Dialogue Description:

What does solidarity look like when our racial justice movement leaders are being labeled as terrorists and targeted by the FBI as “Black Identity Extremists” – in a way that hearkens back to the vilification and oppression of the Black Panther Party and other movement leaders? What does “security” and “community defense” really look like in an era of doxing, gun violence, increasingly militarized police, surveillance, and the arming of teachers? How do we continue to stay engaged in the struggle and cultivate resilience (as opposed to fragility and fear) in ourselves, our communities, and our movements in response to the real threats and impacts of state sanctioned violence? How do we push the privileged parts of ourselves to keep showing up and taking risks?

In lieu of a list of suggested readings, you are encouraged to look up any of the terms above you might not recognize. And if you would like a reading to add some perspective, check out these first few pages of the book Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times by Nick Montgomery and carla bergman.

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

What brings you here?

• How to show up in this movement moment for our leaders?
• Noticing how I am taking increasing risk in activism.
• Spending time with SURJ youth and families exploring issues. Hadn’t heard about terms, learned more about the intensity of the attacks. Academic spaces in particular being targeted. What are ways to show up?
• Here to learn and change and develop.
• Solidarity as a question beginning to explore. Lived in and out of the US a lot, re-evaluating as return.
• Loved Joyful Militancy reading. Didn’t know what doxing was either and the idea of empire. The new language is disarming, it is hard to be constantly learning new language. There is a lot of controversy over language. Language is confusing to older people who are just coming into it. Awareness of repression thru recent Richmond ICE detention center newest policy to not let visitors in. A year ago so many people were out on the streets, and Sheriff Ahern is still running unopposed.
• Witnessed many injustices without even having awareness of them growing up. I have a lot to learn, also know there’s no finish line.
• Interested in collectively connecting with others in these movements.

Dialogue

• How do we as individuals keep showing up and how do we defend our leaders?
• How are people showing up to defend and protect and buffer those who are on the front lines?
• Solidarity with Palestinian movement leaders at SFSU.
• Showing up for Black folks in organization, leveraging privileged identities. Noticing that I can say things that are perceived as ‘aggressive’ when Black men share it. Siwatu case in Michigan. Sierra Club leveraging their position to support her freedom. To have open conversation in the workplace is a big shift in the organization.
• The way there are many levels, personal relationships, in larger movements. It is the same act at every level and has value.
• So much repression happens when things remain hidden, when the state controls the narrative. Continuing to have conversations and create organized networks of information to counter what gets said. Keeping our communities whole, because there is so much divisiveness, especially in progressive movements when we in-fight. How do we stay unified around whatever it is we support? It is very complicated.
• A lot of Black Panther People who got targeted by the state, like Mumia Abu Jamal, have gotten long-standing support, continuing to push back against erasure, people being thrown away.
• Sadness in the Joyful Militancy could come up as a feeling of safety or comfort. There are experiences that seem positive, but are the masking of what it takes to have this perceived experience of comfort. Privilege of moving in and out of engagement. Capitalism being caught up in these systems, especially the buffer zone. What does it look like to be subversive in our day to day actions.
• When we get to know each other, it will get messy. There is a lot of healing that needs to occur. Importance of education for youth and adults. Finding your niche and where it is, whether it is on the front lines, in a supporting role and in education.
• It is a matter of speaking up. If we don’t speak up when it occurs, we are just being complicit and retreating when at all times we need to speak. That’s where it begins.
• It was the environmental justice team at Sierra Club, mostly POC, that named the need to train white people. On the vision of mostly Black women under terrible conditions. My piece is easy compared to that. It has been joyful because it has brought me into deep relationship. My job is really spiritually depleting.
• Importance of white people educating each other.
• The lull of the story of privilege. Yes, I know I need to keep showing up, I know that’s what matters, and also, I know for myself that I feel the pull of privilege. Hasta la muerte cafe in East Oakland has been targeted, I feel like I just don’t want to be out there. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I know better. It is hard to keep pushing myself to show up. How to balance burnout and fatigue, helps give in to the privilege?
• I don’t have as much opportunity to show up as I wish I did. When I show up, I feel great. I have questions about how to speak out when other white people are saying offensive things. Fear of not being effective. Need a dialogue on practicing how to talk to white people in a way that will not shut them down.
• We work because breaking down the system is good for us. If I say that to many of my white neighbors, they don’t understand. Hard to explain how it is in all of our interest?
• Many people feel threatened because they feel like they have to give something up.
• Hard to share with family members. Hard to break the barrier.
• It is so easy to make it individual: I’m comfortable, what do I have to give up. What does this mean for me? It is hard to get people to think systems?
• The imagine of Jim Crowe when people would go to church then go to a lynching. That is the level of humanity white people lose when we are so turned off? Have to get turned off by so many people’s humanity.
• It is a disease. How do you tell someone that they are the disease, but that they have a disease. Don’t want to coddle people either.
• Relationships as so important. Impacted by friends getting deported, or neighbor losing their house. IMportance of starting where you are. Thinking of all the things I was taught to aim for, like retirement. Maybe that’s just not a thing that I’m going for? Tendency to get hooked, and be on a path.
• Are they ok with how few people they can care about in the world? They have to keep their world so small to ignore the reality that they’re in. I have 3 friends who have lost a loved one to a police shooting in the last year, I would have to not care aout a lot of people.
• Reality of segregation as part of why white people don’t feel invested in collective liberation.
• Oakland is segregated and gentrifying. Lost 25 percent of Black homeowners in Oakland.
• When have you been transformed in movement work?
• Working in Palestine with Israeli Jews and Palestinians. I was told to yell at Palestinian workers. It really shook me at my core. In my department, we stopped yelling, treating each other like human beings. Got invited by Palestinians to their homes, couldn’t associate with them because then became subject to the eye of the secret police there. In my experience, Palestinian culture was very relationship-based.
• How to decide what amount of risk to take?
• You make a choice that you feel builds the vision you want in the world. There is risk involved.
• What would it mean for people to actually have my back?
• Maybe I even have the intention to have someone’s back, but in practice it can be very hard to show up.
• Are there fewer resources now for arrest support?
• It is so expensive here, people have to work so much to sustain here. Part of the suppression in order to survive.
• There needs to be a new culture of society that creates communities that are able to support dismantling societies. How can we create these communities that can support each other? How to support each other financially, socially and spiritually?
• The more that white people are educating, the more we can build those resources.
• Concerned about suppression on the internet, further control online.
• Disunity in movements as crucial. So  much fragmentation in nonprofits. Scarcity mindset.
• Inspired by DACA student activism.
• What is the most effective thing to do? When to risk arrest, for example?
• Importance of organization.
• SFO protests to respond to the Muslim ban as a moment of transformation. Thousands of people descended. Many people felt more empowered to take risk given that moment and the numbers.
• It has been liberating for me to remind myself not to get to focussed on effectiveness. Remembering that it takes a long time. Especially in my own life, those difficult conversations sometimes we can’t see the long standing impact. Not having a hubris about having the work that we are doing. Collective work takes a long time.
• Attempt and then accept.
• East Bay Meditation Center class on white awakening in sangha. So much about managing ourselves. In this moment, what is useful, even if it is unsatisfying.
• I would go into white spaces and everyone would look very oddly. And friends of color would be so supportive.
• One of the WNC guidelines that was very liberating was not to assume shared identities. Felt clear it was bigger than individual people, about more collective. Don’t avoid conflict or difference.
• How to make space for conflict and get ok with being uncomfortable.
• Importance of not elevating ourselves as more woke white people.
• Not alienating the people that we need, and also there is a sense of urgency. Your ignorance is in the way of our liberation and that is frustrating.
• Jewish Voice for Peace course about unlearning zionism
• Division leads to divide – that is when there are issues, difference being important but not the same is divisiveness
• My best friend is a zionist. It is immense challenge for us to be together but we are doing it. I cannot understand that part of her at all. And she cannot understand why I wouldn’t.
• A lot of the definitions used tend to be the definitions used by people themselves. There are some many divides and fragmentations it is hard to make sense of.
• We are acculturated to want easy answers. Hard to sit in nuances. How can you be in solidarity when there is so much difference? Who to be in solidarity with?
• How does solidarity get impacted by gendered oppression?
• How do we have conversations that might be messy or have conflict? Appreciate ability that someone can speak their truth and have an understanding that people are going to be messy. Importance of expressing our truth without it becoming personal.
• As a woman, hard to speak out because of all that has happened in my life, various traumas.
• I have a friend who is part of a direct action group that is all women and genderqueer people. They have conversations about triggers before every action. Importance of doing work together without sacrificing each other.
• There is a strong call for white people to show up and take risks. I do and I want to. There are times when I need a break. Am I just giving in to my privilege or maybe my trauma needs a break? When are you coddling your privilege?
• Importance of aliveness?
• Importance of trusting our intuition when we need to step back and take a break or go forward. I think we know. I think we should give ourselves leeway to trust our gut. As a cisgender woman, I have taken care of people my entire life, I feel empowered by my choice to stop.

Check-out

• Re-energized to keep talking to neighbors.
• Yearn to be around more trans people. No clear answers around state repression escalation.
• Not many men in this room. More women and transgender people in this work than men. Where are the men? In particular white men.
• A lot of appreciation of the sharing that was happening. Many half-formed thoughts.
• Thinking about where does the aversion from other white people come from? Fear that I will never be a good enough white person to be safe for my friends of color. Fear that I am gonna lose my white community and still not be welcome in POC community. I see things in other white people and know how painfully it lands for POC, hard to hold all of it at once. Importance of values based spaces and building those over time. Having urgency and people working whatever edge their on.
• The seduction of survival. Strong biological urge to survive. Then I can layer shame and privilege on top of that. I think I do need to find more energizing nourishing and connected ways. Some of the ways I am showing up are draining. Maybe they don’t connect to my vision of the future, things that feel winnable. I am involved in a lot of long term support project. Makes it hard to show up for other things. Might be important to re-evaluate.
• Appreciation. Without being colorblind, we are all one, this organic body. Some of us represent an unhealthy part and some more healthy. The importance of maintaining a healthy body. Can’t do it alone.
• I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to speak up every time there is injustice or oppression. No one can ever be perfect, ok with messing up. I’m ok with being uncomfortable and with difficult conversations. Want to be able to go back out of my turtle shell of privilege.
• Remembering to remind myself of the collective rather than just the individual me. My ability to step up is so mixed up with some many other individual issues. It is like a meditation to keep reorienting away from individualism. Still overwhelmed, but also dedicated.