Resources for Racial Justice

Community, State and National Resources

• The Root Social Justice Center in Brattleboro is a Vermont-based, POC-led nonprofit organization focused on racial justice organizing, community advocacy, and relationship-building programming.

• Windham County Vermont Branch of the NAACP is dedicated to serving the needs and promoting the social, economic, political and inter-personal power of people of color and their allies living in our county.

• Rural Racial Justice Organizing Study Group Toolkit, created by Lost River Racial Justice and Out in the Open in collaboration with The Root, is "intended to be a support to the continued education and community organizing around racial justice in rural communities across the country."

• The Lost River Racial Justice Reading List "is intended as a starting point for people (especially white people) to begin learning about systemic racism and racial justice organizing in the United States. It also includes plenty of materials for anyone to explore and deepen their knowledge. " Many of the books and some of the films are available at Brooks Memorial Library.

• Action and Allyship Guide from the Vermont Racial Equity Advisory Panel

• Migrant Justice is dedicated to "organizing for economic justice and human rights"

• Brattleboro's Community Safety Review Committee was established by the Selectboard "to begin a focused examination of how Town resources were currently utilized and how they could be best utilized to ensure equitable community health, wellness, and safety."

• The Brattleboro Police Department posts information about its goals and policies, such as the Fair and Impartial Policing Policy.

Racial Justice Themes on the Library Shelves

Online Reference Resources: Learn and Strategize

• Know Your Rights, from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) provides clear, plain-language guides to Protesters’ Rights, Voters’ Rights, rights of persons stopped by police, and more. Free on the web.

• Electronic Reference Books on race in the United States are available in the Gale Virtual Reference Library, which is free on the Web with a Brooks Memorial Library card and free to everybody who uses the outdoor wifi cafe. Don’t miss these recently added titles:

  • A State-by-State History of Race and Racism in the United States, 2019

  • African Americans and the Presidents: Politics and Policies from Washington to Trump, 2019

  • Below the Surface: Talking with Teens about Race, Ethnicity, and Identity, 2019

  • Racial Literacy: Navigating Intersectionality: How Race, Class, and Gender Overlap, 2019

  • Race and American Law: Voting, Education, Employment, Marriage, and Citizenship, 2020

  • Class in America: Class and Race, 2019

  • Black Power Encyclopedia From "Black Is Beautiful" to Urban Uprisings, 2019

  • Race and Ethnicity in America From Pre-contact to the Present, 2019

• Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Free on the Web with a Brooks Memorial Library card and free to everybody who uses the outdoor wifi cafe. Browse a library of topics in the news and read clearly-labeled opinion essays (“viewpoints”) plus background sources like news reports, statistics, and reference book articles. Great for assessing arguments and cutting through over-simplified notions of truth versus “fake news.”

• News and Current Events section of the Brooks Memorial Library website A roundup of reliable local, state, and national news sources. Some, like The Commons and VTDigger, are free to all on the Web. Others, like the Newsbank archive of the Brattleboro Reformer, the Vermont State News Collection and the New York Times, are free on the Web with a Brooks Memorial Library card and free to everybody who uses the outdoor wifi cafe

Movies: Racial Justice Through the Filmmaker's Lens

Featured films on Social and Systemic Injustice from Kanopy streaming movies

Kanopy, free with a Brooks Memorial Library card, includes award-winning films of interest to all who work for justice. Here's a small sample:

• I Am Not Your Negro - James Baldwin and Race in America An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I Am Not Your Negro explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism.

• Race - The Power of an Illusion The division of the world's peoples into distinct groups - "red," "black," "white" or "yellow" peoples - has become so deeply embedded in our psyches, so widely accepted, many would promptly dismiss as crazy any suggestion of its falsity. Yet…

• White Like Me - Race, Racism & White Privilege in America based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege.

• Copwatch - An Organization Dedicated to Filming the Police This acclaimed documentary follows WeCopwatch, an organization dedicated to filming the police. Its members captured the original videos of the deaths of Eric Garner in Staten Island and Freddie Gray in Baltimore that ignited the entire nation.

• Broken on All Sides - Race, Mass Incarceration and New Visions for Criminal Justice Today, there are more African Americans in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. The prison population has exploded by 500% since the end of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

• Dispatches From Cleveland - Communities Fighting for Social Change This documentary closely examines the rust-belt city of Cleveland, one of the most racially divided American cities in the wake of the police murder of Tamir Rice. Dispatched from Cleveland follows ordinary people - long shaken by police misconduct by police misconduct, social discrimination, and poverty - whose love for their home pushes them to work together to bring about real change.

• The Talk: Race in America This film documents the increasingly common conversation taking place in homes across the country between parents of color and their children, especially sons, about how to behave if they are ever stopped by the police.

• Law & Order - An Examination of Police Practices and Behavior surveys the wide range of work the police are asked to perform: enforcing the law, maintaining order, and providing general social services. The incidents shown illustrate how training, community expectations, socio-economic status of the subject, the threat of violence, and discretion affect police behavior.

• Peace Officer - The Militarized State of American Police A feature documentary about the increasingly militarized state of American police as told through the story of William "Dub" Lawrence, a former sheriff who established and trained his rural state's first SWAT team only to see that same unit kill his son-in-law in a controversial standoff 30 years later.

• Revolution '67 An illuminating account of events too often relegated to footnotes in U.S. history - the Black urban rebellions of the 1960's. REVOLUTION '67 focuses on the explosive urban rebellion in Newark, New Jersey.

• P.S. I Can't Breathe - Black Lives Matter This documentary welcomes dialogue around racial inequality, policing, and the Criminal Justice System by focusing on Eric Garners case. We hope viewers will increase their understanding of issues plaguing Black and Brown Communities by witnessing a massive group of protesters unite for the purpose of justice.

• Every Mother's Son - Policing and Race in America Iris Baez, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, never meant to become an activist. Kadiatou Diallo never meant to leave her home in Africa and move to the U.S., to fight for justice for her son. Doris Busch Boskey, a Jewish woman from the suburbs, never thought she'd become a spokesperson against police brutality.

• What's Race Got To Do With It? - Social Disparities and Student Success Despite 15 years of diversity programs and initiatives, many of our discussions about race remain mired in confusion. Even a casual observer can't help but notice how structural racism is ignored, how multiculturalism is confused with equality, and how many campuses remain hamstrung in their efforts to become more inclusive and welcoming of everyone.

• Cruel and Unusual - Black Panthers Fighting for Justice in Prison This is the story of the Angola Three, three remarkable men - Robert King, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox - who as members of the Black Panther Party have been fighting for justice since the early 1970s.

• The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow THE RISE AND FALL OF JIM CROW offers the first comprehensive look at race relations in America between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement.