See SEED at NCORE

Three of SEED's Lead Team and our founder will be holding workshops at the upcoming National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE) in New Orleans.

SEED Co-director Jondou Chase Chen, Co-director Gail Cruise-Roberson, and Associate Director Motoko L. Maegawa will be facilitating a workshop titled, "It's On Us: Growing the Justice We Need," on Wednesday, May 30, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. as part of the "Race and Social Justice in Higher Education" track. Here's what they say about the session:

Have you learned that being nice is not enough? Have you realized that asking "Why can't we all just get along?" does little or nothing to shift systems of oppression? Do you feel frustrated that either you or the people around you keep trying these strategies but they don't work? What do we do? What can we do? Do we give up? No. For people of color, we return to what we have always had to do: survive, resist, and thrive in our communities and our cultures that have kept us alive through centuries of white supremacy even as they too bear the scars of racism. For white people seeking to be in just relationship with us, there is the dual responsibility of dismantling white supremacy and amplifying the resilience of people of color. Undergirding all of these efforts is the question, universally asked but individually answered: What is the racial justice you need to be your whole self? In this workshop session, we will facilitate a set of storytelling exercises that help us develop our own frameworks for the justice that we, our communities, and our institutions need. In being able to clarify this, we will then provide strategies for calling other people into this work, and for growing collective efforts toward the justice we need. We will conclude by affirming that justice requires both imagination and action, and that the justice we need is on us. This session should particularly benefit those who are seeking to engage in cross-racial conversations, conversations grounded in community and culture, and those who have already experienced the joys and frustration of seeking social justice.

Additionally, SEED Founder Peggy McIntosh, along with Victor Lee Lewis, founder/director of the Radical Resilience Institute, and Hugh Vasquez, senior associate of the National Equity Project, will be holding a session on "Naming and Using Privilege to Weaken Privilege and Real-ize Greater Distributions of Power," on Friday, June 1, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.:

Over the last 30 years in the U.S., more people have become aware of privilege systems than ever before. But are people using their privilege to weaken the systems that gave it to them? The facilitators will bring 10-15 examples of reducing privilege in psychological and institutional structures. Then session participants will be invited to describe their first-hand knowledge of actions people are taking to actually weaken privilege systems. This session should particularly benefit administrators and CDO's who want to answer the calls, especially from students, for empowerment, transparency, and genuine commitments to social justice on the part of leaders.

We hope to see you there!