Tess Cruz Foley
Photo: Ivana Doria Photography
Finding My Brave Space
It’s February 2021. We are holding huge rainbow peace flags at a social justice rally that I helped organize. I’m listening to my comrades shout dehumanizing remarks at people with different beliefs than them. I’m watching them shout offensive names at children who had come with their parents to a rally, a group that reportedly supports the police, but even the police at the rally told me they know better. The group is in support of the unjust system that imprisons people of color at significantly higher rates than it does people with light skin. A justice system that often protects law enforcement with qualified immunity, and it appears to me that it supports the idea that people with darker skin aren’t equal, aren’t good, and aren’t deserving of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.
Black people in our local social justice community had also explained why the rainbow peace flags were problematic. We were specifically asked not to use them in counter-protests, as peace did not convey the urgent need of oppressed communities. They need justice. They need equity, we were told. They explained that peace, in this instance, felt placating and lacked understanding of the plight. Furthermore, the rainbow represents the support of the LGBTQIA+ community, which absolutely deserves all the support, but it was an odd choice for this rally, especially in response to the murder of George Floyd, which is why we started organizing rallies. The message that Black Lives Matter was diluted and largely lost with the rainbow peace flag. Lastly, and most importantly, we were told by Black leadership in our community that when well-meaning white people make racists angry, they get to go home—and be white—and will likely not be the target of the racist anger they just fueled.
As a behavior analyst, I knew that screaming obscenities at children was not an effective way to build an inclusive and equitable community. I knew that the behavior I witnessed from our group that day would likely confirm the bias of those we countered. I knew that we were likely causing the behavior and beliefs we wanted to extinguish to increase.
At that rally, I promised myself that I would become a more effective agent of change.
How did we get here? The summer prior, shortly after the murder of George Floyd, two other moms in my town and I had begun organizing weekly protests, which we called Stand-Ups. We sold Black Lives Matter yard signs and used the money to pay speakers to address the hundreds of people who attended. It felt great. We quickly grew to have more than 500 members in our Facebook group. We were gaining notoriety, and other groups began asking if we’d organize stand-ups in different towns, specifically countering rallies. At this point, one of the three moms who started our group dropped out, citing personal reasons.
After that counter-protest, things escalated quickly; I made several attempts to steer the group and had several discussions with my friend and co-organizer. So much so that I began to be viewed as a sympathizer. I know there are many ways to protest. I did my research and knew that I wanted no part in the type of protest that the majority of the group wanted to engage in.
Soon after, a known white supremacist “nationalist” group was planning a rally in our town. I wanted to counter by holding our rally centered on the ideology of Black Lives Matter. The anniversary of the death of Breonna Taylor was approaching. The majority of the group felt differently.
The police chief got my phone number and asked me to come in to discuss our group’s plans. I brought my co-organizer, knowing we had different opinions, but I wanted her input and didn’t feel safe going by myself. I was in way over my head. The police chief asked us how many people we thought would be countering. We said we had no idea, which was true. They asked us where we were planning on gathering. They asked if we would be willing to have our rally in a different location than the nationalist group
That all sounded fine to me, as I was focused on centering Black people, which was the whole reason we started the group. I acknowledge that the group was predominantly white. For their safety, most of the Black folks that regularly attended stopped coming as the weeks progressed and the group began to morph from our original mission. As a single mom, a sole parent, I have to think about my safety as my kids’ safety, and so the separate rally appealed to my sense of security. One of the families who’d stopped coming implored me not to attend the counter-protest. “It’s not worth it,” they said.
When the day came, I stayed in my assigned location, with my hand-painted portrait of Breonna, with a small handful of high school students. The majority of the people who showed up headed down to counter the white supremacist rally. I knew what was right for me, and I knew that it wasn’t my place to tell others how to protest. I also knew that any attempt I’d made to share my perspective seemed to make people suspicious of me.
Among those headed to counter the white nationalists was a protester in a pig mask. The sentiment was anti-police. We’d always had police presence at our events, and many of us enjoyed chatting with the law enforcement officers on duty. The group’s sentiment on the police had changed. My desire to cooperate with the police in my town was questioned. I was “in cahoots with the cops.”
I wasn’t where all the action was, but I still felt unsafe holding my sign and walking back to my car. At the nationalist event a half mile away, arrests were made. One of the young men countering had brought a gun. It’s illegal to bring a gun to a political event. I was confused that nobody else in the group seemed alarmed that he’d brought a gun; they were just outraged that he’d been arrested. Meanwhile, our Facebook group had a mole screenshotting posts and comments and sharing them in white supremacist groups. These groups labeled me the leader of a violent hate group, and my fellow social justice advocates called me a “bootlicker” and worse. I was trying to find Black leadership for our Facebook group, but nobody I asked wanted anything to do with us. I ended up closing the group at the suggestion of the original moms, who made the suggestion in the comments of a post she made on social media, calling me a “white savior,” among other things. That night, I started sleeping on the floor of my son’s bedroom. My room was in the front of the house, and I was afraid of a rock coming through my window. I felt unsafe. I didn’t know who to trust, so I didn’t trust anyone. I still don’t feel safe with many of the people who were involved.
While in hiding, I sought to heal my nervous system through mindfulness practices like meditation and breathwork. Simultaneously, I researched proven equity and inclusion initiatives, determined to be more effective than my last attempt. I started to notice similarities in the research around diversity, equity, and inclusion outcomes and the neuroscience of mindfulness. Integrating these two sciences with my background in behavior analysis could foster the optimal internal learning environment for the most important subject: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
Privilege lacks awareness. I began to see how practices that activate the prefrontal cortex, where healing, relaxation, and learning occur, help us build awareness skills, become less resistant to ideas that challenge our cultural conditioning, increase our capacity to empathize with other people’s lived experiences and reduce our dependence on bias.
I audaciously started Brave Space Consulting using this scientific approach to DEI. I have since had the privilege of speaking to rooms full of municipal executives and at educational conferences. I’ve conducted equity audits that make workers feel heard and have impacted real change in daily work culture. I facilitate training that some say is Marxist propaganda, some say doesn’t go deep enough, and some say is the best DEI training they’ve been to. I published a curriculum, “Mindfully Inclusive,” to teach school-aged students how to make room for others by first creating safe, internal space for themselves.
I still love a good protest. I’m still an activist. I don’t have all the answers, I never will, and that’s fine. I am, without a doubt, the more effective agent of change that I set out to be.
Teresa Cruz FoleY is a Mexican American behavior analyst and social justice advocate and founder of Brave Space Consulting. Her desire to heal from internalized oppression and supremacy beliefs led her to research best practices DEIB from corporate, HR, education, and individual perspectives, and to create Brave Space Consulting. Tess is the author of “Mindfully Inclusive: Connecting Social Emotional Learning With Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Skill” an evidence-based curriculum.
