Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: 2021
Founders/leadership: Leila McCabe, executive director

The Beloved Communities Network (BCN) is a continuation of the years of work and wisdom that went into building the Transitions Initiative. As we continue on this journey of transitioning to a world of love, interdependence, and resilience, the Beloved Communities Network will build from the foundation that has been laid, while also strengthening, reinforcing, and designing new ways to leap into the world we imagine. 

Beloved Community is not ours in conception. The concept is rooted in the legacy of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Grace Lee Boggs, and others, and is carried forward through many people investing in the idea that we can live in a world of economic and social justice. With the imagination we bring to this work, we envision a holistic approach that includes leading with bold vision and values, embodied practice, radical connection, and strategic navigation.

We know that now is a time of great transition and change. Around the globe 
we see unprecedented climate disruption and upheaval across economic, political, and cultural systems. We are all facing uncertainty and seeking paths to a future we can believe in. In this time we also feel a calling, an invitation, a possibility, beyond what we can presently see.

We have the capacity to answer this call. We have the capacity to bring forth a future that is kicking to be born. We have the capacity to be that future, to be the power and strength of our vision, our purpose, and our relationships. 

Our communities are calling on us to recognize our undeniable interdependence and make a courageous commitment to love. Our mutual future depends on generating new solutions that reflect this recognition and commitment.  

This is the calling of the Beloved Communities Network.

Leila McCabe

Leila (she/her), executive director of the Beloved Communities Network and founder of JoyLabs, is a mama, artist, strategist, movement maker, and builder. She brings over 15 years of experience in community and campus organizing, electoral organizing, movement building, and facilitation. She is dedicated to creating spaces for deep and authentic relationships to emerge across diverse constituencies and coalitions. 

In 2010, Leila was a founding member of the successful minimum wage campaign in San Jose, California that helped kick-start the national minimum wage movement. In the 2012 election cycle, Leila led a team of 20 people to register 14,000 new voters in Santa Clara County going on to be the deputy field director for a progressive mayoral candidate in San Jose, the 10th largest city in the country. She has also worked in many nonprofit organizations and partnered with multiple colleges, churches, community members, and other organizations in developing curriculum and facilitating workshops. 

Leila completed a certificate in leadership and social change at DeAnza College and Bachelor’s in sociology with a concentration in community change from San Jose State University. She is currently studying to complete her certificate as a certified personal trainer from the National Academy of Sports Medicine. 

In 2021, Leila founded JoyLabs, a space where physical movement meets emotional resilience in a beloved community. JoyLabs trains the resistance through embodied resistance training. 

Leila lives in Oakland California with her husband Calvin and son Malik. She serves on the advisory board to In Lak’ech dance academy and, to bring balance and healing to her life, Leila trains capoeira, lifts weights, and dances. 

Read more about BCN’s involvement in the Queer Afro Latin Dance Fest in San Jose, CA on the Move Blog.

Read more about BCN’s graphic guide, Ten Thousand Beloved Communities, on the Move Blog.

Check out part 1 of the fireside chats cohosted by BCN and MSC at the Transformative Movement building event on the Move Blog.

Check out part 2 of the fireside chats cohosted by BCN and MSC at the Transformative Movement building event on the Move Blog.

Location: Alabama; California; Tennessee
Region: National
Founding: 2018
Founders/leadership: Anasa Troutman, project director, founder

BIG We Foundation (BWF) unleashes the social imagination of those who often go unheard, and supports building a world reimagined from their point of view. It cultivates economic and cultural drivers grounded in Black imagination to foster a culture of belonging for everyone. By following the vision and leadership of those who live in or come from historically undermined communities, BWF values are their north star, guiding them on the journey of embodying the culture shift we are working to create in the world. BWF does its part to generate a thriving culture and healthy communities, where we can all experience sustained safety, joy, abundance, and love.  

BIG We Foundation is a nonprofit arts and culture intermediary built to provide infrastructure and opportunity for high potential, under-resourced communities. The organization employs a culture shift model that leverages storytelling, community building, and real world implementation. It expresses a commitment to co-creating the future by investing in people and communities aligned with and working towards a shared vision. BWF priority areas — womxn and girls, wellness equity, and restorative economics — are designed to work together in Black, Indigenous, and other BIPOC communities, forming a fully integrated, narrative-based, and holistic approach to their work. 

Read more about BWF’s Anasa Troutman’s participation in a Transfromative Movement building event on the Move Blog.

Location: Oakland, CA
Region: California
Founding: 2010
Founders/leadership: B. Cole, founder; Matis Moore, co-director; Mariana Silva, co-director; Tiana Vargas, co-director

The Brown Boi Project (BBP) is a community of people working across race and gender to eradicate sexism, homophobia, and transphobia and create healthy frameworks of masculinity and change. B. Cole, who has worked as a community facilitator and strategist for more than 15 years, launched BBP in 2010. Centering on gender justice, with responsibility and privilege as masculine people, BBP works to change the power dynamics in our relationships, families, and communities through investment in the lives of feminine-identified people.

The Brown Boi Project Leadership Retreat, held twice a year, is a five day cohort of leaders from all walks of life, brought together to talk about race, class, culture, gender, and sexuality; and explores a commitment to social justice. Participants receive training in understanding power, communications, cross-culture coalition building, personal finance, community organizing, self-care, fundraising, relationship building, gender justice, and personal life planning; and BBP covers the cost of travel, food, and lodging.

Location: California 
Founding: 2020
Founders/leadership:  Rosa E. Gonzales, project director 

Facilitating Power works to create a thriving culture of participation in which communities work together to solve social, economic, and environmental challenges; and provides essential tools, techniques, and strategy to educators, organizers, service-providers, managers, and community leaders looking to revolutionize engagement and deepen their own facilitative leadership. They are building a network of facilitative leaders with the tools, knowledge, and skills to foster authentic participation, collaborative governance, and community-driven leadership for a living democracy.

Facilitating Power cultivates collective leaps towards a living democracy, a thriving culture of participation, belonging, and transformative power, rooted in place-based knowledge and natural wisdom. Through the practices and pedagogy of a living democracy, Facilitating Power is transforming how we think about and wield power, and building the capacity of facilitative leaders to support their communities to reorganize for community ownership.

Read more about Facilitating Power’s actions on climate change on the Move Blog.

Read more about how Rosa González of Facilitating Power inspires others on the Move Blog.

Location: Puerto Rico 
Founding: 2020
Founders/leadership: Julie Quiroz

New Moon Collaborations is a home for innovation that centers the spirit, strength, vision, and creativity of Black and Indigenous people and communities of color. New Moon’s purpose is to nurture leaps in culture that transform systems and structures for generations to come, cultivating collaborations to generate strategy grounded in embodied community wisdom and story. 

New Moon recognizes that achieving a future of regeneration, resilience, and love will require a vibrant ecosystem of diverse, interrelated efforts that are:

• Deeply rooted in place,
• Nourished by conscious practice of relationships in beloved community,
• Animated by personally held narrative of past, present, and future that is not defined by white supremacy,
• And grounded in practical, specific, and audacious community wealth development strategy.

New Moon’s work reflects practices and knowledge across all four elements, with a keen focus on shaping and nurturing purpose-driven narrative. New Moon’s work takes many forms including designing and facilitating powerful cross-sector communities of learning and action, producing strategic community-centered video storytelling, conducting qualitative narrative strategy research, and guiding efforts to communicate verbally and visually with clear purpose and vision.

Read more from Julie Quiroz of New Moon Collaborations about MSC’s Transitions Labs on the Move Blog.

Read more from Julie Quiroz of New Moon Collaborations about #BlackLivesMatter on the Move Blog.

Read more from Julie Quiroz of New Moon Collaborations about Love With Power on the Move Blog.

Location: Oakland, CA; Houston, TX
Region: National
Founding: 2008
Founders/leadership: Naina Khanna, co-director

Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN-USA) is a national membership body of women living with HIV. It was founded in 2008 by 28 women leaders living with HIV, diverse in background and experiences — rural, southern, and urban, of diverse races and ethnicities, and spanning a spectrum of ages ranging from 21 to 72 years old. A foundational part of the MSC ecosystem since 2013, PWN-USA’s mission is to prepare and involve women and people of trans experience living with HIV in all levels of policy and decision-making, strengthening the strategic power of all women living with HIV in the United States. 

Every day, Positive Women’s Network – USA inspires, informs, and mobilizes women living with HIV to advocate for changes that improve their lives and uphold their rights. PWN-USA develops a leadership pipeline and policy agenda that applies a gender lens to the domestic HIV epidemic grounded in social justice and human rights. An organizing machine populated by self-identified women living with HIV — including women of transgender experience — members participate in workgroups, regional chapters, training, and events. PWN-USA supports regional chapters in building leadership at a local, state, and federal advocacy level. 

Community informed, the PWN-USA board of directors consists entirely of women living with HIV, representing the epidemic’s diverse communities. Co-director Naina Khanna supports a vision of a world where women living with HIV can live long, healthy, dignified lives that are free from stigma and discrimination.

A national speaker, trainer, and advocate, Naina Khanna has worked in the HIV field since 2005, following her HIV diagnosis in 2002. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for AIDS United, the National Steering Committee for the US People Living with HIV Caucus, is a member of the Women’s HIV Research Initiative and served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) from 2010-2014. 

Location: Durham, NC
Region: National
Founding: 2020
Founders/leadership: Yashna Maya Padamsee, project lead; advisory council: Tara Shaui Ellison; Chanda Jones; Mijo Lee; Felicia Martinez; Mae Singerman

The RadOps Network started in 2016 as an online social media group of over 500 people to build a support and resource-sharing network of like-minded operations workers within social movement organizations. The RadOps Project is the next step, building off of the RadOps network and framework, and seeks to uplift and make accessible the RadOps approach through shareable media and resources such as toolkits, social media infographics, online interviews, panels, and workshops.

Operations include the work areas of operations, administration, finance, events, development, volunteer and intern coordination, and/or the often invisible behind the scenes work in progressive and radical organizations, cooperatives, volunteer groups, and businesses.

The RadOps approach is an explicit justice-based framework and method; and RadOps has a demonstrated commitment to movement building and anti-oppression values and behavior, including centering the voices, experiences, and leadership of BIPOC, people with disabilities, women, LGBTQIA+ people, and others targeted by systems of oppression.

In many organizations, administrative work, which is historically women’s work or feminized labor, is devalued. RadOps see the operations, finance, and human resources teams and our/their labor as an integral part of the greater work. This value of respecting historically women’s work, respect for invisible labor, and honoring the dignity of all labor is put into action within each organization by valuing the work of the full team.

Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: 2014
Founders/leadership: Rufaro Gwarada; Aparna Shah

The reSet Project cultivates imagination and builds power toward inclusive and participatory governance that centers people and the natural world. Working with tribal, community and state leaders, artists, cultural workers, organizers, communicators, academics, and advocates, they seed cultural shifts and intentionally integrate arts and cultural organizing to ensure that decision making power and influence reside within communities and tribes. Rooted in their unwavering love and collective strength, the reSet Project activates whole people, thriving families, and interconnected communities from a place of expansive vision. Together, they’re rebuilding a world of care, joy, and belonging.

Launching in Summer 2021, reSet and the Resonance Network are working with organizational partners across the country in a collaborative learning community to deepen their understanding and practice of collective governance, guided by the WeGovern agreements. 

Resources:

The reSet Project builds on many years of experience and partnerships, as described in these reports which articulate their grounding ideas:
Cultural Strategy: An Introduction and Primer, 2019
The what, why, and how of Cultural Strategy. Commissioned from Art/Work Practice with the support of Unbound Philanthropy. 
Until We Are All Free: A Case Study in Cultural Strategy, 2019
A summary of Until We Are All Free, our culture-led racial justice initiative with CultureStrike in partnership with Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Commissioned from Art/Work Practice with the support of Unbound Philanthropy.

Location: Oakland, CA
Region: National
Founding: 2017
Founders/leadership: Alexis Flanagan, co-director; Doris Dupuy, co-director

Resonance is an ever-expanding network of Black, Indigenous, immigrant, women, femme, trans, and two-spirit people and their co-conspirators who are building a world beyond violence — a world rooted in mutual care, where all people live in dignity, and all beings can thrive. 

Resonance’s worldbuilding draws on the lineage of radical feminist, BIPOC movement leaders who have, alongside communities, developed powerful ways to oppose and resolve violence. Today, Resonance practitioners are taking the next step toward transformation, by uprooting the complex and interrelated causes of violence, and supplanting them with ways of being in our families and communities, cultural norms, and systems of governance that reflect our values. 

Resonance participants are healers, leaders, artists, survivors, and storytellers creating visionary spaces to access creativity and radical imagination, and practice what it means to thrive.

Resonance Network participants believe that liberation is a practice, and are building the world we know is possible, by: 

• Activating Radical Imagination: co-creating community-rooted action spaces that interrupt the current dominant worldview, and cultivate mutual care in ourselves, communities, and collective systems.

• Claiming Collective Governance: practicing — in our families, tribes, teams, and communities — a set of principles that affirm our sacred responsibility to care for one another and the earth.

• Building Reach and Resonance: building authentic relationships, a shared vision, and collaborative action with individuals and communities who share a commitment to building a liberatory future.

Resonance Network first took root in 2013 with the first cohort of movement leaders to take part in Move to End Violence, a ten year program of the NoVo Foundation. Their shared vision of a world beyond violence made it clear they would need to work beyond the constraints of mainstream anti-violence approaches, taking the longer, more emergent path toward transforming violence and cultivating thriving individuals and communities. 

Resonance Network’s founding members also recognized that transforming the roots of violence meant centering the people whose communities were most impacted by interpersonal and institutional violence. This intention remains a guiding force today.

From its founding, Resonance made the intentional choice to configure ourselves as a network. Unlike traditional organizations, networks hold the capacity to adapt, evolve, and scale in response to changing contexts and current events. This dynamic form not only mirrors the way change happens in natural networks like mycelium or a coral reef — it also makes broad transformation possible.

Today, MSC works in collaboration with Resonance’s core team and Navigators Circle as the network continues to evolve and grow. Made up of network participants, the Navigators Circle uses network principles of co-design, consent, and collaborative practice to support the Resonance team in choice-making about infrastructure and strategy. Through consent-based decision-making, Resonance practices the governance it hopes to see in the world: centering compassion, deep relationship, and collective thriving.