Hello All! Best wishes to everyone for a Happ(ier) New Year than we collectively experienced in 2020. While most people I know are breathing a sigh of relief that a change in our country’s leadership will happen this month (and that vaccines are rolling out), we still face enormous threats to our democracy and the movement for racial justice. My hope is that we will all stay active in the fight for equity and inclusion while attempting to repair the social fabric of the U.S. Although a gargantuan task, each of us has a role to play within our own spheres of influence. I wish you great success as you contribute love, joy, and calls for justice in your own community in 2021.
Before we leave last year completely behind, take a moment to review this list of the Top 10 Social Justice Memes of 2020. The focus is on democracy, the ideal, the vision, the value.
We have a lot of work to do! Stay engaged and energized by joining an ongoing, monthly support dialogue for white anti-racists. AWARE’s monthly Sunday Dialogue (SD) occurs on the 3rd Sunday of every month, 3-5PM Pacific via the Zoom online platform. We focus on connecting, sharing, and learning from one another. If you have not signed up for the interest list (required to receive the registration link), please subscribe here: Sunday Dialogues Interest List Sign Up
While the idea of “calling in” instead of “calling out” is not new, in the face of widespread social media pushes to “cancel” people, Dr. Loretta Ross’ college class is a welcomed advancement. Why are you making choices to make the world crueler than it needs to be and calling that being ‘woke’?” she asks.
“The call to ‘listen to the most affected’ or ‘centre the most marginalized’ is ubiquitous in many academic and activist circles. But it’s never sat well with me. In my experience, when people say they need to ‘listen to the most affected’, it isn’t because they intend to set up Skype calls to refugee camps or to collaborate with houseless people. Instead, it has more often meant handing conversational authority and attentional goods to those who most snugly fit into the social categories associated with these ills – regardless of what they actually do or do not know, or what they have or have not personally experienced.”
This issue relates to the fundamental problems with “one-sided accountability” that AWARE-LA wrote about over a decade ago in a paper called, Transformative Alliance Building. Sadly,that work did not receive sufficient widespread attention to change the culture of anti-racism.
Click on this! Do not miss this experience. Even beyond the content, this is the most interesting website I have ever seen (from a visual point of view). From a content perspective, it is also astoundingly useful. This will be a ‘go-to’ for me when I recommend resources to people newly engaging in this issue. It includes data visualization about how online extremist groups are multiplying in the U.S., U.K, and Germany, a four part explanation of the interconnected, global, and decentralized nature of the problem we face, information (targeting current members) about how to get out of the movement safely, and countermeasures in practice.
This article highlights a deeply unsettling convergence we are seeing where the wellness movement, conspiracy theories, and racism are overlapping.
“Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March, and Black Lives Matter protests began at the end of May, some yoga teachers have been spreading conspiracy theories claiming the disease is "fake news," while also igniting racial divisions and turning a blind eye to inequities that exist within wellness and beyond. Similarly, the rise of QAnon in the yoga community has sewn division and hate — its message completely at odds with the practice's core values of acceptance and love.”
“We are truly in a crisis of conscience right now in wellness. We must not allow yoga to be used as a tool for hatred, bigotry, and division, or as a vehicle for the spreading of misinformation and destruction.”
White nationalists who have been deplatformed from YouTube have found a home and are cashing in on DLive. While it’s important that these hate mongers reach fewer people than previously, their presence and ability to fund themselves through hate is still very dangerous. The conveyor belt from less extreme sites and figures to white nationalism easily transfers from one site to the other.
Read the article: Excerpt: “Megan Squire is a professor of computer science at Elon University who has focused on the migration of white supremacists across mainstream social media platforms and fringe websites throughout the Trump era. Squire submitted research to Southern Poverty Law Center that shows a handful of leaders of the global white nationalist movement are raising significant sums of money through DLive. These leaders include… Matthew Q. Gebert, a State Department official who led the Washington, D.C.-area chapter of a white nationalist organization, (who) recently started livesteaming on DLive.”
“Fuentes, a 22-year-old white nationalist who has promoted Holocaust denial on his shows and advocated for the use of state violence to kill protesters, cashed out a bit over $68,900 from April 16 through Oct. 22 on DLive, according to Squire’s research. Though he has been suspended from websites and payment processors including YouTube, Twitch, Reddit, Discord, PayPal, Streamlabs, TikTok and Stripe, Fuentes is currently making roughly $326 per day off of DLive, roughly equal to a salary of $119,000 per year.”
Listen to a podcast: This 20-minute interview with Megan Squire from the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right discusses her research on how white nationalists take donations via cryptocurrency.
Spotlight on Family
As we enter 2021 let us to take a moment to honor the role family members can play in each other’s growth. I’d like to highlight one father and son duo who each have different, but complementary ways of contributing to racial justice. Dad is active in a local multi-racial community group advocating for racial justice and occasionally authors analytical pieces meant to deepen our understanding. For example, his most recent: Capitalism and the Depth Psychology of Racism. Son has been co-producing and hosting a slick YouTube show called “Some More News” that provides analysis of current events with an anti-racist, progressive lens. I find them both inspiring!
I do not typically highlight opinion pieces, but as we move into 2021, the larger truth underlying this article's focus on Trump is important. It refers to brain research indicating that a sense of grievance makes the brain light up in similar ways as addiction. It also asks those of us on the Left to consider how we approach one another. How do we contribute to the problem?
Here is a snippet of the article:
“There are no quick fixes with addiction. We’re in for a long haul. Our society, and Trump, would seem to have little chance of healing until we (and he) realize how the politics of grievance is damaging us. Political parties and interest groups have come to rely upon inflaming grievances and stoking vindictiveness to generate donations and motivate voters. Media, entertainment and social networking giants also rely upon grievance and revenge-based content to attract viewers and users and increase advertising and sales. More people need to become savvy about how, why and for whose benefit they are being made to feel aggrieved and must decide to stop dealing in the drug of their own destruction.”
This short documentary gives voice to white anti-racist who are committed to organizing other white people to dismantle racism and white supremacy. It is followed by a dynamic panel discussion of a diverse panel of social justice and anti-racist leaders. Check it out!
News alert! Historian, Daniel Yacovone, who co-authored “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” with Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2013, is now writing “Teaching White Supremacy: The Textbook Battle Over Race in American History.” Read this interview to learn how he became interested in old textbooks and how the U.S. has taught white supremacy throughout the country’s history.
