SURJ ROC is proud to announce the following workshops for July!
Quick links here (further descriptions below):
- Writing to Heal (register for both sessions)
- Building Racial Justice through Allyship
- Enacting Accompliceship: A Discussion of D-L Stewart and Bettina Love
- Responding to Racist Remarks
Writing to Heal July 15 and 22, 10am – 12pm
Racism not only creates trauma but derives from trauma for all involved. If we want to become fully functioning human beings, we need to heal from the trauma. Part One of this workshop will offer an understanding of what trauma does to the brain and nervous system, how the body can get safe enough to repair itself, and how writing can help. Writing will include lists, sentence stems, narratives, and poetry, along with a discussion of how writing forms can contribute to safety.
In Part One, we’ll share in writing exercises to explore self, family, and history. We’ll distinguish between our survival patterns and our authentic selves. In Part Two we’ll examine the development of our awareness of race and racism, and the connection between our survival patterns and acts of racism. We’ll get more acquainted with the parts of ourselves we’ve left behind, and look forward to our next steps as anti-racists.
Goals:
- To learn what it takes to get racism out of our bodies
- To have writing resources available to process the effects of trauma and racism
- To remove blame, shame and guilt and replace it with truth, authentic feelings, and empowerment
- To create community among people of all colors in the journey of personal as well as societal transformation
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/writing-to-heal-from-racism-tickets-111556783342
Building Racial Justice Through Allyship July 16 7-9pm
Description: Understanding differences and ourselves is a life-long learning journey central to building authentic cross-racial relationships. In this workshop participants will receive a framework for dismantling the unnatural divisions we have inherited across racial differences. A climate free of blame, shame and guilt will be established in order to create a supportive and challenging learning community. The framework introduced in the workshop addresses three critical elements for creating change on diversity: 1) dissatisfaction with the status quo; 2) an inclusive and sustainable vision for what can be; and 3) a process for getting there. This framework will serve as a foundation for catalyzing personal change that supports the development of authentic, inclusive organizations and communities.
Goals:
- To increase understanding of racial justice by identifying and learning more about group membership and identities.
- To develop a common language for talking about power, privilege, and difference.
- To examine how institutional and personal practices maintain racial inequities among people and prevent us all from reaching our full potential.
- To identify practical strategies for implementing and facilitating change collectively.
- To build alliances and networks
A link to the Zoom meeting will be sent out shortly before the meeting begins.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/building-racial-justice-through-allyship-tickets-111557332986
Enacting Accompliceship: A Discussion of D-L Stewart and Bettina Love July 18 3-5pm
Description: There has been a push by BLM and other racial justice and Black liberation activists for white people to move from a position of verbal and intellectual allyship to a more active position of solidarity in the Movement for Black Lives, often referred to as co-conspiratorship or accompliceship. It is important for white people to think about various ways we can invest in Black lives and work in true solidarity with people of color. What does it mean to act in conspiracy with? What kinds of trust and self-knowledge are required for becoming an accomplice to the work? For this workshop we ask participants to read chapter 5 of Dr. Bettina Love’s We Want to Do More Than Survive* and watch Dr. D-L Stewart’s 2018 UNT Diversity Conference keynote talk on moving from allyship to accompliceship (citation below), and to come with questions about what Stewart and Love have to say, ideas about what accompliceship and co-conspiracy might look like, barriers to achieving a practice of anti-racist solidarity with Movement leaders, and goals for your own movement toward accompliceship and co-conspiracy.
Goals:
- To develop shared understandings of the critiques of some forms of white allyship by activists of color.
- To create a list of strategies for enacting accompliceship or co-conspiracy.
- To discuss our own barriers to working in full solidarity with people of color, and strategies for breaking those barriers down or shifting how we perceive them to function.
- To build a collective set of actions toward accompliceship that we can support each other in and hold each other accountable to.
A link to the Zoom meeting will be sent out shortly before the meeting begins.
Stewart, D-L, Hobson, K. & Attar, N. (2018) Equity and Diversity Conference – Dr. Dafina-Lazarus (DL) Stewart, Social Justice Speaker, video, February 22, 2018; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1152244/: accessed April 7, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting University of North Texas.
*Here is a link to a list of Black owned bookstores from LitHub:
Responding to Racist Remarks July 29 7-9pm
This workshop is designed to give participants an approach for dealing with racists remarks by family members, strangers, friends, colleagues and others. It acknowledges that the flood of emotions that sometimes occur in these situations may limit the full range of responses we could have.
Participants learn a process and then practice real situations so that in the future they can increase their ability to respond effectively without hostility or condescension.
A link to the Zoom meeting will be sent out shortly before the meeting begins.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/responding-to-racist-remarks-tickets-111558175506
I am thankful these are being offered to a larger community. This is a long time coming and certainly would have been helpful when I was a Chaplain in a Woman’s prison.
Will these be offered again? I am finding that my calendar conflicts with most of these dates
Yes! We’re still working out dates, but most of these will run again in August, and likely beyond that as well. All the facilitators are volunteers, so it’s somewhat dependent on whether we have the right folks available.
If you join our mailing list, we will definitely be announcing workshops through that channel as well.