11/13 Anne Braden Program Open Session on Strategies for Anti-Racist Organizing

[Megan Dowdell]

Invitation to join Catalyst Project and the Anne Braden Program

Leadership Team and Participants for our upcoming open session:

Strategies for Anti-Racist Organizing

Sunday November 15th, 3-5 pm at the

Humanist Hall, 390 27th St in Oakland
(The Humanist Hall is Wheelchair accessible)

You are warmly invited to this upcoming Anne Braden Program session.

We hope you can join us for a panel discussion on Strategies for
Anti-Racist Organizing with Linda Burnham longtime leader for racial,
gender, and economic justice, Dawn Phillips of Just Cause Oakland, Alicia
Garza of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Carla Wallace
of the Fairness Campaign and Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and
Political Repression.

Panelist will ground current anti-racist work within a legacy of long-term
social movements, share strategies for building working class power in
communities of color in Oakland and San Francisco toward systemic change.
Panelists will layout what those big picture strategies look like in
practice. They will share lessons and strategies for anti-racist
organizing with white people and ways white people can be part of efforts
to build vibrant multi-racial movements for justice.

The Anne Braden Program is a four-month intensive anti-racist organizing
training for white social justice activists.  The program combines
workshops, mentorship, and volunteer placements at local racial and
economic justice organizations, in an effort to develop white anti-racist
leadership to build support for racial justice in white communities and
help build powerful multiracial movements for collective liberation.

Open sessions of the Anne Braden Program provide an opportunity for
participants to invite friends and family to join them in their learning
process.  While the Anne Braden Program is designed for white social
justice activists, the open sessions welcome guests of all backgrounds.
The open sessions are an opportunity for Anne Braden Program mentors, site
supervisors, volunteers and allies to participate in the program.  These
sessions are a space for us to come together and learn as a larger
community.

If you would like childcare or ASL please let us know by Tuesday November
10th.

If you plan to attend this open session, please RSVP to Chris Crass at
ch...@collectiveliberation.org.

Linda Burnham is the co-founder and former executive director of the Women
of Color Resource Center (WCRC), a non-profit education, community action
and resource center committed to developing a strong, institutional
foundation for social change activism by and on behalf of women of color.
She has been working on racial justice and peace issues since the 1960s
and on women-of-color issues since the early 1970s. Burnham was a leader
in the Third World Women’s Alliance, a national organization that was an
early advocate for the rights of women of color. In 1990, together with
Miriam Ching Louie, she co-founded Women of Color Resource Center. Burnham
has published numerous articles on African-American women,
African-American politics, and feminist theory in a wide range of
periodicals and anthologies. A particular focus of her more recent
writing, organizing and advocacy work has been welfare policy and the
lives of low- and no-income women and their families. Burnham led
delegations of women of color to the 1985 UN World Conference on Women in
Nairobi, Kenya and the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing,
China. In 2001 she led a delegation of 25 women of color activists and
scholars to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban,
South Africa. In 2004 Burnham was a leader of Count Every Vote, a human
rights project that trained citizens to monitor the polls in the southern
states. In 2005 Burnham was nominated as one of 1000 Peace Women for the
Nobel Peace Prize. Burnham is a frequent featured speaker on college
campuses and to community groups, addressing issues of women’s rights,
racial justice, human rights and peace. Burnham’s writing and organizing
are part of a lifelong inquiry into the dynamic, often perilous
intersections of race, class and gender.

Dawn Phillips is the Organizing Director at Just Cause Oakland.  Just
Cause is a membership-based organization building a powerful voice for
Oakland's low-income tenants and workers.  Their mission is to create a
just and diverse city and region by organizing Oakland residents to
advocate for housing and jobs as human rights, and to mobilize for
policies that produce social and economic justice in low-income
communities of color.

Dawn has over 15 years of community organizing experience. Dawn began his
organizing career through the Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program at
the Center for Third World Organizing. After graduating from MAAP, Dawn
spent six years serving as the Director of Community Organizing at BOSS
(Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency), organizing homeless people
in Oakland. He than spent six years serving as the Executive Director of
PUEBLO (People United for a Better Oakland). Dawn has served on the boards
of the National Organizer’s Alliance (NOA), Asian Communities for
Reproductive Justice (ACRJ), and the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable
Economy (EBASE).

Alicia Garza is Co-Executive Director of People Organized to Win
Employment Rights (POWER). POWER is an organization that unites working
class families, youth and tenants to achieve economic, racial and gender
justice through organization and empowerment. POWER's mission is to
eliminate poverty and oppression by developing the capacity of working
class communities of color to play a powerful role in the political
processes that impact their lives and the well being of their communities.

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Alicia has organized with local
communities of color for racial and economic justice for the past 7 years.
As Co-Executive Director, Alicia supports POWER's staff and members to
build the power of working class communities of color by coordinating the
growth of a sustainable, dynamic organization that is ready to meet the
challenges of this new era. Alicia also serves on the Board of Directors
of The School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) in Oakland, California.

Carla F. Wallace was born in Louisville, Kentucky Carla grew up between on
a farm in Oldham County, and in Amsterdam, Netherlands.  Since the
mid-80’s, she served on the board of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist
and Political Repression and was engaged in anti-KKK work in response to
cross burnings and klan on the police force, and in the Southern
Organizing Committee’s environmental justice organizing.  Carla helped
coordinate efforts to pass Louisville’s Hate Crimes Law, motor voter law,
mobilize community against police abuse, and organize solidarity
delegations to Nicaragua, Palestine, Colombia and Cuba.

In 1991 she was one of the founders of the Fairness Campaign, which has
been honored locally and nationally for its work on behalf of lgbt rights
and justice for all.  In 1999 the campaign’s success in building an
inclusive community based struggle for civil rights, passed one of the
most inclusive pieces of lgbt legislation in the country, and the only
gender identity inclusive law in the South.

In 2005 Carla helped establish the Audre Lorde Chair in Race, Class,
Gender and Sexuality at University of Louisville. Carla is a member of the
Fairness Campaign Leadership Council, the Strategic Planning Committee of
the Anne Braden Institute at University of Louisville, the Carl Braden
Memorial Center board, and the Kentucky Health Justice Network.


Megan R. Dowdell
916-504-8888
megan....@gmail.com