by Judy Helfand I’m sitting in the audience for a post-production discussion of Kill Move Paradise, a play in which four black men try to make sense of their recent killing. A white woman in the first row is speaking and I’m thinking Stop! Don’t you, a white woman, tell …
by Judy Helfand In the months after the wildfires that burned through our little farm, taking the house and all the outbuildings, I observed the changing state of my brain as illustrated through my choice of readings. At first I wasn’t reading at all and then gradually I started drifting …
A Gift Poem for an Elder I Just Met by Christopher Bowers I come from a people whose burden was a big story that abhorred storytelling and thus secrets ruled with invisibility. I come from a people who thought the center of the universe was in the perpetual west and …
At our last Racial Justice Allies dialog in July with the community, we talked about what to do as white people when we observe or are a witness to racial discrimination. Bystander intervention is crucial now more than ever. Weekly we are hearing about stories of violent discrimination, verbal and …
by Judy Helfand When a new member of Racial Justice Allies asked why there wasn’t more posting on our blog given all that is going on, I replied that we’d been too busy to write. But the question lingered and I reflected more deeply on what I’ve been doing over …
by Kate Riffle Roper As a white mother of two black children, three white children, who all have a white father, I have something to say. Racism exists. It is real. And it is everywhere, all the time. When I brought my boys home they were the cutest, sweetest babies …
The Spirituality of Confronting Privilege, Entitlement, and Cultural Appropriation by Christopher Bowers Grief and Re-Membering: The Spirituality of Confronting Privilege, Entitlement, and Cultural Appropriation was originally published at Satya Lightworks | Rekindling Ancient Wisdom I live in a beautiful, affluent little town infused with the legacy of 60s-era hippie activism …
By Adrienne Lauby Recently, I went to the funeral for Cirak Tesfazgi, a 32 year old homeless man who was murdered Sunday night in Santa Rosa. I didn’t know him but many of my homeless friends did. He was asleep outdoors near downtown Santa Rosa when someone he didn’t know …