Dear impractical laborers,
Recently, an ILSSA member expressed concern that the majority of the Embodiment
Residency <http://impractical-labor.org/>’s offerings are facilitated by White
people. This member was especially concerned that the conversations that deal
most explicitly with anti-racism, decolonization, and abolition are facilitated
by White people. She suggested that ILSSA, in recognizing the importance of our
questions, could have hired an external BIPOC educator to facilitate
anti-racism workshops.
We understand her concern. We agree that anti-racist workshops should be
facilitated by BIPOC who are well-paid for their time, expertise, and emotional
labor. We also want to clarify that we do not intend for this Residency to
serve as anti-racist training, or in place of such training.
We organized this year's Residency as an online iteration of the 2016-2019
Group Residencies <http://impractical-labor.org/projects.html> a creative,
flexible space for ILSSA members to have open, honest, and vulnerable
conversations and experiences that matter, together. This has always been the
ILSSA way, to explore shared concerns through mutual generosity and
vulnerability, to pose difficult questions and extend opportunities for our
members to reflect, together.
Perhaps, this time, we went about this the wrong way.
We will make mistakes.
We make them with open hearts.
We wish to learn from our mistakes, so we can do better.
We wish to open, extend, and continue this conversation, beginning with these
two next steps:
1) We invite our ILSSA community to help identify our blind spots. Who may be
implicitly excluded from our open calls, and why? How could the Residency have
been more intentionally inviting to BIPOC presenters/participants,
specifically? In what ways could we nurture and seek out BIPOC participants?
Please send your comments, questions, and concerns to
operator@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:operator@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>. If a
conversation to discuss these issues would be helpful, please let us know that
too.
2) Katie Latona has reframed this Monday's “Let’s Talk About Anti-Racism”
conversation to ask some of the questions that have emerged from this week’s
conversations: "When do we have anti-racism conversations, and with whom? How
do you reach new people who may not have the resources/info/person to have a
conversation with? How do we dismantle Whiteness without centering it? How do
you start a conversation without centering yourself?” Monday June 29, from
6-7pm ET, RSVP katie.latona@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:katie.latona@xxxxxxxxx>.
We look forward to continuing our Remote Residency
<http://impractical-labor.org/> with you.
In community,
ILSSA Co-Operators Emily & Bridget + ILSSA Residency Co-Organizer Nike
….
ILSSA Operator
http://impractical-labor.org/
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