From Isaac Lev Szmonko,
on behalf of Catalyst Project:
Dear friend,
Yesterday morning I checked the news groggy-eyed and learned of the massacre in Orlando at ‘Latin Night’ at the Pulse gay club. The grief is overwhelming. I find myself unexpectedly in and out of tears.
Queer space is sacred.… Read more
… Read moreThe replacement of real indigenous stories with Christian-influenced, western moral tales is colonialism, no matter how you dress it up in feathers and moccasins. It silences the real voices of native peoples by presenting listeners and readers with something safe and familiar. And because of the wider access non-natives have to sources of media, these kinds of fake stories are literally drowning us out.
Two mini-zines made by White Noise and friends for a Black Lives Matter march and the Reclaiming Dr. King’s Radical Legacy march last year are available to download and print – a small way to contribute to the waves of organized actions this weekend.
Please take and share these tiny folded pieces packed with quotes and food for thought for white allies:
At the beginning of December the White Noise Collective core met to examine our experiences from 2015 and envision new intentions for the coming year. How quickly yet another year has passed, full of new growing edges, community building, core transitions, and ever-deepening practices. Reflecting on our intentions from our past retreat, it is powerful to witness how the past year was indeed full of manifestation of so much intention: direct action organizing, a new presence on twitter (that we are still co-evolving with), maintaining an action listserve, some beautifully juicy and complex community dialogues, a new dialogue space specifically for movement activists, and two newly developed workshops – one on the role of white women in upholding, maintaining, and subverting systems of violence and the other, that we offered twice this year on Difficult Conversations.… Read more
Dear District Attorney Nancy O’Malley,
This Friday we will mark the one-year anniversary of the Black Friday 14 non-violent direct action at the West Oakland BART station — an action inspired by a growing national movement to expose the painful legacy of police brutality and demand an end to police violence in our country.… Read more
They’re ba-ack! (shudder)
With Halloween quickly approaching, and costume shops like Spirit Halloween opening their doors, many of us are cringing at the thought of another Halloween full of racism, sexism, heterosexism and the full range of offensive apparel we annually witness.
In response, we offer up a toolkit to those who wish to be a part of resisting the dominant paradigms that plague this season.… Read more
This piece is by longtime educator and social justice practitioner Tilman Smith, published on Dr. Shakti Butler’s World Trust site (a phenomenal resource for racial justice educators). Her articulation of the intersection of whiteness and femaleness deeply resonates with White Noise in this ongoing work to critically examine and courageously shake up the ways in which, as Smith so clearly expresses,
… Read more
White Noise has signed this powerful statement currently circulating, which speaks to our deepest commitments and reasons for existence as a collective.
Click Here to sign the statement
Posted from The African American Policy Forum (AAPF):
As we grieve for the nine African Americans who were murdered in their house of worship on June 17 2015, those of us who answer the call of feminism and antiracism must confront anew how the evils of racism and patriarchy continue to endanger all Black bodies, regardless of gender.
In our struggles to take down white supremacy and patriarchy, we must each heal the ways we have internalized these systems of oppression. Otherwise, we end up recreating them — even in our liberation movements. This healing means different things to different people. We write this piece in particular for those of us who identify at what we often call the intersection of race privilege and gender(ed) oppression.… Read more
This insightful article is cross-posted from New Republic:
We cannot talk about the violence that Dylann Roof perpetrated at Emanuel AME last Wednesday night without talking about whiteness, and specifically, about white womanhood and its role in racist violence. We have to talk about those things, because Roof himself did.
Rachel Dolezal Isn’t the Most Important Race Story in Spokane.
But she does seem to be an unraveling puzzle that continues to elicit curiosity, outrage, and comment. From Mia McKenzie’s discussion of Blackness and Blackface, to Kai M Green’s willingness to give Rachel a little more benefit of the doubt in discussing the similarities of race and gender constructs, to Lisa Marie Rollins’ explanation of what transracial actually means, plenty has been said already.… Read more
Thank you for taking the time to read this. This letter was written by white allies in support of certain Native members of our community who have already put a lot of time and energy into trying to explain why it’s a problem when people without Native/First Nations heritage use the term “Two Spirit” to describe themselves.… Read more
For this Mother’s Day, we wanted to share these inspiring images from the Strong Families campaign at Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
“The image of mothers that is widely celebrated excludes mamas based on their sexual orientation, race, class, immigration status, and more. In particular, mamas who are imprisoned, and mamas whose children are incarcerated do not get to see the beauty and power of their relationships represented in most Mother’s Day cards.”… Read more