Our Commitments

POSTED DECEMBER 28, 2020

In our newsletter sent on December 28, 2020, we expanded upon the commitments outlined in the writing below. We’re duplicating those commitments here in perpetuity:

First, an update on the commitments outlined below:

1. We’ve assembled an Artistic Advisory Council and convened the group in multiple ways over the last two months. We’re excited to work with them as we continue to refine and develop our programming and artistic practices. You can learn more about them on this page.

2. We’ve compensated six artists for their work on JETco. projects and programming.

3. Jake has attended multiple anti-racism training sessions, both in-person (pre-pandemic) and online. Eli will attend an online anti-racism training in the month of January 2021.

4. We are in the process of generating reporting guidelines for both internal (staff-to-staff) and external (involving patrons) incidents of harassment, to be implemented by our first public gathering in 2021.

5. As we build our budget for 2021, we will ensure that that information is readily available to our Artistic Advisory Council, to any other individuals who work with JETco., and to anyone who is interested in seeing how we allocate our capital on a project-by-project basis.

Second, additional commitments that expand the scope of our anti-oppressive practice:

1. We have integrated Indigenous land acknowledgments into all of our gatherings & meetings and will continue to do so. We’ve also introduced a digital land acknowledgement to our homepage, which we encourage you to read here.

2. In an expansion of our budgetary transparency policy, we’re adopting a company-wide policy of radical transparency for all agreements signed and payments disbursed with measures in place to protect individual identities. We hope that this will help us remain accountable to ourselves, to our values, to our community, and to our community’s values. If you’re interested in viewing these records, please contact us!

3. We envision a world in which “accessibility in gathering is prioritized through the creation of both equitably and differently accessible gatherings.” We will continue to construct our season and the gatherings that comprise it with explicit attention to accessibility. In support of this commitment, we will:

   • construct every gathering with specific attention to access needs, including but not limited to providing captioning or interpretation services, supplying audio description, holding our in-person gathering in physically accessible locations, and offering materials in multiple formats.

   • acknowledge the access limitations of specific gathering formats so that we do not build a season that relies exclusively or even heavily on those formats to the exclusion of certain individuals. A limited format might be a gathering that centers on auditory experience.

   • foster long-term, generative relationships with local disability justice organizations and disabled creators.

4. We will continue to use our platform to amplify Black creators, Indigenous creators, creators of color, disabled creators, and creators in the queer community.

POSTED AUGUST 3, 2020

In our newsletter sent on July 21, 2020, we responded directly to the We See You, White American Theatre demands with brief reflections as well as institutional commitments. As promised in our newsletter, we’re duplicating those commitments here in perpetuity:

1. In the coming months, we’ll be forming an artistic advisory board that will provide guidance, clarity, and perspective to our artistic practice and programming. We will ensure that we construct this board with explicit attention to maintaining racial and gender parity. We will further work to foster a culture of respect and care in all board meetings and engagement in order to ensure that all board members feel comfortable voicing their concerns; that their concerns are heard and responded to quickly and effectively; that their perspectives are incorporated into future programming; that they are not tokenized; that they can and do influence policy and practice; that the company leadership (Jake & Eli) can and do respond to feedback and criticism, and make tangible changes to any practices identified as problematic.

2. As we work to determine the structures and functions of our company, we pledge to pay all employees and artists and to pay them equitably and well. We will have a company policy of financial transparency (all payment information publicly available to all employees), which has been demonstrated to increase pay equality. We will never create any unpaid positions.

3. Facilitated anti-racism trainings, while not a catch-all fix, are crucial to developing a common language and set of norms and understandings around anti-racist practice in the workplace and beyond. We will continue to attend online anti-racism workshops and trainings with the aim of attending at least one in-person as soon as it is physically safe to do so. All employees of JETco. will be required to attend anti-racism trainings and workshops as well. We will coordinate and pay for staff (us included) to attend.

4. As we develop company policies (both administrative and artistic), we will include clear instructions and processes for addressing incidents of racism that happen within our company or as a result of our work as a company. Jake and Eli will hold each other accountable; we will also be held accountable by our advisory board. Any future employees will be provided with pathways that do not involve Jake and Eli to report incidents of racism should either of them be directly implicated in the incident.

5. We will routinely revisit these demands and add or adjust as needed.

POSTED JUNE 12, 2020

Hi everyone,

We hope that in this time of communal grief & rage and necessary public outcry you are staying as safe and healthy as you can.

To exist passively as a white-led organization now is to actively contribute to the culture of white supremacy and white silence that directly compounds the oppression of Black folks, Indigenous folks, and people of color (BI&POC). As we engage in the deep self-reflection and immediate direct action necessary to dismantle the white supremacist culture in which we are complicit, we invite you – specifically if you are white – to do the same.

Speaking both as individuals (Jake & Eli) and as a company, we affirm our commitment to anti-racism as an active, lifelong, personal and institutional practice – not just an ideal. We commit to using our platform to uplift and amplify Black creators, artists, and voices. We affirm that Black Lives Matter.

While neither of us is able to attend the ongoing protests in person, we’re doing our best to amplify their message (online & in conversation) and to support those putting their bodies on the line (financially & otherwise). Join us on Twitter for updates throughout the day regarding resources, actions, and reflections in this time of uprising. We’ve also started aggregating resources by topic on Instagram in our highlights, including materials on understanding the police abolition movement, curbing burnout in activism, and integrating anti-racism into your purchasing habits.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be developing and sharing a strategic plan that weaves anti-racism, feminism, and queer liberation into our organizational structures and creative endeavors. That plan, this statement, and our actions will continue to evolve as we learn more and further engage in this work. We’re grateful for your patience and look forward to sharing more concrete steps with you soon.

In solidarity,
Jake & Eli