 News from SURJ! We're excited to announce an upcoming call with Angela Davis! See the save the date below. Another important save the date is for the SURJ 10 Year Anniversary All Chapter Call. We've got new Leadership Team members! Meet them below. Check out an interview with Western Mass about their Reparations Campaign, and a victory from LSURJ (Louisville SURJ) to get a racist monument removed, and continue celebrating the 100th podcast from Word is Resistance by checking out some of the top episodes from the past few years! Angela Davis with Surj Join us for a call with Angela Davis! Tuesday July 9th, 8 ET / 7 CT / 6 MT / 5 PT Register here: bit.ly/surjangeladavis Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/2703052713101503/ More information coming soon! 10 year anniversary all chapter call SURJ is turning 10 this year! We will be having a series of events that will kick off on July 14th with an all chapter call. We would like every SURJ chapter represented and all members are welcome to join. Register here: bit.ly/surj10years Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/2283780538504737/?active_tab=about New SURJ Leadership Team MembersSURJ is pleased to announce that this round of our leadership team (LT) expansion process is complete. After receiving over two dozen applications and interviewing fourteen individuals, we are delighted to welcome five new members to our team. The LT works closely with SURJ staff to make decisions about strategy, structure, and accountability. We look forward to our continued work to shape transformative change toward our collective liberation. Click here for full bios!  Western Mass SURJ is in the midst of a reparations campaign to purchase a house for movement partners with BLM413 and Out Now. Watch the interview with chapter leaders Misha Heij Mariano, Jess Kuttner, and Ingrid Avison. Learn more and donate here. Watch the trailer here. Watch the full movie here. Word is resistance 100 episodes! Thanks to everyone who made our celebration of the 100th episode of "The Word Is Resistance" such a great success. We had so many new listeners our All-Time Top 10 list changed several times. Thanks to everyone who shared! And check out our Top 10 Lists here!  Louisville SURJ Victory After a two year battle led by Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice, and anchored in accountability to the vision of Louisville’s and the nation’s Black Liberation leaders—that confederate statues must come down---Louisville's Landmarks Commission voted May 9 to uphold the appeal by the City calling for removal. This clears the way for a take down of the Castleman Statue, which to more and more people, has come to represent the confederacy, slavery, and ongoing racial oppression today. This two year battle that included LSURJ volunteers going door to door work to educate and pressure people in one of Louisville’s most affluent and politically powerful neighborhoods, demonstrations and direct action, forced the larger Louisville community and elected officials to engage a long overdue conversation on why symbols of white supremacy are part of an overall atmosphere of oppression and injustice. The historical context of this “man on the horse” is simple: it is a registered Civil War Confederate Monument. It was erected during a period of public art designed to define the powerful, define the rules, define geography in a city. It was the period when the Ku Klux Klan grew as a terrorist organization and when Jim Crow was becoming the law of the land. In short, it is a promotion of white supremacy. Removing the Castleman statue is only one piece of a community agenda that must include challenging racism in the courts, jail and prison systems where people of color and the poor, including poor white folks, are disproportionately targeted by a criminal justice system that clearly “sees color and sees poverty”. Our work must address inequities in housing, in our schools and in every single institution in our community—building a coalition of all the ‘locked out’ to say no to the white supremacy culture and structures keeping us from our mutual liberation. LSURJ's other campaigns include ending Cash Bail in partnership with The Bail Project, and getting police out of the schools in partnership with Black Lives Matter Louisville and others. In each of these struggles, getting clear on how our work supports the mission of SURJ is critical to making accountability effective and real. When we organize, and focus on our work to undermine support for white supremacy and the economics it keeps in place, and build a broader base of white folks for racial justice—wins that lead us on stronger into the next struggle and build for liberation are possible.
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AuthorThis is a blog post authored by the SURJ National Staff Archives
March 2020
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