The Black Possibilities App is creating a “digital safe space for Black Oregonians to connect, organize, heal, & advocate together,” according to the organization Imagine Black, which created the app. Joy Alise Davis, the executive director of Imagine Black, joins us to talk about the need the app fills for Black Oregonians and the new online connections and exchanges she hopes will emerge from using it.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to a new social media app. It’s called Black Possibilities. It launched at the end of September. According to the nonprofit Imagine Black, which created it, the app is a digital safe space for Black Oregonians to connect, organize, heal and advocate together. Joy Alise Davis is the executive director of Imagine Black and she joins us now. Welcome back to Think Out Loud.
Joy Alise Davis: Thank you so much for having me.
Miller: Where did the idea for Black Possibilities come from?
Davis: So, we definitely prototyped the app for a couple of years. But we’re also recognizing that we’re experiencing a lot of collective trauma in this moment right now. Both the fact that the pandemic is still going on. We’re seeing corporations put profits above people. We’re seeing genocides and other state sanctioned violence. And we really wanted to find a way for us to come together and heal, to be able to discuss and truly be with like-minded folks.
Miller: So maybe this is just a simple-minded assumption on my part, but the work on this predated Elon Musk’s slow motion implosion of Twitter?
Davis: Oh yes, definitely. We started talking about this back in 2017-18. Actually a great one of our board members had this idea about what it would look like for us to come together in a virtual space, and recognizing that Black Oregonians are spread out and really needing ways to come together and build community.
Miller: There obviously are all kinds of international multinational companies that provide digital spaces for people to do all sorts of stuff. Are you personally on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter?
Davis: I’m on quite a lot of things. I am a true millennial in that way. I’m on Instagram, Facebook and for us, we really see this as an “and” versus an “or”. We are recognizing that folks want ways to kind of cut through the noise and have opportunities to dive a little bit deeper with folks.
Miller: What do you think is going to be different about Black Possibilities than existing, less geographically or demographically specific platforms?
Davis: For one, we don’t sell data. We keep everything in house. We’re really mindful of privacy and making sure that we have a really strict no-hate policy. We also really are making sure that we’re vetting folks when they join. So you have to fill out a little form, you have to have some time where we ask you questions and you answer it. We really want to find values-aligned folks.
Miller: And so a human being is reading those responses and saying ‘yes, you can join’ or ‘no, you can’t’?
Davis: Yeah, exactly. Human beings. Mostly me and my amazing team. We’re going through every single application. We’re asking some follow up questions.
Miller: Wow. So what are the first questions you’re asking?
Davis: Such a great question. We have a thing at Imagine Black ‒ something that we focus our work on ‒ called a Black queer feminist lens. We didn’t create it but we adopted it from some of our partners around the country. And it basically means that we center Black Oregonians who are most impacted. So we recognize that, for us to really do the work that we need to do, we have to make sure that those folks are involved in decision making. So we ask folks how they feel about that. We ask them how they align with that ideology, that framework, and we ask them what their gaps are. And it’s not to say that there’s a perfect human. There’s no such thing. But we want to know where folks are coming in so that we can tailor some content to support their learning, but also be able to be support systems for them as they kind of dive deeper.
Miller: You said there are follow up questions as well. So, sometimes people have answered this questionnaire and you haven’t been sure whether or not you should give them the invite?
Davis: I think it comes to the fact that, for a lot of folks, they are not used to answering these questions. So they may kind of dance around the subject, do the whole Oregon passive thing. So then we follow up with an email and ask them a little bit more. We sometimes call them, we have some conversations and learn a little bit more about them as folks, and see how we can support them on the journey.
Miller: Who is actually allowed to be on this app? For example, I’m a cisgendered white man. I assume that I couldn’t, if I really wanted to be on this, you would say no?
Davis: That’s a funny question. We would actually say yes. So we have private spaces for our allies and accomplices who are really interested in supporting Black Lives Matter, who are progressive, who want to make sure that their efforts are aiding into some sort of larger movement. So you could definitely fill out the app and we would contact you and have a quick conversation and get you on there into some private spaces.
Miller: This intentionally does not seem like it can scale up, to use business language. I mean, you can’t have 18 million people first. First of all, there aren’t 18 million Oregonians to begin with. There aren’t 18 million Black Oregonians. But how big is it right now? And how big do you want it to be?
Davis: Don’t quote me, but I believe Black Oregonians… [there are] about 93,000 Black folks in the state of Oregon. For some folks that feels like a very small number. For us that’s a really beautiful organizing goal. We know that there’s Black folks all around the state. So right now we have a couple hundred folks. I think we’re just shy of 500. We’re hoping to get thousands of folks on this app. Again, recognizing that folks have different entry points, whether it is a cisgendered white man who’s interested in supporting this work, whether it’s other people of color who are interested. We’re hoping to get thousands of folks and I think you hit it. We’re not trying to compete with the Facebook and the Instagram giants that we see, but really offer a different alternative for folks.
Miller: What do people actually do on the app? How have people been using it for the last three weeks or so?
Davis: We have some amazing live streams that happen. So we have someone that does, every other Wednesday, a live meditation for folks who are stressed out. Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of things happening and want a quiet space to kind of come together collectively and be intentional for 30 minutes. We also have workshops that happen on the app. We also have opportunities where folks can learn about events that are happening around the state so that they can kind of move between the virtual space and in person.
Miller: What about just social media burnout? In recent years, I’ve talked to so many people who have just gotten sick of the onslaught of social media. And now, for a lot of the reasons that it seems like you’re hoping to actually use social media to fix just this never ending digital click world. So can a new app solve that or is it more of the same?
Davis: I think social media is really a reflection of the intentions. I used to actually work as a social media strategist back in the day in advertising. And I remember being shocked when I learned that the intentions of these apps weren’t for community, that it actually was for profit.
Miller: How long did it take you to figure that out?
Davis: Oh, again, true millennial. I was on Facebook in high school. So it was hard for me to kind of unlearn what I thought the space was and what it truly was.
I think now what we are mindful of is that, again, it’s going to be an “and” versus an “or”. We know that some folks are really tired of the misinformation that they’re getting on social media. They’re tired of their data being sold left and right. And the ads that they’re getting feel a little bit uncomfortable and creepy for some of us who actually are getting served constantly. So I think, for us, we’re really interested in something a little bit different. We’re hoping that folks download this alongside their current social media apps and check it out maybe once a day.
Miller: What about in-person action? Is there a connection for you between people using this app and people actually meeting each other?
Davis: That’s such a great question as well. We have tons of in-person events at Imagine Black. We just got done having a really big launch party a couple of weeks back where folks joined us in our space in Old Town Portland and we were able to talk about the app to celebrate each other. We’re hoping that folks are able to navigate this state through the app.
I think sometimes it’s really overwhelming to know what you can do, what’s safe for you to go to, what your favorite nonprofits are doing, because there’s so much happening. So we’re hoping that folks can kind of cut through the noise a little bit and find like minded folks in person or virtual.
Miller: The last time we talked ‒ I didn’t look to see the actual day ‒ but I’m pretty sure it was when the nonprofit that you are the executive director of had a different name. It was PAALF, the Portland African American Leadership Forum. How did that morph into Imagine Black?
Davis: We spent about 10 years working under the name PAALF and did some amazing work. In 2017, we shared our PAALF People’s Plan, if you recall. I think I came in here and talked about it a little bit. And what we learned from the community is that they wanted us to create a political home for Black Oregonians, particularly progressive Black Oregonians. So we listened to them. We changed our mission and our vision and we have our name to reflect that change. And for us, we really want to think about this concept of Black radical imagination. We know that this state was dreamt up by someone, and we want to make sure that folks have the tools to be able to dream up alternatives and use tools like policy and voting and democracy to get us there.
Miller: What is Black radical imagination?
Davis: For a lot of us, when we were really young, we were told that we’re not allowed to imagine and dream of new realities. That’s something that a lot of Black folks experience due to anti-Black racism. We were told that we had to grow up really quickly. We’re also really mindful that, for example, Oregon was dreamt up to be a white utopia. Some folks came together and they designed with that intent. We want to be involved in dreaming up those new realities. We want to be involved in creating policies that work for folks who are the most vulnerable in our communities. And we want to be able to be there as we kind of move it to the finish line in the implementation phase as well.
Miller: It reminds me a little bit… as you’re talking, you’re encompassing a lot of different things and we can talk about concrete political action in just a second. But a couple of years ago, we had a conversation about speculative fiction and Black futurism and other kinds of futurisms. And I’m just curious what you see as the connection between imagination, dreaming and thinking about different possible worlds, different ways to live, and making those imagined worlds real. What’s the connection?
Davis: Gosh, I can talk about Black futures and speculative fiction all day. I’m definitely a nerd in that space. But we believe that there is going to be a future for Black people, first of all. I think that’s something that is very radical to say out loud, especially given all the state-sanctioned violence and the policies that are up against us. We also believe in participatory and collaborative efforts and we see democracy as one of those things.
So for us to get to the future, the link is democracy. The link is being civically engaged. The link is being able to not only dream up new worlds, but to advocate and work alongside people to get us closer to that world. So I think it’s really hard to move and operate in this world without a clear vision, without something that we’re moving towards. And being able to be clear about that has really helped us sustain the movement as a whole.
Miller: Officially, because of federal laws, you have two separate tax exempt organizations, not at all uncommon among nonprofits. One can engage in legislative lobbying and some political actions. And if I’m not mistaken, contributions to that side of it, those aren’t tax exempt, from the donors point of view. But what might those nitty gritty political actions look like in 2024? We’re ramping up to another big election year.
Davis: You got it right. We have a 501(c)(4). To the best of our knowledge we’re the first Black led and Black serving organization here in Oregon that focuses on that political work. There’s so much happening in 2024. I think we have some really great, exciting things happening in Portland with rank choice voting. We have a very hot DA race that’s coming up. I also think there are some things that folks are trying to roll back that folks voted for, Oregonians voted for. I’m thinking about things like Measure 110 with decriminalizing drug use.
I’m thinking also about rank choice voting as a whole here in Portland and how we are shaping our government. I think there’s so much happening. And being able to be flexible and being able to be involved in both the legislative work as well as what’s happening locally at the city level and in the county, it’s really nice to have a 501(c)(4).
Miller: Does the app, does Black Possibilities… I mean, how does it fit into everything you’re talking about?
Davis: We see it almost like the vehicle to move this work forward. We are constantly working on initiatives and projects and working on policies that are going to help make the folks that we serve, their lives better, and Oregonians as a whole better. We see the app as a way to cut through the noise. I’m sure you’re getting tons of newsletters and text blasts about what’s happening in the state. We want to make sure it’s easy for folks to opt in.
We’re also really thinking about community care. Community care is this concept where it’s not enough for us to do self care as individuals. We can’t solve these problems as individuals. We need to come together. And sometimes that looks like having fun together in virtual spaces, laughing at what’s happening in pop culture. And sometimes that means showing up and testifying and making sure that we’re voting and thinking about folks who are most important.
Miller: Do you personally feel that, to go back to some of the things we were talking about earlier, you have to be more tethered to your phone because there is one more thing that can provide community that’s important to you?
Davis: Yeah, I see it almost like taking a very well, meaningful pause of all the noise, if I’m quite honest. Sometimes this world is so stressful. And especially for a Black Oregonian, there’s so many things that we’re up against. It’s nice to have a safer space to just decompress with folks. And I see this as a tool. Again we’re hoping that folks are moving between this digital and in person. But we’re also mindful that we have a few folks in our community, quite a lot actually, who are immunocompromised and can’t actually go out to in person events. And we want to make sure that there’s a space for them as well.
Miller: You’ve used the phrase safer space many times. Does that mean that there is active content moderation?
Davis: So we do have, within our guidelines, information about not hating. We want to make sure that we’re not having trolls, that folks aren’t spamming. So we do have that language. But we think safe space is constantly negotiated. I think it’s really interesting in this world now that we kind of say that we checked that box, we’ve done it. But reality is, safe space is constantly negotiating. Folks are constantly questioning it and we’re learning through community and getting better. So we do have some very strict guidelines that we hold ourselves accountable to. But we also are open to learning and to expanding that as we grow.
Miller: But are there people on staff who are responding to complaints about trolls or comments and then kicking people off or deleting comments?
Davis: Yeah, not at this time. If I’m quite honest. We are really lucky. I think through our vetting process that we have some really values aligned folks. So if anything, we’re just helping folks learn how to use the app, making sure they understand how to upload things and we haven’t had to censor anyone or kick anyone off at all.
Miller: Joy Alise Davis, thank you so much for coming in.
Davis: Thank you. This is great.
Miller: Joy Alise Davis is the executive director of Imagine Black. It’s a nonprofit. One of their latest projects is a new social media app called Black Possibilities.
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