White Anti-racist Leadership Conference
New Orleans, LA
November 2002
In 2001-02 CSWAC organized the White Anti-racist Leadership Conference in New Orleans. This event was orginally planned as an intermediate step to hlding a larger white anti-racist convention the following year. Here's the "call" to work on the convention. It's pretty inspiring. Fifty people were invited to the leadership conference to begin the process. The conference was hosted locally by European Dissent.
An advisory committee was established for the conference and consisted of:
--Lucky Altman, National Conference for Community and Justice/Los Angeles
--Rev. David Billings, European Dissent, People's Institute for Survival and Beyond
--Robert T. Carter, Psychologist, Columbia University
--Ronald Chisom, People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond
--Diana Dunn, European Dissent, People's Institute for Survival and Beyond
--Marian Meck Groot, Women's Theological Center
--Jeff Hitchcock, Center for the Study of White American Culture
--Judith Katz, Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group
--Frances E. Kendall, Consultant on organizational change and communication,
--Paul Kivel, Activist, anti-violence educator, author: Uprooting Racism
--Joycelyn Landrum-Brown, Univ. of IL at Urbana-Champaign, Pgm on Intergroup Relations
--Victor Lee Lewis, Diversity trainer, participant in The Color of Fear
--Paul Marcus, Community Change, Inc.
--Sharon Martinas, Challenging White Supremacy workshop, Tides Center
--Peggy McIntosh, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women
--Eddie Moore, Jr., Founder, Annual Conference on White Privilege
--Robert W. Terry, Author: For Whites Only
--Tim Wise, Activist, author, speaker, antiracism educator
--Catherine Wong, Univ. of Massachusetts-Boston, Counseling & School Psychology
The 2002 conference did not result in a planning group committed to holding the larger convention event. The story of what took place at the leadership conference was told in CSWAC's Fall 2002 Membership Newsletter.
Looking back, the White Anti-racist Leadership Conference proved to be a significant event in itself. Although it did not lead to the larger convention, it did promote an interest in regional organizing. The conference lead to the following outcomes:
-- Many people there met other people for the first time. Personal connections were forged that continue today and an intergenerational network specific to white anti-racist organizing was started.
-- Participants agreed to undertake local and regional white anti-racist organizing across the US. Organizing events were held in the Boston, Seattle, and Mid-Atlantic areas.
-- White anti-racist groups were founded in Madison, Wisconsin and Baltimore, MD. They continue today.
-- CSWAC decided to shift its organizing effort to the White Privilege Conference, where we began the White Anti-racist Summit series.
-- CSWAC decided we needed to encourage white anti-racist community and so we formed the White Anti-racist Community Action Network.
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