Workshop: Sisters on the Frontlines: A Conversation on Revolutionary Feminism with Selma James

SOUL SUNDAY SCHOOL

3-5pm
Sunday, April 1, 2012
1904 Franklin Street (@19th Street) Suite 904
Oakland

ARC’s Spring 2012 Racial Justice Webinar Series

http://www.arc.org/content/view/2303/219/
not free.

“Changing the Conversation on Race”
March 15, 1pm ET/10am PT

“Taking Real Steps Towards Racial Justice”
April 19, 1pm ET/10am PT

‘Sex Crimes Against Black Girls’ Exhibit Uses Art to Confront Incest

Last week, I checked out “Sex Crimes Against Black Girls,” a multimedia art exhibit that tackles many forms of sexual abuse black girls endure in the African Diaspora. The work, which will be at Bed-Stuy’s Restoration Plaza until April 2, was rich, provocative, and in some cases, quite pretty. But, because I’m a nosy writer, I was most intrigued by its curator, Shantrelle P. Lewis. For her day (and all-night) job, the New Orleans native directs programs and exhibitions at another organization, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute. But the 32-year-old chose to use her free time and psychic energy to find works by black and Latina artists that address the knotty subject of intra-racial sexual violence. Lewis, an incest survivor, was kind enough to sit on the phone and explain why:

Read more here:


http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/02/from_the_color_purple_to.html

Recy Taylor, Sexual Violence, and the Horrors of Jim Crow

Cynthia Gordy over at The Root caught up with 91-year-old Recy Taylor, who’s still fighting for justice nearly seven decades after her brutal gang rape brought international attention to America’s civil rights struggle. It’s a horrifying, but powerful story.

http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/02/recy_taylor.html

Article: Missouri Corrects Record On 1923 College-Town Lynching

Missouri Corrects Record On 1923 College-Town Lynching
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/08/missouri-corrects-record-_n_780656.html

Intersections Radio: White Privilege Conference

Tune in to “Intersections Radio”
Your weekly connection to the Matrix Center and White Privilege Conference

http://radio.uccs.edu

Tuesday’s – 12pm-2pmMST

If you miss the live shows, check the archives here.

Article: Rosa Parks' Other (Radical) Side

http://www.theroot.com/views/rosa-parks-other-radical-side

The flesh-and-blood Rosa Parks was a lot more interesting than the one we read about in history books. A new book details how she was a warrior for justice for black women who were brutally raped by white men in the segregated South.

Anne Braden Anti-Racist Training Program

In Spring of 2011, Catalyst Project will be offering...

The Anne Braden Anti-Racist Training Program
For White Social Justice Activists

This four month political education and leadership development program is designed to support the political development, skills, and analysis of white activists in becoming accountable, principled anti-racist organizers building multiracial movements for justice. The program will begin in February of 2011. Applications are due by October 1stof 2010.

SOUL Sunday School: ¡Alto Arizona!

SOUL (School of Unity & Liberation) & Causa Justa::Just Cause present:

SOUL Sunday School:
¡Alto Arizona!
Solidarity with Immigrant Communities Now!!!

Sunday, July 25th, 2010 | 3-5PM
1904 Franklin Street, Suite 904 (@ 19th), Oakland

SOUL, the School of Unity & Liberation, and Causa Justa::Just Cause,
invite you to a Sunday School on the current wave of legalized anti-immigrant racism
in Arizona, and the growing resistance movement which has ignited in response.

SB1070, passed in April, empowers local police authorities in Arizona to racially profile
residents, harass immigrants and people of color for proof of citizenship, and expand their
powers as agents of state repression. Immigrant communities in Arizona are organizing to
actively resist the implementation of SB1070, and their call for solidarity has been
answered by communities all over the US. A boycott of the state of Arizona is underway,
delegations from organizations near and far have arrived to support local organizing efforts,
and actions have been planned inside and outside the state. The next national Day of Action,
July 29th, the day the legislation is scheduled to take effect, has been declared a
Day of Non-Compliance. No complicity with racist laws, anti-immigrant hate, and
criminalization of our communities!

Join us for a presentation & discussion on the growing movement to resist
repression and cultivate solidarity-- among people of color, working-class communities,
immigrants & non-immigrants. We'll hear reports from recent delegations to Arizona
and plans for the upcoming Day of Action, and discuss the possibilities for building a
movement for true liberation from the Bay to Arizona and beyond.

The event will feature a panel with speakers from

Causa Justa::Just Cause, Oakland
Causa Justa::Just Cause, San Francisco
Community Justice Network for Youth
U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel

This event will be presented in English & Spanish. Translation will be provided. Please RSVP to us at 510.451.5466 x 300 or info@schoolofunityandliberation.org

Article: Not White Enough? There's a Facebook App for That!

"90 percent of the women entering Arizona clinics for mercury poisoning were Chicanas who had been using skin-lightening creams"

http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/07/vaseline_white.html

Workshop: Undoing Oppression Through the Body

Undoing Oppression Through the Body
with Victor Lee Lewis and Vanissar Tarakali
Host: Seminary of the Street


Date: Saturday, May 22, 2010
Time: 10:00am - 5:00pm
Location: First Congregational Church of Oakland
Street: 2501 Harrison St.
City/Town: Oakland, CA

This embodied workshop for both people of color and white people will explore the impact of trauma (personal, intimate, social) on our experiences of oppression, our participation in oppressive systems, and our efforts to free ourselves from both. Assuming that oppression traumatizes both targets and agents, we’ll work with trauma and shame as they live in the bodymind, introducing concrete practices for engaging consciously with adaptations that keep oppression and privilege in place and discovering empowering alternatives.

Participants will spend time in both joint sessions and POC/white caucuses. People of color will explore ways to recover resilience in addressing racism and internalized racism. White allies will become conscious of automatic behaviors that interfere with efforts to undo racism and learn effective ways of working with them. People in both groups will become more resourceful in managing feelings of anger, fear, overwhelm, discouragement, “burnout” and stress in themselves and others.

This is a rare opportunity to learn from two pioneers in the field of social justice education. Victor Lee Lewis, MA, is a social justice educator/healer with more than 25 years of experience. Best known for his role in the groundbreaking film The Color of Fear, he is pioneering new ways to bring fast, deep and lasting emotional healing into social justice education. Vanissar Tarakali combines intimate and social trauma expertise, anti-oppression education, a Ph.D. in East-West psychology, and a deep understanding of the body's intuitive, energetic, survival and healing mechanisms to design embodied educational programs.


Sliding scale: $80-180
First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. in Oakland
Email ntorbett@seminaryofthestreet.org to sign up

Angela Davis: Radical Pedagogy

‘Angela Davis: Radical Pedagogy,’ film by Angela Carroll
Read the interview and watch the trailer at Filmmaker Angela Carroll on her new film ‘Angela Y. Davis: Radical Pedagogy.’ Screenings and Q&A with the filmmaker are

• Wednesday, March 10, 1-3 p.m., in the Richard Oakes Multicultural Center, Cesar Chavez Student Union (upstairs), San Francisco State University;
• Wednesday, March 10, 6-7 p.m. and 7-8 p.m., at the Jazz Heritage Center, 1330 Fillmore St., San Francisco; and
• Friday, March 12, 8-9 p.m. and 9-10 p.m., also at the Jazz Heritage Center.

Slavery and the Racialization of Crime and Punishment

Part I:
Visiting A Modern Day Slave Plantation

Part II:
The Racialization of Crime and Punishment

Article Abstract

Elouise Brown: Dooda Desert Rock and Energy Policy in Indian Country

Saturday March 20^th

@ the Women's Building

American Indian Movement presents…

Elouise Brown: Dooda Desert Rock and Energy Policy in Indian Country

The community of Chaco Rio in the Navajo Nation (SW of Farmington, New Mexico) has been blockading entry to the site of a proposed 1,500 megawatt coal fired power plant

since December of 2006. Desert Rock would be the third coal plant within a 20-mile radius, in a region already suffering from extreme levels of toxic emissions.

Elouise Brown is a Diné (Navajo) traditionalist and president of the Doodá Desert Rock committee. She will speak about dangers posed by the coal industry, the exploitation of indigenous land by energy companies, and the ongoing struggle to prevent the Desert Rock plant from ever existing.

Short Films

Making a Stand at Desert Rock - by Klee Benally (8:00)

Killing Coal: Four Corners in the Crosshairs (7:10)

Our Native Roots - Inside the Dooda Desert Rock Camp

Audre Lorde Room 7:30 info: http://www.doodadesertrock.com/

Conference: Racism, Islamophobia And Anti-Arab Discrimintiaion Conference

Date:	Thursday, February 25, 2010
Time:	12:00pm - 9:30pm
Location:	Jack Adams Hall, Cesar Chavez Student Center, San Francisco State University

FREE

A Mini Conference brought to you by:

The Arab Cultural and Community Center, The Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative at SFSU, Africana Studies SFSU, the Black Student Union at SFSU, the College of Ethnic Studies SFSU the General Union of Palestinian Students at SFSU and the Muslim Student Association at SFSU


This event has been coordinated to examine the complexities of the historical and current intersections between primarily Black, Muslim and Arab communities in the US. The series of sessions particularly aims to contribute to developing a more nuanced discourse about the historical relationships of solidarity, activism, and shared experiences of racialization, marginalization and censorship within these communities. We believe by identifying historical patterns of racialization and contemporary similarities among the experiences of communities of color, we are able empower our communities by challenging conventional narratives in academic, political, and cultural institutions and asserting our own narratives while simultaneously building joint struggle. We also believe this discourse enhances our abilities to provide alternative, ethical, efficient, justice centered and relevant frameworks of activism, academia, service providing and curriculum development for our communities at large. These paradigms thus challenge the systems of abuse, entrapment, fear and isolation facing our communities in the modern US political landscape.

No cost.

You may attend all or any of the sessions throughout the day.

Opening and Welcome: [12:00pm]

I. COINTELPRO: Then and Now [12:15-1:45]
"Confronting Entrapment and Destruction of Our Communities"

II. 2010 U.S. Census: Who Counts? Who is Counting? Who is Being Counted? [2:10-3:50]

III. Art as Resistance: hip hop, From Palestine to Oakland [4:10-6:00]

IV. Reception: [6-7]

V. Racism, Colonialism and Islamophobia: Resisting the Status Quo [7-9:30]

Workshops: Challenging Racism

Cultivating Capacity for Challenging Racism

"Awakening Your Ally-Body: From White Racial Shame to Allyship," An Article by Vanissar Tarakali

The journey to powerful and accountable racial justice allyship is actually a process of thawing out and healing from trauma. This is challenging because trauma is stored deeply in the body, and so the thawing-out-from-trauma journey unfolds in our bodies. It is deeply intimate and personal.

One of my allyship workshop participants who experienced this thawing process in her body came in with a vague fear connected with being a white racial justice ally. As she and the group brought compassionate attention to their sensations, she felt rage, helplessness and sadness emerge in her body underneath the fear. She directly experienced the devastating impact of systemic racism on her being--"like having a car accident on my front door step every day”--and felt how she had numbed herself for years to cope with this “disaster.”

Direct, bodily insights like these, while painful, support empowered allyship. After her thawing out experience, this participant felt more space and energy, and was able to identify the next steps she needed to take to be a conscious racial justice ally: “It’s empowering …to be able to observe it happening…this new awareness… insert[s] more choice into what is an otherwise automatic numbing reaction.”

Click here to read the full article.

I'll be offering "Shame and White Allies Working for Racial Justice" on Saturday, February 13. Read on for details.

Workshop: Shame and White Allies Working for Racial Justice

with Vanissar Tarakali

Guilt and shame are common issues for white people seeking to acknowledge and address racism. White people’s shame about racism often shows up as behaviors that reinforce racist dynamics, including denial, defensiveness, passivity and self-absorption, the calling out of which often serves to deepen shame and limit white people’s receptivity. How can we respond compassionately to this shame without condoning the resulting racist dynamics?

On February 13, Vanissar Tarakali will offer a workshop that brings theory and embodied practice together to explore white people’s automatic, shame-coping behaviors, and offers insights into why certain racist behaviors are so entrenched, even in well-intentioned white people.

This workshop, which draws on over a decade of research into the psychology of how white people unlearn racism, will benefit white allies seeking to strengthen mutual support and compassion for everyone working to transform racism. People of color who would like to recognize when racial shame is motivating white behavior are also welcome to attend. This workshop will help everyone recognize when white racial shame is operating and offer options and antidotes to support white allyship and accountability.

You can learn more about Vanissar's background and work by visiting her website: http://www.vanissar.com/.

Saturday, February 13, 10am-5pm

Sliding Scale: $80-180; limited financial assistance available

First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. in Oakland

Email our registration desk to sign up

Article: Slavery in US Prisons --An interview with Robert Hillary King and Dr. Terry Kupers

An 18,000-acre former slave plantation in rural Louisiana, the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is the largest prison in the U.S. Today, with African Americans composing over 75% of Angola's 5,108 prisoners, prison guards known as "free men," a forced 40-hour workweek, and four cents an hour as minimum wage, the resemblance to antebellum U.S. slavery is striking. In the early 1970s, it was even worse, as prisoners were forced to work 96-hour weeks (16 hours a day/six days a week) with two cents an hour as minimum wage. Officially considered (according to its own website) the "Bloodiest Prison in the South" at this time, violence from guards and between prisoners was endemic. Prison authorities sanctioned prisoner rape, and according to former Prison Warden Murray Henderson, the prison guards actually helped facilitate a brutal system of sexual slavery where the younger and physically weaker prisoners were bought and sold into submission. As part of the notorious "inmate trusty guard" system, responsible for killing 40 prisoners and seriously maiming 350 between 1972-75, some prisoners were given state-issued weapons and ordered to enforce this sexual slavery, as well as the prison's many other injustices. Life at Angola was living hell -- a 20th century slave plantation.

read more and watch the video here.

People Skool at The Race, Poverty, Media Justice Institute

PeopleSkooL at The Race, Poverty, Media Justice Institute is focused on teaching non-colonizing,
community-based and community-led media, art and organizing with the goals of creating access
for silenced voices, preserving and de-gentrifying rooted communities of color and re-framing the
debate on poverty, homelessness, disability, migration, incarceration and race locally and globally.

See upcoming seminars here: http://www.poormag.info/RPMJ/programSeminar.html

See the flyer here: http://www.poormag.info/RPMJ/pdf/peopleSkoolScheduleEnSp.pdf

Undoing Oppression Through the Body

Undoing Oppression Through the Body
with Victor Lee Lewis and Vanissar Tarakali

Saturday, January 23, 2010 10am-5pm

This embodied workshop for both people of color and white racial justice allies will explore the impact of trauma (personal, intimate, social) on our experiences of oppression, our participation in oppressive systems, and our efforts to free ourselves from both. By employing concrete tools and practices, we’ll work with trauma and shame as they live in the bodymind, helping participants engage consciously with adaptations that keep oppression and privilege in place.

Participants will spend time in both joint sessions and POC/white caucuses. People of color will explore ways to recover resilience in addressing racism and internalized racism. White allies will become conscious of automatic behaviors that interfere with efforts to undo racism and be allies to people of color. People in both groups will become more resourceful in managing feelings of anger, fear, overwhelm, discouragement, “burnout” and stress in themselves and others.

This is a rare opportunity to learn from two pioneers in the field of social justice education. Victor Lewis, best known for his role in the groundbreaking film The Color of Fear, is pioneering new ways to bring together education, bodymind healing, and leadership coaching. Vanissar Tarakali combines intimate and social trauma expertise, anti-oppression education, a Ph.D. in East-West psychology, and a deep understanding of the body's intuitive, energetic, survival and healing mechanisms to design embodied educational programs.

Saturday, January 23, 2010
10am-5pm
Sliding scale: $80-180
First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. in Oakland
Email ntorbett@seminaryofthestreet.org to sign up.

Embody Your Allyship

Embody Your Allyship
Open House
for White Racial Justice Allies

Sunday, December 13
12 noon-3:00 PM in Temescal (North Oakland)

Suggested Donation: $25

Once we know what we are responsible for as white anti-racist allies, why is it often so hard to follow through?
Why, despite our best intentions, do we freeze up when it's time to speak up and educate other white folks, or hold back when it's time to challenge systemic racism? Why do we get defensive when it's time to listen to people of color?

At this Open House, we will learn about how an embodied approach to allyship can support creative & connected racial justice responses when we find ourselves off balance. We will discuss individual and collective blocks to effective white racial justice action. Participants will also learn some simple, effective tools that support practical white allyship.


Facilitator bio:
Vanissar Tarakali, Ph.D. is a healer and teacher who designs embodied healing oppression and allyship trainings and interventions for individuals and groups. She is passionate about supporting folks with privilege to unlearn oppression and use their privilege for social justice. The former Healing Oppression Project co-lead at Community United Against Violence (CUAV), Vanissar studies Generative Somatics with Staci Haines and Denise Benson, and intuitive reading with Phyllis Pay.


Please contact Vanissar at (510) 594-6812 or vanissar@cs.com for more information