Disposability, Desirablity, and #MeToo

This blog post is written in response to comments and discussion generated at the January 2018 White Noise Collective dialogue, which examined the themes of “Race, Gender and #MeToo”.  I am grateful to the participants for their frank, vulnerable, and honest conversation.  See our website for the guiding questions and suggested readings for the dialogue.
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Racial and Gender Justice Halloween Action Toolkit!

Ah the beginning of fall. The air is a little colder, the colors a little more orange, and there is no shortage of pumpkin flavored products. Yet there is one sign of the turning seasons that is truly unwelcome…racist, sexist, heterosexist, and colonialist costumes — already in full force in stores around the country.
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Resources for Engaging and Ending Police Violence

end_police_brutality_six_sticker_sheet-rc672ec2ced08419bbe778cc03313c943_v9wth_8byvr_324In this time of mourning, rage and national reckoning with the legacies and realities of racist police violence – resources for connection, deeper engagement and different forms of action are flooding through the widening cracks of this broken system. Here is a partial compilation, from quick click actions to concrete alternatives to political education to visionary policy solutions. … Read more

Liberate Halloween Action Kit!

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

White Women’s Tears and the Men Who Love Them

There has been much critique lately of “white tears.” This term refers to all of the ways, both literally and metaphorically, that white people cry about how hard racism is on us. In my work, I consistently encounter these tears in their various forms, and many writers have provided excellent critiques. Here, I want to address one specific manifestation of white tears: those shed by white women in cross-racial settings.

Moving into Radical Self-Worth to Better Support our Movements — part 1 in a series

our liberation is intersectionalIn 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

Body as Battleground: A Little Historical Context on the Attack on Women & Reproductive Rights

In our September dialogue, we focused on the topic “Body as battleground.” Obviously, with the current political attack on womens’ reproductive rights, the conservative media’s sexist slandering, and the general ways that patriarchy interferes on every angle of our daily lives, there was a lot to talk about.

We delved into a slew of intense and interesting themes, but for me it was the reading I did in preparation for the night that really floored me.… Read more

Taking up space (or: the things we learn on BART)

They say every moment is a learning opportunity. But I hate when those moments happen when I’m half awake and grumpy. Last week, I was taking my bike onto BART for my ever-so-wonderful and all-to-early morning commute from West Oakland to San Francisco. Though I am one of those pesky bikers that often sneak onto trains just a few minutes before I’m allowed to in order to get to my morning meeting at work on time, on this particular morning I was actually on BART at a legally-allowed time.… Read more

Themes to Comment On!

Here are the themes that the folks who came to our last dialogue said that they want to explore in future dialogues. Through the help of Beja, they miraculously transformed from notes on poster paper into typed clusters in this blog for people to comment on to collectively figure out what to talk about next (April 12).… Read more