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Back to Back: Allies for Human Dignity Present...

Undoing Racism Workshop

9am-4 pm, Saturday

January 28, 2012

First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive Street, Eugene

An interactive workshop for social justice activists. We will look at where racism comes from and how it operates, as well as the process of overcoming it, in ourselves and the community. Expect uncomfortable moments but also expect to leave energized, with a clearer understanding of what it means to be an ally.

Leaders Guadalupe Quinn and Marion Malcolm, both members of the Back to Back Steering Committee and seasoned social justice organizers, have co-led workshops for many years. They will be joined by guest presenter, Mo Young, also a member of the B2B Steering Committee, who will speak from her experience of growing up multiracial in Eugene and will reflect on what she, as the mother of an African American child, hopes for from the community.

Pre-registration is required. Space is limited; deadline is 1/26/12. To register, leave a message for Stephanie at CALC, 541/485-1755, or email calcoffice@gmail.com.  We request a donation of $15-25, sliding scale, and will provide lunch and beverages.  If you need or can offer a part or full scholarship, contact Silver at CALCBack2Back@gmail.com.

This workshop is the first in a series.  In 2012, half-day Back to Back workshops will address heterosexism/homophobia, anti-Semitism, white privilege, and class issues.  The next workshop date is April 28th.

 

 

CALC is Awarded Grant from Pride Foundation!

 

CALC is very honored to partner with the Pride Foundation to work towards decreasing bigotry and prejudice in our community. The funds will support our Back to Back and SAfER programs to counter oppression, racism, bigotry and heterosexism in a systemic way. Some of CALC's work in these areas include the Safe Schools Working Group to ensure there are advocates for LGTBQI youth in local schools, public photo exhibits expanding understanding of our diverse community and the Stop Hate campaign which organizes community responses to hate crimes. Please join CALC and the Pride Foundation in these and other initiatives to make our community stronger and more inclusive.

 

Lane County Network for Immigrant Integration
Statement of Principles

 

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Springfield Alliance for Equality and Respect urges CALC’s friends to support an exciting new initiative supporting immigrant rights!  A Statement of Principles has been developed by the Lane County Network for Immigrant Integration.  This group includes representatives from about thirty local organizations. Two CALC programs, SAfER and Back to Back, are now participating.   

The Statement of Principles speaks to:

• Inclusion and Integration
• Recognizing the Contributions of Immigrants
• Supporting Immigrant Families
• Promoting Respect and Non-discrimination
• Affirming a Common Sense Approach to Public Safety
• Advancing Humane and Just National Comprehensive Immigration Reform

The Statement of Principles will serve as a vehicle for raising awareness about immigration issues and building a broad base of support for immigrant justice.  The Network seeks both organizational and individual endorsers.   Click here to view the full statement and sign it. Please also consider taking it to your group, union, or congregation. 

Whatever happened to the War on Poverty?

 

On September 13, 2011, two days after the pomp and circumstance of 9-11’s Tenth Anniversary, the Oregon Center for Public Policy highlighted U.S. Census data that shows a significant increase in the share of Oregonians living in poverty, underscoring the need for a robust jobs program and greater investment in the public infrastructures that protect the vulnerable and create economic opportunity.

In addition the picture painted by the Census data was not pretty. Poverty in Oregon rose from 11.7% in 2007-08 to 13.8% in 2009-2010. Nationally, poverty increased 1.9 percentage points to 14.7% over the same period.

Whatever happened to the War on Poverty?

It got consumed by the War on Terror. October 7, 2011 marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, a country that nearly 100,000 of our troops still occupy today. Less than eighteen months later our military invaded Iraq, where 44,000 of our troops remain. The costs: over 6000 American dead, nearly a million deaths among Afghan and Iraqi civilians, and, most pertinent to the forgotten War on Poverty, over $1,000,000,000,000, and counting, of our tax dollars (over 907 million from Lane County alone).

Combine these wasteful expenditures with George Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, which benefited mainly the wealthy, and you have a fiscal legacy that, especially in the partisan atmosphere that prevails in Congress today, will take years, if not decades to rectify.

What must be understood is that it is not just the official poor who are now experiencing the painful consequences of the previous administration’s obsession with the "axis of evil”. Paul Krugman, in his September 23 New York Times op-ed piece, pointed out that between World War II and 1979, the inflation adjusted income of the middle of the income distribution rose 100%, since then it has gone up only 21%. Only the wealthy have seen significant income gains over that latter period.

Our foreign policy has simply replaced the Soviet Union by “terrorists” as the bogeyman to justify our huge military and security expenditures. The true goal behind that policy has been to inure the continuation of global economic and military dominance by the U.S. This posture is both bankrupting our economy and fomenting hostility toward the U.S. around the world.

Ten years after the launching of the War on Terror the questions we must be asking ourselves are these. Can we at last begin to redirect tax dollars away from the war machine toward lifting a sixth of our population out of poverty (and most of the rest of us out of perpetual financial anxiety)?

We urgently need job creation, we need to restore vital public services, protect the environment and take care of our children by fully funding our schools. We can accomplish all of this if we bring the war dollars home.

Can we finally acknowledge the futility of the path of unilateral military intervention and begin to redirect our foreign policy towards a multilateral approach, which envisions an international effort to provide the kind of global infrastructure that would render irrelevant the ravings of fundamentalist fanatics?

Can we, as young John Kerry did forty years ago before a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee reviewing the Vietnam fiasco, posit this question our leaders today: “How to you ask someone to be the last soldier to die for a mistake?”

Bruce Bowers is a steering committee member of Progressive Responses, the peace program of Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC)