Tag Archive: race

February 6, 2012

You have a chance to change the system!

Grace Lee Boggs: You Have a Chance To Change The System from Bhawin Suchak on Vimeo.

“We are the children of Martin and Malcolm. Black, white, brown, yellow. Our birthright is to be creators of history. Our right, our duty is to shape the world with a new dream… We have to begin to thinking of ourselves, we are the ones who are going to shape the world with a new dream. The old American Dream was based so much on exploitation of the earth and of other peoples. So our revolution can’t be the way that we thought of revolution to acquire more things; our revolution has to be one that grows our souls.”

Read More

Leave a comment
January 3, 2012

Happy New Year!

One of the many things I like about celebrating New Year’s Day is that for a moment in time the awareness of millions of people is simultaneously focused on the same point of transition.  We conspire to create an opening.  We align ourselves with the cycle of the planets.  We leap into a future that is necessarily new.

I’m not big on apocalypse or fear mongering.  But I am often in awe of the stars.  2012 is going to be a big year for the stars.  We’ll hear a lot of silliness, but creative are good alchemists.  Let’s allow ourselves to toy with the idea of transition – of shift, of developmental leaps.

Read More

Leave a comment
December 29, 2011

People Power

The Black Mesa Water Coalition is an inspiring group of Navajo and Hopi young people who organized to protect the Navajo aquifer which was being depleted by coal production and transportation processes. They are a great example of people power, coming together and winning important gains for their community. And, they are an important reminder about the many ways in which Native people in the U.S. continue to face structural barriers to their own well-being. As we move the conversation about structural racism forward, I have to ask myself, as a black woman who grew up on land that was taken from the Wampanoag people, how can I be an effective ally?

Leave a comment
December 20, 2011

Got Racism?

We’ve been having a good conversation at IISC about ways to challenge and re-frame race discourse in ways that are truthful, loving, compelling, welcoming and so much more. Last week, I posted a video from Jay Smooth about shifting from a discussion about “being” to a discussion about “doing.” Let’s keep the conversation going.

Read More

Leave a comment
December 19, 2011

Fair Chance America

The following post is from Founding Board Chair, Thomas J. Rice.  It is a little longer than we  post, however, we hope that you will find it is rich in content and helps continue to challenge the way we think about various systems and movements.

Historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream when he coined the term at the depths of the Great Depression. What we seek is “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.” If there’s one thing we could all agree on, we have lost our way in this quest. And there’s no GPS to find our True North, or the way home.

Enter the Occupy Movement, a spontaneous cri de coeur from a millennial generation that feels betrayed and abandoned by the people and institutions they believed in. No American Dream for them. Their prospects are bleak, in no way better or richer or fuller than their parents. In spite of great effort and expense to move up and out, the millenniums are back in the nest, in serious debt from college  loans and working at some menial or dead end job with no health benefits.

Read More

Leave a comment
December 16, 2011

Live Love

Here at IISC we talk about having three lenses for the work of collaboration.  One of those lenses is the lens of love.  I have worked and played with Anasa Troutman in all kinds of formations over the years, most recently as part of the same Networks and Decentralized Organizing Community of Practice.

I thought that her stance for Love is a very real call for those of us interested in the practice of social transformation.  What do you think?

Leave a comment
December 12, 2011

Goodness as Practice

Video blogger and hip-hop radio host Jay Smooth makes an eloquent case for understanding that being good does not require us to be perfect, and that learning to live with our imperfections is a way forward in contemporary race discourse. I’d share a few of his comments, hoping this will inspire you to find the time to listen to the whole talk.

“Are you saying that I am racist? How can you say that. I am a good person! Why would you say I am a racist?”

And you try to respond “I’m talking about a particular thing you said.”

“No, I am not a racist.”

And what started out as a “what you said” conversation turns into a “what you are conversation,” which is a dead end that produces nothing but mutual frustration and you never end up seeing eye to eye or finding any common ground…

Read More

Leave a comment