History of the Antiracism Coalition Faith Ethical and Spiritual Communities

As collaboratively discussed by:

On the Call

These words were transcribed from a Zoom video call that took place on May 18, 2020 during the Coronavirus pandemic as the Coalition was coming to the close of it's incubation year.

• Shadia Álvarez (PISAB Staff)

• Rev. Dr. Willard Ashley (coalition co-founder & co-chair)

• Rev. Joe Barndt (Coalition co-founder & Core Trainer at PISAB)

• Imani Chapman (Coalition co-chair)

• Ron Chisolm (PISAB Co-Founder)

• Dr. Kimberley Richard (PISAB ED)

• Rev. Nathan Trice (Coalition Staff)

Framing by Ron Chisom

The Coalition is taking off and we gotta give it all the support to make sure that it stays afloat. We gotta make sure that it has autonomy but at the same time it’s part of a whole. We have to make sure we don’t look at it as a separate entity, like we’re doing spiritual work, you know, because whatever we do is spiritual work so we gotta keep it connected to the whole, not "I’m working on, like, religious", "I’m working on housing", "I’m working on health". I know it’s not the intent but can come down like that and for people who are part of the network and sometimes with predominantly white groups...we get caught up in that individual. We just gotta be relentless and make sure it doesn’t happen ….we can say that it won’t happen, but if you’re not careful other folks can take it where they want to take it. We don’t wanna be settin’ up something we don’t want to set up, so we gotta keep that in mind. All that we do is spiritual in many ways because it can get caught up into compartmentalizing everything and thinking religion is even more sacred because it is spiritual but all of our work is sacred and spiritual in many ways.

The First Attempt

When we began in 2002, Roberta [Samet] was very much involved in it and, in some respects, started the idea. Following 9/11, when I [Will Ashley] was in charge of the Caregivers Grant we gave checks to about 30 different faith organizations. Roberta Samet said “you can’t get a grant unless you take Undoing Racism® training. So from each organization the principal had to go through the Undoing Racism ® Training. That’s how I first met Ron and that became the Interfaith Community of New York City back in 2002 to 2007.

The Second Attempt

More than five years ago, [Joe Barndt and] Sandy Bernabei and a few others pulled together a group of people together. About 50 people came together from churches, synagogues and other groups and just had a chance to reflect on. Most of them had had experience with The People’s Institute and were wanting something to happen in their communities and they came away from there really excited. So, when we began again in five years ago to come to the coalition, some people already had a foundational understanding of what the People’s Institute. The first time we met it was great; it was a Barney Moment-- “I love you. You love me.” If you remember, the second meeting ended abruptly because Palestine came up. It wasn’t quite time yet.

The Third Attempt

In February of 2018, we {Will Ashley & Joe Barndt] thought, "let’s try it again and see what we learned from the last gathering". Will and I started having monthly meetings, just inviting people orally, not a formal process of invitation. People wanted to sit around and talk about a coalition, an antiracist coalition, and faith. By the time we reached, by the time we got to October or November of 2018, we’d had a couple of hundred people come to those events--not big numbers each time, but the total number at the end of that time was a large number. Then we had the meeting at Marble Collegiate in March 2018 for people to do some reflecting about and there were a number of speakers. People got a chance to talk to each other and affirmed, almost mandated, that we move ahead with this organizing. Following that meeting in March we started having much more regular meetings, talking about the organizing.

By the time we launched in May 14, 2019 we had had two or three faith-based [Undoing Racism®] trainings by then. We had approximately 30 organizational members and about 200 people who met at the Fourth Universalist Church. That was Shadia's first big event. At that meeting we had speakers: Ron [Chisolm]; Debbie Almontaser from the Muslim community; Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood ; and Rabbi Pearce. There was very enthusiastic participation! At that event Johnny Ray Youngblood pledged $20,000 as a grant to go toward staffing of this.

Since that, since that time of the kick-off, we’ve been looking for staff and looking for a process. [We formed a steering committee, voted on a budget, voted in additional members of the executive committee--Carla Burns, Imani Chapman, Rabbi Bob Kaplan.] Our last gathering was at Riverside Church in November 17th, (2019). There were about 20 organizations present... delegations for each one of them, each of them expressing a desire to start the process of, “taking it inside" before taking it outside. We would be asking all participating members to have a process of antiracism taking place inside their own institution and shaping its antiracist commitment, before putting them together as a larger coalition, where they can take action as a faith-based antiracism group. Due to the coronavirus, we had to postpone our listening event in May. But we are excited to have just brought on Nathan Trice as an organizer for the Coalition.