Hey Occupy!

Please join us for an amazing opportunity -
OCCUPY WHITE PRIVILEGE: Anti-Racist Organizing to Build the 99% Movement

* A full-day teach-in offered to Occupy activists by Sonoma County Racial Justice Allies *

WHEN: Saturday, April 14 – 9:30am-5pm
WHERE: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall, 547 Mendocino Avenue, Santa Rosa

Learn how to see and confront racism and white privilege within Occupy so as to build a dynamic, powerful, and effective movement for social justice that really includes the 99%.

Racial Justice Allies’ mission is to create a space where white people explore and take responsibility for racism and white privilege, develop anti-racist identities and practices, and work as allies for racial justice. Everyone is welcome to this work!

Event details, the schedule and the workshop descriptions are listed below. Please contact Judy Helfand at helfand@well.com for more information.

* Cost is FREE! Donations appreciated.

* Bring your lunch and enough to share if you can. Bring your own plate and utensils.

* Childcare is available – but must be requested in advance! If interested, please contact Sairy Franks at sairyfranks@gmail.com

* Please commit to staying for the whole teach-in.

SCHEDULE
10:00 – 10:30 Welcome and get to know each other (Doors open at 9:30. Please come early!)

10:30 – 12:00 Session I: Whiteness 101 (see description below)

12:00 – 12:45 Lunch. Bring enough to share if you can, and your own plate and utensils.

12:45 – 2:15 Session II: Institutional Racism OR Intersecting Oppressions (see descriptions below)

2:15 – 2:30 Break

2:30 – 3:45 Session III: Being an Ally OR Race and Class (see descriptions below)

4:00 – 5:00 Where do we go from here? Applying the work.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS:

Whiteness 101: Explore what it means to be white in a white-supremacist system. See how white folks can move easily through this system without needing to acknowledge how it throws up daily obstacles to people of color. And consider what we ALL lose personally and as a community.
Presenters: Chad Bolla and Judy Helfand

Intersecting Oppressions: Important social justice movements have been weakened by activists focusing on a single oppression and failing to acknowledge or understand the other ways in which their colleagues & allies have been targeted for oppression. How can we help prevent this in the Occupy movement? How do our individual intersecting identities inform our anti-racist work?
Presenters: Christopher Bowers and Adrienne Lauby

Institutional Racism: As we seek to transform institutions of oppression and inequality in our society, a thorough comprehension of institutional racism is vital to the integrity of the change that we bring about. This workshop seeks to deepen our understanding of racism as a structural and institutional mechanism, not merely an interpersonal dynamic. This understanding will ground our discussions of race in the reality of how systemic racism shapes the lives of people of color, and how we might ally ourselves with transforming the deeply-rooted structure of racism in how our society functions.
Presenters: Linell Hardy and Irene Southworth

Being a Racial Justice Ally: Being an ally for racial justice can take on many different and often complex forms, and there is no blueprint for how to do it. Transformational allyship takes place in the inner life, interpersonal life, and our outer work of change and activism. Furthermore, allyship is not a place that we arrive to, but an ongoing process of accountability, growth, and compassion. This workshop intends to provide a framework for doing the personal and intimate work of working against racism in ourselves and our communities, and in so doing create a space where we can share and learn from our experiences as we grow to embody true allyship and solidarity in movement building here in Sonoma County and beyond.
Presenters Maureen Purtill and Irene Southworth

Race and Class: Is it possible to create economic justice without also working for racial justice? This workshop examines the relationship between race and socioeconomic class.
Presenters Adrienne Lauby and Carl Patrick

Sponsored by the Free School and Community Wellness Working Groups of Occupy Santa Rosa. We’ll see you there!