The first Wednesday of every month Bridgeport Generation Now hosts The Bridgeport Antiracism Collective (BARC) a “multiracial space for individuals and community leaders committed to developing a personal practice of antiracism here in Bridgeport.”
Gen Now has also partnered with a New Orleans-based group to organize training for city officials.
More from CT Post reporter Cayla Bamberger:
The school district could host an anti-racism training session for elected officials and other leaders, according to a tentative plan passed by a school board committee on Tuesday night.
Bridgeport Generation Now, in partnership with the New Orleans-based People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, is organizing a free, 2.5-day training for board and city council members and others as space permits. Led by three national trainers, the workshop accommodates 40 participants this round. Participation is subsidized through a foundation-funded grant.
The plan is to hold the workshop at school facilities on April 1 through April 3, pending full board approval.
“(Participants) get to self-examine and understand how we have all been racialized in this country,” Gemeem Davis, vice president and co-director of Bridgeport Generation Now, said of the program. “How we might be carrying harmful ways of being into our lives and our work and our society right now, and how we can organize together to change that.”
Full story here.
Congratulations to Generation Now for sponsoring another session on ANTIRACISM for a fifth year in April. They are seeking a location where the Friday evening and Saturday and Sunday sessions can be held, as a public service to explore the various narratives, histories, and storylines which have been a part of our education, learning, and likely worldview, when we fail to reflect upon alternative descriptions of events, situations, and past conflicts.
Slavery of blacks from Africa in the colonies and after as United States until Emancipation Proclamation, the South’s defeat in Civil War turning into Lost Cause, the brief Federal support for “freedom for all” of Reconstruction and subsequent replacement with Jim Crow practices, etc. creating a continuation but hidden reason for WHITE SUPREMACY behind many political, cultural and personal battles today. Challenging conversations are likely one effective way of dealing with ignorance, careless democracy, and autocratic governance. Who has room for such a session in 2022? Time will tell.
John, you know I like to parse words with you? Is it more of a challenging conversation or an HONEST, OPEN, TRANSPARENT one? Have you taken this anti-racism workshop? If not, are you planning on participating in the upcoming workshop? I asked these questions not out of curiosity but because your comment falls into Gemeen Davis’s, Gen Now, rationale for holding such workshops.
The organizers of this educational anti-racism workshop claimed:
“(Participants) get to self-examine and understand how we have all been racialized in this country,” Gemeem Davis, vice president and co-director of Bridgeport Generation Now, said of the program. “How we might be carrying harmful ways of being into our lives and our work and our society right now, and how we can organize together to change that.”
Do you feel your comment might have some self-examination? Do you feel you might have been racialized in this country which the various narrative, histories, and storylines that have been a part of our education, learning, and past conflicts that affect our daily lives?
Your comment seems to hold some harmful ways, or at the very least, less productive in a worthy goal for a more racially just society. Or does the political-philosophical goal transcends race in the endeavor to conjure up votes in what is the political game for its philosophical society?
For starters:
A. Jim Crow’s racial injustice disparities in its separate but equal were far from hidden. It was in plain sight for the world to see, Now, the North’s racial injustice, disparities, that shit was hidden-ish.
B. Democracy! careless? Are saying democracy can be careless? If so, you are then saying voters are ignorant in their carelessness? If that’s the case, you’re also saying Jim Crow voting laws that required blacks to be literate or other forms of requirement were corrective measures to prevent a careless Democracy? Careless or not, that is why America isn’t considered a Direct Democracy but a representative democracy with the constitutional federal republic, a constitution that goes beyond the ignorance of a careless democracy that granted blacks their freedom regardless of the carelessness, hidden or not.
C. I understand the need for knowledge of human history. However, to say America’s Civil War and the efforts after it, that is “CONTINUOUS” but because of careless democracy was a Lost Cause, that created a “CONTINUATION” but the hidden REASON for white supremacy, behind many political, cultural, and personal battles today.
That line of thought tends to fall within Gemmen’s statement regarding racism racialization in this country and is seems to sound anti-America also. Are you saying Obama’s Presidency of the United State of America was considered a CONTINUATION of a lost cause?
This announcement of Gen Now comes off the heels of a Black Women Speak March that had its own hidden racism. It was very selective in its motivation and who the outraged was targeted for the handling of two black women cases that made national news. Was it racialized racism or just emotional-based politics at play? Is there much difference though?
John, let’s have an HONEST, OPEN, and TRANSPARENT challenging conversation about Racism and Racialization in America. Because of the history of black slavery in the “NEW WORLD” and America’s governmental role in it. As well as the treatment of blacks in general in a “careless” democracy. Blacks have more of a REASON to be racist toward whites than whites towards blacks. While each generation of black ancestry is further removed from that history, because of it, blacks are just as susceptible if not more so, to learn or be taught to be racial racialization in this country by the forces that influence it. To be fair by all the force that opposes it.
See the thing about racism is it is a form of anger and hate behavior that goes beyond self-preservation. It’s taught, learned, generally, in one form or another, for one reason or another, be it personally, culturally, i, politically, or “ PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES” 🍆 EVEN MENTALLY, INHERENTLY FABULOUS. 🌈 etc. 💔
It is learned regardless of the reason, through time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhCHcIxdo3M
Racism is the path of least resistance for its simplicity form, visually. But that divide exists in every nation. America is not unique in that regard. In other nations where the visuality of skin tone of racism is not in plain sight, hate finds its way. Sunni,Shiite, Protestant, Catholics, Hutus, Tutsis. The list goes on throughout history. Even to this day as we speak look at what is taking place in Eastern Europe among the Eastern Slavic.
To touch back on America’s history of slavery and those who live in America that have descended for it. After the Civil War and during the period of reconstruction hundreds of Southern freed blacks and newly freed blacks participated in government. They didn’t just go from slave labor (plantation) to educated government officials in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. Also, where do blacks fall in that history who of their own free will migrated to America in search of a better life for themselves and their family like many in my ESL classes?
The Port has an upcoming Democratic DTC election. We have Black pastors against each other. As well as Latinas against Latinas. Are we claiming these political challenges are a form of racism or is it just CAREFULL EDUCATED DEMOCRACY VOTERS against CARELESS IGNORANCE DEMOCRACY VOTERS?
Is racism only at play when a white person is on the ballot or the intended target in our current political realm?
PS. Don’t make too much of a distinction between democracy, careless or not, and autocratic governance. Democracy is an autocracy, based on majority rule, no? Although the Philosophers
and founding fathers of democracy were not as careless as America is. They didn’t let their slaves vote, or every freed person, only the privilege. In some aspects, you can say the experiment of America and its Constitutional Federal Republic/Representative Democracy, started where they left off, Not sure where the Oligarchy Elites or the Keymaster fall into all of this.
At any rate, 💣,👁🗨🚀🌍
Wait, what was I say again? Oh yeah, when did we get ice cream? 🤣
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFpARlLDrgo