A Letter to Our Community
Jun 08, 2020
Hi there,
Ever since March 16th (when the shelter-in-place mandate was put into place in San Francisco and we closed down our operation in Potrero Hill), I put blinders on when it came to anything else that wasn’t Farmgirl. And, to a certain extent, this is pretty much how I’ve lived my life since starting the company in 2010. As the sole founder and CEO of a business, especially a bootstrapped one at that, I think you have to have an incredibly narrow focus to not only get it off the ground but to keep it growing. But throw a global pandemic into the mix? The legally enforced solitude plus the shutdown and a complete restructuring of Farmgirl caused by COVID-19 has meant I’ve been running close to 24/7 eating, breathing, and (barely) sleeping my business.
Those blinders came off on May 25th with the murder of George Floyd.
I’m ashamed to admit this. Ashamed that this is not the first time that I, along with the rest of the country, have witnessed the killing of an unarmed Black man or woman by the police. With Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and Philando Castile, I felt the shock waves of their murders reverberate through social media in hashtags and photos of protests and watched the news coverage of impassioned and devastated family members and leaders from the Black community. But then, just as quickly and torrentially as the movement overtook the media and our attention - it disappeared – replaced by fresh headlines in the 24-hour news cycle and new photos of pretty things in my feed.
I say this now fully aware of the privilege that allows the death of an unarmed Black man - by the very people we have put into a position of power to serve and protect him - to become just another headline usurped by tomorrow’s news or a wave of Instagram Stories. Because as a white woman, this is not the reality that I live. But all of these men and women, and those who are not named here but who suffered the same fate, are not headlines. They are not hashtags and not fodder for the media cycle. They are people. And allowing their names and their deaths to fade away into the ether like that of an IG story after it expires in 24 hours is a privilege that I have been given and allowed myself in the past to have. And it is absolutely not one shared by those in the Black community.
These past weeks I am finally learning that I cannot say this is the case for me any longer.
As a white person who enjoys the privilege that I am automatically afforded because of what I look like, I am beginning to understand that I am also signing off on the same institutions that systematically withhold these same privileges from George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In my late teens, I inadvertently tried to use what I later found out to be counterfeit money and didn’t get so much as a slap on the wrist. I’m here to tell the tale. George Floyd isn’t.
As a white business owner who enjoys the privilege of the platform Farmgirl has afforded me because of what I look like and what I’ve built, I’m also beginning to understand the role that my company and I can play in helping to effect some meaningful change.
The question I’m asking myself is - what now? It starts, in part, with this letter. I am accountable to all of you to commit to ensuring Farmgirl creates and holds a space for the Black community and all people of color. What will that mean? Starting now, here are some of the things we’ll commit to.
We will double down on our commitment to diverse hiring practices and fostering an environment that does not tolerate but rather embraces this diversity.
We will ensure the vendors we work with, the companies we choose to partner with, and any external affiliations we make embrace these same values.
We will continue to fundraise for organizations doing work to combat racial injustice through our With Heart program.
And finally, we will ensure that as we grow Farmgirl into an even stronger company, one that creates and ships beautiful arrangements coast to coast, we will also lend our voices - and our platform - to the people, communities, and other businesses that need it.
My team and I are committed to taking action - and committing to extending those actions well past the current news cycle so that their impacts may be felt past this day, this week, or even this year. Some of the actions we take will be those we’ll share with you. Some of the actions that we start to intentionally weave into the fabric of our company will be more internal. We won’t be touting all that we do, in an attempt to pat our own backs, because we do not feel that that is living with integrity. After all, integrity is what you do when no one is watching, which seems like the opposite of social media culture today. As always, we will remain transparent and open to answering all of your questions and concerns as we hold ourselves accountable for making long-term company commitments to racial justice.
There is no getting back to “business as usual” from here because the “usual” has (rightly) changed. Yes, we will continue sending marketing emails and posting pictures of flowers, because that’s what we need to do to continue to grow as a business. But I am also promising that we will use those same venues to continue to speak out about the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade and to keep the momentum that will hopefully begin to dismantle the systems that created the conditions for and condoned the committing of these killings. And we’ll do this without fear of losing business because as a company - and as human beings - we will always put our values ahead of our profits. There is a cost associated with not being quiet about issues that matter to us - and it’s one we’re willing to pay.
Along the way, I can almost guarantee we will make mistakes and missteps. But I promise we will not allow the fear of these mistakes, or the shame in making them, to keep us silent. And I also promise that we will listen - to your corrections and your questions and to your lived experiences and that we will use this to help better inform our activism and road to allyship.
Thank you,
Christina
__________
In these last few weeks, my team and I have tried to be more intentional about the content we consume. Here are some videos and movies we’ve been watching, books we’ve been reading, and voices we’ve been listening to, in case you’re interested in doing the same.
AN EPISODE ON THE POLICE, JOHN OLIVER’S LAST WEEK TONIGHT
13TH, A DOCUMENTARY BY AVA DUVERNAY
BRIAN BANKS, A FILM BY TOM SHADYAC