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Jewish Liberation: Why Does It Matter to Racial Justice?
For the March 14 meeting panelists Debbie Zucker, Rabbi Brian Field and Dr. Dena Samuels will talk about some of the past and current dynamics of anti-Semitism (anti-Jewish oppression), and how it gets predictably gets used to manipulate, divert and weaken anti-racism work.  We’ll work in small groups and in the whole-group discussion to make awareness of and resistance to anti-Semitism a critical part of our commitment to anti-racism work, and to building a just, vital and safe society.

To give you more background for the discussion, please read the attached article, “The Dynamics of Anti-Semitism.

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Our February meeting with be next week, February 14th, 2017,  at the Park Hill United Methodist Church at Montview Blvd and Glencoe St. in Denver. The meeting will start at 7 PM.

Again this month we will be having our meeting downstairs in the Youth Lounge.

It seems that some folks have bee confused about what entrance to the church to use. There is a large parking lot on the north side of the church that is accessible off of Glencoe St, that is just east of the church. The door to the church you shoud use is the one that opens onto that parking lot. If you have passengers with mobility difficulties, you can pull up to that entrance and then park in the lot or on the street. Just inside the door, take the stairwell down to the lower level and follow the hallway, turning to the left into the Youth Lounge. If the stairs are difficult, go straight ahead from the door and find the elevator in the narrow hallway.

Crossing Boundaries for Love

This February’s forum happens to fall on Valentine’s Day.  We thought it would be appropriate to talk about the range of experiences people have when they are in relationships and marriages that cross boundaries which at times have been prohibited by custom and by law.  This includes racial, gender, or religious boundaries.  We will hear stories from some couples and individuals in these relationships and from the children who grew up navigating multiple worlds.  Whether you’ve had experience with “crossing the line” to have a personal relationship or not, please join us on a day that love is celebrated.

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Our January meeting with be next week, January 10th, 2017,  at the Park Hill United Methodist Church at Montview Blvd and Glencoe St. in Denver. The meeting will start at 7 PM.

Again this month we will be having our meeting downstairs in the youth lounge.

Doubling Down on Whiteness

The beginning of 2017 seems to find the country openly struggling with what many thought was the inevitable progress of moving toward a multicultural and multiracial democracy.  This is not a new thing.  America has long had a pattern of resistance to minority progress and rolling it back.  As Reconstruction was being dismantled after the Civil War, the cry was “We came to redeem America.”  Today we hear, “We must make America great again.”

How do we prepare for this next period?  What must be done to pull together a broken culture?  Is it possible?  Please take a look at the essay Toni Morrison wrote for The New Yorker in November, “Making America White Again.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/making-america-white-again

Octavia Butler, an African American science fiction writer, once said that that the two things that worried her about the future of humanity were the tendency to think hierarchically, and the tendency to place ourselves higher on the hierarchy than others.  We need to find ways to counteract these urges.

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The January/February 2017 issue of The Atlantic has a cover story which is a compelling account of President Barak Obama’s journey to the White House written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. For many young people he is the only President they have known.
This short 4-minute animation uses recordings from conversations Coates had with the President:
The full article is “My President Was Black: A history of the first African American White House – and of what came next,” and is at this link:

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Our December meeting with be next week, December 13th,  at the Park Hill United Methodist Church at Montview Blvd and Glencoe St. in Denver. The meeting will start at 7 PM.

Again this month we will be having our meeting downstairs in the youth lounge.

Internalized Racism

There are several levels of Racism.  One of the most enduring forms is Internalized Racism. There are also other oppressions (sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc) and they each have several levels too, including internalized oppressions. The discussion in December will look at how we internalize the ideological ideas of oppressions and the impact they have on maintaining the cycle of Racism.

Please review the attached document, “The Four I’s of Oppression,” and think about any reflections you would like to share in a fishbowl exercise. The paper is about the four levels of oppressions and how those levels interact to reinforce their own and each others oppressons.

We will use a series of fishbowl discussions to explore how internalized oppression show up in our lives and what ideas we have to deal with it. We are hoping for practical ways to support each other and face the rapidly shifting attitudes in the culture. We plan to explore these ideas with a serires of fishbowl exercises, with different groups in the bowl.

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