• Hillary Clinton and the Problem of White Feminism
• Sympathy for the Devil? Refusing to engage Trump’s base will only guarantee the growth of the far right

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.

• strategy – want to have concrete conversation around what the next 6 months of organizing looks like, what is the role of people in the Bay Area or other very progressive cities, what work can we do that ripples out nationally
• guilt, shame, despair; ways that I feel most connected during that time is in community, deepening relationships
• happy to know that a lot of people are energized
• thinking about strategy, how to have very difficult conversations with family in Michigan, wanting to create connections with other folks who have immediate family who supported Trump
• want to be with others
• how we don’t have room to be afraid of fucking up, it’s time to stop trying to be perfect and act and know we will make mistakes and trust we can learn from them. vast majority of white people who aren’t invited to show up for racial justice, how do we invite them
• fielded phone calls from people from so many different corners of our lives, need to talk to people about being white
• be amidst our grief and other feelings, and also feel how this is provoking other important conversations
• feel an urgency, a thrashing that isn’t very helpful, better to calm and center and then move with intention and clarity
• feels like a throwback to when GW Bush was elected
• this moment feels like a call to action, especially asking what is my child seeing in this moment?
• looking for a place to be in the racial justice movement in the Bay
• feeling a lot of flailing around, wanting to be strategic about matching skills with what needs to be done
• wanting to talk not only to friends who are conservative but also to friends who are liberal, this is not new!
• want to talk about some direction, want to have some sort of plan of action, and also build a community and make some changes
• post-Trump election and ties to white nationalism is first visceral experience of thinking about my Judaism and thinking that whiteness might not always protect me, even though I access white privilege
• how am I talking to my family? how are my family members talking about the dangers that Trump represents?
• painful to be around young people who can’t have a conversation about strategy and rely so much on adults
• how do we build a movement that feels sustainable, that doesn’t feel thrashing around
• how do we create space to grieve?
• think that building community is what helps to give us sustainability
• role models, how to be a role model to students, what role models are we looking for, who are they, where have they been?
• feeling really sick, really feeling it
• ritual as mechanism to sustain our work
• intersection of Ashkenazi Jewishness and whiteness, and using this moment to open up action to mainstream Jewish organizations, and intersections with Palestine in this moment
• Different spiritual backgrounds- how to have grounded spiritual vibe at direct action and protests. Examples from Black organizing spaces that ]
• Not identified as white as a first generation immigrant- trying to work through the different way I experience whiteness
• Letting go of fear of fucking up, just talking about it
• feeling more vulnerable for gender presentation, and knowing I am safer here than other places
• Difference of reaction from white people than many people of color. POC not as shocked, its been like this. Why are we so affected by media, etc.
• Found courage this last week that I didn’t know I had.
• Speak the truth and not worry about the reaction
• Discernment without division
• Accountability around my whiteness, feel the pull of “its actually not gonna be that bad for you”, and the realness of that.
• Whiteness, passion for racial justice can end up showing up in a really divisive way. How to be passionate, while still bridge across difference and bring curiosity to the person Im interacting with.
• Why are white people so surprised and denial that this has always been in the country that we are in. One of the problems is that many people already are living the American dream.
• What we have now is a lot of woke people and that is a beautiful thing
• My fear is that a lot of self-hatred and doubt is going to stop us from mobilizing the way we need to.
• Neoliberalism helped create the environment that allowed Trump to win
• If we are going to engage in electoral politics is how we are going to change it. We need to run people on the ticket at every level as well as grassroots work
• How to push white people in my life who were ok with Hillary. Lot of talk about unity, and I want to know what that really means.
• Liberalism- people say main issue is the electoral college.
• Saftey pins
• Mid terms elections
• % of already engaged white people, folks who need to be invited, organizations that are already doing that.
• Can we move this country if it is just based on morality. Where is the material  basis
• Equity is superior growth model – policy link
• economic inequality is keeping down GDP
• Right wing got to define race. Hilary couldn’t because neo-liberalism is racist too.
• How to help people see the racism in neo-liberalism
• in order to organize we need to deal with and Recognize the deep fear that whites have of “genocide”
• White becoming a minority, and keep
• Lit- story of Derek …, poster child of white nationalism and he defuncted, gives a clear lens of white nationalism and how he was brought out until the point he could not reconcile his world view
• Safety pins
• Have POC asked for this? OK? Band-aid thing.
• Framed as I am available if there is xenophobic violence. Danger is if it is performative. But not doing the hard work of fighting white supremacy
• Very related to white liberalism- racism looks like interpersonal or explicit
• Need to start giving the benefit of the doubt
• how to intervene, don’t be a white savior.
• Does wearing the safety pin help you feel like you don’t need to do anything else.
• Linda Sarsour This is a moment and were woke, and now we are gonna give 110%, but for her she is tired and we need
• Strategy piece and done well in the bay. Cadre of organizing, BASAT. But also help onboard people newly within SURJ.
• So in larger progressive cities, the immigrant rights movement where the left was organized around before BLM. So we have the opportunity to have a larger cross-section of people to forward what a diverse movement looks.
• Bringing together BLM, immigrant rights and roots of the sanctuary movement. Opportunity to move many more people into direct engagement with people facing deportation. People who are service/support oriented to help people deal with the effects of repression.
• Expanding SURJ or something new. Need to bring people into relationship to take action. We need a lot more people to give 20%, cause some of us have already gone 200%. Person to person connection, with undocumented folks and Black folks.
• LGBTQ folks, they are not coming after us yet. For people who love queers it is a good doorway to support Black and undocumented folks.
• What is the map of the bay area white anti-racist organizing place.
• A lot of people who said they used to be engaged, so many people want to know how to enter.
• Safety pin- cool now that you are wearing that. Safety pin checklist. IN the bay
• White women march- subtext, the gentrification of many things. if it doesn’t say specifically POC, than it is white. Is it a problem, for a bunch of white women to come out against Trump. The issue is that they are just looking at sexism, and not about all the ways POC and queers will be getting oppressed.
• Identifying as a feminist for a long time and then to learn about the ways that feminism has been used to perpetuate white supremacy. You only see gender oppression, and not the way in which you are privileged. So a bunch of white women together will forward an agenda that serves them, and not an intersectional woman.
• The divisiveness is a fine to tread.
• In the desire to be good, we aren’t anything.
• Merrit circle, chaffing against the energy there. Love trumps hate. Too liberal, because so many people think if only Hillary had won. Fear I had had for years and didn’t know it would come this soon. Having a longer perspective on it is important.
• A lot is being asked to make room for other folks. How do people who have already been organizing handle all the influx
• For the people who are newly freaking out, we are having to figure out how to mobilize them, and we are also about to unleash a lot of folks who don’t have any relationships with people of color, or who will want to be a savior.
• Dis-orientations. How do you do direct action, or how do you practically support communities facing deportation. How to not trample over people we are in solidarity with.
• Do we expand SURJ? People who have
• How to hold a long term vision and learn from history as well.
• Role I could have, Im not a hard core activist nor a novice, so Im trying to find the in-roads for new people. There are lots of menial volunteering that are needed- childcare, rides, etc.
• Shouldn’t be a jump straight to direct action.
• Where are your strengths? Numbness or anger. Vision for organizing has oscillated. From “I don’t care about your heart and mind, I just want you to take action”.
• This isn’t about Trump, this is about the culture that we have. Mainstream community, that is focused on electoral college and how do we gently radicalize people.
• Role of empathy. Nervousness when I express openness to peoples views who are racist, because I am then implicated.
• Somatic workshop, the process of empathizing. Using those tools.
• Not accepting people are where they are.
• Having empathy for the trauma that people have had, and the values that they.
• People want that practice of training how to have the conversation
• If you take the action, and you aren’t in such a existential place. Being in process.
• It is a long process of radicalization.
• membership based organizations, like churches and unions, to try and fail and be in community. Especially for white liberal racism. Want to plug them not into SURJ, but their neighborhood council. The cost is that they fuck up.
• Our organizing is centralized, cause its too exhausting to really base building and moving people through a long process.
• Every year anti-abortion groups march on the same day, and

Closing

• Grateful to this space opening up.
• Reading
• Support others in this space to talk it through
• Work with my family
• Beginning and continuing in a sustainable way
• Patience
• Learning about new organizations
• Refreshed by new perspectives
• Grateful for map of organizations
• Noticing shame whiteness backlash- and will not let it keep me from doing work
• On point to invite folks I don’t usually invite
• Visually pleasing way to map organizations
• Holding onto embodiment practices as not optional
• Transfer leadership more, involved in ways in which they are accountable
• Impressed with how people carry on
• Sad and purposeful, lineage
• Spiritual practices, plan, and connections with people I have been doing the work with already to keep creating
• Discerning for myself who I can move and who I cant
• Build up emotional intelligence and skills to support other people
• Burned out, so figure out how to take care to keep showing up.
• Get another workshop organized, if anyone wants to co-facilitate.
• Open letter-
• Committing to be ancestors that future generations could be proud of.

Specific Organizations

• SURJ- national base-building org.
• Anti-Police Terror Project
• Great for action
• Bay Area Childcare collective
• Serve predominately POC community
• Causa Justa Just Cause
• Tenants Rights and Immigrants rights
• They need white allies to do childcare, rides, clinic
• National Lawyers Guild
• Legal observing for actions.
• Training coming up
• Trans Gender Intersex Justice Project
• legal clinic on Tuesday nights
• Critical Resistance
• Prison abolition and they have a monthly
• Take Back Oakland Coalition
• Big campaign to Defund OPD,
• MLK
• Berkeley Cop Watch
• Code Pink?
• Community Democracy Project
• Diablo Rising Tide
• Idle No More
• Earth Justice
• Movement Generation
• Arab Resource Organizing Center
• If Not Now
• Book Groups- New Jim Crow
• Sanctuary Cities and
• Catalyst
• BASAT
• St James Infirmary
• Berkeley Free Clinic
• Planned parenthood
• Oakland Power Project
• Poor Magazine
• The Untraining
• White Awake
• Ella Baker Center
• Beyond the Separation of Whiteness