We Put Our Faith In You
By Sahar Driver and Sonya Childress
The following piece is adapted from a letter we wrote to Color Congress members the morning after the 2024 US presidential elections, and completed over the weeks that followed. It reflects our commitment to our members in the coming years.
We put our faith in you.
On the morning after the election results were called, results that we’ll all be contending with for a long time to come, some of the first emails to come through were from you. You who work with youth or early career filmmakers and help them to find their voice through this medium; you who bring together and hold space for seasoned filmmakers; you who fight to ensure our peoples’ films find audiences; you who tend to our stories by bringing them into conversation with one another at your events; you who hold space for audiences and their needs as they move through difficult stories; you who make sure the dreams and aspirations of the people and communities on-screen are centered once the lights go on; you who organize through filmmaker, editor, programmer and other collectives building networks of solidarity; you who bring people together in-person year after year or week after week to watch and discuss film together that confronts difficult realities and engenders beautiful futures; you who show tenderness and care for every person in your community through the ways that you gather us, the ways that you make space for us, listen to us, build with us; you who are building the new in the shell of the old.
That morning we needed community and there you were.
One of the beautiful things about this community is that it is made up of leaders. You each hold tremendous power in your corner of the world. Own it. You are bringing people together regularly, people who tell stories. There’s power in that. You are bringing people together to watch stories. There’s power in that. You are a part of a community of practice. There’s power in that. Each of our small corners of the world may seem too small to be consequential, until we look up and see we are part of a larger tapestry that is as potent as it is beautiful. Lean into the power you have and do it responsibly; even the smallest actions have great consequences when they are woven into community.
Where does your community need you most right now? Beyond the job or scope of work, beyond all of that… Is safety a concern? That’s the most important question to ask at this moment. You may be in a position to help get folks organized or direct them to resources that can help. Is there a need to process and make meaning together? Make space for that, even if you don’t have all the answers. And as you step into your leadership, and support your staff and members through this period, remember that we are here to hold space for you. We know that leading in difficult moments like this is heavy work. We are navigating our own fears, vulnerabilities, and responsibilities for our loved ones and communities. We think of the words shared by jazz franklin from Patois: The New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival: How can I reconstruct my pain and grief into a condition that allows growth, collaboration, and compromise in the face of rigid authority, fundamentalism, and/or general apathy?
So, how do we reconstruct our fear and grief? We start by remembering the tools we’ve received through Lumos Transforms that help us to feel the full weight and scope of our emotions, to cultivate our agency in how we respond, and draw strength from those emotions. We remember the vision our members articulated together last year in Atlanta, and the culture of care, mutual support, and holistic wellness that we committed to building together, and we draw hope from that vision.
We remember that we operate in the realm of culture, and that culture is power. Together we are building the narratives that tell a powerful story about the world we want to live in. We are building a culture that invites people to lean into the impulse to care, to help, to share, to trust, to love — even when the political and economic environment pushes people to listen to a different impulse. This work of culture creation, of world-building through cinema, of “haciendo patria” as Arleen Cruz-Alicea of Ruta Crítica says, is the most important work in this moment. And you all are at the center of that work.
We remember we are stronger together. Like many of you, we have beloved family and friends on various parts of the political spectrum and have felt the tensions of this election intimately. We know and love people who were willing to hold their noses and vote for Trump despite being worried that he would bring the country closer to authoritarianism as well as others who were willing to hold their noses and vote for Harris despite representing a party unabashedly responsible for the ongoing genocide in Palestine. We are alarmed at the swiftness with which some resorted to divide and conquer strategies that laid blame on the most vulnerable in our communities, not least of which are our transgender siblings and those speaking out to end the genocide in Palestine. This cannot be.
As we approach a new political environment we urge you, our members, to refuse analyses and policies that suggest we have to prioritize the safety and liberation of some communities over others. It is our responsibility as storytellers, culture workers, and champions of nonfiction film–who in times of deep inequity, social dissolution, and rising authoritarianism hold tremendous responsibility–to do our own work to understand and then shed light on the ways the rich and powerful maintain these systems of oppression, rather than reproduce their false, racist narratives that scapegoat our communities and turn us against one another. While we choose to build power within and across communities of color, we are unwilling to sacrifice the understanding of our intersectional identities in service of easy solutions and convenient scapegoats. Our collective vision for a pluralistic society requires us to cultivate a cultural landscape that makes room for all of us.
This is why Color Congress is first and foremost a solidarity project that is building community with people across various identities and interlocking oppressions; solidarity is our north star and targeting one another is a fundamental line that we will never concede. When we feel the tug of power beginning to turn us against one another, we recognize it and instead turn to other more honest and useful frameworks that do not divide us. Because the one thing that is certain is that the ruling elite will continue to ensure wealth and power flows upwards. As a community dedicated to the nonfiction form, we have to tell the truth about this. It’s not everything, but it is fundamental and deeply underrepresented in the media today. Because we have much bigger threats coming for our sector as irresponsible, commercially-driven media destroys pathways between independent filmmakers and audiences while eroding trust; as threats to race-conscious grantmaking and reparative work faces litigation; as nonprofits who have been the backbone of movement organizing face cuts for standing up against genocide; and as others are blacklisted or threatened for critiquing government and speaking truth to power.
As a membership organized first and foremost around solidarity across differences, we at Color Congress are committed to each other and to understanding the various ways we navigate a status quo that was not designed to serve us. We fearlessly examine harm while attending to differential impacts on our communities, and we boldly advance solutions we believe will benefit us all. We are committed to each other because we believe in this ecosystem’s capacity to tell the truth about our communities and lived realities. And because we believe our stories belong in the world and we know this ecosystem will deliver where a mainstream media system has not. Because we believe storytelling that emerges from a community and culture of care and collective liberation contributes to narratives of collective liberation that ripple outward and fundamentally shift society. But we–all of the cultural organizers, champions of nonfiction storytelling within this ecosystem and the nonfiction sector more broadly–can only do this if we are clear-eyed in our analysis of this moment, how we arrived here, and direct our anger not at each other but at those in power who are responsible for creating the material conditions we wish to change.
What we have learned in our first three years as an organization is that this work of ecosystem building and cross-racial solidarity requires a great deal of trust and faith. Every month we ask you, our members, to come together, to bring your whole selves into the room, and to listen and share with fellow leaders without the spectre of competition or criticism hovering over our heads. To block out the voices that tell us there are limited resources for our organizations, for our communities, for our stories. To reject the zero sum politics of philanthropy and industry. We invite our members to tell us who they are, what communities they serve, and what stories they want to tell. We have spent the last three years listening, and learning, and building trust, one story, one shared experience at a time. We are building a new muscle and leaning into a new coalitional stance, forged from the difficult work of building power across differences. If the past is any indication, the coming years will test the strength of our bonds. But we are here to say that our commitment to you and to our shared vision remains strong.
We are honored to do this work with you all, and for our communities.
We will get through this — together.
In community,
Sahar & Sonya
Sahar Driver and Sonya Childress co-direct the Color Congress, an ecosystem-builder that resources, supports, connects, and champions organizations led by people of color that serve nonfiction filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color across the United States and US islands.
