Lisa Fujie Parks is based in the San Francisco Bay-Delta bioregion in Oakland, California, on the ancestral and present-day homelands of the Lisjan Ohlone people. Lisa is an NACRP member, parent organizer and board chair at Our Family Coalition. Read her spotlight below!
What communities are you most accountable to?
I’ve lived my whole adult life in Oakland, California, and am raising a child as a parent in a two-home three mom family. I am most deeply connected with and accountable to BIPOC+ LGBTQ+ families and communities. This includes friends, pods, and chosen families, with and without children. I am a multiracial, bicultural person of Japanese and white heritage, and my core family, pod, and community are multiracial LGBTQ+ folks and allies. I feel a generational kinship and a sacred responsibility toward the families and communities that nourish and sustain me and hold me accountable. In describing my communities, I include a “+” to be inclusive of the full and expanding spectrum of expressions of gender, sexuality, and kinship. One of the ways I show my accountability to BIPOC+ LGBTQ+ families and communities is through my service as a parent organizer and Chair of the Board of Directors of Our Family Coalition (OFC). OFC advances equity for the full and expanding spectrum of LGBTQ+ families and children in the San Francisco Bay Area through support, education, and advocacy. Uniquely situated at the intersection of LGBTQ+ and family justice work, OFC is powered by community and inspired by a love of children and families and a vision of a just society where we all belong and thrive.
In a few sentences, what would you like to share about yourself and your journey/personal connection to community-driven planning?
Growing up female, mixed race, and queer in the US and Japan gave me an appreciation for the role of community and culture in shaping our lives. Exposure to social justice movements in the US gave me an appreciation for the need for cultural and structural change through collective action. In high school and college, I was drawn to community-driven planning as a powerful way to voice my own needs and collectively advocate for the rights and needs of the communities I belonged to and stood in solidarity with. My life experience has shown me that top-down decision-making is unjust and ineffective and does not reflect the visions, power, and solutions of the full spectrum of community members. I started my career in the community development field and now work in community-based public health. I work as a community facilitator, planner, advocate, and coach in partnership with communities across the country to foster safety and healing through intersectional equity and justice, community power-building, and culture and systems change. I firmly believe that community-driven planning is necessary to transform the culture of violence, domination, and extraction into a culture of collective thriving and regeneration within the interdependent bioregions we call home. My current work as a parent organizer with OFC is one of the first times I’ve fully focused on community-driven planning with the community I feel most directly supported by and accountable to, and for that, I am incredibly grateful.
In a few sentences, can you share about a current community-based project you are working on?
In OFC’s 2021 Community Needs Assessment, our community members indicated that climate and environmental concerns were a priority, and OFC is now ready to seed dialogue, planning, and action. We are beginning to illuminate the strengths of our community ecosystem in the face of the structural conditions harming our families, and envision potential directions to learn together, support one another, and cultivate our collective power for change. We are investing in relationships that can put visions into action and serve as connective tissue across families, pods, and networks. We are leaning into an emergent strategy and moving at the speed of trust during this time of great transition. Currently, we are holding one-on-one and small group conversations with interested community members to understand assets, needs, and interests and to coalesce a project stewardship circle of staff and parent/family organizers who will work together with community members to envision future climate and environmental justice directions for OFC’s core areas of education, support, and advocacy. Some ideas for future activities include visioning and story-sharing salons and fireside chats; making and sharing food; planning sessions with popular education, embodiment, grief, and healing justice practices, community ecosystem mapping, knowledge-sharing; and pilot projects (e.g., mutual aid and environmental justice campaigns).
Lastly, in a few sentences, what does being part of the NACRP network/community mean to you?
I walked into the in-person kick-off training of the NACRP credential training program in January this year feeling a bit insecure about my ability to contribute and belong to the community, as I currently do not work directly on climate and environmental justice issues. I asked if I could join a group with an empty seat at a table. Another participant welcomed me warmly, saying, “Yes, please join us! We are introducing ourselves and sharing a plant our spirit feels most connected to.” At that moment, I knew, “Yes, I’m in the right place!” I may be new to climate work, but I am not new to community work. I belong here. I have a lot to learn, and I can contribute. Since then, I have been incredibly nourished by the credential training program offerings, and participate in additional Vision Power Solutions offerings when I can. Several NACRP members recently volunteered their time to provide me with valuable input to ensure a grant application for OFC’s efforts aligned with community-driven planning principles. This exemplifies the generosity of the members of the community. I am profoundly grateful to participate in the NACRP network and community, a soulful, powerful community of learning, mutuality, and action.
