2013 Session 13: Personal Transformation for Collective Liberation

2013 Anne Braden Anti-Racist Training Program
Session 13: Personal Transformation for Collective Liberation

Required Readings and Video

  1. Tema Okun, “From White Racist to White Anti-Racist: The Lifelong Journey”. (16 page PDF*: White_Anti-Racist_Life-Long_Journey_Okun). (bio).
  2. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, excerpts from “Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others” with introduction from Catalyst Project  in 2011 ABP reader. (6 page PDF: Lipsky_Trauma_Stewardship). (bio).
  3. Dismantling Racism Works, “Anti-Racist Organizational Development” from their Dismantling Racism: A Resource Book for Social Change Groups. (20 page PDF: Anti-Racist_Organizational_Development_WesternStates). (bio).
  4. Ng’ethe Maina and Staci Haines, “The Transformative Power Of Practice”. (4 page PDF: Maina_Haines_Transformative_Power_of_Practice). (Maina bio; Haines bio).
  5. Ng’ethe Maina‘s presentation at the Transformative Organizing Panel from the US Social Forum, 2010.  Video (part 3 of 5).  The first 10 min 45 seconds. (On the web at www.thestrategycenter.org/node/5147; also on Youtube). (bio).

Recommended Readings

  1. Catherine Jones, “Love Letter to Common Ground Clinic” (4 page PDF: Jones_Love_Letter_To_Common_Ground_Clinic). (bio).
  2. Dismantling Racism Works, “Movement Mentality” from their Handbook. (2 page PDF*: dRworks_Movement_Mentality). (bio).
  3. Dismantling Racism Works, “Change Team” from their Handbook. (7 page PDF: dRworks_Change_Team). (bio).
  4. Dismantling Racism Works, “Organizational Vaccine” from their Handbook. (2 page PDF: dRworks_Organizational_Vaccine). (bio).
  5. Jamie Lee Evans, “Aunt Lute Books: Theory and Practice in Action” from The Woman-Centered Economy: Ideals, Reality, and the Space in Between. (3 page PDF: Aunt_Lute_Books_Evans). (bio).
  6. Dismantling Racism Works, “Giving Feedback” from their Handbook. (2 page PDF: dRworks_Giving_Feedback). (bio).
  7. Whites Confronting Racism Workshop (Lorraine Marino and Antje Mattheus), “Guidelines for Receiving Feedback” from their workshop manual. (1 page PDF: Marino_Guidelines_for_Receiving_Feedback). (bio).
  8. Whites Confronting Racism Workshop (Lorraine Marino and Antje Mattheus), “Tips for Addressing Conflict” from their workshop manual. (2 page PDF: Marino_Tips_on_Addressing_Conflict). (bio).

Readings are provided free for use by participants studying in the Anne Braden Training Program for Anti-Racist Organizers, a noncommercial, nonprofit educational program. We encourage everyone to buy the works from which excerpts have been taken – please support these authors and publishers.

Author Biographies

Dismantling Racism Works, dRworks, is a collaborative of trainers and organizers who have been facilitating Dismantling Racism work for many years. Using a model developed in the early 1990s by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, what was once a three-day workshop has developed into the multi-year Dismantling Racism process we facilitate today. Under the leadership of all those at dRworks and with the help of literally hundreds of people who have participated in the DR process and are working hard to build anti-racist organizations in communities across the U.S., we continue to develop and strengthen the grounding model that we offer to leaders and organizations who come to us for help and support.

dRworks Training/Curriculum Team:
 Bree Carlson is a lead trainer with more than 10 years of organizing experience in community, labor, and electoral projects. Working extensively throughout the United States and abroad, Bree has provided training and facilitation to groups ranging from grassroots community organizations and statewide coalitions to regional intermediaries and national organizations.  Bree has assisted in the creation and implementation of the Dismantling Racism curriculum and has trained hundreds of organizations in the DR process, board development, strategic planning, and fundraising.
Meredith Dean has been working on justice issues for over twenty years, internationally, regionally, and locally. She first developed her anti-racist approach to social change during the years she spent working with community organizers in the Philippines and doing international solidarity and media work with progressive religious organizations.  In 1993 she became founding Director of the Appalachian Women’s Alliance, and since then has successfully combined anti-racist education and training with anti-racist organizing and action in low income Appalachian communities.  Meredith holds a Masters Degree from Antioch University, attended Seminary at Drew Theology School, and earned her Bachelor of Arts from Davidson College.
M. E. Dueker  is a lead trainer who most recently served as executive director of Project Underground, a human-rights and environmental organization in Berkeley, CA.  Dueker brings 12 years of organizing experience in various contexts, including campuses, small communities, membership organizations, national organizations, international solidarity work and electoral efforts.  Dueker has gained a broad practical knowledge in the non-profit sector through experience in administrative, fundraising, management, board of directors, lead organizer and consultant roles in non-profits across the United States.  Dueker has conducted dismantling racism and organizational development trainings for social change organizations nationwide for the past 7 years.
Alice Johnson is originally from New Bern, North Carolina.  She worked for several years at El Centro Hispano in Durham, NC, a grassroots Latino leadership center, where she coordinated the development of language interpretation and translation as anti-racist tools in grassroots leadership development.  She also lived in Palestine from 1997-1999, working with a local social conflict resolution center in Gaza City.  Alice currently works with the Highlander Research and Education Center in East Tennessee, coordinating the translation, interpretation, and multilingual capacity building within the organization.
Michelle Johnson is a licensed clinical social worker working at Counseling and Psychological Services at University of North Carolina.  She has worked as a social worker at East Chapel Hill High School (NC) where she developed several diversity programs.  In her current position, she has helped lead efforts to assess outreach efforts and services to students of color.
Kenneth J. Jones was a DRworks founder.  He was active in the social change movement for 25 years. Kenneth provided workshops for groups across the country in organizational development, strategic thinking and planning, community organizing, board and leadership development, fundraising and dismantling racism.  His humor, kindness, intelligence, and insight influenced literally hundreds of activists across the country. Kenneth was about to become the director of the Highlander Center before he died in 2004.
Tema Okun see bio below.
Suzanne Plihcik is a community organizer and facilitator for the Partnership Project, a collaboration working to strengthen neighborhood and institutional relationships through an increased understanding of systemic racism. She and her partners conduct anti-racism workshops and teach the skills of anti-racist community organizing. She is past director of Project Greensboro, a community building organization working with Greensboro neighborhoods and the agencies that serve them.  Before joining Project Greensboro, she was executive director of the National Alliance for Non-Violent Programming, a coalition of national organizations seeking to reduce violence in entertainment through media-literacy.  She is a founding member of the Greensboro Public School Fund, Dance on Tour, and Friends of Public Education.
Tina Lopes works in a variety of sectors, government departments, and organizations, to implement change processes.  She also facilitates strategic planning, board development, and mediation sessions that integrate anti-racism and equity.
Barb Thomas integrates anti-racism and equity into program design, facilitator training, and organizational planning.  She is one of the co-authors of Education Changing Unions and currently works with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
Leslie Withers was an organizer with Clergy and Laymen Concerned (CALC) in the South for several decades.  CALC began as Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam in 1965 to work in faith communities to end the war in Vietnam.  They went from an interracial peace mobilization to become a mostly white peace organization in the 1970s.  They continued their work against militarism and US foreign policy after the war in Vietnam ended.
End of dRworks Training/Curriculum Team

Jamie Lee Evans is the project coordinator for the Y.O.U.T.H. Training Project. She specializes in facilitation, training and working with groups.  Jamie worked at San Francisco Women Against Rape for eight years, serving first as Director of Recruitment and Training and then Director of Teen Education. She holds a bachelor’s degree from University of California at Santa Cruz and is a MSW from San Francisco State University. She is also a survivor of the foster care system and a leader in INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence.

Staci Haines is a leading teacher with Generative Somatics. Her work emerges from the somatics tradition of Richard Strozzi Heckler integrating Polarity Therapy, Gestalt, Vipassana meditation and Aikido. Staci integrates her extensive study in personal and social change, trauma and recovery and Neuro-Linguistic Programming into this unique and powerful work. She is a senior teacher in the field of Somatics and leads courses in Somatics and Leadership, Somatics and Trauma, and Social Justice Leadership. Staci is the author of The Survivor’s Guide to Sex, a how-to book offering a somatic approach to recovery from sexual trauma and developing healthy sexual and intimate relationships. Staci is also a founder of generation Five, a social justice organization whose mission is to end the sexual abuse of children within 5 generations through survivor leadership, community organizing, transformative justice approaches and movement building.

Catherine Jones was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana and coordinates the Latino Health Outreach Project and is finishing medical school to be a doctor.  She worked in the Common Ground Clinic, the Anti-Racism Working Group of Common Ground and People’s Hurricane Relief Fund.  Catherine worked for many years with San Francisco Food Not Bombs and the Challenging White Supremacy Workshops.  In 2002, Catherine co-founded the Bay Area Childcare Collective, whose mission is “We are committed to providing grassroots organizations and movements composed of and led by immigrant women, low-income women, and women of color with trained, competent, patient, and politicized childcare providers for one-time events or ongoing meetings.”

Laura van Dernoot Lipsky has been working with trauma survivors for two decades. After regularly spending nights volunteering in a homeless shelter at age 18, she went on to work with survivors of child abuse, domestic violence, acute trauma and natural disasters. Also active in community organizing and social-justice movements, she has acquired an intimate knowledge of the toll that trauma can take on those who are called to help.  With her theory of Trauma Stewardship she combines the wisdom of traditions from around the globe with contemporary research, inviting those of us who have been exposed to hardship, suffering, or trauma, whether directly or indirectly, to reinvent how we approach caring for others and ourselves.
 She was worked with community organizers and health care workers in Japan to zookeepers and reconstruction volunteers in the post Katrina New Orleans, from U.S. Air Force pilots to Canadian fire fighters, from public school teachers to private practice doctors. She is also the founder and director of a Spanish-language preschool and grade school enrichment program that offers an environmental and social-justice curriculum.

Ng’ethe Maina worked for AGENDA, a grassroots community-based organization in Los Angeles, from its inception in early 1993, helping to develop it into a leading voice for poor people in struggles for social and economic justice.  As a Senior Organizer with AGENDA he helped lead successful economic justice campaigns to win jobs and training for poor people; he also helped pioneer cutting edge organizing tools and technologies that AGENDA has used in its efforts. In 2003, Ng’ethe moved to New York City, where he became the Training Director for New York Jobs with Justice, and launched the Social Justice Leadership Collaborative with Simon Greer.  He is currently the Executive Director of Social Justice Leadership.  Ng’ethe brings to this position more than a decade of social justice organizing, and several years of transformative organizational change work.

Tema Okun has worked with community-based, social change non-profits for over 20 years. Her work as a staffer for the Rural Advancement Fund, the Carolina Community Project, Grassroots Leadership, and the Institute for Southern Studies formed the core of her organizational experience, where she served in such varied roles as development director, training director, and interim executive director. Tema has worked with literally hundreds of organizations on organizational development issues including fundraising, long-range strategic planning, member and board development, issue and organizing campaigns. She has worked with Kenneth Jones and DRworks for over 10 years doing both organizational and anti-racist organizational development work with a wide range of organizations and communities. Tema has a B.A. from Oberlin College (1975) and an M.S. in Adult Education from N.C. State University (1997).

Whites Confronting Racism: this anti-racism workshop was designed in the early 1990s as a response to requests made by activists of color involved in Training for Change (a multi-racial social justice training institute based in Philadelphia) that white people work with other white people around racism.  Lorraine Marino and Antje Mattheus created and facilitated the experiential workshop for over a decade and have now passed the torch to other facilitators.  More info at www.trainingforchange.org.

* Note: number of pages refers to pages within the PDF file to provide a sense of the download size, not the number of pages of readings included. Links to external web sites open in a new page.

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