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Work 4 Peace,Hold All Life Sacred,Eliminate Violence! I am on my mobile version of the door-to-door, going town-to-town holding readings/gatherings/discussions of my book "But What Can I Do?" This is my often neglected blog mostly about my travels since 9/11 as I engage in dialogue and actions. It is steaming with my opinions, insights, analyses toward that end of holding all life sacred, dismantling the empire and eliminating violence while creating the society we want ALL to thrive in

Sunday, October 04, 2020

Brief Report Back Saturday Oct 3rd Zoom Gathering: “What Will White Womyn Do To End Racism?”

 

We got off to a bumpy start this zoom due to technical difficulties. Several womyn signed on but couldn’t connect, plus screen freezes galore – so we got off to a slow and late start but still had another great zoom. 

We discussed the “blue flu”, which is a police walk-out. One of us who lives in a Black community, was extremely happy, as she didn’t see any police doing their usual ‘intimidating drive-bys’ and walking patrols through her neighborhood. We discussed the strategy of spreading the blue flu as a pandemic across the country in order to abolish the police.

Ever needing to be vigilant, we talked about the constant necessity for white people remind ourselves daily if not hourly, to stay aware of both our privilege and feelings/acts of supremacy as it is so easy to slip into (un)intentional racism. For example, examining our language use: Black people vs Blacks, enslaved vs slaves, white people vs people (the ‘white’ understood). Making statements “everyone is racist’ instead of “all white people are racist” and anyone can be bigoted. And we delved deeper into what is bigotry vs what is a reaction to 400+ years of racism? 

Again we touched upon how disappointed and painful it is when the people we worked to elect to office on the grounds of their alleged progressive ideals, fail us. And the conflicts arising from how white people then hold Black and brown people in positions of governance accountable. In this day and age, when white people are trying to step back, learn how to listen to and follow the leadership of Black and brown people, what happens when we disagree strongly with the leadership of our elected officials? And especially when we see those officials not acting against police violence which we know impacts Black people much more than white people. Is it more racist of white people to not say anything or to take the microphone? Do we need to amplify our voice to hold our representatives accountable or do white people have yet another choice(s) such as finding and supporting those Black people in our community whose values we are aligned closer with, using our white privilege to amplify their voices?

We continued to share our stories of our journey along our individual paths to anti-racism and how still we cannot fathom the hatred whites choose to embrace especially today not just so many decades after the alleged abolishment of slavery but since the plethora of information, instruction, experience, analysis including strategies for dismantling and abolishing racism that especially Black womyn have put forward and made so accessible to all. And again, our responsibility in confronting and silencing this hatred, if not rooting it out.

A couple of us lived through the “busing in Boston” travesty and violence perpetrated by white people against Black children and the dismal failure of integration to improve the educational system – once again proving that institutions created and maintained to preserve racism cannot be “amended” but need to be demolished and rebuilt from the ground up. 

We spoke again of feminism and the need for white womyn who are feminists to always include “anti-racist” in front of feminist in order to acknowledge the racism white womyn un/intentionally bring with us wherever we go and also the racism of the larger society reporting and turning feminism into a white movement by amplifying white womyn’s voices while silencing and ignoring the fact that it is Black womyn who analyzed, created, developed and  taught us about feminism, empowerment, how to love and treasure ourselves as womyn, and how to identify and smash the misogyny we internalized and face externally.

We ended with a commitment to return next Saturday to continue honing our skills in acknowledging and confronting racism and improving our effectiveness as anti-racists! 

See you Saturday 6pm eastern time, 3pm pacific!

 

In love and rage, Xan