Supporting Our Etsy Community During the Ongoing Black Lives Matter Movement
By: Adetoro Adegbola
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Etsy, Diversity In Tech, Social Impact, Diversity And Inclusion

Etsy is firmly committed not only to our formalized diversity, equity and inclusion goals, but most importantly, to our fellow colleagues with whom we work daily. In times of crisis, it is critical for people to have safe spaces for grief, conversation, support, and community. We have aimed to provide these spaces for Etsy employees and will continue to do so.

Providing Safe Spaces:

Following the murder of George Floyd, we began discussions via Etsy’s Black Resource and Identity Group (BridgE) at Etsy and provided guidance for managers on how to support team members who were experiencing grief or who needed time off.

On Friday, May 28th, Etsy held a company-wide vigil for George Floyd and all who have died at the hands of police brutality on GoogleMeet. Following the Quaker tradition, the vigil held space for remembrance of those we have lost and employees were able to share how they were feeling, recite poems, light candles, and offer prayers. Over 250 colleagues joined the vigil on a Friday afternoon, including our entire Executive Team and CEO. In this time of social distancing, we gathered virtually with candles and provided solace to one another by posting supportive comments and with black heart emojis in the chat in lieu of the hugs we would normally give. It was a moment of true community, support, and friendship.

It is also critical for our Black colleagues to see that leadership is fully behind them, and sees them in all their personhood. This means acknowledging the real and ongoing struggles that Black employees face both in society at large, and in majority white workplaces. Our Engineering Leadership hosted a conversation on race, giving leaders tools and language to use to stand up vocally in support of Black Lives Matter, to check in on Black colleagues without applying pressure or centering non-Black voices, and giving flexibility and space to the grief many are experiencing.

Additionally, we created and distributed resource guides, including Etsy Against Police Brutality, a collection of ways for employees to act and educate themselves and their families, and our Diversity & Inclusion Events Specialist, Sheyenne Brown, partnered with our Parents ERG and BridgE ERG to plan a series of workshops on How to Talk to Your Children About Race; where we provided a safe space for both black and non-black parents to unpack ways to break the cycle of racialized socialization, and to teach the next generation how to embody the principles of anti-racism. Our Hispanic Latinx Network ERG stood in solidarity with our BridgE community by facilitating conversations about ways that racism impacts all communities of color, and ways that the Black experience in America is unique. Our Asian Resource Community ERG also put together a list of resources for their members to be allies to the BridgE community. Etsy employees observed a collective mental health day and HR provided resources via our mental health provider, including grief circles for our Black employees.

Celebrating Juneteenth as an Etsy Community:

BridgE also held a “What does Juneteenth mean to me?” panel, where seven BridgE members reflected on their different experiences learning about or celebrating the holiday — from growing up in the South and learning about Juneteenth as a young adult, to wondering whether there was an American analogue to Jamaican Emancipation Day and Nigerian Independence Day traditions, to socializing and eating barbecue at Juneteenth block parties in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hundreds of Etsy employees from around the globe joined in to learn about Juneteenth, submitting questions for the panel to enhance their own understanding of the meaning of this day.

During our “What does Juneteenth mean to me?” event, Katrina Drayton, Senior Policy Manager, noted that celebrating Juneteenth is important as, “We have never had a national reckoning around slavery.” In that spirit, beginning in 2021 and beyond, Etsy will observe a company-wide Juneteenth holiday to honor the history of Black Americans and to promote action against racial inequity. We recognize the impact that our voice can have when we all come together and hope that employees will take this time off to rest, celebrate, reflect, learn, and contribute to lasting change in our world.

As part of Etsy’s 15th Birthday of Service in June, we promoted volunteer opportunities on Juneteenth that reached out to communities with low response rates to the census, a tool for allocating resources to communities in need of investment. Leadership promoted these resources and giving-back opportunities via Slack to their teams and in public channels, and employees were empowered and reminded to use some of their 40 annual Volunteer Time Off (VTO) hours to contribute to our communities outside of work.

Going Forward

As part of our ongoing efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion, we are launching Blue Ocean Brain, an online learning platform that delivers virtual training in the form of easily digestible micro-lessons around topics including microaggressions, explicit and implicit bias, anti-racism, and feelings of belonging. All Etsy admin will have access to the Blue Ocean Brain platform by the end of 2020. Etsy is firmly committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and supporting traditionally marginalized communities and we will continue to update on our progress here. You can read more about our governance on DEI here.