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Table of Contents Thanks to all of TJD's 2003-2004 Fair Share Congregations Paying Our Dues: An Expectation of Membership Thomas Jefferson District Communications Guide UUA General Assembly - June 24-28 - Long Beach, CA |
15th Annual Anti-Racism Conference Held The District Anti-Racism Transformation Team held its 15th Annual Anti-Racism Conference at the Eno River Fellowship in Durham, NC on February 20 21, 2004. Members of Eno River, UUFRaleigh, and All Souls, Durham, did a fantastic job of planning and making the participants feel welcomed. DARTT members planned tthe well received program. DARTT members Andrea Kelso, Judy Turnipseed, and Jan Elders share their reactions and responses to the Conference in the following paragraphs. Just returned from the TJ District's 15th Annual Antiracism Conference in Durham, NC. Rania Masri <http://www.progressive.org/pmp0701/pmpms1801.html> delivered the keynote on Friday evening, and Paula Cole Jones <http://www.uuworld.org/2004/02/feature1.html> worked with us the entire next day exploring the process of Reconciliation and cultural identity. Masri's fire and exposing intelligence led some to feel "attacked", calling most of us to account for the local and global products of white privilege; Jones, with her velvet manner, entranced our whiteness to thorough self-examination contextualized by POC (people of color) articulation of the enduring/evolving reality of American racism - she spoke masterfully to truth and compassion. This was an incredible contrast of passionate delivery - the one raging and the other healing. Together the messages might actually effect change in Euro-american conscioiusness about the way we were-and-are ... Later, in her workshop, Jones showed the middle of a three part PBS series called "The Illusion of Race", followed by a popcorn discussion among the attendees about our learnings from the film. As we watched the historical depiction of the way American government, business, media, and other institutions invented and then perpetuated the idea of race
in order to oppress and exploit Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and African Americans, we agreed on the importance of learning the true history of our country in order to understand the present. From
slavery and manifest destiny to racial profiling and cultural annihilation, the past becomes the present, but does not need to continue into the future. Such a bad use of our government and institutions requires good government to restore and repair the damage, to heal and to reconcile. Theology of antioppression. David and Leslie Takahashi-Morris gave an inspiring and educational session on why and how we use our spiritual reality to do the work of antioppression.
Bob Gross, Chair of the Thomas Jefferson District Anti-Racism Transformation Team, was recently named to the UUA Anti-Racism Anti-Opression Multicultural Committee (formerly the Journey Toward Wholeness Committee). Bob is a long time member of the Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church in Charlottesville,VA and a Jubilee Trainer.
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