TL;DR: Link list of statements, guidelines & policies

• Main Accountability Page (you are here)
• Why this statement exists & the principles we follow
  • Responsibility
  • Transparency
  • Clarity
• Mission & Objectives
• Land Acknowledgement
• Who We Are
• Financial Disclosures
• Affiliate Disclosures
• Rules of Contact
• Statement of Acknowledgement
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Refund Policy
• Acceptable use of this document (that’s just at the bottom of this page)

Why this Statement of Accountability exists

by Ashia R., Head Custodian of Raising Luminaries

By maintaining transparency, clarity, and responsibility, readers, patrons, sponsors, and featured makers (let’s just lump us all as ‘Incendiaries’) can easily identify if (and how) our actions benefit or harm ourselves or others.

Members of Raising Luminaries [RL] and our ancillary organizations Books For Littles [BFL] The Luminary Braintrust, [LBT]  the Student Ignition Society [SIS], including our supporters, readers, contributors, and the founder of RL and author of this statement, Ashia R. are responsible for our individual actions and our contributions to the community.

Accessibility

I strive to make this document and our spaces accessible for members with disabilities with the resources available to me. Please contact me if any activity in Raising Luminaries websites are  inaccessible for you.

Responsibility

Incendiaries take responsibility for soliciting, acknowledging, and taking action on feedback so we can feel confident that our voices make a difference. Read more about our responsibilities.

Transparency

We must be transparent about our motivations and outcomes (both desired and real) of our actions so Incendiaries can feel confident nothing sneaky is going on. This transparency helps Incendiaries identify when we are causing or could potentially cause harm. Read more about transparency within Raising Luminaries.

Clarity

We must state our missions, objectives, and procedures with clarity in an effort to create resources that are accessible for folks with scarce resources and disabilities. Clarity helps Incendiaries who are typically erased and targeted by similar organizations determine the potential harm or benefit of using our resources and participating in our spaces. Read more about clarity in Raising Luminaries procedures.

Mission & Objectives

What we do, who we are, and how we do it. Plus uur long-term and yearly objectives. To check all that out, visit the Mission & Objectives page.

Land Acknowledgement

I, Ashia Ray, was born, raised, and continue to raise my family on the original homelands of the Wampanoag and Massachusett Tribal Nations on the land the US government currently calls Eastern Massachusetts. I take responsibility with gratitude and intent to honor the stories, members, traditions, and cultures of these nations. My living here makes me a complicit beneficiary and participant in colonization.

The work we do here rests on a foundation of decolonization – recognizing and resisting empiricism, greed, theft, genocide, and the cultural values embedded in the society we work in to support Indigenous throughout Turtle Island. I set these intentions in the financial contributions I make, the collaborators I boost, the material I create for the community, and the standards we set for our spaces. This work must be woven into everything we do here.

Read more in the full Land Acknowledgement.

Who we are – Raising Luminaries Participants & Spaces

Who are the Incendiaries behind Raising Luminaries? In the Who We Are page, we discuss ways of participating in RL, who we are, who provides what, and who benefits.

Financial Disclosures

We can’t escape a capitalist society – so by writing about this work, I indirectly profit off the existence of oppression. Without working to end oppression at the root, this work would be complicit in the cottage industry that promotes and profits off the thing we claim to fight against. Ew.

RL finances are an experiment in radical interdependence (which means a healthy cycle of collaboration, not forever amassing power). RL is designed seed its own destruction by rendering itself obsolete.

• Who pays for this? Where does the money go? Check out the Financial Disclosures page. It’s got charts!
• Wondering about how our affiliate links work and who I link to? Visit the Affiliate Disclosures page.

Privacy Policies

I’ll be honest these kinds of legal policy thingies are super confusing. I used a template and filled it out to the best of my ability – you can find it over here: Privacy Policy

Rules of Contact

Boundaries are healthy! Here are mine. Rules of Contact & Responding to Feedback.

Statement of Acknowledgement

In the Statement of Acknowledgement, find out where we list the people and organizations whose work we frequently reference for RL

Acceptable Use Of These Documents

Everything we do here is praxis in creating a kinder, more courageous generation in an effort to make these resources accessible and available for all. If your organization would like to hold yourselves up to similar standards of accountability, feel free to copy, and spin off of these documents as a template for your own accountability guidelines.

If you share our ideas or benefit from what I do, please acknowledge my work with a link back to the Raising Luminaries source page, attributed to Raising Luminaries (both when possible). Direct financial contributions via Venmo or joining the Luminary Braintrust are optional but always appreciated.

Stay Curious, Stand Brave & Smash The Kyriarchy

This document was last edited March 2024 by Ashia R. to replace Ko-Fi with Venmo for donations. These are living documents that you can expect to change over time.