Xavier Ramey is the CEO of Justice Informed, a social impact consulting firm as well as an award-winning social strategist, noted public speaker, and conflict mediator. He has helped shape the vision and values of CHICAT from the beginning as a founding board member.
Xavier is passionate about CHICAT’s work because of its ability to scale resources to overcome issues of inequity and disinvestment in the communities we serve. “When I saw that we were finally talking about not giving the west side of Chicago a slice of the pie, but rather creating an entire location just for the westside, my neighborhood, I wanted to be a part of that.”
One of CHICAT’s founding principles is that, “every human being is an asset, and every life isvaluable.” Xavier says that value was important from the start, “because of the conversationabout black and brown youth particularly as being inherently or they were on a path tocriminality, and if they did grow up to be adults that they are only were worthy of low-wage work.That’s what we saw a lot of in the job force, and that’s where the focus of our workforce programscame from.” CHICAT sought to answer, “what is a meaningful salary for the people in ourcommunities and how do we create the training and space for them to find that?”
Xavier shares that, “[our values] require us to consistently look back at that every time we’redoing our work and see whether what we’re doing with our hands is being informed by theintentions that we have in our hearts when our minds came up with the idea to do this.”
When thinking of the next frontiers for CHICAT, Xavier thinks that we can move from,“supporting people who are trying to have a better life by creating new opportunities” to”reducing the sources of harm that created their needs.”
Full interview:
Why did you join CHICAT’s board?
“The first time I heard about CHICAT, what resonated with me is they were talking about deploying scaled resources to a scaled issue of inequity and workforce issues that black and brown folks were facing. At the time there was a real push around STEAM and STEM and
massive disinvestment over the last decade as it relates to the work of art and creative practices. That focus and the narrative supported why arts and engineering were important to young people and their development. When I saw that we were finally talking about not giving
the west side Chicago a slice of the pie, but rather creating an entire location just for the westside, my neighborhood, I wanted to be a part of that. Up until that point I had mostly been a part of projects that were smaller investments, in some way smaller visions, with significantly more localized impact. And finally, the mission was really about more than just one community. It felt like we were trying to wrap our hands around the west side proper.”
How did the founders come up with the principles and founding values and what you think of them today? Which do you find most important and why?
“What you see at CHICAT has been an emergent and dynamic process over the course years. The values in both language and intent have not gone away from the founding values.”
“The values around humanity and that every person has value. That value was there from the very beginning because of the conversation about black and brown youth particularly as being inherently or they were on a path to criminality. And if they did grow up to be adults that they are only were worthy of low-wage work. That’s what we saw a lot of in the job force, and that’s where the focus of our workforce programs came from. We were looking to answer, ‘what is a meaningful salary for the people in our communities but also how do we create the training and space for them to find that?’ And how do we undergird that with the framing, in our values, that requires us to consistently look back at that every time we’re doing our work. Look back at those values and see whether what we’re doing with our hands is being informed by the intentions that we have in our hearts when our minds came up with the idea to do this.”
Do you think there’s a value that has arisen since the founding that should be included now?
“The entire nonprofit space is really being challenged on its ability to effectively engage the work of social justice versus just social change. Every nonprofit is being confronted with the question of how its own operations and values align with antiracism. And for those of us that really want to be effective how they can view the work and principles of antiracism. Most nonprofits were not built to be antiracist, they were not built to embody the work of diversity and inclusion.Organizations like CHICAT, including when we created it, was created to be a source of opportunity and a direct service organization that specifically serves a targeted community that needed it. Increase investment. But the other side of investment is the work of divestment. And that’s the challenge of advocating against things that are hurting our communities. Nonprofits,especially since George Floyd was killed, have especially been thinking about not just are you making an impact but are you stopping the negative impacts. And not just through the provision of your services and identification of need, but also identification of harm and the active solidarity of those that need safety. To stand with them in active resistance to harm.”
“If I think about what our frontier really is as it relates to values and things that we can embody that currently are not a part of the way we see our work, I really do think it is a question of,where are we a challenger in our sector? Where are we a challenger of existing norms of nonprofit practices? Where are we challengers of the types of and the sources of harm that affect our communities that we focus on? And what is our positionality in those arguments, to those people that reflect that continued harm? What is our belief and how do we back it up as it is related to who we partner with, who we work for, and what we stand for? Where and for what can CHICAT actively stand in solidarity versus what we’re currently focused on which is, where and for what can CHICAT invest in supporting people who are trying to have a better life by creating new opportunities, but not necessarily reducing the sources of harm that created their needs.”
“The second thing I’d say is our next frontier is really around strategic partnerships through out the city and ways that we can leverage some of the tangential anchor institutions. Whether it befrom hiring, facility space, community partnerships, or otherwise. Our work has very much been inside our center. And the gift that we have of that beautiful facility is also part of why we focus on the facility. It has challenged our ability to really move deeply in communities. I’ve seen that change over the last several years in really dramatic ways. We’ve pushed it from the board and I’ve seen it as new staff come on and lock arms with the current staff we have, they’ve really started to look at not what is happening in CHICAT. But what’s our role and opportunity as it relates to community engagement? I think that’s a place where we can be more catalytic, more directional, and we can be more engaged.”
