This month, Evenings & Weekends' Co-Managing Director Paul Taylor delivered the keynote at Engaging Networks' Community Conference in Washington, DC. His speech explored themes of ancestral legacy, community care, and resistance against oppressive systems through the lens of his own leadership journey.
See his full remarks below.
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Hello and good morning. It’s an honour and privilege to have been invited to join you here this morning.
I wish I could stay for the entire conference because it sounds like a space that I think we need more of in the sector — a space to be dream, to reflect, to be inspired, and to challenge assumptions.
After spending as much time as I’ve spent working in the sector, I know just how important these spaces are. Opportunities to engage in the ways that you’ll be doing throughout the conference brings me a lot of joy and hope.
Something tells me a lot of good change will be traced back to today. So, I’d like to thank you all for being here, for showing up in a good way, and for the work that you do each and every day.
I was asked to join you today to share some of my reflections on my leadership journey, and what I think it means to lead in a good way. I can’t even begin to think about my leadership journey without reflecting on my journey as a queer Black man. A queer Black man, that for as long as I can remember, has been doing all that I can to make my communities, my country and the world more just.
I’ll also share some of my reflections on politics, including my two political campaigns. I proudly ran to be a federal Member of Parliament or MP representing my community of Parkdale—High Park in 2019 and then again in 2021.
Feel free to ask questions about this as well. You can ask about politics in Canada, the process of running and even if I’ll dare do it again.
In any event, before I really dive in, I want to take a moment to say that I truly hope that you receive my remarks today with open hearts and open minds. And that your hearts and minds remain open as you listen, learn, share, and engage critically throughout the conference.
I want to start with also talking about something that we actually don’t usually talk about — our bios. While I’m grateful for the bio and introduction that was shared, I’d like to take this opportunity to share a big part of my biography that doesn’t usually get shared when I’m introduced, but to me, it’s even more important to who I am today.
So, good morning. My name is Paul Taylor and I’m the son of Bernadine Naomi Taylor.
I’m the grandson of Maize Olivia Baker Burt.
And the grandson of Rebecca Thompson.
I mention these women to you, because they are important to me and my story. And because they are a huge part of who I am.
My bio or my story doesn’t begin with the jobs that I did after university, and neither does yours.
Have you ever wondered why the only things that many of us include in our bios are the jobs that we’ve had after some form of education? Capitalism does a good job of telling us what to value, but I encourage us all to push back on the ways that capitalism tells us who we are and what’s important.
My bio began with those that came before me: Bernadine, Maize and Rebecca. My bio began with those that taught me the important lessons that I learned outside of the classroom. It began with those that loved me, protected me, and fought for me.
I’m standing on their shoulders today! Well that doesn’t sound very nice, but hopefully you get what I mean.
They are my story. They are my bio. They are with me all the time. Like right now. Here smiling from cheek to cheek proud of the man that I’ve become. Proud of the ways that I lead differently, and proud of the ways that I honour and live their teachings every day of my life.
I encourage you to reflect on the bios that you create and share. Reflect on event how you think about yourselves, and the role that those who came before you have played in shaping who you are today.
Thank you to my mom Bernadine, my grandmother Maize and my great grandmother Rebecca, for making it possible for me to stand tall today and every day!
When I’m not feeling like I can stand tall, they are who I channel and whose strength continues to support me on my journey.
Let’s take a moment to reflect on our stories, the fulsomeness of our true bios, and to extend gratitude to those that shaped us in a good way.
I’ve come to learn that things like white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, and capitalism do a really good job of teaching us that our real lives begin when we start working for a paycheque.
Like many of us, I let those oppressive organizing principles convince me that that’s just the way it is and how it’s done — which meant that’s how I should do it.
When I was a new ED, I realize that the kind of leadership that was expected of me, was a kind of leadership that had been designed, articulated and to the benefit of white men.
I’ve seen where that kind of leadership has gotten us and I don’t want to keep going down that path.
Thankfully my mother, Bernadine, taught me to be curious. To ask questions, to dream in colour and to push back on the low expectations that are often bestowed upon Black boys in your country and in mine.
She taught me (and continues to teach me) that it’s my responsibility to do everything that I can and to help make my communities and the world a more just, fair and kind place. She’d likely say it's important work for us all!
She also taught me something that we don’t every really learn elsewhere. Certainly not at a university or in most workplaces. She taught me about the importance of joy, play, laughter and rest, which I’ve come to realize is so crucially important, especially in this work.
Many of us spend our lives fighting oppressive and unjust systems. We do so because we see the harm that those systems inflict — on us, on our communities and across this land, but if you ask me (which I think you are), too many of us do so without centring our need for rest, play, and joy.
I try to remember that my ancestors fought what seemed like impossible battles for their liberation. For my liberation. For the liberation of us all.
I like many of you, will always feel compelled to continue to push for better, including for our collective liberation.
But I also recognized that many of their sacrifices were so that I could enjoy peace, rest, good food, laughter, love, and play.
It’s why I push back on what I believe are harmful notions of the joyless burnt-out activist or non-profit leader that never seems to have the time to prioritize enjoying the things that our ancestors fought for.
Instead, we are all so busy. Trying to do as much as we can with as little as we can — often on the backs of our health.
Urgency culture is not our friend, and it never will be. When you burnout, which many of us invariably will if we don’t shift our approaches, capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy know that our replacement is ready and waiting in the wings for their own turn to burnout.
I’m not choosing that for myself. My ancestors certainly didn’t choose that for me.
You want to know a secret? I get massages, and I love them. You know what else I do? I sit in the sun and do nothing but relax, I still play outside with my friends, and I make time to cook some of the very dishes that I watched my mother make when I was a child (she says I’ve surpassed her now).
I encourage you all to think about what it could look like to centre joy and rest in the work that you do. Push back on urgency culture and all of this racing around. For what? Urgency culture keeps us busy and distracted from acknowledging, and challenging the very systems that keep us perpetually busy.
Earlier I mentioned my grandmother, Maize Olivia Baker Burt, but I’d like to introduce you to her and why she’s so important to me.
She taught me about what it means to lead. Not manage, not control, but to lead. She taught me about the responsibilities that I have to my communities.
You see, my grandmother, like her mother before her, didn’t have a lot. She was materially poor. She raised her three girls, and several others (including my older brother), while her husband, my grandfather, worked picking up household garbage on the tiny island they lived on — St. Kitts and Nevis — the smallest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
Although my grandmother didn’t have much, she always managed to make something delicious with what she did have. Unsurprisingly, it’s often how I cook to this day. I still use what I see in the fridge or cupboard to inspire my meals.
My grandmother believed that no one should go hungry, especially the kids in her community, so she would take the little that she had and create something that would feed countless neighbourhood children and sometimes even their parents.
Both my grandmother and mother — Black women and their families who were forced to navigate the most unjust systems — demonstrated mutual aid and community care far before it was ever called those things by white progressives. It was just what they did. What they had to do to survive.
They didn’t get grants or write proposals. Nor did they chase and beg oddly dressed, wealthy white men on a golf course for money.
They took the little they had and shared with those that were struggling the most. When my mother had an extra $20, I was often the one walking with the envelope to drop it off at one of her friend’s places, or I would go to the grocery store to pick up a few things on a list that my mother knew her friend needed.
And when we were struggling the most, with empty cupboards, no electricity, or heat, I would go pick up that magical extra $20 from one of my mom’s friends.
Sometimes it was a little bit of money, but other times it was a cake for a birthday or Miss Dina’s famous jerk pork. I’ll never forget who those women, Black women, showed up for each other and for me. I witnessed and experienced the mutual aid and community care that kept many of us alive.
To me, this is what community and leadership is about. We do what we can to take care of ourselves and each other, especially those in our communities that have been made to struggle the most.
It’s not about one of us, it’s about all of us. It’s about making sure that we’re all able to eat, sleep, dream and thrive in a safe place.
It’s about working together to ensure that we have all that we need and deserve, and so that we can all dream together about what else is possible.
I took these lessons with me in every job that I’ve ever had. As the executive director of FoodShare Toronto, Canada’s largest food justice organization, it was my commitment to community that I had learned from my mother and grandmother that inspired me to do everything that I could to raise incomes for those at the bottom of the pay grid — folks that are always more likely to Black and Brown and often women — in just about every sector. My team and I were able to raise the minimum wage from $12/hour to $24/hour by the time I left.
I brought forward a policy that tied the lowest wage to the highest wage, a ratio of 1:3, which meant that the executive director could not be paid more than three times what the lowest paid person in the organization was paid.
We introduced policies that had us paying people for interviews, making a $2,000 no-interest emergency loan available to my colleagues whenever they needed it, starting benefits on day one of someone’s employment and converting sick days into wellness days and increasing them significantly, so folks could use that time to do the things that keep them well. Things like sitting in the sun, playing with their friends, or even spending a day catching up on Love Island.
These policies didn’t come from a book or a lesson at a university, or from watching the omnipresence of cis white men in leadership lead and pontificate. These were lessons about leadership and community, that were taught to me by uncelebrated, yet brilliant Black leaders. Black women in my family, and in many families.
While these women often go uncelebrated, unrecognized, and certainly not funded, they do so much heavy lifting in our communities. Am I’m grateful! We should all be!
I want to introduce you to one more person before I get yanked off the stage, my great-grandmother, Rebecca Thompson. She was a church going woman who never missed a Sunday. I also hear that she used to dye her hair when it started to turn grey. And the only time that she’d take her hat off, was in church. The thing is, she dyed her hair with shoe polish.
There was no hiding it when she took off that hat. Everyone would see just how stained it was from the shoe polish. Other church goers would giggle and laugh. She didn’t care, because she was where she felt she needed to be, and no one was going to tell her differently. I’m sure her death stares were also pretty helpful.
The stories I’ve heard of my great-grandmother Rebecca remind me that we have to claim our space, wherever it is. Even if others or systems around us, try to tell us that we don’t belong. Any experience that isn’t new or novel for many of us.
For me, I’m constantly confronted with the fact that I live in a country where being Black is a risk in and itself. In Toronto, I’m 20x more likely to be shot by the police.
As a student in Ontario, I was less likely to graduate and more likely to end up in care.
In Canada, I’m 3 and a half times more likely to live in a food insecure household than a white family.
And being queer on top of that means navigating the additional challenges, barriers and risk that that are foisted on me in a very heteronormative world.
When I ran in 2019, I was told that there has never been an openly gay Black man take up a seat in this country’s house of commons. They said it as if I would be surprised — unfortunately, I wasn’t. Too many spaces, people and systems trying to tell us that we don’t belong.
The obstacles we face right now, and every day are great, I’m not going to lie. But I also believe that better is possible. I believe that justice and liberation are within our reach and we can all be a part of making it our collective reality.
My commitment to advocating for better means never allowing myself to slide into complacency or to accept ho-hum incrementalism or “business as usual.” Because in a lot of ways, business as usual is white supremacy, homophobia, Anti-Black racism and anti-Indigeneity.
Business as usual is trying to take us down, push us out and trample over us all at the same time. Business as usual tries to rob us of our joy. But we can’t let it!
My mother raised an optimist, it’s both a blessing and curse. Today, with all of you, it feels like a blessing.
The status quo isn’t inevitable. We can’t let anyone convince us otherwise.
Let’s make our ancestors proud by doing all that we can with the baton that they’ve passed us.
Because as hard as it might be to believe, especially considering my youthful appearance, but one day we’ll be the ancestors, and those that we pass the baton on to will take it to places that we could never have imagined – and we’ll be so very proud. We just need to do our part and to do it in a good way.
Again, I hope that you received my remarks with open hearts and open minds. Thank you.