Talking Equality With Stacy Casson

A few weeks ago, Mission Equality co-founder Sharon Hurley Hall had the chance to chat with Stacy Casson for her Things to Think About podcast. Stacy takes a different approach, encouraging guests to choose from decks of cards, then weave a story around the character that emerges. As part of that process, Sharon also talked about the vision for equality and life inside Mission Equality. Here are a few key quotes:

Stacy: What comes to mind for you, Sharon, when you take a look at this [card]?

Sharon: It is that vision of that vision of thriving, that vision of … freedom from financial worry. Having the luxuries, being fully realised in yourself. Having that world where your right to thrive is recognised as a right that everybody should have and be able to benefit from, to live in an in an equal world where everybody has that has that right that capability where their needs are met, where everything that is needed for them to have that wonderful and abundant life is provided.

Stacy: And what comes to mind is, I think a lot of times the obstacle that we face in creating this new world, is people don't have a vision…

Sharon: Yeah, I think I think a lot of us have that challenge. It’s something we talk about a lot at Mission Equality. It's like, how do you create a whole vision for what this could look like? What are the things that have to change in order to realise this vision? How do we bring those into being?

That's part of the reason that we put out our Black Paper to say, okay, here is a vision. It's not the only vision…Maybe in looking at this vision, you'll be able to think, Oh, well, I think here's how I think the world could work better for me... Maybe I’ll use this as a starting point for what a thriving world could look like for all of us.

What is a world where, you know, greed and capitalism are not seen as the be all and end all? Well, what is a world where human thriving is seen as the highest goal? What does that look like? What does that look like in our lives, in our communities, in our companies, in our businesses? What does that look like when we have leaders who have that as their North Star … and so those are the questions that we ask.

Stacy: White supremacy is kind of a cancer in our culture. It has definitely metastasised. So we want to be very specific with how we want to treat this.

Sharon: Yes, how do we identify it? How do we see where it's working? And you know, many of us feel severe discomfort with this idea of how prevalent [white supremacy] is, in many of our cultures, in many of our practices, in many of the ways that we approach things, you know, the constant quest for productivity, the constant quest for growing profits, the constant dismissal of people's needs in favor of profits, right?

And what if we did it differently? What if we, you know, we allowed both people and companies to thrive without either one thriving at the expense of the other? What if we, you know, allowed people to meet their needs?

I'll talk a little bit about life inside Mission Equality, because we have a tiny oasis, which shows what some of the possibilities can be. You know, where we don't have a hierarchy, where people are on the same pay scale, but … [pay is] according to their contribution … And where we consider that there's a value exchange, where people will work on particular projects, but at the same time, the company provides a space where people can thrive, a space where there's flexibility, where we have a no rush culture, right? And we recognise from the start that life happens, you know, people have kids and responsibilities. And so we try to build that knowledge into everything that we do.

You can listen to the whole episode on the links below:

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