At Beast Crawl Literary Festival, our function is to model inclusion and empowerment by elevating the diverse voices of the Oakland literary arts scene. In doing that, Beast Crawl promotes racial equity and cultural diversity by inviting a wide array of participants who embody the richness of our various literary communities.

The Beast is honored to Crawl and perform on native Ohlone, Chocheny, Karkin land.

Throughout our work, we support diversity across all lines of difference, including age, economic circumstance, ethnicity, sex, race, range of ability, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity/expression. Beast Crawl seeks to inspire established and upcoming writers and the public at large by celebrating diversity as the fundamental strength of Oakland’s literary arts scene.

Beast Crawl strives to comply with tenets of the Americans with Disabilities Act, to ensure reasonable accommodations for all peoples at all venues, and wherever or whenever possible to meet and exceed standards of accommodation in the name of humanizing our shared experience.

Beast Crawl provides a diverse, inclusive, and equitable environment where all employees, volunteers, Curators and performers, whatever their gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation or identity, education, or disability, are valued and respected.

We are committed to a nondiscriminatory approach and provide equal opportunity throughout the various functions of our workplace and the Festival. We respect and value diverse life experiences and heritages and ensure that all voices are valued and heard.

In order to provide informed, authentic leadership for cultural equity, Beast Crawl Literary Festival strives to:

• See diversity, inclusion, and equity as connected to our mission and critical to ensure the well-being of our staff and the arts communities we serve.

• Acknowledge and dismantle any inequities within our policies, systems, programs, and services, and continually update and report organization progress.

• Explore potential underlying, unquestioned assumptions that interfere with inclusiveness.

• Advocate for and support board-level thinking about how systemic inequities impact our organization’s work, and how best to address that in a way that is consistent with our mission.

• Help to challenge assumptions about what it takes to be a strong leader at our organization, and who is well-positioned to provide leadership.

• Practice and encourage transparent communication in all interactions.

• Commit time and resources to expand more diverse leadership within our board, staff, committee, and advisory bodies.

• Lead with respect and tolerance. We expect all employees to embrace this notion and to express it in workplace interactions and through everyday practices.

Beast Crawl Literary Festival abides by the following action items to help promote diversity and inclusion in our workplace:

• Pursue cultural competency throughout our organization by creating substantive learning opportunities and formal, transparent policies.

• Generate and aggregate quantitative and qualitative research related to equity
  to make incremental, measurable progress toward the visibility of our diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts. Once the content is curated it will be added to our website so others can access.

• Improve our cultural leadership pipeline by creating and supporting programs and policies that foster leadership that reflects the diversity of American society.

• Pool resources and expand offerings for underrepresented constituents by connecting with other arts organizations committed to diversity and inclusion efforts.

• Develop and present sessions on diversity, inclusion, and equity to provide information and resources internally, and to members, the community, and the arts industry.

• Develop a system for being more intentional and conscious of bias during the hiring, promoting, or evaluating process. Train our hiring team on equitable practices.

• Include a salary range with all public job descriptions.

• Advocate for public and private-sector policy that promotes diversity, inclusion, and equity. Challenge systems and policies that create inequity, oppression and disparity.