let's do this.

brownpeopleproblems:

the-movemnt:

To this day I marvel at how many well-meaning white Americans will parachute into remote villages and slums in Africa, Asia and South America to do charity work, but won’t set up anti-racism projects in places like Logan County, West Virginia, where at least 96% of residents are white and most believe Trump is all that stands between them and racial oblivion. It’s hard to fathom how many white-run think tanks, foundations and charity organizations exist in the U.S., but how few focus specifically on deeply studying white racism and eradicating it.

This is not work that people of color can shoulder alone. White spaces are isolated by design. According to the Washington Post in 2014, 75% of white Americans have no friends of color. We’re not going to get past a nation where between 40 and 50% of Trump’s supporters think black people are lazier and more violent than whites and nearly 70% dislike Muslims if anti-racist white people don’t penetrate the communities from where this thinking originates.

— Zak Cheney Rice, Only white people could have prevented a Donald Trump presidency

follow @the-movemnt

shiralipkin:

c-l-ford:

tenpennylemonade:

halfhardtorock:

I keep seeing posts that are like “get involved! Go volunteer!” and I wanted to counter that a little with more info and ideas.

At the non-profit I work for, we had a huge surge of volunteer applications post-election. Which is nice and heartening, but we literally have no where to place people now. We have too many volunteers! Though this probably won’t be true for every non-profit (and please check in and see!), it will be true for some.

Tbh, volunteering is kind of…not what you think. People get all lit-up with wanting to help others and then we’re like “well there’s a two day training for all volunteer positions and then what we really need are envelope stuffers.” People deflate in the face of actual nonprofit work and check out pretty quickly. It’s not glamorous. You will only rarely feel like something was accomplished. You will be bored a lot and shit moves slowly up hill against the constant threat of donor loss and budget meetings.

So anyway, I’ve been emailing back prospective volunteers to tell them basically

We may not have placement for you but we still need your help.

Nonprofits may not need more volunteers and workers, but we need more community members. 25 people+ this week wanted to work for us, but our community support and social groups are DYING. Three to four people show up at a time to scheduled groups, if that.

Some of the people I sat down with literally expressed that the reason they wanted to volunteer for us was to “meet more people,” and “get involved in the community.”

But like when I recommended they actually join some of our community groups, they were disinterested.

Here it is, the truth: our nonprofit can’t save you. We can’t save the community. We don’t have the infrastructure for that.

We are here to SUPPORT the community.

Please please, now more than ever, get involved in your community by BEING INVOLVED IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Not through volunteering but through networking and meeting people and connecting and being there on a personal level for people. Support and enrich your community with your involvement. Go to community gatherings, groups, dinners, meet-ups. Put in your time. This is going to be critical in the next four years. How are we going to establish safe networks if we don’t even know each other?

This is my recommendation rn

This this this.

I would also like to add that there are many types of community service.  Some people might be switching their efforts to activist/political groups.  But volunteering for other groups that might suddenly have vacancies might also be important.  

For instance, I used to be a member of a professional organization that planned educational training each year.  I tried to select topics that were both relevant but also didn’t reinforce the status quo.  Communication topics were often one that could identify privilege issues without being “advertised” that way.  Stealth education.

Or, maybe try volunteering for an SF con.  They usually need volunteers, and they need ones that will promote social justice and celebrate social justice writers.

Do you belong to some type of faith community?  Volunteer there to help ensure your religious leaders aren’t the type that advocate the wrong types of candidates for office.  Although, if your religious leader was advocating for a candidate, this is a violation of the separation of church and state, so….

Do you have children?  Volunteer to help with school activities to ensure they are kept inclusive. 

Also, remember that you can help in even less overt ways.  Sometimes it means cooking/buying food for your activist friends.  Sometimes it means just lending a supportive ear.  Sometimes a hug at the end of a hard day.

If you can afford it, sometimes donating money so that those that have the time and energy and ability can afford the supplies and whatever else is needed to further the work.

I personally don’t have a lot of spoons.  So also, do what you can.  Whatever you can.  And don’t beat up yourself if you can’t do more.  You have to stay healthy to fight and ally however you can.

I volunteer with my local rape crisis center, and calls and requests for services have gone WAY UP over the course of and since the election. Because having a man who brags about repeatedly sexually assaulting women in your face every day is hella triggery. If that’s a kind of work you can do, your local RCC would likely be thrilled to have you.

an easy thing to do is to SHOW UP. show up to a rally, or a march, or a lobby day, or testify at a hearing, or come to a community meeting/action event or even a trivia night hosted by an organization you support, but show up and engage with other people who have also shown up. if you want to be an ally, actually do the work that goes into being an ally. 

(ps, stuffing envelopes with wine and pizza is how i have spent some of my most favorite evenings with some of my most favorite people.)

halfdesiqueen:

a recurring pattern the last few days for me has been that i’m telling white people about all the shit i’m trying to get done (grad school applications, volunteer applications, dialogue with my youth, support for my brown friends, attending actions and workshops, etc), and these white people respond with “i’m just so scared and desolate and terrified and i don’t know what to do!!! i can’t do anything!!!”

and like

look i’m not saying that everybody has to be ready to go and hit the streets day one, right? i’m not gonna do that.

but i have to say that i deeply, deeply resent white women telling me to my face that they’re too scared to get their shit together, when i have to get my shit together. like i have a responsibility to myself, and to my community, and i don’t really have time to sit around and wait for my processing to finish. i can process and i can grieve, but i have to do that while getting up and moving forward. 

so @ white women: if you need to take time to process and you’re in enough of a position of privilege that you don’t really risk anything by remaining stagnant for a few extra days, that’s fine. whatever. but don’t make me hear about it. this is one of those times, people. this is one of those times that white people who want to be Good White People have to walk the talk. you have to show up for brown and black women, and if you’re not ready to do that yet, don’t make me hear about it when i don’t have a choice, ready or not.

white women should reblog this btw

(Source: elizzabethdarcy)