The Nuts & Bolts of Anti-Racist Organizing

So, in the last two sessions, we've been looking at actual organizations that are working on social justice issues from an anti-racist perspective, led by people of color or white people. How are people ACTUALLY doing all this anti-racist work we've been gearing up for? What are the particular pieces that organizations weave into their work? From this I draw both from reading about organizations as well as looking at the organizations where participants in this program have been placed as volunteers.

Leadership Development
For real social change, we need to have the people at the bottom (most oppressed/most impacted, whatever terminology you prefer) leading the movement. Not out of some altruistic , affirmative action type standpoint, but because that is the only way to actually bring true change that will be good for everybody. People who suffer from the heaviest oppression are the ones who are going to know best what needs to change and how. But also because of the oppression they have suffered - which may lead to financial stress, lack of education, trauma from violence, substance abuse, or any other number of obstacles - their capacity to lead the movement may not be fully developed. Thus the need for leadership development - training and guidance on how to organize, how to run meetings, how to develop strategy, how to defend rights. None of us is really born knowing that, but those of with certain types of privilege get taught those things. I am really beginning to see how the knowledge of how to organize is a resource that I have because of privilege and not only do I need to use it, I need to share it with those without that privilege.

So how does one develop leaders?
For some organizations, it's theoretically straightforward: at La Raza's Day Labor Program, they had a 10 session training course for newly elected coordinators - teaching skills on facilitiation, strategy, legislative process, fundraising, etc. They also have a weekly popular education workshop series. Other organizations use more one-on-one mentorship. Or the idea that when assigning roles, such as talking to the media or running an event, you choose a team with one person who has experience and who person who does not.

A big hunk of leadership development is constantly showing how the things that individuals are experiencing are part of larger social phenomenon, as well as pushing people's politics to see how their struggles are connected with other people's struggles. Like how transgendered people's trouble around having ID's that match their name and gender leads to the same issues that undocumented immigrants face.

Another component is having various ways for people to plug in, participate, and lead that makes room for the various circumstances in someone's life. Someone may not be able to make it to scheduled meetings, but perhaps they can make phone calls from home.

Accountability
In the anti-racist organizer world, which I know is a very particular subculture, people talk about accountability a lot, but still it can seem ephemeral. Like what the hell is it? We came up with some good concepts:

1. Personal Level: Doing what you say you are going to do when you are going to. Creating clear structures can be really helpful in this - having workplans, a supervisor/lead that you regularly check in with, and clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
   
2. Organizationally: Making sure that the people who are impacted by your work have a strong voice in the organization, that you hear from them how the work you are doing impacts them and their communities. Part of this is also doing the work to meet people's needs so that they can participate, which also goes back to leadership development. For instance at the day labor center in Lake Worth, we really wanted there to be some workers at every organizational meeting, and the invitation was put out. When they didn't come, our director often said, well we invited them, that's the best we can do. No, we have to do more. We have to find out what they will need in order to be able to come - which might also entail changing the way we seek out input from them. Maybe it's a simple matter of changing the time, or providing food or childcare, or maybe the meeting structure itself doesn't work.
   
3. Politically: Keeping your politics and vision in mind, and making sure that the work you do is staying true to your politics

Sometimes these things may not point in the same direction, so there is a challenge of staying true politically while also meeting the needs, desires, and strategies of the grassroots people or "base." Some challenging examples of this is say that you are an abolitionist group (meaning that you think prisons should be totally abolished and no one should be imprisoned), then there is a cop that kills a young black man. The community is outraged and many sectors want to see that cop convicted and sent to prison. So here you have a community, young black men, who are the main targets of the prison system, who are advocating the prison system as a just way to deal with a terrible situation. Does your organization stay accountable to its abolitionist mission, or accountable to the population most impacted by the prison system? That is a choice that each organization, or each person, must make according to their own judgment. Of course, the long term answer is to constantly be in discussion with those communities about your politics and the vision behind them.

Multi-racial Relationship Building & Alliance
We didn't go too far into this but a couple things include having effective language translation so that people can talk to each other!, and working to find common issues to unite around. One example is that over here in the Bay Area, there is a strong "Brown-Black Unity" in resistance to the attempts to pit African-Americans against new immigrants over competition for jobs - when really both groups are deliberately being locked out of employment opportunities by a system that doesn't want either group to succeed.

Point from the Panel
We had yet another awesome panel that shared with us their experience in different organizations with different strategies and tactics. Some highlights

• That in the post-civil rights era, the right wing has been successful in delegitimizing race as an issue - meaning that they have convinced people that race is not a factor any more and it doesn't make sense to talk about it.
• The concept of "dog whistle racism" - where people are calling white supremacists to arms without ever using racial terms. One example is the current "tea party" movement.
• That meshing domestic anti-racist strategies with global anti-racist strategies are hard because everyone in the US benefits from imperialist capitalism - even black youth who are so targeted by domestic racism, are attached to the material goods, i.e. Nikes, that are produced as in sweatshops of imperialist transnational corporation.
• Two purposes, among the many, that the visibility of anti-racist white groups serves is to be a reliable partner in the struggle against racism - organizations/people of color knowing that you exist and can call on you when needed; and creating an alternative to right wing politics - people get to see options of how to interpret situations and can choose your side instead of right wing conservatism being the only visible option. This to me was something of a revelation, even though I know I have thought about it in the past, but the idea that just by existing and being visible, you help to provide options that can help shift the culture, that seems easier to me. Not that that's all you do, but that you're mere existence alone does something, helps.
• We got guidance from Linda Burnham on how to talk to people about structural racism - many people think of racism only as interpersonal, and we know it as structural and institutional as well, and how do we distill the 4 months of learning we've done on this into one conversation? Well, of course, it doesn't come down to one conversation, but what Linda said was that the important thing to do is to listen to people, figure out where their thinking is at, "enter their frame of mind", celebrate what's positive about it, and then MOVE IT FORWARD. Like if someone really believes in multiculturalism - then recognize that yes tolerance and diversity is needed, that their commitment to it is beautiful, and then show how their desire for racial equality requires some steps beyond the limits of what multiculturalism can achieve. Linda also referred us to john a. powell, director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University as someone who has done lots of thinking on structural racism.

We also talked a bunch about the scale of the movement we need to build - that we need to be reaching millions - much more than we can get via dooknocking. We didn't come up with "the answer" to how to do that, but one thing I think is that is where culture comes in. People talk about cultural workers - the poets, musicians, rappers, filmmakers, dancers, etc - and we need to recognize that this is one of the ways to really reach the millions, and their work is truly work and truly valuable. They/we are creating a culture of resistance and liberation that we hope will be more appealing than the current culture of domination. When it's "cool" for youth to be rapping along to Dead Prez's songs about black power or singing along with Riot Folk anthems about fighting global capitalism or reciting Alixa & Naima's words on Colombian struggles - instead of mindless songs about bling or obsessive monogamy or singing commercial jingles - that's when we will have a chance at succeeding on the scale we need to be.

Don't be disempowered by analysis!

The following is taken from my comrade Jonathan in the program, who also has a blog chronicling his time here:

An elder African American mentor of mine back in NC who is a longtime anti-racist activist and has been an important piece of my political development over the years, raised a few concerns with me before i ventured out here. They stuck with me and were on my mind yesterday. He noted the propensity for white anti-racist training to lead to people becoming disempowered and making counterproductive assumptions about their role within multi-racial spaces. He noted that many white people coming in to anti-racism become so terrified of stepping on the toes of people of color, that they receed far into the background, rendering their intelligence and commitment ineffective. This severe self-censorship also implies the problematic belief that folks are color are not able to stand up for them selves when a white person is dominating a space. He was also concerned with difficulty many white anti-racists have in balancing the acknowledgment of their unintentional complicity in white supremacy, with an ability to proudly bring their full humanity into organizing spaces.

Personal Transformation

So as we've moved away from the really painful histories of oppression and towards more practical sides of doing anti-racist liberationist work, it's been easier to step away from the emotional aspects. Today's session really asked us to move deep into ourselves and get in touch with our most personal fears and motivations. So I'm going to get really personal in this blog (though I'm already pushing to intellectualize it and get away from the emotions) - and I ask that if you want to read that, that you do it when you have some emotional space.

Idealized Self-Image
We did a lot of work around "idealized self-image"which is essentially the person we want people to see us as. We looked at it specifically around the theme of being a white anti-racist activist. So I was asked to describe the person I wanted everyone to think I was, and I include it here not only to expose my psyche, but to help describe the idealized self-image:

• An activist with burning passion
• A go-to resource for advice on political issues
• Someone who knows my place/role within multiracial settings/movements
• Someone who can always take criticism or being called out really constructively and never be hurt or defensive about it
  
• Someone who always calls out/critiques others in the most loving, supportive way possible

Our facilitators asked to focus on how demanding our idealized self-images are - requiring us to be awesome all-the-time, perfect, not make mistakes, etc... I know that we all say that no one is perfect, but really, sometimes it's hard to believe that people will really love you (personally or politically or ideally both) through your mistakes. As a side note (or not so side), one big transformation we need to make is creating a culture that really allows mistakes and has protocol for dealing with them loving, constructively, and supportingly. I lately feel like I've been taking a lot of risks and making a lot of mistakes which have hurt people and in turn become really painful for myself.

Fears, Doubts, and Negativity
Then we looked at the fears, doubts, and negativity inside ourselves that the idealized self image sets out to protect. For me a really serious thing is racial inferiority - that as a white person who recognizes the slant of racial supremacy over many centuries - I will never be as valuable as a person of color; that because being white is my "original sin", I am inferior to non-white people, and can only be valuable insomuch as a I contribute to the struggle for racial justice. My work is valuable, not my person. Someone in the group talked about similar feelings, and looked at how ingrained capitalism is into ourselves that we think we are only worth as much as we can produce. Yes, that feeling is really ingrained, and it's hard for me to imagine a living society where people value each other just 'cause. I know I strive for that, I long for that, and I believe a lot of time I love my friends not because of what they do, but because of who they are. But I oftentimes don't believe people will love me that way.

I also worry that I have no real place in the struggle for racial justice, or not a place that will feel good to me - and as much as I want to have something important to contribute, that I am only useful as a shuttle of resources and support to people of color who are the real activists and organizers. This is a distortion of white anti-racist analysis that says that I need to be supporting people of color led organization. One of the Catalyst staff referred to a conversation he had with a black organizer who said that he was tired of really powerful white organizers going to anti-racist trainings, getting an over-inflated sense of the negative impact of their actions on people of color, and essentially dropping out of the movement because they felt like they had no place. (this also replicates white supremacy by saying that white people's actions can make or break people of color's movements) Yes, we need to be conscientious of things, yes we need to be accountable to people of color, but we need to be doing things to be conscientious of and accountable for. I don't know if I am recreating this sentiment fully enough, it's something I'm still struggling with.

core strengths, values, and motivations
Then we were asked to look deep into ourselves with a loving lens and look at what our core strengths, values, and motivations were. This got real intense as the facilitators would ask people to step up and actually announce one of their own strengths, and then asked the rest of the participants to reflect back to them a moment when they noticed that person exhibiting that strength. For me, a lot of my motivations and values boils down to straight up love and a belief that anything is possible if we want it. That's what moves me. The love part is also a vulnerability for me because I'm real in touch with love, and crave more of it than I think I get.


Impacts
We then looked at how the idealized self-image impacted our anti-racist work and our relationship with other whites and people of color. One person brought up that she was projecting her idealized self-image so well that people believed she was all those things, got intimidated by her, and then pulled away. Another thought is that having unrealistically high expectations of ourselves then leads to others feeling that if they don't meet the same standard, they shouldn't be participating in the movement. That we often set the bar too high for ourselves or others to be able to participate.

The exercise we did at the end was joining in a circle and holding hands, then one at a time, turning to the person on your right, calling them out by name, and saying "Your leadership is needed,". Then the person on your left says that to you. It's a little hard to take seriously because the person is saying it because they're supposed to, but it's amazing how vulnerably I need to hear that from someone who I admire and believe. How do I balance believing that I am my leadership is needed and also believing that leadership by people of color is primary?

Grassroots Fundraising

So, after all this looking at how the non-profit, foundation-grant-funded organizational model can't be truly revolutionary - what's left to keep an organization running? Funding from the grassroots, of course! Not only is that the most strategically effective, it is actually the most realistic. During session a guest presenter and longtime fundraising expert, Nisha Anand, broke down a lot of statistics that I'd love to share with you all.

Where Does Organizational Funding Come From?
75% from individuals
7.5% from bequests
12.5% from foundations
5% from corporations

So why do groups spend so much time chasing down foundations and corporations - yes, they are large sums, but that makes it even more vulnerable. One foundation can change its mind (as has happened to several groups with radical politics (supporting Palestine, etc) and pull the rug out from under a project.

Who Gives in the USA?

• Seven out of 10 people give to non-profits
• 85% of money from individuals comes from households with a family income less than $60,000.
• Households that make under $10,000 give away 5.5% of their income every year.
• Households that make over $100,000 give away 2.5% of their income every year.

So it's true, the more you make, the less you give away proportionally. Also, looking at these numbers, you have to realize that the majority of money funding projects comes from people who have very little wealth! That could be a combo of just being more generous in general and of funding causes because they have a real chance of positively impacting their lives.

Which Fundraising Tactics are most financially effective?
(looking at the time you put in versus the money you get out)
0% Special Events (such as galas, etc)
1-2% Direct Mail
10-15% Door-to-Door canvassing
10% Phone call w/written follow up
15% Personalized letter followed up with a phone call
25% Personal Phone call followed up with a letter
50% Personal Visit with a face-to-face ask

We did a lot of work around why people feel uncomfortable asking for money - that capitalism requires us keeping quiet about money (and inequities in wages, etc) so we are taught never to talk about money. We looked at different fears people have around asking for money, and different strategies to use to do fundraising. We have all been tasked with raising at least $700 for Catalyst (our program registration fees don't come anywhere close to covering Catalyst's costs). So in a bit I will be asking all of you all to contribute what you can!

The Revolution will Not be Funded

Much credit for this mind blowing goes to INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence who have been leading the discussion in this arena for years.

So I've certainly heard that "the revolution will not be funded" before - when you think about it, of course, why would the class of people with exorbitant want to fund projects that will successfully end such gross inequities of wealth? When an organization is dependent on winning the favor of foundations or government grants, they actually tailor their work to meet the requirements of the foundation - and accountability to the people they intend to serve/empower (depending on the organization) is lost. The organization is less focused on what is actually working for their members/clients, but what looks good to funders.

The Taming of Social Uprising
An even deeper analysis (given by Andrea Smith in the anthology of essays "The Revolution will not be funded") looks to how radical, grassroots movements have been tamed and controlled by "incorporating" into 501(c)3 non-profits. A clear model is the gay liberation movement, which we all know erupted as a working class, multi-racial rebellion against police oppression.

"In the wake of the riots, intense discussions took place in the city's gay community. During the first week of July, a small group of lesbians and gay men started talking about establishing a new organization called the Gay Liberation Front. The name was consciously chosen for its association with the anti-imperialist struggles in Vietnam and Algeria. Sections of the GLF would go on to organize solidarity for arrested Black Panthers, collect money for striking workers, and link the battle for gay rights to the banner of socialism."

Yes, gays sharing struggle with Black panthers and Third World Revolutionaries in the name of radical socialism! Today? The mainstream gay struggle is that, mainstream, and focuses on things like gay marriage and HIV funding, and has lost most of its connections with other oppressed groups. I think that transformation is a direct result of incorporating as non-profits.

Or for a more documented affect, Andrea Smith points to the work of Robert L. Allen in tracking how the "Ford Foundation began supporting Black civil rights and Black Power organizations such as CORE - and started shifting their focus from Black liberation to Black capitalism. Similarly, Madonna Thunder Hawk describes how the offer of well-paying jobs in the non-profit sector seduced many native activists into diverting their energy from organizing to social service delivery and program development."

If you think, it doesn't have to be like that, there are lots of really awesome philanthropists out there that sincerely support social change - well, I don't know enough to discredit that, but what I have learned is the origins of Foundations. Starting in the early 1900s, foundations were created as a direct tax shield for wealthy people and corporations. Think of how many billions of dollars which would have been public money (though I of course don't trust our government to put public money to good use) that very theoretically could be controlled by the public, instead a wealthy individual gets direct control over where that many goes - and thus chooses projects which are in his/her interest - not the public interest. I know for me, I would love to believe that wealthy philanthropists or boards of foundations truly have public interest at heart, but, even in the most altruistic scenarios, it is virtually impossible for people with that amount of wealth (or who run in those circles enough to be named to the board of a foundation) can actually EVEN KNOW what oppressed groups of people need to liberate themselves.

The Non-Profit Industrial Complex (ya know I had to go there!)
Another effect is the professionalization of the movement. With non-profits, certain people are chosen and then get paid to lead the work, and the effects are many:

1. People with more education, credentials, class privilege get chosen to lead work instead of the people most affected by the situation
2. Those activists then get attached more to the careerism and funding than in the effectiveness of the work
3. "The NPIC (non-profit industrial complex) encourages us to think of social justice organizing as a career; that is, you do the work if you can get paid for it. However a mass movement requires the involvement of millions of people, most of whom cannot get paid. By trying to do grassroots organizing through this careerist model, we are essentially asking a few people to work more than full-time to make up for the work that needs to be done by millions."
4. This funding scheme makes organizations compete with each other instead of collaborating, as they struggle to define to funders how their work is unique and more important than others' work.
   

Honestly, this article by Andrea Smith goes on and on with more and more brilliant points, and I could just keep quoting and quoting. Really, you should read the book!

We Need a Movement that Can Incorporate Everyone
Another article from this book, by Paula X. Rojas, really gets into how professionalized, incorporated models of organizing will never reach the scale or be accountable (and thus effective) to the majority of people who I believe should be the one rewriting the script of the world order. I think this not only applies to non-profits, but also to other movements with cultures that promote the idea that you must be a full-time activist in order to be committed, and that don't allow place for the majority of people - whose lives involve a healthy mix of childrearing, supporting other family, working for money, taking leisure time, caring for mental health and otherwise dealing with the real effects of centuries of oppression as poor, female, and/or people of color.

I know this makes me want to study Latin American social movements more, as they are able to involve millions of people in protest on a regular basis, or lead to things as the Zapatista uprising. And really do some thinking about how I can make sure that I'm putting my energy into projects that have a chance at succeeding on a mass scale, and not just finding a place for myself as an "activist."

Damn, y'all!

Visionary Politics

This week's session included a panel that was ON FIRE! People from truly visionary organizations really laying out the framework of radically different paradigms for the world they want to see.

We got to hear from four amazing women:
Rachel Herzing from Critical Resistance, Chela Delgado from INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Sara Kershnar from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan from Movement Generation.

Resilience - Resistance - Reimagining
Michelle spoke on Movement Generation's work to connect the people who are working locally to stop the disastrous effects of environmental racism in their communities - connect them to the larger global struggle around climate change to create - voila - the climate justice movement. Their approach is visionary: Resilience - Resistance - Reimagine. For resiliency, they aim to foster the learning of "hard skills" around sustainability - greywater reclamation, urban agriculture, etc - that will help peoples survive as the world's resources get exploited. In the Resistance arena, they look to "changing the system" via campaigns, new policies, and taking over governance. In Reimagining, Michelle spoke of replacing capitalism's place as "common sense" and shift to a more cooperative second nature, transforming the mindset of "gotta get min" to "let's share ours."

One of the most useful mindflips Michelle laid out was the shift from giving people "jobs" to looking at people's "roles." Looking pre-capitalism, people didn't have jobs, they had roles within society. Only certain people get jobs (namely the able-bodied, young & middle aged adults, with a heavy preference for white men) and they must compete for them, but everyone in a society has a role, and the sooner we learn to respect that, the sooner we can live in a more equitable society.

She also talked about how important it was to be creating a transformative counter narrative different from the one we have been taught (capitalist and based on domination). Stories are powerful - that is why cultural workers, who are slowly shifting mindsets on a major level, introducing new words and concepts via posters, stories, songs, etc - are so instrumental. The sooner more people see the world through a different lens, one that we have deliberately crafted, the sooner the world will actually become the way we envisioned it.

Why do we think punishment = justice?
Rachel spoke to us about the prison industrial complex: which is far beyond just prisons and police - it includes the whole machinery of punishment and surveillance that we accept as normal and necessary - militarized schools, depressed education system, unaffordable and inaccessible health care, normalized policing, etc.

From Angela Davis' article: "What then, would it mean, to imagine a system in which punishment is not allowed to become the source of corporate profit? How can we imagine a society in which race & class are not primary determinants of punishment? Or one in which punishment itself is no longer the central concern in the making of justice?" This last sentence is so crucial to think about - how often do we look at the doling out of justice solely in the terms of how heavily the perpetrator was punished? Does this bring back a murdered loved one? Does this actually ease someone's injuries from violence? Does this actually ever heal a community?

For anyone who might not instantly see how race & class are "primary determinants" of punishment, think about this: What's the difference between a "criminal" and a "lawbreaker"? Think of all the white middle class kids off smoking pot or doing acid or cocaine in their homes - are they "criminals" - then picture the black working class kids with a culture of hanging outside of the home - smoking pot - then ask yourself how easy it would be to call them "criminals" and watch them get arrested and sent through jails and probation. People are sent to prison, not so much because of the crimes they may have indeed committed, but largely because their communities have been criminalized.

The System is Not Broken
Rachel is fond of saying "The system is not broken; it is working perfectly doing exactly what it was built to do." This is deep. This is why reform of the "justice system" will never create a just society - so what we must do is abolish it completely and rebuild society to address issues in a totally different way. Another helpful quote from Angela Davis "The first step would be to let go of the desire to discover one single alternative system of punishment that would occupy the same footprint as the prison system." We need a holistic recreation of society that doesn't create the ills of poverty and racism that allows us to think we need a prison punishment system. Rachel talked about Critical Resistance's no compromise stance by saying we demand what we want, we don't settle for what we think we can get. The idea of the transformative counter narrative comes back here, as people are working to create a narrative of what holistic justice looks like, and this is the first step to making it a possibility. CR has a motto similar to Movement Generation's 3 prong approach: Change, Dismantle, Build.

Anti-Zionist Judaism
Sara was a powerful speaker who brought to light the truly elitist roots of Zionism and the need for Jewish resistance to Zionism. A piece of IJAN's work is looking to rescue the humanitarian, liberationist roots of Judaism from the racist, colonialist Zionist strains that dominates public understanding of Jews. Or as Ricardo Morales says "Self love in Jewish life requires displacing the ultra-nationalist cult that has hijacked Jewish public life and caused so much suffering."

In ways similar to how the brutalities of maintaining white supremacy has stripped many whites of their humanity, maintaining the racist apartheid of Zionism in Israel has stripped many Jews of their humanity. Sara read a really powerful quote from Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, that was shocking to hear

“Palestine cannot absorb the Jews of Europe. We want only the best of Jewish youth to come to us. We want only the educated to enter Palestine for the purpose of increasing its culture. The other Jews will have to stay where they are and face whatever fate awaits them. These millions of Jews are dust on the wheels of history and they may have to be blown away. We don’t want them pouring into Palestine. We don’t want Tel Aviv to become another low-grade ghetto.”

This said in 1938, in the midst of growing fascism and the soon to come Holocaust.

One of the articles we read, Lihish'tah'weel by Ricardo Levins Morales, laid out the argument that if Israel's purpose was to create a safe and secure homeland for Jews, it has not worked. The Zionist, racially defined society has not worked and will never work, and any moves towards a two-state solution where Jews have one place and Arab Palestinians have another will also not worked - this will always be apartheid which requires force to maintain. "No polity, no matter how well intentioned, can govern a system based on racial privilege without becoming reactionary."

Making the Road by Walking
Chela spoke to us about INCITE!'s work and their commitment to using consensus based collective models, even on a national scale. Though there are many difficulties in working this way, remaining true to their ideals is extremely important. In speaking of the slowness of building a new world based on consensus, and the frustration that can bring up in real life organizing, she said "When you are making the road by walking, it's hard to run." Wow. Think about that for a while. If the work you are doing is truly groundbreaking, truly pioneering, it will be slow hard work.

Two more articles that were in this weeks reading packet were:

Love & Community
bell hooks' "love as the practice of freedom" which boils down to the fact that domination is built upon suffering and liberation is built upon love. "The absence of a sustained focus on love in progressive circles arise from a collective failure to acknowledge the needs of the spirit and an overdetermined emphasis on material concerns." She talks a bunch about the levels of despair created by the current system and how draining that is for everyone. She quotes Joanna Macy, " the energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies."

I think to how many of my closest friends and companeros that have been lost to depression and addictions and are no longer able to be active in the struggle for liberation. bell also says that "in choosing love we also choose to live in community, and that means that we do not have to change by ourselves." this is so relieving, to not carry the weight of transforming the world as individuals. I can be part of a collective process, where the workload is manageable, and together we will get somewhere. This I think to me is why I crave working in collective so deeply - it is easier and more nourishing.

Last Thing! La Mestiza
We read this awesome, beautifully written article by Gloria Anzaldua called "La conciencia de la mestiza - towards a new consciousness." It wove together crafted myth and poetry and political reality. The main thing I got out was the power of mixed blood people to be creating new ways of thinking that synthesize the contradictions of different racial & cultural beliefs. "In our very flesh, (r)evolution works out the clash of cultures. It makes us crazy constantly, but if the center holds, we've made some kind of evolutionary step forward." She speaks of alchemy, morphing, crossroads, borderlands, synthesis, transformation - the creation of something that is more than the sum of its parts. Like the way that transgendered people have created an understanding of gender that supersedes the binary system, and in doing so, liberates all from the oppressive implications of binary gendered socialization.

It is people at the crossroads of race, of gender, of sexuality, of class - that have the broadest range of experience, and thus are best posed to lead us all into liberation.

Assimilation into Whiteness in our Own Family Lines

“The great force of human history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do…It is to history we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations. And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this. In great pain and terror one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is and shaped one’s point of view. In great pain and terror because, therefore one enters into battle with that more historical creation, oneself, and attempts to recreate, oneself according to a principle more humane and more liberating, one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power and also changes history.” - James Baldwin, “White Man’s Guilt” 1965

Here's some hot quotes from this sessions readings:

• "A hostile posture toward resident blacks must be struck at the Americanizing door before it will open." - Toni Morrison, speaking of how immigrants are only assimilated into whiteness (and gain white privilege) once they learn to hate and mistreat blacks.
• "White men - from Norway, were they were Norwegians [not white people] - became white: by slaughtering the cattle, poisoning the wells, torching the houses, massacring Native Americans, raping Black women. This moral erosion has made it quite impossible for those who think of themselves as white to have any moral authority at all." - James Baldwin
  

Jewish Assimiliation
There were a few articles that looked at the specific case of Jewish assimilation into whiteness - in Europe, Jews were the "dark" ethnic minority subject to centuries of discrimination, slavery, and genocide. Come to the U.S., the community at large opted to become white and participate in racism against Blacks and other people of color, just as now it is the Zionist Jews who are oppressing the Arab Palestinian on the basis of race.
__________________________________________________________________

The buildup for this week was extensive: we were asked to spend some time investigating our family histories - not just genealogy, but trying to put our ancestors lives into context. As we are all white, we know thatmostly our families came as immigrants from Europe. Why did they come? What challenges did they face as immigrants? What jobs/roles were open to them? What were their social networks?

Family Tree
I personally got caught up in climbing my family tree - tapping into online genealogy resources that helped you fill out your tree based on work others had done, as well as connecting you to primary sources - such as census records, land grants, newspapers, etc. (I did this thru ancestry.com, which is expensive but gives a free 2 week trial so I spent all my free time those two weeks really digging in.) I found tons of interesting things, such as the Spanish land grant proving one of my ancestors' title to land in Florida from 1816, stories of the first Purvis (John Purvis) coming to the colonies in the mid 1600s, confederate pension records of another ancestor, etc. I also talked to my grandma a bunch who shared stories and photos, like the gem to the left, which is my great-grandfather, maybe around 1916, with the ginormous tomatoes from the family farm. I learned that the German side of my family, which immigrated in the late 1800s, came over as Lutherans who wanted to escape conscription into the military. From then on, the Lutheran community was their main support network - which ends, on my lineage, with my mom.

Half of me was overjoyed to feel long roots in Florida, the other half was left with questions about how my family and their communities figured in to the Seminole Wars and the civil war. One of my g-g-g-grandpas was definitely on civil war confederate pensions, but said that he served home duty. I really wanted to uncover something that showed where my ancestors stood on the issues of slavery and native genocide - participants? slaveholders? economically locked out? passive bystanders? resistors? - but I didn't find anything that revealing.

During the actual session, we got together in small groups based on where in Europe our principal ancestry descends from, and just talked about our families and what we learned in our research.

Why Study your Family History?
Why did Catalyst put Family History in the Braden program? It is a deliberate strategy to fight the assimilationist force in the US by understanding the different cultures our ancestors came from. Our ancestors were not culture-less - that is part of the myth of whiteness. The process of becoming white goes hand in hand with loss and dehumanization, brokenness, violence - this is the legacy of white supremacy. But whiteness was deliberately created to break unity which means that it can also be deliberately dismantled. People have resisted and tried to reclaim history/culture (including ourselves). We can create a cultural shift which leads to social and economic shifts.

The questions we ended the session with was this: What's it going to take for white people to see ending white supremacy in our self interest? And what role are we going to play in making that happen?