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A place to learn about ADI's work, events, resources and tools, and learning opportunities to help you engage in the struggle for equity and justice.
ADI’s operating philosophy honors the lived experiences of members of the community in all aspects of our work. This stems from our belief that communities must play a central role as actors and stakeholders in articulating, facilitating, mobilizing and executing efforts that advance justice.
Our program interventions seek to mobilize transformational change in the Adirondack North Country region. Our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) work focuses on building culturally conscious communities, businesses, and organizations by expanding cultural and critical consciousness around issues of systemic racism and structural oppression. We empower communities with the tools and strategies needed to take action, while expanding access to unique Adirondack opportunities for historically marginalized groups.
Working with community members, local organizations and regional stakeholders, ADI creates tools, strategies and interventions that reduce the impact of the legacies of systemic racism and structural oppression that continue to plague our nation and the Adirondack Park region impacting those who are the least well off politically, economically and socially. Each of our initiatives was born out of Adirondack constituencies identifying long standing issues and needs and engaging the community directly in the solutions.
ADI focuses our work on systemic and structural racism. These forms of racism are still pervasively and deeply embedded in systems, laws, written or unwritten policies, and entrenched practices and beliefs that produce, condone, and perpetuate widespread unfair treatment and oppression of people of color. We design our programs specifically to interrupt this type of racism. Examples of this work include our Community Policing and Emerging Stewards Initiatives.
We also provide tools for individuals to combat their own individual racism and bias. This racism includes the beliefs, attitudes and actions that support or perpetuate racism. This racism can occur on both unconscious or conscious levels. We refer to this work as becoming an ally and is crucial for community members to undertake if they want to truly work toward equity and justice. But this work has to be done by the individual. People have to choose to do the work to become a true ally.
As we wrap up Black History Month, we hope this newsletter will encourage, empower and engage you to continue the work year round. Some topics and items we share may make you uncomfortable or challenge you. We hope you sit with that with grace, as those feelings are part of the process of becoming an ally. This is not easy work but is necessary for true change.
Onward,
Tiffany Rea-Fisher, ADI Director and
Melanie Reding, ADI Associate Director
*You can learn more about Tiffany and Melanie on the ADI website Our Team page.
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