As part of our organizational sunsetting process, we lovingly offer selections of our workshop curriculum to you and to your communities. Like dandelion seeds taking flight on the wind, we hope these educational tools serve you and take on new, emergent lives. The workshops below are a handful among many others we offered in the dozen years of White Noise.
Since our decision to sunset the organization in 2023, we have taken a year to reflect with core collective members and close collaborators to integrate this decade-plus experience, distill lessons and lift up valuable movement memory. Most of these conversations have been recorded for our podcast and also live on StoryCorps.
To our friends, comrades and community,
We miss you! And, we have major news to share: after a long, rocky period of deliberation, our core has made the difficult decision to sunset our organization. Ultimately we have determined that we do not have capacity to move forward together in the form of White Noise Collective.
We are big fans of vent diagrams: move from the overlaps – a phenomenal participatory art project, which was started by educator E.M./Elana Eisen-Markowitz and artist Rachel Schragis.
In their words: “We define a “vent diagram” as a diagram of the overlap of two statements that appear to be true and appear to be contradictory.
The rallying call to defund the police could not be more clear in this time of rebellion and uprising for Black lives, justice and liberation. For those of us who are thinking about this strategy for the first time, or are new to lineages of abolitionist work, here are some resources to guide and deepen understanding of where this call comes from, what it is, and how to contribute to this movement in the short and long term.
For white folks who have been on this journey of anti-racism and for folks who are joining now, wherever we may be there are always new learning curves, ways to show up, opportunities to grow our capacities to support racial justice movements, inner and outer work to meet the transformative demands of this time.
Here are a range of resources to guide and coordinate action, to align understandings and work in solidarity with humility and accountability. We mourn the stealing of the lives of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Tony McDade at the hands of the police and white vigilantes. In mourning, sorrow and anger, we recommit to the lifelong work of ending the 400 year old nightmare of white supremacy.
When Amy Cooper pointed her finger at Chris Cooper saying, with cell phone in her other hand, “I am going to tell them (the police) that an African-American man is threatening my life.”, a crystallization of decades and centuries of ghosts that have haunted this country came into sharp focus. The weaponization of white womanhood is so old.
Within the massive waves of information overwhelm, we compiled these resources to boost our capacity and connection to respond to this crisis. Gratitude to all of the labor by so many amazing people that went into creating these resources to weather this and future storms together.
Re-posting this excellent blog by Felicia Gustin of SURJ. Upcoming events also include: 7/2 Families Belong Together – Block ICE and Banner making: Stop ICE Family Separation
We are all feeling outrage over the cruel and inhumane immigration policies that separate families at the border. Trump’s Executive Order is a smokescreen, a distraction, and we have to keep up the pressure.… Read more
“This sacred site represents our living culture and more than 5,000 years of our history. We will not allow our ancestors to be disturbed.”
—Joint statement from Ohlone family bands
Hello local settlers, it is a vitally important and urgent time to tune in to the Indigenous-led campaign to save the West Berkeley Shellmound, learn and understand the profound significance of this Ohlone ancient burial ground and sacred site, and to teach others, and get involved with many forms of support.… Read more
15 years ago began the US invasion of Iraq. What could an Iraq War Memorial be? How to represent a scale of loss and devastation beyond what individual hearts can hold, what could do (im)possible justice, what would be small, real steps of reparations? How do we learn from other countries, peoples, communities about memory as a practice of becoming more human, a practice of resistance against amnesia as a tool of Empire – with our particular United Statian default settings of tuning out war and often fragmented attention spans?… Read more
We want to share the excellent resources compiled by friends at Catalyst Project and Bay Resistance, and add a few others for educators, organizers, artists, and all people who want to take action this weekend and beyond.
“We have re-entered a time period when white supremacist groups are not fringe or powerless, but connected to, and supported by, the White House.… Read more
