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 female (whether or not we currently identify this way) is currently impacting our movement work and relationships.

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.

  • keeping emotionality – to feel it to my core and not intellectualize it
  • getting caught up in activist identity, feeling “sceney”, social capital – in a waythat it wasn’t in MLKs time, it was a big sacrifice for white folks to be

    involved

  • real purpose and connection – why are we really there
  • Stanford student freeway closure was amazing to see
  • What excites me doesn’t fit into rules of organizing – if not photo op, media –that’s not what drives what I want to do, figuring out how to navigate
  • When white supremacy is coming out of all our pores, time to really reflecton it
  • impacts of urgency
  • noticing times when I’m surprised where I’m at, am I pushing myself in waysI want to, feeling shoulds – what authentically do I have time for?
  • Wonderful to be in kid spaces
  • Shut downs and level of spectacle, keeping one door open so it’s not a felony– to what degree is it symbolic?
  • Wanting to push myself to do radical action, what does it mean to sacrifice?
  • There’s specific ally roles, and, is it self-segregating?
  • How to respond to a call, and what is the call now?
  • Spaces needing to be humanized – are people talking with each other?
  • Need for a party
  • Always miscommunications and egos
  • White organizers reluctant to talk to black organizers
  • Reverence, not wanting to cross lines, don’t take black organizers’ time
  • Feeling not good enough, or not wanting to take up space, be quiet and seennot heard – relate to whiteness and gender
  • The march organizers deliberately has disabled and children in front, thenBlack group then 3rd world, then white allies
  • Affinity groups are trusted action response relationships
  • Ego constantly having to check
  • How am I relating to other white people who are not involved?
  • At SURJ meeting, white people called to put bodies on line, and need to bethinking about how are we making inroads for other white people – how to

    do both/and

  • Not getting insular
  • How to engage with white folks who are interested
  • I enjoy resisting – it is empowering
  • How to engage with folks beyond the tunnel, in gentle and disruptive ways
  • Reaching out to senior citizen community
  • Where are moments where we are able to have a conversation? Not just takea photo and take off
  • Wanting to disrupt types of segregation – not wanting to tokenize
  • When race is up, we become hyperaware and hypersensitive, whole systemactivated, hard to get grounded and centered
  • An incredibly easy place to go to, be angry at other white people
  • Easy to say my liberation is tied up in yours, different to feel it
  • How urgency changes way we communicate
  • SURJ: white people should be feeling uncomfortable
  • We can get caught up in right way to “do” racial justice, what is problematic
  • Feeling less capable of being bold
  • Over last month there has been clear leadership
  • Muckiness comes in afterwards, sitting with each other as comrades
  • What is accountability? Relation between ways show up and privilege – always watching for what I’m not seeing, massive white privilege I’m not seeing, makes me terrified to organize something
  • Accountability risk and relationship-building
  • Feeling separate from friends in black organizing groups, we don’t talk aboutorganizing
  • Hyper-vigilance, trauma defense
  • Layers of socialization makes me feel stuck
  • Discouragement around demands – and symbolic actions
  • Privilege at play with being against a reformist-based demands, principledrevolutionary
  • Different kinds of discomfort – pushing up against ourselves, pushing an edgeand pushing edge of what’s possible – distinguish with what intuitively feels

    off or wrong

  • Convenience, justice will not be convenient, but who are we making itinconvenient for? Crucial question
  • Trust
  • Creating as many spaces as possible to engage
  • If we’re grounded and centered then can build relationships
  • Black Panthers, Black Power gutted from Oakland, where it was born
  • Shaking up relationships
  • Anti-eviction action at foreclosed homes auction – working at the door, anAfrican American man got upset and said “you think black lives matter – why

    not let us speak for ourselves?”

  • Date of federal building action, people had been waiting for 3 years for socialsecurity date
  • Where are the sacrifices being made?
  • How are we building together? Tenderness and fear of failure
  • Anger after Castro action
  • Where is our ability to be playful and reflexive
  • Learn from mistakes, create new strategy
  • What’s being asked of us by black leadership – know those parameters andbeing able to play within them
  • What’s responding to call and what’s cooptation
  • Down with rage – Rage and agency
  • Pattern of anger towards those closer to you
  • The more I don’t say /express anger the more it shows up in personal healthways
  • First hurdle having emotions, second feeling agency around them
  • Understanding risk around arrest and paid work
  • Humanizing and relationship-building, continue the slow work andrelationships
  • Looking forward to next phase, not as many symbolic actions and shutdowns, vision evolving and wanting to be part of those conversations
  • I have not sacrificed have only gained and learned from this movement
  • I forget to acknowledge the beautiful things that are happening that I am andam not participating in
  • Actions may always be both heeding a call and cooptation
  • Noticing ego, not let it block me from participating
  • Some of my slow burn projects have let fall, not sure how it all happens
  • As a learning and a gift, calling in and out gently or roughly