Here is your first set of readings, video and audio to complete by the first day of the program, February 22th. Please note there are about 154 pages and 2 hrs of required audio/video, so you’ll want to plan ahead and start soon!  

All of the readings correlate with specific parts of the curricula and the goals/outcomes for the first weekend listed below.  

Our goals for the first weekend are to set a foundation for the rest of the work we will do together:

• Relationship building
• Orientation to the different components of the program, including training in grassroots fundraising
• Building an anti-racist, transformative organizing culture
• Understanding what is happening politically right now in our country and internationally, including the global shift to the Right, and why
• Understanding white supremacy as a system, historically and today, and our own relationship to it
• Starting to develop an understanding of racial capitalism. While this is a complex idea with multiple components, this weekend we will look at how capitalism could not have developed without theft of land and resources from indigenous people, enslaved labor of African people, colonial expansion in the Americas and beyond, and imperialism against Third world peoples. Therefore, white supremacy and capitalism are inextricably intertwined.
• Learning about Indigenous resistance to colonization

A note on the readings: 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 honor the emotional and intellectual labor of these authors by buying the works from which excerpts have been taken where possible. This is especially important as we all have white skin privilege and many of these authors are folks of color. Please do not share these readings broadly over listservs, but do share them with individuals and your organizations who you will be engaging in study with. When sharing any of these readings with your comrades, please also pass on this message.

In weekend two we will be diving into Black liberation, patriarchy, and imperialism and we’ll have more readings on those topics to come.

Enjoy!

Understanding Racial Capitalism (components of racial capitalism bullet pointed below)

• • • Robin D.G. Kelley, Excerpt from “What Did Cedric Robinson Mean By Racial Capitalism?” from the Boston Review (1 page)

• Christian Supremacy/Hegemony
  1. Paul Kivel, in the Shadow of the Cross 111-130 (19 pgs total)
  2. The Empire Files: Deepa Kumar on Islamophobia and Empire (27 min video)
  3. Jane Coaston, How the rise of conspiracy theory politics emboldens anti-Semitism (7 pgs)
  4. Jewish Voice for Peace, Fighting Antisemitism, sections 1 & 2 (4 pgs)
• Enslavement of Africans
  1. Sven Beckert, excerpt from “Slavery and Capitalism,” The Chronicle Review (6 pgs, full article @ chronicle.com).
  2. Edward E. Baptist, Excerpt from “The Half Has Never Been Told”  (2-3 pgs)
• Colonization and resistance
  1. 1. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Indigenous People’s History of the United States, “Introduction” (14 pgs)
     2. Nick Estes, “Born on the Fourth of July: Counterinsurgency, Indigenous Resistance, and Black Revolt” (3 pgs)
     3. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “As We Have Always Done, Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance” Introduction (10 pgs total, excerpt from chapter 1 recommended)
     4. Ana Portnoy, “Irma and María: Shedding Light on Puerto Rico’s Colonial Reality” (10 pgs)
• Imperialism
  1. Nicholas Davies, 35 Countries where the US has supported fascists, drug lords and terrorists: (4 pgs required, 7 more recommended) Pick 10 countries to read, strongly recommend reading all of them 🙂
  2. Warsan Shire, No one Leaves Home (4 min video)
  3. Harsha Walia interview, “Defining Border Imperialism”(13 min video)
• Patriarchy
  1. Johnathan Henderson, Reflection on Caliban and the Witch (2 pgs)
• Environment and Climate
  • Kyle Powys Whyte, “Why the Native American pipeline resistance in North Dakota is about climate justice” (4 pgs)
  • Movement Generation, “Ecological Revolution” (5 pgs)
  • Video clip from Laura Pulido, The Poisoning of Flint Michigan and Racial Capitalism 22:53-28:30 (6 mins)
• Ableism
  1. Sins Invalid, small sections from Disability Justice Primer (9 pgs total)
     • Disability Justice: A Working Draft (starts pg 9)
     • poem from Disability Liberated by Aurora Levins Morales (starts pg 55)

Building a Visionary Anti-Racist Culture

1. SONG (Southerners On New Ground), “role of white people in the movement at this time” (8 pgs)
2. Tema Okun, “White Supremacy Culture” from dismantlingracism.org. (7 pgs)
3. Anne Braden, “Finding the Other America” (5 pgs) & watch this 3.5 min video

Grassroots fundraising as organizing

1. Vicki Quatman, “Organizing and Fundraising: Sisters in the Struggle”. (3 pgs)

Assessing our current political conditions

1. Spencer Sunshine, Three Pillars of the Alt-Right: White Nationalism, Antisemitism, Misogyny (6 pgs)
2. Glen Greenwald, Brazil’s Bolsonaro-Led Far Right Wins a Victory Far More Sweeping and Dangerous Than Anyone Predicted. Its Lessons Are Global. (5 pgs)
3. Max Elbaum, Politics Is About Power: Assessing the 2018 Midterms (7 pgs)
4. Tarso Ramos, “Facing the Right: A Conversation with Tarso Luís Ramos.” (watch 11:42 – 1:04:28) from the Center for Political Education event Facing the Far Right. We find Tarso Ramos’s talk to be very helpful in understanding our political moment, but his wording is sometimes challenging, here are some definitions we created to help.
5. Carol Anderson on Voter Suppression since Obama (16 min video) from 26:32 to 42:08

Family history

1. James Baldwin, “On Being White and Other Lies” from Black on White: Black Writers On What It Means to Be White (5 pgs) (bio)

Recommended Articles/Book Excerpts

1. Chris Crass, Catalyst Project, “From A Place Of Love: Catalyst Project and the Strategy of Collective Liberation Leadership in White Communities” (20 pgs)
2. Andrea Smith, “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy” from The Color of Violence: The INCITE Anthology. (8  pgs)
3. Arun Kundnani, Violence Comes Home: An Interview with Arun Kundnani (if have space, keep in required, otherwise in recommended, it’s 5 pgs)
4. Toni Morrison, “On the Backs of Blacks,” Time, Fall 1993 (1 pg) (bio)
5. Karen Brodkin Sacks, “How Did Jews Become White?” from Race, *(Gregory and Sanjek eds.) (12 pgs) (bio)
6. Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America, excerpt from chapter 1 (8 pgs)
7. Laura Pulido, Geographies of Race and Ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence (7pgs)
8. Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, Understanding Anti-Semitism (30 pgs)

Recommended Audio, Video & Poetry

1. Robin D. G. Kelley lecture “What Is Racial Capitalism and Why Does It Matter?” (1 hr)
2. Vijay Prashad, “The World We Want is the World We Need,” (13 min video) from Riverside Church, NYC, May 20, 2011. 
3. Suheir Hammad, “Refugees” (Prod. by Beatnick & K-Salaam). (3 min song)
4. Interview with Layli Long Soldier, a writer, a mother, a citizen of the U.S. and of the Oglala Lakota Nation, “The Freedom of Real Apologies” (8 pages)
5. Mab Segrest on Fortification podcast – Segrest explores her experience as a white lesbian organizing against a virulent Far Right movement in North Carolina against a backdrop of nine generations of her family’s history (1 hour)
6. Alicia Garza: On Historical Amnesia, and Fighting White Supremacy. Making Contact podcast. (29 minutes)
7. Michelle Grace Steingberg, “Beyond Recognition” — A film exploring the quest to preserve one’s culture and homeland in a society bent on erasing them (25 mins)
8. Marge Piercy, “The Low Road” (1 pg poem)
9. Migrant Justice Video — How U.S. Involvement in Central America Led To a Border Crisis (12 mins)
10. Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez “What is White Supremacy?” from Catalyzing Liberation Toolkit (6 pgs)
11. James Baldwin, “White Supremacy and the United States” (8 min speech, or 2 page PDF transcript)

Recommended Tools

1. Catalyst Project, “Tools for White Anti-Racist Organizing”  from the Catalyzing Liberation Toolkit. (2 pages)
2. Sins Invalid, section from Disability Justice Primer — Access Suggestions for a Public Event (starts page 23–read first 3.5 pgs)
3. Micah Bazant, “Trans 101 Etiquette, Respect, and Support,” (6 pages)
4. Paul Kivel, excerpts from Uprooting Racism.: “Costs of Racism to White People” (5 page PDF) and “White Benefits, Middle-class Privilege” (7 page PDF)
5. Kim Klein, “Prospect Identification:  You Already Know All the People You Need to Know To Raise All the Money You Want to Raise”. (4 page PDF), and “The Fine Art of Asking For the Gift”. (4 page PDF)