Accountability is no simple math of debits and credits, choices and consequences. When we think about it, there is nothing simple about action and reaction, really; there is elegance, there is an efficiency so large it feels impossible to see and know at times, there is something that verges on magic in the space where action accumulates into reaction and continues along the chain.

That said, in the name of getting on with things, people are often asked to get over harm caused, and mechanisms of accountability are often glossed over with apology. In some spaces, even apology is glossed over with statements of intention. In some spaces calls for accountability are met with violent responses.

It is our aim to be accountable, even if we cannot know or state clearly what that might look like. It is our aim to hold the most targeted members of our 2SLGBTQ+ community (in identity-first terms: indigenous, young, old, sick, neuroqueer/divergent, mad, disabled, fat, trans, poor) at the centre of our work. It is our aim to centre the needs, experiences, feelings, and liberation efforts of the most targeted members of our 2SLGBTQ+ communities.

At StrongHold, we believe there is no accountability without community.

Community is a complicated word for many folks, perhaps stemming from its multiple meanings. On the one hand, community is defined as a group of people that live in the same place, or share some sort of defining characteristic. On the other hand, community is something that is created out of shared values and goals. One type of community is about who or where we are, and another type of community is about how who or where we are is reflected through what we do with, to, on behalf of, and in collaboration with others.

At StrongHold, we believe in community, and embrace the gifts and the challenges that come when people’s expressed and unexpressed hopes, needs, feelings, best intentions, desires, biases, actions and inactions come together to form some sort of whole, whether for the sake of one three-hour event, or a story of a whole that extends through time, across generations.

It is our aim to create and hold space for people identified with and allied to 2SLGBTQ+ people, groups, organizations, and ideals to co-create, to co-exist, to flourish together, in community.

At StrongHold, we believe there is no community without consent.

Consent is always a conversation, and never a given. People’s power to offer and withold consent is often woven in with hierarchies, structures, and mechanisms of control.

At StrongHold, we seek to honour people’s power to consent above the way that power is effaced, erroded, ignored, or directly violated by ideological and repressive means of control.

This means that we will ask first before taking something, whether that is physical touch, emotional support, volunteer labour, or any other exchange. We will give people the opportunity to decide how they want to engage.

Consent offers a direct challenge to oppression.

It is our aim to centre the consent needs of every person in connection to, communication with, or attendance at StrongHold.

At StrongHold, we believe there is no consent without accessibility.

Accessibility is about creating multiple points of access to an event, organization, venue, or idea through the removal or mitigation of barriers that individuals and groups of people experience through routines of oversight and/or targeted exclusion.

At StrongHold, we believe accessibility is our responsibility, and we are delighted to confront challenges to accessibility.

We are not yet as accessible as we desire to be.

It is our aim to offer as many points of access, and remove as many barriers as can be identified.

At StrongHold, we believe there is no accessibility without sustainability.

The ability for something to last in time and space is inextricable from the ability of its component parts to function together through time and space. StrongHold is created of and by human people in human bodies, with human limitations, subject to human systems of hierarchy and oppression. Expecting ourselves and each other to get everything right, in a seamless fashion, for every meeting and event, all of the time — well, we would not last. Perfection is not sustainable. Neither is stagnancy.

StrongHold is born out of love and imagination by the (presently) five people who are generating its initial momentum through our efforts, and we want to centre the joy and possibility StrongHold represents for us over narratives of stress, failure, disappointment, and burnout. It is our aim to exist in as well as build something solid and flexible enough to withstand internally and externally imposed experiences of oppression.

It is our belief that who we are, and what we have (access to) in the here and now is enough to make a meaningful impact in the present while contributing to something more liberated and more impactful in the future. It is our belief that liberation requires all that we have to give, without requiring us to threaten our survival in order to participate.

It is our aim to outlast in flourish.

StrongHold is made of people.

At StrongHold, we believe there is no sustainability without a position of non-exile.

We are, all of us, all parts of ourselves welcome and necessary. We are here to call ourselves and each other home.

We belong together.

We have the imagination, ability, generosity, and capacity to: mitigate for harm thoughtfully and carefully; to address harm-caused meaningfully and sustainably; and to heal from harm deeply and thoroughly.

This means that we will not exile people from the community, and we will also do the work of creating spaces that support accountability and preserve dignity. In situations where harm has occurred, StrongHold will centre the needs of the most targeted and work to create a context that invites accountability. Non-exile means that we will work to create a space where mistakes and missteps don’t automatically result in exile from the community, without leaving the people who have suffered harm to be exiled-by-default.

It is our aim to transmute harm into something restored and restorative.

Distortion is the least generous, least flexible, and yet most malleable way to story an experience, a person, a community. Distortion is highly transmissible, deceptively simple, and promotes exile.

Distortion writes itself over the most simple truth of our shared humanity, and the most complex nuances of our legacies of action and interaction.

Affirmation seeks to distinguish between self and non-self. Affirmation seeks to restore us to our wholeness, where wholeness has been lost or left behind.

Affirmation is a reclaimation of the ways in which we belong to ourselves and have belongingness with one another.

Enoughness offers a gentle and firm ‘no’ to the idea that we must earn our place.

Enoughness says: our feelings are real, our needs are valid, our efforts are important, our lives are valuable.

Enoughness values presence over proof.

There is a quality of being that is constantly fighting to hold itself together. At times, it seems like everything we know about ourselves, and all of our material and energetic resources are circling some thirsty drain.

Within us all is the capacity to generate, to create, and to make. This generative-creative-maker self shows up in a variety of ways, and with it, satisfaction (even momentary) is never far behind.

If suck-it-up-get-over-it bootstrapping was going to work, we think it would have worked by now.

At this place, in this time, we do not have a lot of mastery when it comes acknowledging, accounting for, and reconciling harm caused. We seek and welcome all opportunities to practice.

The idea of healing is so tied up with narratives, actions, and institutions of violence — so wrapped up with notions of ‘cure’ — we almost did not turn toward this word.

But, stripped from its many distortions, healing is: something we do, something that unfurls over time, and is something we have the potential to support.