Eracism Minute 12/23/18 Cat McIntyre

On behalf of the Black Lives Matters Ministry Action Team, I want to wish you all a joyous and loving holiday season. We honor each one of our congregants, and confirm that no matter what you go through in this life, you are loved, you are worthy.

I am also reminding you that the Black Lives Matter Ministry Action team does not say that black lives matter more than your life. We are not saying that there is only so much love and justice to go around. We ARE saying that until black people know justice, no one will know justice. To borrow from our Universalist ancestors, none are saved until all are saved.

We aren’t there yet. We aren’t where we deserve to be. We aren’t yet living in the world we were promised at our birth, but we will get there. Each day we meet fear and anger with love we bend the arc a little closer to justice.

Cat McIntyre

12/23/2018

Eracism Minutes for January

Hi Folks,

We have filled 2 January slots for Eracism Minutes, but need 2 more speakers. The plan is that January and February will focus on prominent Black leaders, to acquaint the congregation with other important anti-racism leaders besides Martin Luther King, Jr.

Examples are:

• Bayard Rustin
• Kimberlé Crenshaw (who first wrote about intersectionality)
• Tarana Burke (founder of Me Too)
• Freddie Hampton (Black Panther member)
• Alicia Garza, Patrisse Kahn-Cullors and Opal Tometi, co-founders of Black Lives Matter
• Sojourner Truth
• Harriet Tubman

Alan Friedlob will be speaking on January 6 and Stevona Burke will take January 20th, which is the Black Lives Matter service.

That leaves 2 January Sundays: January 13 and 27. Please sign up with Cat, David or Lauralee.  Let Paul know your topic as well, preferably by the Wednesday before your Minute.

Thank you!

NO MEETING TONIGHT 12/26; New Meeting Schedule

No Meeting tonight, Wednesday, December 26.  Enjoy the holidays!

Since we will be beginning the Beloved Conversations program next month, we will be meeting just once a month and combine business with our readings discussion. Meetings will be the 2nd Wednesday of each month from 6:45-8:00. Community Night Dinners are available at 6 pm on Wednesdays.

Hope to see you there!

Meeting tonight at 6:45

Meeting tonight at 6:45 for further discussion of SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT RACE.

ERACISM Minute 9/30/18 - Lauralee Carbone

ERACISM Minute 9/30/18

Good morning! I’m Lauralee Carbone here with an ERACISM Minute, a minute of consciousness-raising from the BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action Team’s program. I’m going to talk about the color of justice, prosecutorial power, and your opportunity to make a difference with your vote for local prosecutor in the upcoming election.

The following information is from the book, THE NEW JIM CROW, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander.

The legal rules governing prosecutions, like those that govern sentencing decisions, maximize rather than minimize racial bias. No one has more power in the criminal justice system than prosecutors. The prosecutor is free to dismiss a case for any reason or no reason at all, regardless of the strength of the evidence. The prosecutor is also free to file more charges against a defendant than can realistically be proven in court, so long as probable cause arguably exists. Whether a good plea deal is offered to a defendant is entirely up to the prosecutor. And if the mood strikes the prosecutor can transfer drug defendants to the federal system, where the penalties are far more severe. Juveniles can be transferred to adult court, where they can be sent to adult prison. The most remarkable feature of these important, sometimes life-and-death decisions is that they are totally discretionary and virtually unreviewable.

Immunizing prosecutors from claims of racial bias and failing to impose any meaningful check on the exercise of their discretion in charging, plea bargaining, transferring cases, and sentencing has created an environment in which conscious and unconscious biases are allowed to flourish. At virtually every stage of pre-trial negotiation, whites are more successful than nonwhites. Blacks are more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes. In our state of Washington, a review of juvenile sentencing reports found that prosecutors routinely described black and white offenders differently. Blacks committed crimes because of internal personality flaws such as disrespect. Whites did so because of external conditions such as family conflict.

With such prosecutorial power and the tendency toward bias against non-whites, it’s important to examine the prosecutor candidates’ records, views and awareness of systemic racial bias. Please vote with social justice in mind this November!

ERACISM Minute by Heidi Ohana--September 23, 2018

I want to talk about white fragility today.  I know someone comes up here each week and talks about racism in this country, within our denomination, and within ourselves.  I also know sometimes people get tired of it.  This is what white fragility is about. 

White people in this country live in an environment that protects and insulates us from race-based stress. This insulated environment builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering our ability to tolerate racial stress.  We don’t want to hear that we benefit from institutionalized racism, that we live in a white supremacist culture, or even that we, ourselves, hold some racist attitudes.  We’re good people after all.  We’re on the “right” side of this issue.  No one wants to feel bad about themselves – especially if they believe racism is wrong.  And that is not the goal.  The goal is to become increasingly aware of how we benefit from and participate in this system.

White fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive feelings.  Learning to tolerate this discomfort and continuing to listen and to learn and not be defensive will be how change happens.

Heidi Ohana

Eracism Minute 7/15/18 (Pride)

7/15/18 Eracism Minute

Good morning. I’m Lauralee Carbone, here to present a weekly eracism minute, a minute of consciousness-raising on behalf of the BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action Team. Eracism is defined as the removal from existence of the belief that one race is superior to another.

I’m going to present a poem by Audre Lorde: a black, feminist, lesbian, warrior, mother, author, poet. In her poem she speaks of intersectionality, the overlapping discrimination of racism, heteronormativism, sexism, ageism, ablism, and classism. See if you can pick all these “isms” out. For clarification, she refers to Nedicks, which is sort of like the Denny’s of the east coast.

Who Said It Was Simple

There are so many roots to the tree of anger

that sometimes the branches shatter

before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks

the women rally before they march

discussing the problematic girls

they hire to make them free.

An almost white counterman passes

a waiting brother to serve them first

and the ladies neither notice nor reject

the slighter pleasures of their slavery.

But I who am bound by my mirror

as well as my bed

see causes in colour

as well as sex

and sit here wondering

which me will survive

all these liberations.