#building solidarity

[mas-consumption]

Upcoming Events: March-April 2017

Upcoming Events: March-April 2017

  Here is a list of upcoming events in Orange, West Orange, South Orange, Jersey City, and New York City. Building Solidarity Potluck Series University of Orange & Rosa Parks Adult School courses 3/5s: Examining the Consequences of 400 Years of Inequality Conference *NYC Urban Alchemy Seminar: Building Coalition AntiLemonade Exhibit *NYC Amplifying Youth Voices Forum Moxie 1973 presents Juice Hip…

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[mas-consumption]

Building Solidarity: S.E.R.C. (social emergency response center) PotLuck Series @ The HUUB

Building Solidarity: S.E.R.C. (social emergency response center) PotLuck Series @ The HUUB

Building Solidarity: A Series of Pot-Lucks to Keep the Conversation going @ The HUUB Building Solidarity: S.E.R.C. (social emergency response center) PotLuck Series @ The HUUB How can we be better organizers, activists, and allies? What lessons can we learn from those who came before us? Join the HUUB, University of Orange, First UU, and special guest organizations for our Building Solidarity…

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[gashinaa]

Building solidarity between Korea and Palestine

Zavi Kang Engles writes: As a Korean-American concerned about the influence of the United States on other countries, I’ve begun to wonder something -- do Korean people have more in common with Isra...

Friends!! An article of mine has just been published on Mondoweiss!!! In it, I describe the growing ties between Israel and South Korea and argue that, historically, Koreans have much more in common with Palestinians and that we should use our own truths as a base on which to build solidarity. Please read and share if you like it :) 

[fullpraxisnow]

Meeting People Where They Are

An often avoided and frequently ignored criticism of generating solidarity is educational privilege. I know that flies in the face of a lot when we think of education as empowering, or knowledge as power; and while it is indeed both, it so often lends itself to further atomizing we so called "conscious" from the very folks we are trying to help emancipate.

I can tell you from a decade of personal experience, trying to explain white privilege to a poor white Southerner has to have been the most repeated and fruitless exercise of my life. I am in no position, nor am I here to tell you not to try yourselves, or that you should abandon that fight. Rather, I am pointing out that if we want to convey a message beyond the realms of academia, if we want to permeate beyond the echo-chamber of Tumblr and leftist Facebook groups, this will mean inventing new language, new forms of communicating, that reveals to one oppressed group the oppression of another oppressed group, where for example we connect the racial disparities of our histories to our shared economic disparities. I have spent many hours wielding a club of information, all the while trying to beat sense into the heads of the of the indoctrinated, only to have bloodied my own mind for having yielded nothing. I'm reminded of Fred Hampton's revolutionary love: 

You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We’re not gonna fight capitalism with Black capitalism. We’re gonna fight capitalism with socialism. Socialism is the people. If you’re afraid of socialism, you’re afraid of yourself.

So when you are talking to people, in our own circles, or out there in the trenches, whenever possible, find ways to extinguish destructiveness, to build community, to be in struggle with, and to do it in a way that meets people where they are, not in some place where we have elevated these discussions into un-tangibles. Our praxis must be one that lives with and speaks to, not at.