Anne Braden Program 2018 Readings and Homework

Below you can find the readings and homework that we assigned for the 2018 Anne Braden Program, a four month-long anti-racist training program for white social justice activists. This reading list and the homeworks have been developed over the last ten years with input from our brilliant constellation of mentors, organizers of color and movement elders. You can form study groups with friends, family, or fellow organizers. Or you can do the homeworks with people you work with. Or read and do the homework on your own. However these best serve you, we hope that you can apply the learnings to bold, badass work to change this world. We need it.

Sincerely, the Catalyst Project Collective

Readings:

First Session Readings

  • Foundational understanding of White Supremacy
  • Understanding Racial Capitalism
    • Ensalvement of Africans
    • Colonization
    • Imperialism
    • Ableism
  • Building a visionary Anti-racist Culture
  • Grassroots fundraising as organizing
  • Assessing our current political conditions
  • Poetry and song

Second Session Readings

  • Black Liberation
  • Patriarchy
  • Climate Change
  • Imperialism and Neoliberalism
  • Class and classism
  • Poetry

Third Session Readings

  • The world we want: anti-racist vision and organizing strategy
  • Leadership development and personal transformation
  • Resisting state repression
  • Poetry

Homework:

  • Indigenous Resistance and Colonization – Unlearn/relearn the history and current struggles of Indigenous people in the place you grew up and/or currently call home and to begin thinking about our place and role in these struggles of colonization and resistance.
  • Anti-Racist Organizational Analysis – Questions to help examine where your organization is centering racial justice in their work.
  • Family history –  Uncovering your family’s history to understand the ways you family have perpetuated, assimilated into, and resisted white supremacy.
  • Neoliberalism – Understand neoliberalism and its impacts by looking at changes in your hometown since the 1970’s.
  • Deconstructing Class – Understanding your own class background and how white supremacy and white privilege have impacted it.
  • Class Characteristics – A tool for identifying and understanding one’s class. It is meant to be done after completing the “deconstructing class” homework above.
  • Reflections On Classism – Questions to reflect on classism, how it might be showing up for you, in your relationships, and in our overall white and multiracial movement cultures.