Upholding Inclusion and Standing Against Harmful Policies
As a settler-founded non-profit, CPAWS Yukon has been taking steps to ensure that we represent the views of all those who want the Yukon to be an example of how people can live in balance with the natural world. Our mission is to conserve the Yukon’s ecologically and culturally important lands and waters for all. We believe that public awareness, engagement, grassroots community organizing, education, and empowerment are key to achieving land and water protection, and our commitment to social justice is reflected in our actions.
CPAWS Yukon is alarmed and saddened by the rise of bigotry and the dismantling of protections for marginalized people that has accompanied the election of the Trump administration in the U.S. This includes the policy changes by Meta and Twitter/X, which removed fact checking, ended commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, and updated hateful conduct policies to allow hate or fail to moderate or censor it. These changes put at risk the safety and well-being of queer, trans, racialized, and marginalized people and groups.
Social media is meant to be a safe space for fostering connection, sharing news and facts, and facilitating discussions. While we might not always agree with one another, taking the time to have open conversations and think critically helps us share perspectives to find robust solutions to the issues we are facing. Instead, these policy changes violate the spirit of free and informed media, amplify bigoted voices, and create dangerous media that distorts facts and spreads hate. This is not okay.
CPAWS Yukon strongly opposes these decisions and has spent considerable time working through how we will continue—or not continue—to engage with certain social media platforms in ways that align with our values. After many team discussions, we’ve chosen to transition away from Twitter/X and move over to BlueSky. For the time being, we’ve decided to stay on Facebook and Instagram, as these media platforms are still widely in use by many people who access our pages. We will be actively reducing the money we spend on advertising and engagement with Meta to reduce our direct impact on the company’s damaging, unsafe, and biased policies. Instead, we plan to highlight our resistance and values through our content.
We are committed to evolving as we learn and reflect on our practices and impact. Our team will continue to push to create an environment of compassion and inclusion, so that we can support each other and bring our many strengths and knowledge to move forward together.
We recommend signing up for our Newsletter to stay in the loop, especially as platforms and policies continue to change.
Other ways we are working to uphold social and environmental justice:
- Relationships based on respect and our Commitment to Reconciliation are foundational to our work as an environmental organization. When we work on a specific area or region, we look to the goals of the First Nations whose land it includes, and we use that to inform our own goals.
- We are committed to amplifying underrepresented voices by creating space on our platforms, reflecting diverse experiences and knowledge systems, and supporting leadership opportunities to uplift those who have historically been excluded from decision-making spaces.
- Hiring policies and structural guidelines are shaped by a Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) framework to help our team mitigate gender, racial, and other hidden biases as well as structural inequities in our recruiting and hiring processes.
- We are developing resources for the defense of conservation and inclusion to provide tools and empower our team to support each other, stand up to bigotry, understand what it means to create a safe space, and uphold our values in difficult situations.