Values only have value if there's agency
Questioning whose security we treat like it matters (and whose we don't), plus a snapshot of our values as an anticapitalist worker cooperative.
For the most part, I feel quite solid and calm in building our anticapitalist worker cooperative, Rest Day Creative, in part because I started self employment seven years ago so this ain’t my first rodeo, but mostly because I really believe in what we’re doing. I feel a different kind of confidence than I ever have in work before because of how much I believe in it.
You can read more about the basis for our worker cooperative and how it started here:
Human wellbeing as a priority — creating a microcosm of reality
I want to live in a world where human wellbeing is a priority. Full stop. I’d guess if you’re here, at least some part of you agrees with that statement, but it can be a weirdly audacious thing to say, given the culture of individualism and profit that we live in. Trying to implement it from a top-down policy level seems even more…
I believe in my work being able to sustainably contribute to my own future. To a future. To our futures.
I believe in my contributions having tangible impacts on the lives of the people I care about. I believe if the structures of care don’t exist how we need them to, we’re the ones to make them.
I do not believe wellbeing is too much to ask for, and I want more people to feel like it’s worth creating, and not in isolation. I want people to realize it’s possible, that what’s seen as “radical” may actually be a real and sensible direction for our futures.
As
put in this week’s essay (well worth reading), “Stop being dismissive of radical movements. Stop rolling your eyes at the ostensibly utopian dreams of your anti-capitalist and anti-state friends.”Reframe what realistic means. Reframe what radical means. Our radical imaginings may seem just that to some, but in the face of the alternatives, they could still be the most realistic way to get to a just future.
I believe in all of this, but this the first time I’m building these structures in a work sense, with decentralized power and policies that reflect value so wholly on so many levels.
I believe we should all have agency in how we approach work. I was a yes-person for so many years in so many different roles, because even when I was in positions that explicitly told me I didn’t have to be, I could still read enough of the underlying dynamics to know if I didn’t consent, eventually I wouldn't have that job (or relationship, or fill-in-the-blank).
I knew that I could say no, but only if the no was not too inconveniencing or threatening to that person’s worldview about their own security.
That dynamic still existed in very thoughtful work environments too, with leaders that were very considered about their impacts and trying not to do harm.
This isn’t just a corporate thing, and this isn’t just a “jobs out there” thing. This is a jobs-in-general thing. This is a navigating hierarchy and consent across any part of our society thing. We see that it’s okay if we protest as citizens — until our no threatens to the worldview leaders have for their own security. We learn it’s okay to say no during sex — unless our no threatens that partner’s sense of security. Thankfully that’s not all we experience, and there are many counterexamples. But what we have experienced is enough, in so many different settings and so many different ways and work especially, to learn that our participation might mean weighing our wellbeing with our own safety or security. The frequency of that lesson is only compounded by each layer of marginalized identity or circumstance.
Conditional no’s are not real agency, and the only way we’re going to get around them is if we, individually and collectively, shift our understanding of what we value, who we value, and whose security really matters.
Never in my work life, before now, have I entered into a formal partnership agreement where I felt like, top down, from how my input was treated to how much pay I made, what I had was fully recognized as equal. Which says a lot, considering I have had countless metaconversations over many years with all of those people about how I saw our work as collaborative partnership and co-creation. Whether through my own naivete or just sheer personality, I really believed I was building partnership, every time. I was met with ready agreement on the other end, and they were even sometimes the ones initiating the conversations — only when it came to a paycheck or the security of our futures, theirs came first. And the degree to which theirs came first was sometimes really wide.
But, really, what were they supposed to do? That’s what they were told to do, that’s what almost every single model we’ve ever experienced shows we all should do, and because of it, that’s what they felt they had to do for their own wellbeing. If I had been in their situation before this year, I might have done the same thing.
I truly don’t fault any of them for that. I really don’t.
I just wanted a tacit understanding — backed by real metrics — that my contribution was just as valuable as theirs even though I wasn’t the face of a business.
I’ve built a lot, most of it behind-the-scenes, some of it ultimately wildly successful on behalf of other people, and that has a lot more to do with having skills that are excellent for that kind of support than it does about me not being capable of executive leadership. Based on contribution and lasting impact, there are some collaborative projects that in an equitable, monetary arrangement, I would have received financial equity on, though I didn’t.
And again, that’s not on them, and that’s not on me. I’m not saying that because I need any part of the past to be different, I’m saying it because it’s factual. In a different arrangement, things would have been different.
I felt some friction, as I’m sure just about anyone has who has worked “underneath” someone else, but I didn’t actually know what an alternative could be and I doubt they did either. We operated based on what we had access to, and it would have taken a full paradigm shift not just for me but for everyone involved to rework what we valued and how that looked on so many different structural levels.
I think it has much more to do with our collective understanding and valuation of care work as much as anything else. Obviously there are so many smart people who have talked about care work, and here I’m using the term much more broadly than the usual sense to extend to any kind of supportive role rather than a leadership one, but I think a lot still applies in parallel. Support work is seen as less than, even though it is essential for all business. In any business, solo business included, someone needs to do it.
The ideas are what is valued. And yes, HELL YES, we need the ideas. So many times I am in awe of the creativity and power of the people whose work rests on their ideas. (Truly, do you know how many geniuses just exist out there?? And how many of them are people we personally know and get to learn from?)
But who do you think makes your ideas into something real that makes you money? Unless it’s you, it’s the support people who are with you.
Everyone on our team at Rest Day comes from a background of support in our work, and we’ve often chosen projects or roles in our solo businesses that are less visible or behind-the-scenes. These choices honestly have nothing to do with capability. Every one of my teammates has a special kind of charisma that can and does command attention, though admittedly at times in a quiet sense. They are all, quite honestly, brilliant, and I feel very lucky to get to share in their wisdom and their skills.
But even if it did have to do with capability, even if none of us were fit for what is traditionally thought of as leadership, why should our work be any less valued?
On our team, we’ve all been second in command, or fourth, or twenty-sixth, many times over. We know what it means to be in support roles, and we’ve chosen them anyway. We’ve chosen the projects and tasks we have because they’re fulfilling, they’re interesting, and we can see measurable impacts. We like them, and we’re good at them. Like, really, really good.
Whatever role we are each in, we need each other. So why not value each other?
And if we value each other, how do we ensure that value is reflected in a real sense? What are the dollars going in pockets, what are the benefits on the ground? How does that value extend beyond contribution and acknowledge actual need?
Again, what do we value, who do we value, and whose security matters?
What do we need to do in order to ensure we engage with our team, our audience, our clients, our customers, as humans who have needs that are just as real and valuable as our own?
If you are a free flow artist with no inclination for spreadsheets, value your spreadsheet person. If you are the spreadsheet person, value your artists. With praise. With dollars. With referrals. The visionaries and the vision-makers need each other (even if you work alone and that just looks like different parts of you making peace with that need).
Which yes, if you’re here, that’s probably what you want in the first place. But we’re still navigating uncharted territory to some extent, aren’t we?
There are reasons more businesses aren’t cutting the salaries of the owners and leveling out the difference to what their employees make. Some of those reasons are legitimate, as in, “If we change some of the structures of our business to make them more equitable right now, our business has a high likelihood of not surviving, and then no one is cared for.” Fair!
Let’s be clear that I am never advocating unreasonable risk when it comes to change, or significantly compromising survivability. (Though I do want to give a side eye at what is and is not actually “unreasonable” and take a look any structures that are based on narratives of deservability.)
What I am advocating for is approaching our interactions with each other and our businesses, whatever role we play in them, with clear-eyed awareness and curiosity.
I am advocating that we question business as usual when the business says it’s all for equitability but the behind the scenes say otherwise. I am advocating for the ability to receive and sit with what might be less palatable answers to those questions for ourselves and be willing to experiment with even incremental shifts and experiments.
We’re each meeting the dynamics of our lives exactly where we find ourselves in them, and that’s going to be its own whole thing depending on so many factors. I just want us to be willing and open to what those dynamics tell us about ourselves and what we can do about them if we see they’re aligned differently with what we believe in.
In our case, our team doesn’t have significantly more or less on the line than we did before starting Rest Day Creative. It’s an entirely new business, but there are a lot of invisible mechanisms it’s already standing on, and we have so many proven skills that are going to transfer over. Many of our existing resources can be funneled over from the businesses we’ve already been operating, and we’re mostly restructuring how those resources are distributed. Shifts toward equitable work relationships and conditions are going to look substantially different if any business you’re part of is deeply entrenched in existing systems and ideologies that need to be carefully dismantled.
Because we don’t have a lot to dismantle, just a lot to create, our experimentation at Rest Day mostly requires:
Making policies that we’ve never used before, many we don’t have any peers using as a model, and being the test subjects for how airtight they are (and reporting back on them).
Being willing, all of us, as “support people” to step forward into our what leadership requires of us in our own way, and seeing support, when it is given, as its own kind of necessary and integral leadership.
True democracy still means we each have to take initiative, and as I’ve stated above, I’ve never had an ongoing work collaboration that was democratic across all levels of the work. None of us have to this extent. We’re learning, and we’ll keep learning.
Different than I ever have in work, I feel the responsibility of my actions and input having deep and lasting effects on three other people from now until we say differently. It’s not like they didn’t before, since three of us already worked together before we formed Rest Day, but the sense of ownership and shared stakes are different.
We’ve made commitments to each other in tangible, monetary, resource-oriented ways that state, “When I thrive, you thrive. When you need, I support. When I need, I receive.”
I’m looking forward to when I can come back here and tell you more about what we learn in a concrete sense, like how we’re setting up our decision-making process, how we make our way through conflict resolution, and the structures we have in place for all sorts of eventualities. Next week we meet with a lawyer, and I know I will have so many things to say about that some day too.
Until then:
May we value our wellbeing, may we value each other, and may we build our worlds to reflect that.
Love,
Iris
Our Values
You can’t very well get in alignment if you don’t know what you’re aligned with. That’s why one of our very first actions weeks ago was to get clear on our shared values and what we stand for.
I’ll talk about these in much greater detail at some point and break down how we apply them in specific ways (which I am very excited to do), but in the meantime, this is a quick snapshot of our fundamental values at Rest Day Creative. Everything we do and plan to is cross-referenced with these values, from how we set expectations with clients to how we interact as a team to which benefits we establish, when, and why.
Do you have a metric like this to help yourself gut-check how you operate? Would you like to? What do you value, and how are those values present in the realest ways?
Transparency: trust generates transformative change.
Trust forms when everyone involved can see what is happening. Where there’s trust, there’s safety, and where there’s safety, creative expression is possible. Only with creativity can we imagine and then create the realities where equitable, mutually beneficial futures are the norm.
Reciprocity: generosity is a renewable resource.
No one is more or less deserving to have more or less than we each do, and when we operate from a place of generosity, we have a sense of relief and trust knowing that we are accountable to each other — not from a place of responsibility or obligation, but from a space of collective care. Mutual care makes space for the reality that no person operates on the exact same level every day, and together we don’t need to.
Experimentation: the rough draft is our playground.
To get somewhere new, we have to give ourselves the opportunity to not know, to guess, to fuck up, to fail — and to play without fear of consequences while we do it. Because living under capitalist structures has realities and constraints we can’t always get around, anticapitalist efforts are inherently experimental. There’s no one right way, only the ways we try to live closer to our values, to our own minds and bodies, and to each other.
Sustainability: nervous systems come first.
When we base our work on systems and processes that prevent burnout and dismantle urgency, we acknowledge realities that already exist and make it possible to actually navigate those human inevitabilities. We create space to live within the work and recognize the humanity of the day-to-day for ourselves and each other. Anything less than that isn’t sustainable, and none of us are expendable. No profit is worth anyone’s pain.
Pleasure: enjoyment is our most-used metric.
Taking pleasure in what you have is the ultimate expression of enoughness, and enoughness is the antithesis of capitalist growth at all costs. We believe in growth with a purpose, and if that purpose isn’t bringing joy, then what is it for? Play is fundamental not because we’ve arrived somewhere that allows us to, but in spite of the fact that we haven’t.
Resources and Inspiration
I’m uplifted by the idea of list stacks as a grassroots move to highlight voices across this platform at different levels of audience and identity, and as part of that, I’m excited to have Soft Animal Bodies listed in the newly launched Q Stack directory of queer writers. I also look forward to making my way through many of the publications listed! (To my queer babes, they do featured guest submissions if you want a new place to put eyes on your writing or art.)
Speaking of, it’s Pride month! Let us never forget that Pride is forever and always a protest — every day and year until it no longer has to be. Our joy is important, the visibility of our joy is important — and so is our resistance. The first pride was a multi-day riot against police violence. Queer women of color, notably trans women in particular, fought for themselves, for each other, for us. We’re not doing their legacy or our identities justice (allied straights included) unless we’re also committed to just futures that include and extend beyond our own.
Wherever you are, however much you have or have not done yet, you are needed. Yesterday is always the best day for advocacy, but today is the next best, and it’s the one we can actually do something about. Not sure which cause to contribute to next? Choose one. Pick one. There is no ultimate answer. The answer is pick. The answer is do something. Operation Olive Branch, the collected mutual aid resource for vetted funds supporting families in Gaza, is always a great option.
I loved this reminder by about artists making the revolution irresistible, and how hope is a necessary and intrinsic part of that revolution. In that vein, Future Praire opened applications to artists for their Queer Futures Award: “We are offering $1,000 grants to Portland-based artists working in any medium who create a new art piece that creatively envisions the future of Portland, especially for the queer community.”
I look forward to: seeing Hannah Gadsby’s new stand-up comedy tour tomorrow night, with a group of autistic queers going to see another autistic queer. Wandering around Portland rose gardens while they’re still in full bloom and feeling like I’m taking a turn in queer Bridgerton. Lazing in the sun next to the river amidst all of the other gays, like ya’ do. Taking a bath in the clawfoot tub in the garden of my summer sublet at the new moon, because that sounds like a pretty gay thing to do. May we all have cute gayness in our lives.
Normally I would shout out things I’ve already finished reading, but I’m in an ongoing state of working my way through six books and 1 million podcast episodes simultaneously. I don’t want to not talk about these any longer even though I haven’t finished them. First: Altar to an Erupting Sun, such a timely book for how we orient ourselves as one person amidst collective attempts to change systems. Even though it’s fiction, I’m heartened by the human reminder of the changemakers who have come before us and who will be after. The pacing is slower and I’m taking my time to read, but I’m definitely invested.
The other: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, which I’m listening to for this month’s book club at a local Portland queer bookstore, Always Here. Fantasy can be an iffy genre for me, but I appreciate the less Eurocentric perspective of a queer Indigenous protagonist who is outspoken in her pushback against supremacist structures. It’s more quietly political than action-heavy, but it has a lot to say and the protagonist’s bullheadedness happens to be very likeable. Many things to love about this book, including: multiple love interests, dissecting unquestioned hierarchies especially with race and class, and well-balanced secondary characters with their own story arcs, including an autistically coded one.
Watch-wise, I feel like the show Hacks is too often slept on. The comedic timing and writing on that show is *chef’s kiss*. It’s harsh, it’s tender, it’s relevant, and it’s so fucking funny, with a cast that has become incredibly endearing over time, exactly because they’re so deeply flawed and hilarious. I feel like every time I recommend this show…people just don’t watch it?? But they should??
What’s on your mind this week? Resources you’ve been reading, digesting, watching, etc.?
About Rest Day Creative
Rest Day Creative is a cooperatively owned microagency with a community-oriented, anticapitalist lens that builds brand foundations and systems for divergent thinkers, artists, activists, values-centered organizations, and helping professionals.
We create websites, copywriting, and visual branding, as well behind-the-scenes setup for businesses. We also create digital resources, including for branding, design, and cooperative work.
We’re in the process of restructuring existing structures into this new business from the ground up, but if you’re interested in learning more about our services, you can sign up here to know when we’re open for new clients.
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Iris! Thanks so much for the shout-out, I feel like I've been hearing your name linked to many people I adore (we were maybe also at a retreat together many years ago???), so it's very cool to find your substack and be more connected. This is a beautiful reflection and your coop sounds amazing; I'm going to share this with my partner who is in a compost cooperative here in Cleveland, trying to make it as radical as possible and still stay afloat.