AWP Preconference Training Workshop on Bridging Diversities

Dear Colleagues,

If you are attending AWP 2011, I hope you will consider participating in this preference training workshop, which I am co-facilitating. It offers valuable tools that are particularly relevant to the work of this group.

Bridging Diversities to Create Sustainable Leadership for Social Change:
The Be Present Empowerment Model®

What does it take to foster open dialogue and create enduring partnerships among diverse groups when we live in the social, political, and economic systems that we seek to change?

In order to create peace and justice for all people, we all are responsible for examining our individual and collective roles in perpetuating the “isms” (racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, etc.). Grounded in this understanding, we realize the depth of how these issues have an impact on ourselves, our families and communities; and begin to model new ways that foster tolerance, promote peace, and partner for justice.

Be Present, Inc. supports individuals to be present in their lives – to be more effective leaders in creating health and well being within themselves as well as in their families, schools, organizations, workplaces and communities. We teach a model for developing sustainable leadership for social justice at the individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels.

This workshop teaches the Be Present Empowerment Model®, a leadership curriculum that develops self-awareness, understanding, voice, and purpose in building sustainable relationships in our diverse and changing world. Participants will:

• Explore in a safe space the ways in which our thoughts, feelings, and actions have been shaped by our own and others’ beliefs about our race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity issues.
• See the nature of our shifting and fluid location in intersecting hierarchies of dominance and subordination, privilege and exclusion.
• Foster open dialogue, broadened understanding, and shared learning.
• Develop enduring partnerships for change.

The workshop is open to all people. Our approach is experiential and highly interactive. We create and maintain an open, supportive learning community in which participants are encouraged to share their own experiences. Methods include personal interaction through large and small group dialogues.

warmest regards,
Clare Holzman

Hello all,

Here is a link to a working diversity-related bibliography my colleague and mentor, Ryan Rominger, Ph.D., and I created in 2008. http://www.teachpsych.org/otrp/resources/resources.php?category=Diversity

Lots and lots of resources! I look forward to collaborating further.

Akhila

Sharon - Signing On

I'm here. Downloaded 'resources.' Thank you Jessica and Sonya. Sharon

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Still working out kinks!

Jessica

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HI All,

Sonya and I are doing some housecleaning on blogspot, and sending this post as a test, to help us clarify steps.

Until Portland...
Jessica

Additional Resources to Share

Thank you so much for sharing with us these helpful resources, Jessica. The following are a few resources to add to the list, if others are interested:

Men and Feminism, Author Shira Tarrant - This is an empowering book that addresses the importance of men's involvement in feminist movements. Tarrant highlights men's efforts to align with women in the spirit of eliminating sexism and other forms of discrimination including racism, heterosexism, classism, etc. Although the dynamics of power discussed are, in some ways, different from issues central to our working group, Tarrant sheds light onto several paradigms for addressing privilege, which I thought might be consistent with some of our group's visions.

Unpacking the Knapsack, Author Peggy McIntosh - I first read this article during my 1st year of graduate school. As I began to think about my own White privilege, I experienced many emotional reactions related to guilt and shame. I also began to question, "what do I do with these emotions?" and "is naming my privilege enough?" McIntosh's article challenged me to explore how I can relinquish my unearned privilege, how I can use my privilege to effect positive change, and how I can work towards dismantling institutional systems of privilege. For me, this article played a central role in initiating my journey around White privilege and internalized racism.

The color of Fear, Director Lee Mun Wah - This is a powerful film, illuminating issues related to racism. Eight individuals including two African American, two Latino, two Asian American, and two White men engage in dialogue surrounding interpersonal, both subtle and covert, and institutional forms of racism. I was offered an opportunity to watch this film during my 2nd year of graduate school. It challenged me to deepen understandings of my own internalized racism as well its impact on multiple aspects of my personal and professional life.

First Step - Resource Sharing

Hi Womyn,

Thank you to those who have shared resources already to support our ongoing work of countering racism.  Below are the gems which we have shared so far.  I look forward to future blog posts to expand the wealth of books, articles, interviews, movies, music and more which may support this journey.  One suggestion is to include a short description in your resource sharing so that others understand why you are recommending this resource.

In solidarity,

Jessica

RESOURCES

1. On Prisons, Borders, Safety, and Privilege: An Open Letter to White Feminists

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/81260/

2. Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology (2006). South End Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Color of Violence presents the fierce and vital writing of 33 visionary radical feminists of color. These writers not only investigate the intersecting ways in which violence and oppression exist in the lives of women of color and our communities, they also map innovative strategies of movement building and resistance used by women and trans people of color around the world.

3. Incite! Women of Color Against Violence

http://www.incite-national.org/

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and our communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing.

4.   APA Society for the Teaching of Psychology Div 2

ttp://www.teachpsych.org/otrp/resources/resources.php?category=Diversity

The 2nd article from the top is a working diversity bibliography created by Akhila Kolesar and a colleague and faculty member at Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. 

5.  The Fire This Time, a documentary about the New Jersey Seven

http://thefirethistimethefilm.com/

On a hot summer evening in the gay-friendly West Village neighborhood of New York City, seven young women from New Jersey were verbally threatened and physically attacked by a twenty-nine-year-old man. In a not uncommon travesty of justice, the New Jersey Seven, as they came to be called, were sent to prison for defending themselves. The Fire This Time tells the story of the seven women’s trial and prison sentences, and the years-long fight by relatives and activists to get the women released.

6. Jensen, Derrick (2004).  The Culture of Make Believe. Chelsea Green.

Author's website:  http://www.derrickjensen.org/index.html 

Jensen details American racism from the genocidal slave trade through lynchings to the 2000 murder of Amadou Diallo by NYC police, and covers a wide range of other cultural horrors as well: the massacres of Native American people, the Holocaust, the 8,000 deaths from the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak in India, and the deaths of 500,000 children in Iraq. 

7. Galeano, Eduardo (2009). Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. Nation Books.

Mirrors, is an unofficial history of the world seen through history’s unseen, unheard, and forgotten. Recalling the lives of artists, writers, gods, and visionaries, from the Garden of Eden to twenty-first-century New York, of the black slaves who built the White House and the women erased by men’s fears, and told in hundreds of kaleidoscopic vignettes, Mirrors is a magic mosaic of our humanity.