2024 Meeting Summaries
January 2024 Meeting
We attended the National Celebration of Racial Healing Day at the Y.
February Meeting
In December we decided to read Me and White Supremacy by Leyla Saad. This will be an exploration by each of us and ‘us’ together. It is not a book club. Ms. Saad’s 5–6-page sections are viewed as a springboard for this work, to take this journey, to more deeply process toward truth.
We decided to create pairs to explore and debrief about what we are experiencing through the readings. The pairs will meet at their own schedule and in person or by zoom; anyone can establish a free zoom account. We encourage each pair to bring a question or quote to the monthly meeting that particularly touched them. We will review the pairs at the March meeting.
At the February 18, 2024, meeting
· We reviewed the Circle Process, which we are all aware of from our time in CTTT.
· We identified who would be Host, Guardian, and Scribe for the March meeting: these three functions will rotate, and Leslie, Sharon and Pat have stepped up for the next meeting to fill them.
· In the Circle Process, everyone at the table is Guardian.
· We discussed White Privilege, White Fragility, Tone Policing, White Silence, White Superiority and White Exceptionalism.
March 17, 2024, meeting 1:00-3:00pm
In the time between now and the March meeting, we will read the next forty-eight pages of Me and White Supremacy and meet with our pair partner(s). In this section we look at color blindness, anti-Blackness, and racist stereotypes.
This is the schedule for the rest of the book:
March 17, 2024
WEEK 2, pg. 75-123
Color Blindness
Anti-Blackness and Men
Anti-Blackness and Women
Anti-Blackness and Children
Racist Stereotypes
Cultural Appropriation
April 21, 2024
WEEK 3, pg. 125-170
Allyship
White Saviorism
White Apathy
White Centering
White Tokenism
Called Out
May 19, 2024
WEEK 4, pg. 171-203
White Feminism
White Leaders
Friends
Family
Your Values
Losing Privilege
Commitments for Future
RESOURCES
Film
Stamped from the Beginning, Netflix
Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13871094/
Leave the World Behind, Netflix
March Meeting
RESOURCES
· NPR The Buzz, March 8, 2024
The Legacy and impact of Land Grant Institutions (Including U of A).
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/645260085/the-buzz
BOOKS and ARTICLES:
· Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life, Sari Nusseibeh.
· NYT Article today about upstate NY indigenous land is attached.
· Color of Law (book): Richard Rothstein
· Nature, March 8, 2024: Academic workplaces are still failing Black women; they must do better, by Nicola Rollock
Of particular note: “Working in solidarity with Black women means attending to the ways your racialized identity affords you privileges.”
April Meeting
1. The meeting opened with a review the touchstones. Two quotes from Me and White Supremacy for our reflection: “Our humanity is worth a little discomfort – it’s actually worth a lot of discomfort” (epigraph Day 15) and “Mistakes are a fact of life – it is the response to error that counts” (epigraph Day 20).
2. We then went around the circle and briefly shared our responses to the question, “Where are you at today with your learning (about white supremacy) at this point?”
3. We then discussed our first question, “What was the most challenging aspect of the Week Three material for you?”
4. We took a break around 2 and then after did a quick go around for any AHA moments people might have had since our last meeting in March.
5. We didn’t get to a formal second question but instead discussed what was arising for us based on what people had shared from the first question and the AHA go around.
6. Other resources mentioned: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (Carole).
The next meeting will be May 18, same time, same place.
May Meeting
May 19, 2024 CTTT Tucson NOTES
Many thanks to Carole for sharing her poem while getting us settled.
We reviewed the most interesting and/or challenging aspect we each had working through the Week 4 material. There was a consensus about the value of this 4-month journey, although some felt we could have covered the material is less time. All concluded they can recommend this work to others. Also highly valued was the experience of working with partners between the monthly meetings. Many expressed the value of the circle process of communication that gives everyone an uninterrupted opportunity to speak.
We talked about the plans for the next few months:
JUNE: participate as a group or individual in one or many of the Juneteenth events. Let’s organize and attend as many events as we can.
JULY 21: come together for a museum visit, movie/play, and/or lunch.
AUGUST 18: meet as usual; bring/discuss ideas for the next several months.
RESOURCES:
PBS: Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story
“Using his camera as a ‘weapon against injustice,’ Chinese American photographer Corky Lee’s art is his activism. His unforgettable images of Asian American life empowered generations. This film’s intimate portrait reveals the triumphs and tragedies of the man behind the lens.”
PBS: American Masters: Tyrus
“Until his death at the age of 106, Tyrus Wong was America’s oldest living Chinese American artist and one of the last remaining artists from the golden age of Disney animation. The quiet beauty of his Eastern-influenced paintings had a pioneering impact on American art and popular culture.”
Alanna Airitam, Black Diamonds exhibition at Etherton Gallery (until June 22)
340 S. Convent Ave, Tucson, AZ 85701
Gallery Phone: (520) 624-7370
Gallery Hours: Tue - Sat 11:00am - 5:00pm
Etherton Gallery webpage: https://ethertongallery.com/artists/153-alanna-airitam/biography/
Southwest Black Arts Collective: https://southwestblackarts.net/
“Alanna Airitam, Elizabeth Burden and Elizabeth Denneau are working artists. They understand the challenges to establishing a significant presence of Black Arts in the Southwest: the Black population is small, there are few venues that present Black artists, and legacies of Blackness in the region are engulfed by other histories. So they started SBAN to provide spaces to connect and opportunities to exhibit for both established and emerging Black artists in the Southwest.”
FILM: Separate But Equal, Sidney Poitier, Burt Lancaster, Richard Kiley
On Amazon for $1.99.
VIDEO: Celebrating Science in a Fractured Society, a panel presentation at the Simon’s Institute, Stony Brook University. S. James Gates, David Gross, Shirley Ann Jackson, Clifford V. Johnson, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“Science is one of the most powerful tools we have for meeting the grave challenges that humanity will face in the next decades. However, the recent worldwide increase in obscurantism, denialism, and anti-science movements is a matter of serious concern. They have already severely undermined efforts to address climate change, and the recent global COVID pandemic. Global problems such as these cannot and should not be solved for the privileged few while ignoring the wider population. Moreover, we will need to harness all of humanity’s diversity, in all its forms, in order to find solutions. What do we do to bring more of our society into the scientific conversation? How do we spark life-long appreciation for the sheer joy of “finding things out”? How do we raise awareness that either we are all part of the solution or we face an unsettling future?”
https://scgp.stonybrook.edu/video_portal/video.php?id=5164
PodCast: On Being: Colette Pichon Battle: On Knowing What We’re Called To
There is an ecological transformation unfolding in the places we love and come from. On a front edge of this reality, which will affect us all, Colette Pichon Battle is a singular model of brilliance and graciousness of mind and spirit and action. And to be with her is to open to the way the stories we tell have blunted us to the courage we’re called to, and the joy we must nurture, as life force and fuel for the work ahead. As a young woman, she left her home state of Louisiana and land to which her family belonged for generations, to go to college and become a powerful lawyer in Washington, D.C. Then in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina made, as she has said, "a crack in the universe," she returned home to a whole new life and calling. Colette Pichon Battle is a vivid embodiment of the new forms societal shift is taking in our world — led by visionary pragmatists close to the ground, in particular places, persistently and lovingly learning and leading the way for us all.
June Meeting
We celebrated Juneteenth by attending the many events offered in Tucson.
July Meeting
August Meeting
September Meeting
October Meeting
November Meeting
December Meeting