Toward Freedom LLC was founded and is run by Rachel Siegel.

Rachel (she/her) is a white, queer, Ashkenazi Jewish mother, artist, activist, organizer, and educator on unceded Abenaki land in the Old North End of Burlington, VT. She worked as the Executive Director of the Peace & Justice Center, served on the Burlington City Council, and ran programs at Vermont Works for Women before founding Toward Liberation. She was a founder and board member for Vermont Access to Reproductive Freedom, co-founded and co-coordinated the Old North End Mutual Aid network, served on the board nominating committee for Vermont State Employee Credit Union, is on the grant selection committee for Haymarket People’s Fund, and has coached and continues to volunteer for Center City Little League.

Rachel is an anti-racist, anti-diet culture, intersectional feminist. She believes in collective liberation and envisions a world free of chains. She brings her work forward from a place of compassion and curiosity with hope for the world.

Rachel works with an POC Advisory Team to help with program development and accountability.

The team includes:

  • Hal Colston

  • Zoraya Hightower

  • Sherwood Smith

  • Ita Meno

Hiking with her partner Jules, dancing, and being with friends give Rachel joy. She is a recovering alcoholic/addict and practices her spirituality through many modalities. She recognizes the connection between her eating disorder healing journey and systems of oppression including patriarchy and racial capitalism. She is committed to body liberation.

Rachel’s political education comes largely from the Catalyst Collective’s Anne Braden Training, the programs of White Awake, self-study, and The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. She learns and grows with the work of Adrienne Maree Brown, Sonya Renee Taylor, Prentiss Hemphill, and Sarah Faith Gottesdiener.

Rachel Siegel

The Lost Mural, Ohavi Zedek Synagogue, Burlington, VT

Our philosophy

Artwork by Lienne Bick

The consulting and educational workshops that Toward Liberation provides seek to give people the tools and motivation to keep working toward liberation. Using the following guidelines, we create a space that supports people to be brave, even when they feel scared. We seek to allow the vulnerability needed to cultivate true empathy. We try to normalize mistakes, knowing that while it is scary and feels bad to misspeak or misstep, this is part of the unlearning and relearning process. If we don’t make these mistakes in a supportive environment, how do we expect to be good allies/accomplices/humans in the world?

  1. Oops and ouch –This is a space to practice talking about things that some of us have not talked about a lot. We will make mistakes. We can just say “oops” if we realize it or “ouch” if we hear someone else do it. We want to emphasize that you will make mistakes and to normalize that experience as much as possible.

  2. Stay on topic – Drawing on other forms of oppression and discrimination can be a source from which to build and practice empathy. Additionally, it is really important to expose, heal from, and resist anti-semitism, homophobia, sexism, etc. However, our work is focused primarily on racism, so we will steer the conversation back if we stray.

  3. Accept discomfort – Racism is uncomfortable (at best).

  4. Expect nonclosure – The time we have together will not be enough to undo what’s been done over 400+ years on this continent.

  5. Share the space – We encourage everyone to take risks and participate actively. This will mean some people have to talk less to make space. It also means speaking respectfully to each other so people feel more able to be vulnerable.

  6. Confidentiality – We hope you will talk about what happens in your work with us, share what you experience and learn. We ask that you do not share anything that exposes the details of who said something.

Numbers 3-6 are adapted from Courageous Conversations About Race.

Toward Liberation LLC is a small business that works in Vermont to understand, unlearn, dismantle, rebuild, and heal from racism. We work primarily with people who have European heritage and are identified as white.

The systems that are causing so much harm are changeable: they were created and they can be replaced. Toward Liberation exists to be part of the movements for a more equitable and liberated community and world

We need a more equitable world because discrepancies and disparities are the symptoms of dehumanizing and oppressive systems which we have all internalized to varying degrees. It is clear that people want change. We want things to be better for everyone. We desire solutions. And at times, many of us don’t know what to do.

Toward Liberation will customize programs to support you to move to a place of wholeness and equity.

Artwork by Lienne Bick

A note to other white people:

The problem of racism is obvious. If you do not know its impact on people you care about, it is plain to see in the racial disparities of life indicator statistics, including here in Vermont. We see it in our daily lives. We see it nationally and we see it locally. We see it internationally. We see it when it’s not safe for Black people to exist and when people Indigenous to this continent are still being disappeared.

It is easy to feel like nothing we do will make a difference. When we allow ourselves to tap into the pain, it is devastating. Since we can avoid it, we often do. Finding ways to develop empathy without falling into shame spirals, we can learn to live with the pain of racism while also working to undo it. Toward Liberation will work with you to do that.

We are living in systems and surrounded by media that teach us misinformation and set us up to be separated. They create hierarchy and competition and ideas of scarcity. We want to scramble to the top so we don’t get squashed or starved (metaphorically or literally). As we scramble to the top, we diminish others. That will cause us to feel emotional/psychic pain unless we numb ourselves.

People are suffering unnecessarily and I believe that we are suffering on both sides of the harm-oppression equation – everyone is suffering under racism. 

I believe that systems of oppression actually harm everyone, even those who are materially and socially benefiting from those systems (ie racism, sexism, classism, etc). Those of us who hold positions of social or economic power are still damaged by the very power that we cling to. Some of this damage is internal (mistrust of people different from us, difficulty with cross-group relationships, feelings of guilt and shame, shutting down emotionally to cope, etc). Some of the damage is more tangible (we have no universal healthcare because of racism, and white people die every day as a result). I wrote a piece called How Racism Hurts White People, which you can refer to if you want more examples. Clearly this isn’t to be compared to the damage done to Brown and Black people who suffer in ways that are much more direct and visible.

Artwork by Lienne Bick