to know who I am, lucky you. Please keep it to yourself.
Home page photo credits:
Header by Ronald Cuyan on Unsplash
Globe by Artem Bali on Unsplash