S1 Ep 10- Everyday Equity: Everyday Ways to Make a Change with Leah Weinberg

This Episode talks about Anti-Oppression as a Daily Practice with Leah Weinberg

What does it mean to build anti-oppression into your business from the very beginning?

In this episode, Pooja Kothari talks with attorney, former wedding planner, and Oberg Law founder Leah Weinberg about making equity a daily practice  not a marketing strategy.

They explore defensiveness and privilege, intent vs. impact, avoiding tokenism, and what it really takes to create inclusive spaces in business.

This is a candid conversation about responsibility, growth and doing the work  even when it’s uncomfortable.

Transcript

 Welcome to Everyday Equity, everyday Ways to make a change. The show that brings real conversations about fairness, compassion, and progress into our everyday lives. I'm Pooja Kothari, and each week I sit down with guests from all kinds of industries and backgrounds to talk about what equity looks like, not just in their work, but in their daily choices and personal journeys.

Because building a more equitable world isn't just for academics, activists, or experts. It's for all of us every day in big ways and small. We can choose to be more aware, more kind, and more connected, and this is where we learn how.

 Hi everybody. Welcome back to Everyday Equity, everyday Ways to Make a Change. I'm your host, Pooja Kothari. I am the founder of Boundless Awareness and Anti-Oppression Trainer and facilitation. And coach with me today is a guest that I have been waiting all year to hear from Leah Weinberg. Leah and I just gotta give a shout out to Allison Davis 'cause she's the one who introduced us, I think, right?

Oh, I don't know. I thought we did a networking. I think we did, oh, this is going way off top. Remember running in heels, Jenny Powers? Was that how we met her networking thing year, like years ago. Okay. Anyway, it was like 2016. It was a long time ago. Yeah. Once I met Leah, I was like. You're my people. Yes.

And we have been friends and peers and colleagues since. Anyway, I love Leah. One of the best things about Leah is her commitment to anti-oppression work. And we are going to be really diving into what that means, how to express it, how to dive into it started, and especially when you own your own business.

So Leah Weinberg is an attorney, a recovering wedding planner, and the author of. The wedding rollercoaster, a fantastic book. I love this book. And you can get it, it is on Amazon and some other places that you are included in. Yes. And I have a brief page in here that was very exciting to write.

So Leah, let me hand it over to you. Feel free to. Describe yourself a little bit more with a little bit more detail. Yeah. I like to say that I am in my experiencing a full circle moment right now because I started my career as a commercial real estate attorney. I like to say that I took a little detour to become a wedding planner, though 10, somebody once said 10 years is a little bit long to be calling it a detour.

So attorney, wedding planner, and now back to being an attorney. And happen to work with a lot of wedding professionals. So I'm kind of combining the, my previous two careers into this new chapter. Yeah. And what's the name of your law firm? Oberg Law. We are based in New York City, but we serve clients.

We'll get into the details, but so our clients in a handful of different states. Amazing. Okay, so it's pretty unique to find a lawyer who is also knows the wedding industry so well. And as we all know, the wedding industry is rife with its own like any other industry. Yes. Its own biases and stereotypes and clientele that is typically served and all of those things.

So my first question to you, how does anti-oppression work come into your daily life? Your work? Why is it important to you? Yeah. What does it have to do with your identities? Tell me everything. It's hard to say. It's hard to kind of explain why it's important because I'm just one of those people that, as a human, when.

Things are when things are wrong, when people are being are treated, people are being treated poorly. When I know that there's ways for me to do better, I'm not one of the kind of people that can ignore that. And so understanding that as a cis, straight white woman, I enjoy a lot of privilege in this world and in this country, and there's a lot of ways for me to do better to get my colleagues and friends and family members to do better.

And there's a need and I feel committed to doing that and it's been something that, when you first kind of start out committing to this work, it can seem overwhelming. It's obviously very uncomfortable and can seem like a lot to take on, but my approach has been to figure out how to make it a daily practice and something that I am aware of and thinking about on a daily basis.

Oh, a lot of that my progression in this area to Monique Melton, who I've been in programs with since March of 2020. And she has taught me so much, challenged me in a lot of ways, and, being in community with her, knowing what the challenges are. I can't just look at her and say, oh no, I'm gonna opt out of this.

It's. It needs to be done, and I'm committed to doing it. Yeah. I'd love to talk about Monique Melton's work. I she's fan phenomenal. Yes. You can find her on Instagram at mo Motivate, MOE. Motivate. Yeah, no motivate on Instagram. And she's got like amazing resources, curricula all sorts of training ways that take people through all the anti-racism work.

But what's that effect been on you? And most people kind of get stuck in the shame and guilt part. Can you walk us, did that ever happen to you? Oh yeah. How did you get through that? And what have you learned from like Monique's trainings? Yeah, it's def, it's a natural reaction and so pretending that when you start doing this work and really digging in, pretending that's not gonna happen, is not gonna do anybody any good, you have to just go into it knowing that you're gonna as white people, you're gonna feel terrible about your role and your history, like the history of this country and our constant perpetuation of this.

And you have to kind of just accept it, that it's gonna be part of it, because if you hold onto it, you're never gonna move past it. And if you also live in denial about your privilege and your participation in white supremacy and the existence of white privilege and white supremacy, if you can't just surrender to these concepts, you're gonna have a really difficult time.

Ever really learning and making change. So yeah, it's gonna come up, it's not gonna feel great. You're gonna kind of feel like a terrible person. But then don't center yourself in that. Just acknowledge it, see it, but don't wallow in it or re, like I said, don't center yourself in that 'cause that's gonna hinder your progression and your learning as well.

Yeah, because white supremacy is the system that we all non-black people of color benefit from in a variety of ways white people benefit from. And when you say oh God, I'm just so guilty that I just feel so much shame that I'm like, I got this and I didn't ask for it, but now I have it, and what am I supposed to do?

Give it up. I don't wanna give it up. When you get lost in this, you are kind of like a tornado of yourself. Your ego is the eye of the storm. Yeah. Yeah. And so looking at the system. Exactly. And one of your questions was kind of, how does, how has this changed you? And it's I will never look at the world the same way again after having gone through Monique's program.

I can't see anything. Not through an, an anti-oppression lens, whether it's a TV show that I'm watching, a movie that I'm watching, a news report, that I'm listening to, an article that I'm reading, like I see it, you, my eye like sounds silly. My eyes have been opened and I kind of see it everywhere and you're, you hear it in like everyday language and some of the different.

Like ableist phrases that people use. And so like I hear that and it's a little bell goes off. I'm like, oh, that's not the, we shouldn't be using that term anymore, kind of thing. So it's really just it has, it really has changed the way that I see the world. Yeah. It kind of ruins a lot of TV shows, I think.

It does, you're like misogynist, racist, aimless. Another misogynist thing, right? Like white man is the hero and there's like a black person is the sidekick, kind of like helper person every time, yeah. It does. It does ruin it. At the same time it's but then we can also find and support things that are doing better, like find shows to watch who we can support, find actors and directors and writers and people like that who are worth supporting because they're doing the work and doing a better job than other folks. Yeah. And there are plenty of shows that are actually really fun to watch.

In that vein. Yes. One of the questions that I've been hearing from clients. Especially ones that even, now, the 2020 kind of, shook our country. Shook some people and didn't shake others, I should say. Yeah. But those who were shaken up then were like, oh, we are in an organization, we are in a nonprofit.

We are in a company that actually has never. Really done. Aside from the obligatory, like sexual harassment and anti-discrimination stuff, we've never really done DEI work. And I'm still hearing that today from clients who come to me and ask for my services. And one of the first questions I ask is, why didn't you start your company with like your core you have an accounts payable department, you have hr.

Why wasn't this like one of the guaranteed things to be in place? 'cause. How are people gonna feel like they belong? So I wanna ask you, in your personal experience, having gone through several careers and built especially when you were full-time wedding planning, building up your own reputation of helping clients, attracting clients, and having your client list, while also having that anti-oppression focus, which is way before 2020.

So I know yeah. You may have done a lot more work, but you were always there. How do you start a firm Oberg or your own color pop events? How do you start that with an anti-oppression lens from the start? Yeah. It starts with two things. Number one is like the education and the knowledge.

So knowing, just having an understanding of how to. Have an anti-oppression lens when it comes to the work that you're doing and what that means too for your particular for your particular business. For example, when I started my wedding planning company, it was a solo, I was a solopreneur. I was a one woman show.

And so for me, starting that, it wasn't about, okay, how do I. Build a company with diverse employees. That wasn't my, that wasn't my focus. Instead, my focus was how do I make sure that I am inclusive in terms of the clientele that I serve? How do I make sure that I am welcoming? How do I make sure that I am showing diversity in my portfolio?

So the first question you kind of have to ask is understanding. What it, like having the knowledge of what it is that, of a, the DEI piece that you're looking to build as part of your company and what's relevant. And then also asking yourself why, because I know we can get into tokenization, whether it's in building teams or whether it's like the wedding professionals doing a styled shoot and having a black couple.

Just using that as a portfolio piece as opposed to like really doing anti-oppression work, anti-racism education, and kind of understanding your role and everything and what these, and how to just better serve a variety of clients. And so it's the knowledge piece and then the checking yourself as to like, why am I doing this?

And making sure that you're doing it in a, in an authentic way so that we're not tokenizing anybody.

Oh, I think you're muted. How do you know you're not tokenizing somebody? You have to have a lot of self-awareness and like really understand your, like you have to be honest about your motives and whether it's whether it's something that you kind of have gone into the company thinking about, like this is important.

Understanding your core values is really. Helpful, like understanding what is at the center of you as a person, what is at the center of you as your company, and if that is in line with diversity and having an anti-oppression lens to your company that is going to. Not drift so far into the tokenization territory, but if it's something where it's oh, we're kind of having a PR crisis and we got called in or called out for something, and now it's okay, now we wanna make sure we're showing more than just straight white people in our images.

That's a different kind of rationale and push to, to kind of diversify your portfolio. And okay, so as a solopreneur, you're, you want clients who are planning their weddings to hire you and and you in terms of at attaining those clients, the clients you really wanna serve, how do you. This is such a common question and I know the way that I'm asking you is like strange, 'cause we don't talk like this, but a common question my clients ask me is but how do I make the diverse people apply?

Yes, exactly. Yeah. And that's, it's interesting that you say that because we, so like different, like wedding people have conferences and stuff like that and, education programming, and that is, that's literally a question that the wedding industry asks. Like the white wedding vendors are like.

How do I attract more black couples? How do I serve more couples who are members of the lgbtq plus communities? And so they're like, how do I do that? And the answer isn't just that, let's put a styled shoot together to try to show some diversity. It really is about starting with that internal work of internal evaluation am of am I doing the work? What is it that I am doing? Am I even a space? If I were to work with two black models, am I gonna have an entirely white vendor team? Am I putting these models at risk of experiencing harm when they're like on set with us? These are the questions that you really.

Should be asking and have to ask. And so it's if you are not attracting the clients that you want, you need to do some sort of internal like self-reflection and figure out are you yourself doing the work to really create brave spaces for folks and showing people that you are. Inclusive and somebody who they would like to work with.

And then at the same time, like maybe, it might not have anything to do with you because sometimes people just wanna work with somebody else. So don't take it personally, but. Do the work regardless, do this work regardless of whether it gets you more clients of different backgrounds and things like that.

But yeah, that is a very common question. And the first thing is to just do that self-reflection of am I actually doing the work that would make this a good idea for me to work with? Yeah, different people. That's it. That's it. I marked that minute and second. So we're gonna, that's the quote.

That's it. Put it in the show notes a minute. 1557 for the best quote of the day. And, it can't be an afterthought. It has to be the first thought. Yes. Like you're going through a wedding venue and you're like, oh gosh. Anybody who can't walk upstairs or has a balance issue or can't use stairs.

This is probably not a good place for them. What do you do? That's gotta be your first Oh yeah, there was, yeah, there's a venue in Brooklyn. It's been open for a while now, but when it first came out, like there's a rooftop that they advertised for where you can have ceremonies, but there's no, but it's up a very, it's only accessible by stairs.

And I was like, I wonder how this is aada a compliant, but I guess it's just the rooftop and not the main space. But yeah, that's my first thought. There was like. Oh, anybody who has any kind of mobility issues is not gonna be able to navigate this. Yeah. Like my 103 year old granny wouldn't be able to go up those stairs.

Yeah. And anybody else who, anyway, and that ties into what I said earlier of you just never see the world the same way again. It's true. Like you walk into a space and you're for, a purpose of hosting an event or something. And the first thing that like I'm seeing is like, what is what's.

What's the situation here? Also looking at ba like bathrooms. California does a great job of gender neutral bathrooms and New York is really slow. I am like really disappointed in how slow New York has been to catch up on that. Yeah. But yeah, going into a space and knowing if you've got non-binary folks or trans folks attending a wedding and you've got just like men, women, gendered bathrooms like.

Seeing that and under, having that thought of oh, this is not gonna work for this. Yeah. Yeah. The most efficient and effective way of having bathrooms is to make them accessible for everybody. Yes. And that is true too. Yeah. Yeah. Think about, it's so funny, I always think about Ally McBeal and how they had like gender neutral bathrooms essentially.

And this was however long ago. I'm like, they were really stop telling everybody how old we are. Ally McBeal. We were like, who's that? Who's that? I know. All right. So let's talk a, let's hone in specifically on whiteness. Yeah. Because I know in your, in you now have a new-ish, not so new, but new-ish, firm as a white person.

Okay. Let's say it's a firm of, that is managed only by white people or white women. Or in your situation where you were one of the white founders, partners of your firm. Then how do you start that? How do, what's the advice you give to people who are in this situation? Yeah. Frankly, the first piece of advice I wanna give to white women specifically is don't get defensive.

You need to be open and to understanding that you can do better and acknowledge that like we cause harm. On a daily basis and we have to actively take steps to make sure that we don't cause harm. And I think just from, like from interactions of myself with peers from books that I've read of, like folks that are, that do DEI work like it is always the white women that are such a problem and they get so.

Defensive and think that they, like we, I shouldn't say they. We think that we know better. Like it's just a lot of common stereotypical characteristics. And so the first thing I would say to myself and fellow white women is to drop the defensiveness. Be open. Be open to learning, be open to receiving, understand that we are not the experts on things, and that we have the potential to cause a lot of harm.

And so it is worth doing this work in order to. Stop causing the harm. Okay, so some people say listen, I run a nonprofit. All I'm doing is helping people. What do you mean? I'm causing harm every day? Like I am trying to help other people and I'm like devoting my life to this. So I don't know about that.

Yeah, it's about your, it's not about, it's not necessarily about the big picture. Take a step back from the big picture and kind of look at how you're moving through the day every day. Who are the people that you work with? Who are the voices that you're listening to? What are, explore your biases and how certain, maybe certain people that work with you are received differently than others?

I've been in, I have been in environments where. Looking back, I didn't realize it at the time because I just didn't have the awareness and the knowledge and the language. But like I specifically remember one workplace where there was a black woman who was judged so much differently for what she wore, and folks said that she was too casual.

This just got brought up actually in another conversation where somebody was judging the attire of. Black people and not thinking it was professional enough for the situation. And it's like you are, it's a total double standard there. So like checking yourself, like how are you holding people to different standards?

I promise you that even if you think that you are doing all the good in the world, like there are ways that you are still walking through this world causing harm and can do better. And I know white women also don't like the word they don't like to be told that they're causing harm or that they're being violent.

That was something I've unlearned too. Like thinking back, like starting with Monique, she used the phrases causing harm and violence a lot. And I remember the first time hearing that you have kind of a visceral reaction to oh, that's really. That's serious. You think of it all always in the context of like physical harm or like physical violence and it's not, and you have to retrain your brain Yeah.

To understand the difference. Yeah. Yeah. And even, the policies that are in place that you're like this is fair. Or the, everybody gets the same amount and there is a real tug of war between really understanding equality and equity. And also kind of like the adherence, the kind of like white supremacy, capitalist behavior of if I give unlimited sick days, people will just take advantage of it.

So we're gonna cap the sick days at. Three or. Six, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, what something you just said made me also realize, like I have seen, there's places like companies, organizations, associations that are like we've worked with A DEI consultant and we now have all of these like processes and procedures in place, but then they start weaponizing the processes and procedures or enforcing them in a biased way.

And so you gotta check yourself on that part two. Yeah constant. And the brain's way of protecting ourself, or sorry, the, I should say the ego's way of protecting ourself is this consistent defensiveness and denial. So like, why are we ju judging the only black person in this office differently?

And someone will say I'm not, I'm just saying that they came in jeans and our dress code is dress pants or whatever. So it really, it wasn't about race. It really wasn't, it wasn't about the jeans. Yeah. And that adherence, the strict adherence to that denial of stops us from seeing the disparate impact.

I never thought I'd use that phrase after law school,

but it's coming up like all the time now. And so like the really understanding, yeah, your intent may have been like. To look at the black letter of your policy on dress code, but the impact of it to single out Yeah. Was a racist impact. And they're two separate things that are true at the same time.

Yes. Yeah. And they were both accepted. The intent versus impact was a huge lesson I learned from Monique as well. Yeah, because the, yeah, the there is no race neutral. There is no objectivity there, there is no, no such thing exists. Or yeah, her writing isn't that great and you're talking about the only like person of color in the office. It's okay. And then the impact of that is what? So then what are you gonna do about it?

So you don't have that racist. Or that's sexist or misogynist or transphobic impact. So there's a lot of mitigation that can happen. I feel like between, there's this gray area between your intent and impact that you can actually do a lot of really good work in to make sure that people don't feel like what you're saying and what you're doing is racist or misogynist or whatever.

Yep. Okay. A piece of advice you could give our audience, but you've already given tons of, and I'll be highlighting that moment from our thing. But

some resources, there's Monique, any other resources that you have been like, you know what, this has been really good training or a piece of advice that you would give to anybody? Business owners or anyone else? Yeah, it just. It has to be about the kind of constant, the daily practice, and so doing something every day, it doesn't have to be like a big, huge grand gesture every day.

It can be reading a newsletter, attending a class. Reading a book, donating to mutual aid, paying reparations, attending a community event, investing, supporting in your community. There's so many different ways to do this on a daily basis, and like I said, it doesn't have to be an enormous thing. And so I just kind of wanna remind folks of that.

And the more that you do it, the more it just becomes part of what you do and you frankly don't even like really. Notice it. It's not like a big thing that you notice or a thing that you're really even thinking about. It's just part of what you do. And yeah, the daily practice thing and also just also, I know I talk about Monique a lot, but I also have learned from her to cite your sources.

This is not my knowledge, this is all stuff that I have learned. Yes. And so she makes also a big point about talking about you've never arrived in doing this work. You can't say, oh, I took this class and now I am an anti-oppression expert. Or I am anti-racist. There's nowhere to arrive. There's nothing to really achieve.

It's about this ongoing daily work. And she also talks about, not self-identifying as an ally or an accomplice. And at the end of the day, it's about how your, what impact you are making in. Other communities. So whether it's with the black community or LGBTQ plus communities, like how are they feeling your impact and how are they experiencing the work that you're doing?

And that is kind of the litmus test, or I don't wanna say success or failure, but that's really what we're looking at. It's not about labeling yourself, it's not about getting to any certain point, like it is really about how you are impacting the communities around you. Brilliant. One thing that I remembered I wanted to say about when we go into when anybody goes into their defensive or denial stage and the ego's like trying to protect you, or you're like, but don't, I'm a good person.

And you were saying don't center yourself in that. It's it kind of makes the reverse point that you really don't wanna make. We're not exceptional. Racism and oppression is the norm. Yeah. All of us are affected by it. Yep. All of, we've all been polluted by it. So to say ah, but I'm not racist, is to be like, I'm weirdly exceptional in this ocean of racism where everybody is racist and every system and institution and policy that's ever been passed is racist and you're the one person.

Yeah. That's incredible. I'm happy that you, the one person, I'm happy that you said that because. The thing I was kind of getting at earlier, I didn't say this flat out 'cause sometimes it doesn't quite go over very well, but the whole surrendering piece, like you have to surrender to the fact that you're ra like you're racist.

We're all ra, we're all white people are racist. Like we have to surrender to that. And if you fight against that, I don't think that you can really do this work effectively until you like surrender to that fact. And that's gonna get a whole lot of people. Feeling a certain way about that kind of statement, but I that's what I believe.

Yeah. Yeah, I do too. Once again Leah's book, the Wedding Rollercoaster, I gotta tell you, it is a lot of fun to read. It is all about relationships while you're planning your wedding. It's always, it's evergreen, it's always applicable. This is, there's good stories in there. Yes. Yeah. And really actually very informative.

Anecdotes like that just aren't like your one-off anecdote, but that's really applicable to, lots of people. Great book paperback. Go get it. And your, the services your law firm provides, please let us know. Yes. Oberg law o oberg.com. Yes. And what can people find there? Yeah, so we are we're serving folks in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.

Washington, dc, Florida, Illinois, Texas, Georgia, I can't remember I said Georgia. But all sorts of states. We can work across the country on intellectual property and immigration matters, but we work a lot with small businesses. On contracts, client disputes employment some commercial real estate, your intellectual property, trademarks, all that stuff.

So kind of like anything that a small business might need other than going to court. We won't go to court with you. We will try to keep you out of court on the front end, but we are not litigators. But yeah, we're just, and I work, we, I happen to work with a lot of folks in the wedding and events industry just because I know that industry so well.

Amazing. Amazing. A wealth of information and experience. Thank you so much, Leah. I love talking to you. Thank you. I know this was so much fun. Thank you for having me. It was truly an honor to be interviewed for this series, so thank you for that. Oh, that's very kind. We will see you back in August and about two weeks, and thanks for joining.

Bye-bye. Bye everybody. 

 Thanks for joining us on Everyday Equity, everyday Ways to make a change. If today's conversation inspired you, keep the momentum going. Connect with us on LinkedIn at almos awareness. Subscribe to our YouTube at Boundless Awareness and explore more free resources to support your anti-oppression journey @boundlessawareness.com.

Remember, progress isn't about perfection. It's about showing up every day with curiosity, compassion, and the courage to do a little better. I'm Pooja Kothari, and I can't wait to keep learning and growing with you right here on everyday equity.