Dialogue Archives – WHITE NOISE COLLECTIVE

Every invitation we’ve sent out from 2011-2021 with a description of the dialogue theme, food for thought prompts and materials to check out, are all present here.

While many of the themes from the monthly dialogues are represented in our blog posts, those posts rarely include all of what was discussed. Find the notes here from each dialogue raw and uncut. We share them (with names and identifiers omitted) in an effort to be accountable and transparent to our larger community, accessible for those who are not able to attend, and saved as archive to return to and draw from.

December 2021: Generating liberatory belonging in white anti-racist cultural spaces

Description/Guiding Questions: “If America is to grow out of white-body supremacy, the transformation must largely be led by white Americans. This transformation cannot rely primarily on new laws, policies, procedures, standards, and strategies. We’ve already seen how these are no match for culture. For genuine transformation to take place, white Americans must acknowledge their racialized trauma, move through clean pain, and grow up.” ~Resmaa Menakem, “Whiteness without White Supremacy” from My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, p. 262 “White people in this country have quite enough to […]

May 2021: On the Abolition Path

Reflection prompts: Let’s come together to deepen our shared understandings of visionary Black-led abolition movements, expand the limits of our abolitionist imaginations, and recognize the ways that race, class and gender influence our understandings of safety and punishment. What questions are we each sitting with in the wake of the Chauvin verdict and how it relates to calls for justice and accountability? How are people defining justice and accountability in relation to police indictments? How do we reckon with the system that is guilty, that is not put on trial, that was designed to secure […]

March 2021: Reflect, Recalibrate, Recommit

While 2021 is racing out of the gates, let’s take a moment to pause. What are the lessons we want to learn from 2020, from the past 4 years of 45, from Freedom Summer, the fight to defend our decaying democracy, the many ways we’ve adapted to pandemic living, grieving and loving, what is (im)possible, dreamable, doable? Let’s take time to gather together to support critical and compassionate reflection on how we are finding our ground in shifting political landscapes, the relationship between inner and outer work, and what fortifies us for the ongoing work […]

Sept 2020: STRATEGIZING FOR NOVEMBER – BUILDING POWER IN A FRACTURED TIME

these times are beyond words. the loss of so much that is sacred. the seemingly irreparable political divides in our country and world. the brazen abuses of power by the state. and on top of it all, a pandemic virus that makes it dangerous to hold our loved ones dear; to grieve and cry and scheme and strategize and build and push and breath and simply be together. this may sound silly, but i think often of an iron and wine lyric: “they say time may give you more than your poor bones could ever […]

July 2020: Solidarity with Black and Indigenous Resistance, Mass Uprising and Collective Liberation: Rooting and Rising in this Political Moment

Guiding Questions: What is unimaginable one day becomes imaginable the next, and mandatory the next. These last many months have proved that change is not only possible, but can be swift and unrelenting, including in our movements for liberation. We have demonstrated that when there is a mass will or need, major shifts are possible. We have witnessed this in recent months, with huge victories in the Movement for Black Lives, and in Indigenous organizing. It is within the realm of possibility to stop all evictions, to shut down the factories that are directly causing […]

May 2020: Navigating white saviorism and urgency in times of pandemic: revisiting themes of Tema Okun’s “White Supremacy Culture” towards collective liberation

Guiding Framing and Questions: Scholar Tema Okun’s article “White Supremacy Culture” makes conscious attitudes and behaviors in organizations and individuals that perpetuate white supremacy. As we as a collective think and feel into this moment, we are called to return to particular themes in her work to better ground us in vision and action. In particular, we are interested in considering 2 themes emerging as patterns in this time: “sense of urgency” and “white saviorism”. Whether or not you are familiar with Okun’s work, or these particular terms, we invite you into dialogue with us. […]

April 2020: Culture, Family, Land and Self: How We Respond in Times of Crisis

Description: The future is not an escapist place to occupy. All of it is the inevitable result of what we do today, and the more we take it in our hands, imagine it as a place of justice… the more the future knows we want it, and that we aren’t letting go. adrienne maree brown As we continue within the conditions of our new physical, social and political reality, every day reveals a little more about individual and collective patterns under pressure. But where are these patterns coming from, what are their exact shapes and […]

March 2020: Mutual Aid in Uncertain Times

Guiding Questions: What is unimaginable one day becomes imaginable the next, and mandatory the next. We have demonstrated that when there is a mass will or need, major shifts are possible. It is within the realm of possibility to stop all evictions, to shut down the factories that are directly causing polluted cities. Whose will and whose imagination will be enacted? What forces are shaping our imaginations right now? Beyond the next three weeks, what are our notions of “normal”? What does it mean to “get back” to a “normal” that has already been disastrous? […]

February 2020: Disrupting and Transforming the Medical Industrial Complex

This dialogue will include a presentation on the historic roots of the MIC which has given rise to the racialized medical ableism we currently face. We’ll also discuss the HJC’s current work, including its launch of the US’s 1st national Medical Abuse Hotline and Know Your Medical Rights campaign. The presentation will be followed by open discussion and resource sharing to connect people with ways to support the revolutionary work for health justice, especially at the intersections of disability and climate justice. Questions we will explore together: How do we define medical abuse, medical injustice […]

Nov 2019: Therapy for Whiteness

Dialogue description: Whiteness is characterized by unconsciousness, silence, extreme escapism, polarization, navel-gazing, projection, superiority/inferiority binary worldview, and protective attachments to “goodness”. The construction of whiteness is profoundly pathological and has caused immeasurable suffering, yet it is not in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). This dialogue is an invitation to spend some time together diving into the waters of whiteness, its implications in therapy, and ways that the lenses, skills, sensitivities, and capacities from therapy and anti-racist practice can mutually inform each other. Food for thought prompts: If whiteness was a client/patient, […]

September 2019 White Noise Dialogue: Pleasure Activism, Climate Chaos and Building the Irresistible “Yes”

WNC Sept 2019 Dialogue Pleasure Activism, Climate Chaos and Building the Irresistible “Yes” Description: “Ultimately, pleasure activism is us learning to make justice and liberation the most pleasurable experiences we can have on this planet” – adrienne maree brown During this dialogue we want to push ourselves to tie the intelligence of the body to the actual shaping of our everyday realities, especially in the face of climate catastrophe. What does the sensation of pleasure have to teach us about how we can structure our societies, live into our relationships, and relate to non-human beings […]

August 2019: The Use and Misuse of Identity Politics

Description: In this time of blatant white supremacy, leftist social movements feel under-resourced, fractured, and on the defensive. While identity politics and identity based organizing have been critical to winning material gains for specific groups since the Civil Rights era, is it time to think beyond identity politics in our organizing and movement spaces? What does (and has) identity politics offer(ed) our social justice movements more broadly, and specifically here in political climate of the Bay Area? In what ways do our identities inform our political engagements, and how have identity politics stifled or ignited […]

July 2019 WNC Dialogue: Reproduction and Nurturing Life

Dialogue Description: In this time of intensified attacks on reproductive rights, safety and sovereignty, we invite you to join us for our July dialogue that will explore the theme of reproduction and care for life from diverse perspectives. What is the relationship between reproductive rights and reproductive justice? In the face of the abortion bans and attacks on trans and gender variant access to reproductive health care, what forms of solidarity and care exist to defend (and expand) access and choice? For those who are not parents of biological humans in this lifetime, what does reproduction of conditions […]

June 2019 WNC Dialogue: Transforming White Fragility towards Collective Liberation

Dialogue Description: White Fragility is defined by scholar Robin DiAngelo as “A state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation (2011).” In this dialogue, we would like to grapple with the many questions alive for us about white fragility in this political moment. With the rise of this term ‘white fragility’ in popular consciousness, especially with DiAngelo’s recent book, we […]

May 2019: Collective Memory and National Narratives

May 2019 WNC Dialogue: Collective Memory and National Narratives Dialogue Description: Collective memory is the memory of a group of people, passed from one generation to the next. Those groups could be families or entire nations. How do these groups form collective memories, and how do collective memories–of an event, a history, or a narrative–form groups? How do these memories shift over time, how are they different from one group to another, and how do these collective memories reflect or reify existing power structures? What action or affective stances do collective memories demand? In this […]

April 2019 WNC Dialogue: Words We Use & Words That Use Us

Dialogue Description: Language is a form of power. It can create inclusion and exclusion, shared understandings and alienating activist insularity, dehumanize and (re)humanize, be used to “other” people and used as part of self-determination and self-naming. Language, whether drawing on common terms to mobilize people, subverting and reappropriating words and labels, or creating new words to name new meanings, identities and realities, is always an integral force of social change efforts. In this dialogue we will marinate in the power, liberating potentials and dangers of words we use and words that use us. What do new terms help make possible? What language are people and movements creating? What issues or discomfort arise? How do we strive to keep social justice terms alive in their meanings to connect and uplift and reframe, and work against them becoming empty or alienating jargon? Join us in dialogue as we explore these questions for ourselves individually and collectively. Some prompts for thought: I Prefer That You Say I'm "Disabled" Why you should stop saying "all lives matter" explained in 9 different ways

March 2019 WNC Dialogue: Carceral Feminism — Whiteness, Gender Violence and the Rise of the Prison System

From the murder of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin to Dylan Roof who, when opening fire on a Charleston Black church said, “Y’all are raping our white women. Y’all are taking over the world”, how has “white women’s” sexual purity been weaponized to criminalize Black men? How has the rise of the #MeToo movement bolstered the prison system in the name of stopping sexual violence? How does this racist protectionism encompass or exclude different white women, including fat, disabled, poor, neurodivergent, transwomen or gender nonconforming people? What are the consequences on the lives of targeted […]

February 2019: Finding a Political Home in Frightening Times

Dialogue Description: How do we navigate the sense of existential dread and overwhelming despair of these times? How can we begin to think strategically about what is needed in this moment, and specifically from us given our positions in the worlds we navigate, when nothing feels like enough? Where are the political spaces that make our yearning for freedom and wellness come to life? If they don’t exist, how can we create them? For some prompting resources, check out: 8 Lessons from The Future of Solidarity: How White People can support the Movement for Black […]

October 2018 WNC Dialogue: Joyful Militancy Book Club

Join us for our October dialogue, our annual book club, this year focusing on the new, visionary and creative analysis of Nick Montgomery and carla bargman in JoyfulMilitancy: “A basic premise of this book is that resistance and transformation are always in the making at the margins, while Empire is always adapting and reacting (25). …No matter what, things can be otherwise — there is always wiggle room. Uncertainty is where we need to begin, because experimentation and curiosity is part of what has been stolen from us (33).” Our dialogue will be guided by the following questions from Joyful Militancy: What […]

August 2018: Electoral Politics – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Dialogue Description: There are as many opinions about the merits of electoral politics as there are political ideologies. While many progressives are already pushing hard in battle ground areas, we know many other leftist communities won’t even consider electoral politics as a conversation starter. The debate about electoral politics is fundamentally one of strategy. As Chris Crass wrote, “For anarchists, voting and electoral politics spark intense debate because they bring fundamental questions to the surface. How do we believe revolutionary transformation happens? How do we build movement? Where does power come from? How do we […]

July 2018: Desirability Politics, Worthiness and Belonging

Dialogue Description: What does it mean to be attracted to someone or to find someone desirable? How do we know a person is beautiful? How are our attractions, both sexual and otherwise, shaped and influenced? What messages have white supremacy and patriarchy, alongside cisheterosexism, femme-phobia, fat-phobia, ageism and ableism directed at us about worth and belonging in our relationships? How does desirability influence your own sense of worth, your relationship to your body and relationship to others? How are desirability politics playing out for us in this moment of increased violence directed at multiply marginalized communities, especially trans women of color and immigrants? Join us in dialogue as we explore these questions, and others, in an exploration of how race, gender, and desirability impact and complicate our lives.

May 2018: Not Othering Our Ancestors

Dialogue Description: As the US grapples and often fails to meaningfully reckon with its history, what does it mean for us to reckon with our own familial and collective histories? What place do different forms of memory work have in anti-racist practice? How can we support each other to challenge the historic amnesia in the process of different European immigrant groups assimilating into whiteness and learning to uphold white supremacy? Which ancestors do we know about, from any generation – who are we ashamed of, proud of, curious about? Who do we turn away from, and […]

April 2018: Solidarity, Survival, Risk and Privilege

Dialogue Description: What does solidarity look like when our racial justice movement leaders are being labeled as terrorists and targeted by the FBI as “Black Identity Extremists” – in a way that hearkens back to the vilification and oppression of the Black Panther Party and other movement leaders? What does “security” and “community defense” really look like in an era of doxing, gun violence, increasingly militarized police, surveillance, and the arming of teachers? How do we continue to stay engaged in the struggle and cultivate resilience (as opposed to fragility and fear) in ourselves, our communities, and […]

March 2018: Spiritual Bypass and Racial Justice Accountability

Dialogue Description: Spiritual bypassing “is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs. Aspects of spiritual bypassing include exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive, anger-phobia… and delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being.” How does spiritual bypassing show up in obvious and subtle ways to undermine our understanding of and response to racial and gender injustice? Do our pursuits of a solid spiritual ground ever keep us from accessing honest emotional or behavioral responses to oppression, our […]

February 2018: Emotional Labor and Difficult Conversations Around Race and Gender

Dialogue Description: What messages have white supremacy and patriarchy directed at us about emotional labor in interpersonal relationships? Do you feel challenged navigating differences across race and gender where emotional labor is expected or warranted? Do you find yourself struggling to identify and maintain boundaries with colleagues, friends, housemates, community members, partners, or family when it comes to having difficult conversations about race, gender, and other lived experiences? Join us in dialogue as we explore these questions, and others, in an exploration of how race, gender, and emotional labor impact and complicate our lives. Some […]

January 2018: Race, Gender and #MeToo

Dialogue Description: #MeToo has galvanized millions of people globally to name and explore issues of sexual violence over these past months. Founded by Tarana Burke, #MeToo has also visibilized long-standing dynamics about whose narratives of victimhood and survivorhood are believed, and whose are challenged. How do we mobilize in this movement moment to address gendered violence, building for accountability and collective liberation? How can we push to organize beyond exclusively white, middle class cis-women issues and towards intersectional racial justice in our work to end sexual violence? How do we hold complexity and recognize possibility in decentralized, online campaigns […]

December 2017: Tis the White Savior Complex Time of Year

Dialogue Description: While people typically think of the White Savior Complex playing out in the arenas of international development, voluntourism and thelatest Hollywood blockbuster, we recognize that it is critical to slow down and ask ourselves – what are the boundaries of whitesaviorhood that surround my life? Whether its our non-profit jobs, our fundraising efforts or even our radical organizing work, how do we or those around us perpetuate a savior dynamic? What are the impacts on individuals and communities of color in the fallout of these actions, both obvious and subtle? What does true solidarity look like? How do people with White or light-skin privilege take bold action and risk for […]

November 2017: Climate Change, Environmental Racism and Responding to (Un)natural Disasters

Dialogue Description: Recent natural disasters of wind, water and fire have been brutally extreme in degree and frequency – weekly wakes of immeasurable devastation through communities, homes, ecosystems and lives. In times of severe crisis and long, slow recovery, how can we strengthen community responses and resilience? How can we simultaneously resist ways that corporate and governmental powers can exploit shock for development gain? When disasters strike close to home or at home, how can we connect our heartbreak and concern to more distant realities (made distant by geography and by racism) of communities who […]

October 2017: Building a Culture of Resistance to State Repression

Dialogue Description: In this time of increased surveillance and state repression of dissent, how can we prepare and protect ourselves, our communities, and our movements while maintaining and fortifying our resistance? What can we learn from historic precedents of state repression to inform how we act today? What patterns common to folks socialized as white and female/genderqueer/trans/queer may make us and our movements more vulnerable to state repression, and how we can interrupt these patterns? Join us to explore principles and best practices for racial justice activists in the face of state repression. Suggested readings/resources: […]

September 2017: Rising to the Moment: Reflecting and Growing for the Long Haul

Dialogue Description: The political landscape is shifting quickly now, and we want our September dialogue to reflect and hold space for this movement. From the recent white supremacist mobilizations to climate injustice to DACA, this is a brutal time, an extension of the ongoing violence targeting marginalized communities and the earth. Amidst all these shifting forces, how do we stay centered and clear in our long term vision? How do we get precise with our actions, and stay connected? What pulls us away from trust and interdependence, and how do we grow our skills to move towards dignity […]

August 2017: Examining Settler Colonialism

Dialogue Description: In anticipation of the upcoming powerful panel discussion “Living on Ohlone Land”, this dialogue will explore how structures of white supremacy and patriarchy contribute to settler colonialism in our lives and in the Bay Area. How do our desires to feel rooted, grounded, and at home on stolen land impact our commitments to movements for indigenous sovereignty? In what ways do we perpetuate and/or resist narratives of settler colonialism? How are indigenous struggles connected to our other social and racial justice activism, organizing, paid and unpaid work? Suggested Readings: Contemporary Ohlone History, Sogorea Te’ Land […]

July 2017: “No More Heroes: Grassroots Challenges to the Savior Mentality” — a book group

Dialogue Description: Why do so many people with privilege end up making things worse when they try to help? How can a person with privilege challenge systems of injustice without playing into the savior mentality? In what ways does our culture create and celebrate saviors, and how does this infiltrate our movements? These are questions posed in this book, which we will dive into in this dialogue. We will also try to go further than the content of the book and add some perspective on the ways gendered dynamics play into these questions. Suggested readings: You […]

June 2017: White Feminists and the Use of Intersectionaility: Critiques from Feminists of Color

Dialogue Description: In this movement moment, the term intersectionality has entered increasingly into popular consciousness. In this dialogue, we offer a space to reflect on the histories and ongoing formation of the term, centering Black feminist thought. As a collective focused around questions and complexities we often talk about as ‘the intersections of gendered oppression and white privilege’, we want to investigate our own uses of intersectionality, paying attention to possibilities of co-optation and appropriation. Some key questions: In this time of increasing politicization, with many white feminists utilizing intersectionality as a framework, how can we […]

May 2017: “Ethics of All-White Racial Justice Spaces” with SF SURJ and STAND

Joint dialogue with SF Bay Area SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) and STAND (Standing Together and Nurturing Dissent) White Men for Racial, Gender and Economic Justice Dialogue Description: We know that part of overcoming white supremacy is doing away with binaries and the right/wrong dichotomy. And, still, it can feel challenging to do this and to know how to stay accountable to what can sometimes feel like opposing guidelines from the people of color and frontline movement organizers that we try to center as white- or light-skinned activists fighting for racial justice. In this […]

March 2017: Cross-Class Organizing in the Era of Trump

Dialogue Description: There is so much to dig into around the role of class, race, and gender in the construction of our current political moment. Join us as we begin to ask big questions about class oppression and its role in current and historic social justice movements. What does it mean to engage in cross-class organizing in the Bay Area? How can our movements better support working class leadership in these times, and what are the roles for white working class leadership in dismantling racial, class, and gendered oppression? How might we be re-creating classism […]

February 2017: Building an Intersectional Feminist Movement beyond the Pink Hat

Dialogue Description: In this movement moment when millions of white cis-women are becoming mobilized and radicalized in opposition to Trump, how can we push the movement to organize beyond white middle class cis-women issues and towards racial justice? What common and historical patterns of white feminism should we make conscious and disrupt — now and for the long haul? As a collective, we have particularly investigated how “white womanhood” is used to justify systems and patterns of harm especially against POC, while also holding space for our queer and TGNC experiences in that conversation. How […]

January 2017: Challenges, Resistances, and Mutual Aid in a Time of Fascism

Dialogue Description: Here we are at the start of unpresidented 2017, after the largest inaugural protest in US history, joined by marches around the world. Community organizing and outreach is happening in every state as people prepare for the worst, brace for scary realities on the horizon and work to keep them at bay. This is also a time when many are humbly realizing how much we have to learn from communities around the world about what it means to live resisting fascism. Let’s come together to feel deeply into this moment, and share fears, concerns, […]

November 2016: ISSUES. THE US. HAS THEM. Broadcast relentlessly to the entire world.

Dialogue Description: After this long, long campaign period, let’s gather as citizens of empire to look back and look forward to how we may strategize for the future with President ___________.All the media we have consumed, difficult conversations we’ve engaged, actions and rallies, roller coasters of hope and horror – this dialogue is an opportunity to pause, feel and think together in this national moment.Trump’s campaign stoked an immense underbelly of racism, sexism and Islamophobia – whether or not he is elected, this is not dissipating anytime soon. Hillary may make tremendous US herstory. How do […]

October 2016: Haunting and the Ghosts of Colonialism

Dialogue Description: We originally designed this dialogue to be a reading/book group for the book Ghostly Matters. However, after we started to dig in, we decided to shift away from a specific focus on the book (actually a very challenging read) to a wider discussion about the ways US culture (and beyond) is haunted by the ghosts of slavery and colonialism (which to us includes racism, capitalism, sexism, ableism…). How do we, those alive today, interact with and reckon with the violence, the terror, the loss, the repressions, and the shadows of the past as […]

September 2016: Towards Disability Justice

Dialogue Description: From Aurora Levins Morales’ book Kindling: Writings on the Body “There is no neutral body from which our bodies deviate. Society has written deep into each strand of tissue of every living person on earth. What it writes into the heart muscles of five star generals is distinct from what it writes in the pancreatic tissue and intestinal tracts of Black single mothers in Detroit, of Mexicana migrants in Fresno, but no body stands outside the consequences of injustice and inequality…What our bodies require in order to thrive, is what the world requires. […]

August 2016: Race, Gender and Workplace Power

Dialogue Description: Guided by many motivating questions, our August dialogue will explore our struggles for racial and gender justice in our workplace settings. Whether we work at an explicit racialjustice organization, a largely white, “a-racial” institution, or somewhere in between, we want to use this dialogue to examine the unique challenge of managing workplace relationships and institutional power while also struggling for workplace justice. What roles do we hold in our workplaces, and what barriers do we face to dismantling white supremacy and patriarchy within our institutions? How do the real risks of losing or […]

July 2016: Urban Shield, Police Militarization and Community Resistance

Dialogue Description: This dialogue will include a short presentation and information session to learn about Urban Shield, local efforts to stop it, and the roles of white people to reduce police militarization in our communities. We will have time to reflect and discuss how this connects to broader issues of community resistance to increased policing and militarization. The withdrawal from participation in SF Pride by Organizational Grand Marshal Black Lives Matter, Grand Marshal Janetta Johnson and Heritage Awardee St. James Infirmary, in response to increased policing of Civic Center, brought the fundamental themes of security, vulnerability, community […]

June 2016: Intergenerational Feminism

Dialogue Description: The waves of feminism have opened the door to a contemporary dialogue of what it means to simultaneously challenge patriarchy, heterosexism, racism, and other forms of oppression. From call-outs of “white feminism” to growing awareness of intersectionality, how can we hold these conversations in a way that invites intergenerational perspectives? How can we engage feminism in a way that honors the struggles that got us where we are today but also acknowledges the disagreements that surround who should be centered in feminism and who is excluded? How do we bring in discussions of […]

May 2016: The Problem with Work

Join the White Noise Collective in our first ever reading group. At this dialogue we will dive deep into intersectional Marxist feminist Kathi Weeks’ groundbreaking book “The Problem with Work.” If you are unable to read the text, you are still welcome to join us in dialogue as we examine our own relationships towork, problematize the ideas of “work” and “labor”, and critique some of the feminist responses to gendered inequality at work. We’ll also dream big about what Weeks calls “post-work politics”, and ask ourselves what it means for our movement and our lives to have utopian visions of […]

April 2016: Forging an Aspirational ‘White’ Identity: Reckoning with Past, Present and Future

Dialogue Description: “As long as you think you’re white, you’re irrelevant …And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white.” —James Baldwin Whiteness was forged in the fires of white supremacy, the two have never been separate. Yet a generation of white and light-skinned anti-racists are faced with the challenge of both identifying as white in order to rightfully own white privilege, while simultaneously unmooring from the whitewashed ‘white’ identity of past and present. In this dialogue we want to take up the beginnings of that challenge. If the […]

February 2016: Islamophobia and Militarism

Dialogue Description: Given the profound importance and particular challenges of entering into difficult conversations on Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, we are planning to offer a dialogue that will be combined with aspects of our recent workshop. This will include a short presentation on key dimensions of how anti-Muslim racism functions, and will be an opportunity to try out a range of surfacing, scanning, and skill-building strategies in challenging Islamophobic narratives. For reading on Islamophobia before we meet if you have the time, we suggest looking at Paul Kivel’s excellent article in his recent newsletter. Dialogue […]

January 2016: Ally Theater

Dialogue Description: In our first dialogue of 2016, WNC will be discussing the complex dynamics of Ally Theater, as described by Black Girl Dangerous bloggers Princess Harmony Rodriguez and Mia McKenzie, asking when do our attempts at allyship become on display in public forums, and how does this impact the nature of our allyship? For inspiration and an exploration of the concepts of Ally Theater, check out Princess Harmony Rodriguez’s Caitlin Jenner, Social Media, and Violent Solidarity as well as Mia McKenzie’s How to Tell the Difference Between Real Solidarity and Ally Theater. Dialogue Notes: These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken […]

November 2015: Ancestors, Ghosts, Spirituality

Dialogue Description: As the nights get longer, let’s explore our connections to those who have come before and illuminate our life-paths and life-work. What and who lights up our commitments to social justice, our capacities for resilience, deep reflection and inspiration? How do spiritual dimensions live in our imaginations, dreams, struggles and everyday practices? As an offering, here is the partial “role models” page from our site. Dialogue Notes: These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not […]

October 2015: Enclosures: Reclaiming our bodies, imaginations and the commons

Dialogue Description: In this dialogue we will explore enclosures and how they manifest in our lives, our bodies and the cities we live in. We will consider many types of enclosures, including historical and present-day enclosures of physical land and common space, as well as mental and emotional enclosures of our creativity and collective imagination. Some questions we might explore in dialogue: How do we think/feel about the commons and enclosures in our daily life? Where do we see the boundaries of the enclosures and how they function? How are they gendered and raced? How […]

September 2015: #BLM: A Hundred Ways to Show Up

Dialogue Description: For the theme of this dialogue, we will discuss the Black Lives Matter movement. Specifically, we want to make space to discuss the varied ways we are each showing up – let’s talk about everything we’re doing, from integrating BLM material into curriculum to pushing policy change, from confronting our internalized white superiority to doorknockingin our neighborhoods, from conversations across difference to marching and locking down during direct action. Where are we feeling change, hope, and success? Where are we feeling barriers? How are we responding to challenges (including All Lives Matter rhetoric […]

June 2015: Hope and Hopelessness

Dialogue Description: In this dialogue we will explore how hope and hopelessness manifest in our struggles for racial justice. Where do our feelings of hope and hopelessness come from? When do they show up, and when do they feel most strong? How does hopelessness create barriers for engaging in long-term racial justice organizing, and how can we cultivate hope even in our lowest moments? While this dialogue will focus largely on our own personal experiences with feelings of hope and hopelessness in our daily lives, interpersonal relationships, and movement organizing, we thought these readings might […]

May 2015: Internalized Worthlessness, Radical Self Love and How to Not Throw Each Other Under the Bus

Dialogue Description: In this dialogue we will explore the internalized feelings we may have around our white identity, specifically looking at senses of shame, worthlessness, harmfulness, awkwardness, etc alone, together or in mixed race spaces. How do we let go of the binary between being the good or bad white person? How do we tell the difference between discomfort that comes from sitting with our white privileges and self-hate for our white identity? What are the pathways to radical self-love that can better serve us and anti-racist movements? Finally we will explore how we may […]

March 2015: Safety and (Dis)comfort

Dialogue Description: In February, we looked at more external issues related to safety, especially the concepts of violence vs nonviolence, movement tactics, and racialized and gendered expectations as they relate to state violence/protection. In March, we turn our attention to our internal beliefs about safety and particularly tonotions about safety “as the absence of discomfort” that can happen at the intersection of white (or passing) privilege and gender(ed) oppression. How does this socialization affect what we expect in order to feel safe? How does it shape, and sometimes race and gender, safer spaces? How might […]

February 2015: Violence and Safety

Dialogue Description: The past few months have been full of excitement with the building power of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to systematic police brutality and murder of black and brown people. In response, the media, along with individuals and activists alike, are questioning the strategy and tactics of the emergent street mobilizations and organized responses. Throughout this analysis are various opinions about the meaning, role, and position of “violence” in this movement movement. In this WNC Dialogue, we will explore the meaning of violence and safety, especially through the lenses of white […]

January 2015: Dialogue for organizers & movement workers

Dialogue Description: While we will continue our community dialogues, which include monthly themes, more active facilitation and which serve as an open, educational and exploratory space for folks with a wide range of experience facing issues of racism, sexism and movement work, in 2015 we seek to develop a new container that nourishes and challenges us not just as individuals but as racial justice movement activists/organizers. This space will not be for action planning or organizing. It will be specifically geared to support us in deeply examining the ways our socialization as both white and as […]

December 2014: Difficult Conversations from Ferguson to Palestine

Dialogue Description: After our first Difficult Conversations dialogue a few years back, we decided to make it an annual tradition, to support each other in a little practice and role playing before many of us head back to families and communities of origin for the holiday season. This year, we are challenging ourselves to think about how to talk about some big things with those who may think and believe in vastly different ways about police violence, occupation and racism. Check out these articles to get the conversation started: On Growing Up in Ferguson and […]

November 2014: Relationship to Land

Dialogue Description: Moving from the “horrors of October” to those of November, we will take this time together to examine national mythologies that continue to justify colonization. We will also question our relationships to land, here in the Bay Area, California and beyond. What histories shape the present? How do patterns of displacement repeat at home? What are ways we can support each other to intervene into this holiday, which some are calling to be renamed as a national day of mourning? Suggested reading: The Last Thursday in November Control of Ancestral Remains Dialogue Notes: […]

September 2014: Cultural Appropriation of Yoga and Buddhist Traditions

Dialogue Description: While cultural appropriation was a term originally used in response to the cultural theft of Native traditions that was happening in the (land called) US as part of settler colonialism, the term is increasingly being applied to any instance of a dominant group (usually white, western) practicing, wearing or profiting off of the traditions of a more marginalized or exploited cultural group. We’d like to ask ourselves: How is the practice of yoga and Buddhism by members of dominant white/western culture a form of cultural appropriation? What are the impacts of practicing these […]

July 2014: Visioning the Future

Dialogue Description: In our next dialogue coming up in July, we are excited to continue and evolve the discussion from June (but you are welcome to come if you were not at that dialogue!) that looked at our visions for the abolition of racism, white supremacy, sexism, and heterosexism, by looking next at WHO is visioning the world into being. As artists, writers, activists, movie directors, narrative and meme spreaders, designers and communications professionals share potential future visions that have a powerful impact on what futures are created, we want to ask, who are these […]

May & June 2014: Meaningful Work

Dialogue Descriptions: For May, we will we explore the idea of “meaningful work.” What is it? What stories have we been told about it? Is it a necessity, a right, a privilege or a luxury to do work that aligns with our values and also pays the bills? Is the work we are doing (both paid and unpaid) just a pressure release valve, allowing larger social structures to remain unchanged, or are we really pushing our radical edges and building our communities? And how do paradigms about “sacrifice” and “success” fit into this conversation? Whether […]

March 2014: Allyship: Critiques, Potentials and Practices

Dialogue Description: Challenges to the concept of “alliance” keep arising, in particular with regards to white antiracists. We’ll familiarize ourselves with common criticisms, dive into our own growth edges and practices, and examine the limits and possibilities of this model. We will try to balance theory and lived experience in this dialogue, so please think of a recent experience wherein you felt challenged by your role as an ally to share and possibly work through together. We’ll use a few recent blogs to inspire our discussion: GradientLair’s I Don’t Want Tim Wise As An Ally Jamie Utt’s So You […]

February 2014: Love, Rage and V-Day: What’s going on with white feminists?

Dialogue Description: What issues are white feminists largely drawn to, how are those issues expressed, in what ways is white privilege showing up, and what patterns are helpful to explore? Here are links to a number of pieces that relate to this month’s theme, diving into patterns, concerns, critiques, and questions of white feminists and feminism. We offer these not to be overwhelming, but thought that one or two might stir your interest before we meet in person: Beyond Eve Ensler: What Should Organizing Against Gender Violence Look Like? One Billion Rising: Eve Ensler’s White […]

November 2013: Thanksgiving Mythologies

Dialogue Description: Thanksgiving/Thanks-taking is coming up, and with inherited and/or chosen family time together, it is a potent time to (re)direct attention to realities that are hidden by this holiday’s very old propaganda campaign. We’ll look at histories of this land (specifically in CA), Thanksgiving and other national bedtime stories/mythologies we tell ourselves. For additional resources on ways to subvert and shift this holiday towards social justice education and challenging historical amnesia, you may find these interesting: Thangs Taken: rethinking thanksgiving Rethinking Thanksgiving: teaching ideas and resources and Myths and Misgivings Dialogue Notes: These are […]

September 2013: Gentrification

Dialogue Description: On September 17th we invite you to join us again in monthly dialogue–this time examining the theme of gentrification in the Bay Area. From San Francisco (also this, and this) to Oakland and beyond, we’ll analyze deeper trends that influence where we live and why, including “safety,” economics, credibility, and quality of life. After all, gentrification is #73 on the list of Stuff White People Like. And how do race, class, gender and colonial settlement tie into the conversation? For more resources on the intersection of gentrification and July’s dialogue topic of food justice, explore Oakland’s Phat Beet’s statement on […]

August 2013: Virtuous Victim Narrative

Dialogue Description: We’ll spend this evening looking at ways the narratives about white women, such as the virtuous victim narrative, are used to justify violence against men of color. Specifically, we’d like to discuss the ways Zimmerman used his neighbor to justify his murder of Trayvon Martin, how this ties into deeply entrenched histories and brainstorm ways we can counteract this narrative. Dialogue Notes: These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, […]

July 2013: Food Justice

Dialogue Description: The topic of white women in the food justice movement has surfaced in many previous dialogues, so this month we’ve decided to dedicate an entire dialogue to it. What space have white women taken and/or created in the food justice movement, especially in the SF Bay Area? How do race, gender and class influence definitions of and relationship with “good food” and the larger arena of food politics? How does white female socialization influence how we eat, what we eat, and how we build and form relationships around food? We will discuss how […]

June 2013: SURJ and Immigrant Justice

Dialogue Description: We’ll be joined by special guest Dara Silverman with SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) to explore the history of white people and immigrants through activities, discussion and to help make plans to take action. http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/ Dialogue Notes: These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our […]

April 2013: White Privilege Conference Share Out

Dialogue Description: In similar format to last year, this will be a Community Report back from this year’s White Privilege Conference. Our hope is to create an informal space for WPC presenters and participants to reflect on experiences of this year’s conference and to share highlights, insights, take-aways, constructive critiques, struggles, potentials for the future and to distill our experiences for folks who would have wanted to be there but couldn’t. We especially welcome those who could not attend to join us. Dialogue Notes: These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to […]

March 2013: Helping Professions and the Buffer Zone: Maintaining and Challenging the System

Dialogue Description: In response to the theme of this year’s White Privilege Conference, The Color of Money, we will be re-examining what Paul Kivel terms “ the buffer zone,” a range of jobs and occupations that structurally serve to maintain the wealth and power of the ruling class by acting as a buffer between those at the top of the economic pyramid and those at the bottom. With a focus on how people socialized as white and female have occupied and represented this terrain, we will examine historical patterns, iconic images, and our individual participation and insight. […]

December 2012: Difficult Conversations (Holidays, Family and Beyond)

Dialogue Description: What communication patterns do we notice in ourselves? How does white female socialization (and other forms of socialization, cultural values, etc) factor into these patterns and how does it affect our ability to engage in meaningful and often difficult conversations with friends, family and folks with different perspectives? We will discuss these themes as well as learn and practice strategic non-defensive communication – so that as we head home for the holidays, we can make this year the one when we don’t just grit our teeth and ignore the racist or otherwise marginalizing […]

October 2012: Witches

Dialogue Description: In honor of Halloween and the time of spirits close among us, our October Dialogue will look at the long history of political repression related to witchcraft and the demonization of the independent, earth-based feminine that lives into today. How are modern and historical characterizations and treatment of witches influenced by legacies of oppression? What are the implications and effects of the past witch hunts as well as the ones that continue today across the globe (both overt and covert versions)? How do we build resiliency in our communities of dissent while maintaining awareness of the […]

September 2012: Body as Battleground

Dialogue Description: Within the context of the upcoming presidential elections – from reproductive rights under attack, to moves to redefine rape, to slut shaming, how are female bodies being used to wage political war and ideologies? How are white women and women of color being targeted and represented differently? How can we strategically step up and speak out in alliance? Dialogue Notes: These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, […]

June 2012: Psychology of Racism

Dialogue Description: For our June dialogue, we will focus on material that we learned at a workshop on the psychology of racism. We’ll be watching a short video on shame and vulnerability and looking at how shame and other psychological experiences (anxiety, denial, fear, etc) challenge, support and inform our work with oppression and privilege. How can we better understand the psychological motivators of prejudice so that we know how to work with it in ourselves and in others? How can we learn to tolerate the anxiety, shame, guilt and anger that we might feel when […]

February 2012: White Women in Helping Professions

Dialogue Description: What images come to mind when we think of a teacher? social worker? fundraiser? therapist? midwife? What representations and histories shape the large demographics of white females in what are seen as “helping” and “care-taking” professions? How does white privilege, “the white man’s burden“, and structural racism play into all of this? How do notions of “feminine labor” shape our understandings, expectations and life experiences? Whose work is in the spotlight, whose is made invisible? How are white women socialized to draw them into care-taking and helping professions? How does the disproportionate number […]

January 2012: Motherhood, Parenting and “White Moms”

Dialogue Description: Relationships with white moms, parenting identities, social scripts and subversion. Dialogue Notes: These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes. Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs. Big list of questions/topics of interest: White offspring: Can […]

November 2011 Dialogue: Occupy Movement

Dialogue Notes only: These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes. Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs. Reflections on whiteness and gender in the Occupy Movement Opening Check-in Question: Name, preferred gender pronoun, relationship to occupy movement, […]

May 2011: ”White women’s tears”

Dialogue Notes only: These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes. Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs. Our 3rd White Noise monthly dialogue was focused on “white woman tears” – the phenomenon of white women crying when […]

April 2011: Exploration of Ancestry

Dialogue Notes only: At our second White Noise monthly dialogue, we delved into the topic of ancestry with the intention of looking at how the histories/legacies of our (white/female) ancestors connect to the larger discussion we’ve begun. We began by checking in with affirmations about ourselves and about white women – something we committed previously to doing because we recognize how easy it can be to go instantly into denigrating ourselves and feeling over-responsible for all the problems of the world (something we, as women, have been very effectively trained to do — see the […]