Why We Work
Vision
We have an alternate vision of Boston tech in which wealth and race are not factors in someone’s ability to launch, sustain, and advance a career in tech.
Mission and Immediate Objective
We’re a coalition of mostly Black and Latinx tech workers, building a campaign for equitable employment in tech, modeled on worker-driven social responsibility. If we’re successful in our campaign, a significant number of Boston tech workers will work for companies that hire, employ, and advance in a way that is consistent with what an assembly of BIPOC tech workers have determined democratically to be “equitable.” Member companies will be both supported to do that work and also be held accountable by an institution that is representative of, and governed partly by, workers. We will become more specific as we learn. We’ll learn as we build.
Four Truths
- Wealth and race cannot be factors in someone’s ability to launch, sustain, and advance a career in tech.
- Companies have a civic responsibility to the cities that host them, and to the people that live there.
- The economically oppressed must have access to top-tier education that is radically free to them, relevant to industry, and conducive to high-paying automation-resilient careers.
- Workers need not be treated as requiring “help” or charity, which are dynamics that can lend themselves to inequitable power constructs. What we need is justice. As long as one person’s liberation is dependent on another person’s charity, they can never be equals. Workforce training must be understood as a stepping stone towards a broader recalibration of power.
How We Work
Strategy in Four Phases
- BIPOC tech workers begin working groups.
- BIPOC tech workers develop a body of principles for equitable employment.
- Multicultural coalition of workers organize for the implementation of these principles.
- Creation of a Council, co-governed by member companies and workers, oversee, evaluate, and support companies’ efforts to employ equitably.