Help Zekarias create space for collective healing

Help Zekarias and Working Name Studios make space for collective healing through creative collaboration.

As anyone who knows them can tell you, Zekarias Musele Thompson is a person who cares deeply about artistic practice and about building intentional community. And as many close to them know, the last few years trying to do so have not been easy.

Today offers a moment to celebrate the work Zekarias is doing with Working Name Studios, and all they have planned — including an ambitious new program, Possible Dialogues, launching at BAMPFA this summer.

But first, we want to reflect on the experiences that have shaped this journey: namely Zekarias’ experience at Counter Culture Coffee, from which they were fired after a 7-year tenure, while leading the company’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts; and the ensuing battle for proper restitution, which is ongoing.

Zekarias’ story is frustratingly familiar. It’s symptomatic of the ways in which systemic, racialized hierarchy pervades our unconscious and conscious bodies and minds, and seeps into the institutional practices of our governments, businesses, and culture. It’s also instructive, fueling a sense of urgency to build better institutions and more supportive ways of being in community.

We’re creating this campaign to support Zekarias, our dear friend, collaborator and colleague, and the organization they co-founded to do this work on an institutional scale. The foundation they’re building will continue their own healing process and support creating more resilient, diverse, and equitable communities through individual and collaborative art practices.

We hope you’ll join us.

A note from Zekarias:

In my creative, personal, and professional life, I’ve always looked to find and create spaces where the contributions I make are acknowledged and recognized as valuable — where the breadth and depth of humanity in all people is honored. I do my best to lead with curiosity and openness toward the people around me, while seeking to bridge gaps in understanding through listening and, hopefully, being heard. Unfortunately, I’ve often experienced my ability to belong amongst groups of my peers to be tenuous. I have been ostracized, rejected, and demonized in ways that have felt extremely outsized. And while I’m a human being like anybody else and cannot pretend I‘ve been impeccable, throughout the years I’ve certainly learned a lot about how to show up with care and vulnerability, while building and maintaining integrity in my relationships.

At CCC, I was given a responsibility to engage with the cultural norms of the place – norms that had been publicly acknowledged to be lacking in consideration for the experience of Black people who had worked there. I did my best to support a community where people, myself included, were just asking to be listened to more wholly. Starting in July 2020, I helped to facilitate programming including a reading group on systemic racism and company-wide open discussions on creating space for employees of color at CCC.

Soon after beginning the programming, I experienced direct opposition, and personal attacks by employees and leadership, eventually culminating in the events of August 2021. Following a facilitated discussion open to all employees aimed at “creating space for people of color at CCC”, I received an email from the company’s Director of Education asserting that I had been “dismissive and belittling” and that it was “very clear that there was a hidden agenda to witch hunt business decisions” by the organizers. Their email then went on to (bizarrely) say of our work: “[that’s] exactly what Colonists thought they were doing.”

After these ad hominem attacks, I communicated concern about a lack of psychological safety to my direct supervisor and the DEI Counsel, a group of employees tasked with supporting DEI programming efforts. That conversation extended for months with little resolution, eventually culminating in my submission of a seventeen-page report highlighting the challenges observed while fulfilling my role as DEI Manager. I was fired with immediate effect on January 10th, 2022, three business days after sharing this report.

To be told that I was no longer welcome — while doing the job I understood I was hired to do — left me in a state of disbelief, feeling a depth of betrayal that is difficult to use language to describe. Let’s just say that it hurt — a lot.

I still wonder how it might be possible to heal the wounds of our culture that are so entrenched in layers of denial and unnecessary hierarchy. While I’m unsure of how far we will progress towards universal human belonging in my lifetime, I am determined to engage the question with the full depth of my attention, presence, and effort, both in my personal creative practice and institutionally through Working Name Studios.

— Zekarias Musele Thompson

What comes next?

After the trauma of working in organizations that seemed to contradict their stated aim of creating an equitable world, Zekarias reached out to like-minded peers to create an organization that could center artistic practice and collaboration as a means of meeting the challenges of disembodiment, systemic inequity, and unnecessary hierarchy we face in so many other spaces.

To that end, Working Name Studios will be launching an ongoing series of programming entitled Possible Dialogues, with the first iteration taking place at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) in July of 2023, as part of their ongoing Black Life series. Through visual works, sound and music performances, facilitated discussions, and participatory music practices exploring the experiences of Black artists in community, Possible Dialogues will create space to find new ways of healing, and interacting — together. It will also continue to engage in a larger dialogue about the covert and overt ways that racialized Black and other people of color are marginalized in communities large and small.

Your contribution to this campaign, and your continued contribution through Patreon will support Zekarias and Working Name Studios in holding space for expansive, collaborative human practices, beginning with this project.

Finally, as much as this campaign is meant to support Zekarias’ artistic practice, it’s also built to support their journey toward healing and toward seeking justice. In the aftermath of their termination, Zekarias engaged a law firm specializing in employment and whistleblower law, in order to explore bringing legal action and to seek restitution.

Recently, after paying just over $30,000 in legal fees, it became necessary for Zekarias to seek out new legal representation to feel that the case was being pursued properly and respectfully. With new representation engaged, Zekarias is committed to moving forward on the legal front.

We’ve been beyond inspired by how Zekarias has generously, vulnerably woven their story — including some very real and traumatic experiences — into their creative practice. To our mind, that practice and the effort to seek accountability are tied to one another, and your support will reflect that, helping to fund further legal support. And naturally, it will help to fund some physical and emotional healing as well, including trauma-informed therapy and other services.

Thank you for sharing your time in reading, and thanks for your support. If you’d like to dialogue further about the work Zekarias and Working Name Studios are doing please be in contact via email at space [at] workingnamestudios [dot] space.

All love all the time,

Ali Madigan

Ástríður Jónsdóttir

Brandon Paul Weaver, Liberty Bar

Brian Woodland

Cathie Sheffield-Thompson

Claire Fleming Staples

Cory Todd

Daisy Murray Holman

David Wilson

Erick Jackson

Erik Anderson, blighted districts

Felix Cruz

Gideon Hart, Agnes Martian; Dirt Child Press

Jeffrey Lamoureux

Jon Jackson, Jackson Media Group LLC

Joshua Wismans

Justin Robinson

Kyrae Dawaun

Leonora Zoninsein

Taylor Brandon

Dr. Timothy Thompson

TJ Thompson

Will Bundy, Eternal Now

William Kocsis, Working Name Studios

Winifred Pritchett

Yasin Rahman

Fundraising Breakdown:

$30,000 – Legal fees paid to former representation

$3,500 – Trauma informed therapy for Zekarias

$2,000 – Bodywork and chiropractic care for Zekarias

$16,500 – Working Name Studios, including:

Total Goal = $68,500

Possible additional support (not accounted for in total)

$34,500 – 6 months lost wages (January 2022 - July 2022)

Note: Any additional funds go to support Working Name Studios projects, including but not limited to Possible Dialogues Vol. 1, our newsletter and other publishing projects, studio equipment, and event production.