How oppression shows up in labor and work of all forms and varieties.
As the winter solstice passes, we at White Noise Collective are engaged in the beloved tradition of taking stock of our past year, expressing gratitude for what we have made possible given all that we hold, letting go of that which no longer serves us, and making space for new ways to breathe life into our movements for racial and gender justice.… Read more
Re-posting this excellent blog by Felicia Gustin of SURJ. Upcoming events also include: 7/2 Families Belong Together – Block ICE and Banner making: Stop ICE Family Separation
We are all feeling outrage over the cruel and inhumane immigration policies that separate families at the border. Trump’s Executive Order is a smokescreen, a distraction, and we have to keep up the pressure.… Read more
This blog post is written in response to comments and discussion generated at the February 2018 White Noise Collective dialogue, which examined the themes of “Emotional Labor and Difficult Conversations about Race and Gender”. I am grateful to the participants for their frank, vulnerable, and honest conversation. See our website for the guiding questions and suggested readings for the dialogue.… Read more
Wow, another year has passed, and a new year lies ahead. For many of us, and those of you who participated in our offerings this year, it was an exceptionally challenging and painful year. However, as we came together to reflect on 2017 and vision for 2018 and beyond, we couldn’t help but feel proud about all we — as a small, all-volunteer collective — have accomplished this year:
Carrying on our steady tradition of using dialogue as political practice, we convened eleven dialogues this year. … Read more
As part of our annual end-of-year tradition, the White Noise Collective core met in early December to reflect on 2016 — our accomplishments, failures, and growth as a collective — in order to compost old projects and germinate new ones for the year to come.
Chapters – White Noise Collective is National!… Read more
This is to express our gratitude to everyone who showed up at The Future of Solidarity, organized livestream viewings across the country, helped share the event, and made the evening so powerful through your deep presence, open hearts and warm connections. With over 600 people gathered, it was the most amazing turnout we could have hoped for!
At the beginning of December the White Noise Collective core met to examine our experiences from 2015 and envision new intentions for the coming year. How quickly yet another year has passed, full of new growing edges, community building, core transitions, and ever-deepening practices. Reflecting on our intentions from our past retreat, it is powerful to witness how the past year was indeed full of manifestation of so much intention: direct action organizing, a new presence on twitter (that we are still co-evolving with), maintaining an action listserve, some beautifully juicy and complex community dialogues, a new dialogue space specifically for movement activists, and two newly developed workshops – one on the role of white women in upholding, maintaining, and subverting systems of violence and the other, that we offered twice this year on Difficult Conversations.… Read more
This piece is by longtime educator and social justice practitioner Tilman Smith, published on Dr. Shakti Butler’s World Trust site (a phenomenal resource for racial justice educators). Her articulation of the intersection of whiteness and femaleness deeply resonates with White Noise in this ongoing work to critically examine and courageously shake up the ways in which, as Smith so clearly expresses,
… Read more
In our struggles to take down white supremacy and patriarchy, we must each heal the ways we have internalized these systems of oppression. Otherwise, we end up recreating them — even in our liberation movements. This healing means different things to different people. We write this piece in particular for those of us who identify at what we often call the intersection of race privilege and gender(ed) oppression.… Read more
Rachel Dolezal Isn’t the Most Important Race Story in Spokane.
But she does seem to be an unraveling puzzle that continues to elicit curiosity, outrage, and comment. From Mia McKenzie’s discussion of Blackness and Blackface, to Kai M Green’s willingness to give Rachel a little more benefit of the doubt in discussing the similarities of race and gender constructs, to Lisa Marie Rollins’ explanation of what transracial actually means, plenty has been said already.… Read more
Thank you for taking the time to read this. This letter was written by white allies in support of certain Native members of our community who have already put a lot of time and energy into trying to explain why it’s a problem when people without Native/First Nations heritage use the term “Two Spirit” to describe themselves.… Read more
Police Brutality Action Kit, cross posted with permission from: showingupforracialjustice.org/archives/2016
Created by Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
Click here for a PDF version of this toolkit.
By Tes One
Artwork used with permission.
Showing up for Racial Justice(SURJ) was formed in 2009 by white people from across the US to respond to the significant increase of targeting and violence against people of color in the aftermath of the election of Barack Obama. … Read more
As Mother’s Day approaches, the White Noise Collective is once again faced with more questions than answers about this national holiday with a rich but forgotten history. We all agree that the current mainstream celebration of Mother’s Day — adorned with endless plastic, fuzzy and floral ways to express your annual appreciation to your mother — are at best a capitalist co-optation of a holiday that was originally meant for a completely different purpose.… Read more
In late January 2014, for the first time since our birth in 2009, the entire current White Noise Collective core met for a full weekend retreat in coastal Northern California. The blissful sunshine, gentle wind, and migrating whales inspired a weekend of tough questions, deep introspection, big dreams, new plans, and renewed commitments. … Read more