When it came to plan this year’s Strategic Retreat, I asked myself, what would love look like in practice? As BRIDGE staff, board, and community, how could we bring our hearts to the design of the work? How could we make our time together restorative even as we do the work of beginning to plan BRIDGE’s next 15 years? As a Black-led organization, how could we also design a retreat that centered Black joy and liberation and peace?
Read moreUnveiling the Life, Legacy, and Pioneering Spirit of Elizabeth "MumBett" Freeman
Elizabeth Freeman was, yes, a formerly enslaved woman, AND she was courageous and wise, a healer and midwife, clearly a deep listener, and she was also an entrepreneur, land, and property owner and an activist in her own right. She held all of those roles and performed all of those functions as a Black woman in the Berkshires in the 18th century. I and my children have been and will forever be inspired by and in awe of her legacy.
For me as a Black woman, today's events symbolize the bittersweet journey of liberation that Americans of African descent have been on for centuries now as well as the insurmountable struggle for peace and shared valuing of our humanity that we find ourselves still engaged in even today. It is a bittersweet acknowledgment that Elizabeth Freeman’s story has been largely understated and untold (if not erased) from our American History.
Read moreTyringham Racial Justice Event Remarks
I was honored to be invited by the Hop Brook community to speak at their second annual Juneteenth celebration on behalf of BRIDGE’s Towards Racial Justice and Equity in the Berkshires campaign (est. 2009) and to curate an event amplifying the voices of local Black leaders working for equity and justice. I was so glad that Shirley Edgerton (Rites of Passage and Empowerment), Dennis Powell (NAACP Berkshires), AJ Enchill (Berkshire Black Economic Council), and Dr. Leticia Hayes, JD (Williams College).
Read moreChapters: My Remarks at the Launch of Delano's “The Great Barrington Project: Unbleaching the Souls of Black Folk”
Thank you, Delano, for coming home to your hometown of Great Barrington to have such an important project launch with us: “The Great Barrington Project: Unbleaching the Souls of Black Folk.” BRIDGE and our Racial Justice groups are a grateful and inspired partner. You are lifting up our community, necessary conversations, and unspoken stories on such a deeply intimate and personal level. All the while calling us to activation or re-activiation. Thank you!
Read moreMy Remarks from "Listening Deeply: Indigenous Voices"
On October 1st, our community gathered for “Listening Deeply: Indigenous Voices,” a panel discussion which aimed to educate our community in preparation for Indigenous Peoples’ Day on October 11. The event took place at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire in Housatonic and on Zoom. Shawn Stevens, Jake Singer, Bonney Hartley from the Mohican Cultural Affairs Office, and Carol Dana, a Penobscot Language Master, were invited to speak. I was honored to join Lev Natan in sharing opening remarks in service of centering the intention of the listening audience. Read “Great Barrington to Replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day” in The Berkshire Eagle.
Read moreMy Remarks on Juneteenth and Liberation (from a talk on White Privilege)
On Juneteenth (June 19th, 2021), I gave a talk with Dr. Peggy McIntosh “White Privilege, What it is and Why It Matters.” Presented by Tyringham for Racial Justice for BRIDGE, I shared my thoughts and then participated in a Q&A and dialogue alongside Peggy. Read my opening remarks followed by my presentation for their inaugural speaker series.
Read moreMy Remarks at the Launch of Moving Money for Impact
In fall 2019, I was proud to co-facilitate and serve as the Accountability Lead for a unique convening of 80+ leaders in gender lens philanthropy and investing called “Women & Money: Making Money Moves that Matter” in Austin, Texas. Presented by Changemaker Strategies and What Will it Take Movements, the event was produced by my longtime colleague and collaborator Tuti Scott (read about it in Forbes here). Now, in 2021, Tuti has published a new guide to gender lens investing, “Moving Money for Impact.”
Read moreHarvard 2021 Centennial Medalist Peggy McIntosh on Receiving the Award
A note from Gwendolyn VanSant:
It was an honor to be invited as a guest of Dr. Peggy McIntosh at Harvard’s recent Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal awards ceremony. One of four awardees, Dr. McIntosh was recognized for her work on the National Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) Project, privilege, and systemic oppression. It was incredibly meaningful for me to witness Dr. McIntosh take a lifetime achievement moment of her own and share it with Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois as a testimonial to his life of activism and scholarship. I was so deeply inspired, I asked Dr. McIntosh if I could post her remarks below.
Congratulations to Dr. McIntosh, and thank you for your embodied allyship!
About the GSAS Centennial Medal:
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal, first awarded in 1989 on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary, honors Harvard alumni who have made contributions to society that emerged from their graduate study at Harvard. It is the highest honor the Graduate School bestows, and awardees include some of Harvard’s most accomplished graduates.
Dr. Peggy McIntosh is the founder of the National Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) Project, which aims to develop inclusive curricula for educators and other leaders. Since its founding, the organization has trained more than 2,200 teachers to lead year-long SEED seminars in the United States and abroad. In 1988, she published “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account for Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies,” an influential essay that explained how being white provided an unearned advantage in society, based solely on race. (A condensed version, “White Privilege, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” appeared the following year.)
Centennial Medal Citation: “Peggy McIntosh, for your unflinching commitment to naming white privilege and confronting systemic forces of oppression, and for your powerful conviction that open conversation, grounded in personal experience, can help us work toward a more equitable and just society, we are proud to award you the 2021 Centennial Medal.”
Dr. McIntosh’s remarks upon receiving the Centennial Medal:
I want to thank Sandra Moose for doing so much in-depth research on me and for consulting so many people.
I used to think that I had left behind most of Harvard’s frames of reference and modes of teaching. But, in writing my thanks for this GSAS award, I looked back and saw, with gratitude, how permanently I am indebted to Harvard for a method of seeing that has undergirded all my work in American Studies, Women’s Studies, multicultural studies, faculty development, and systems of privilege.
It was Professor Reuben Brower of the English Department who taught us this method of close, close reading of literature, to the point of reading between the lines. It was reading between the lines of my own life that led me to study white privilege and power in and around me.
Often when I am invited to speak about privilege systems, I ask to co-present with a person of color to share the time, money, and publicity. Though I cannot raise him from the dead, I’d like to imagine W.E.B. Du Bois with us here today. He was a genius at reading between the lines of U.S. and world cultures. He was the first African-American, the first Black man, to earn a Ph.D at Harvard, in 1895. I’m proud of Harvard for making that advance 126 years ago. By invoking Du Bois today, I’m hoping that his genius will be taken even more seriously now, so that all the voices of all students, graduates, and faculty of color will be recognized and learned from more intently. Learning from those one was subtly taught to look down on is an essential step for surviving our national crises. Thank you to my beloved colleagues in Denver, Wellesley, and the SEED Project.
Thank you GSAS for encouraging, with your Centennial Medals, complex understandings of truth (Veritas) and encouraging us to become better experts at reading between the lines of our own lives and our times.
Meaningful Diversity Recruitment, & Retention Work Requires Shifting Attention, Power, and Resources
What does hiring with this type of care mean? Leaders must start by equipping themselves with tools to build awareness and trust. There are five areas of cultural competence: shared knowledge and language for how to talk about culture and diversity; examining diversity and representation; beginning bias-assessments; navigating cultural difference; and ultimately, applying these insights to strategy work like recruitment and retention. Then, it’s about setting goals and getting clear on what success looks like in this hiring process. What are our considerations? And once a hire is made — what are the conditions for success and how can I support that?
Read moreadrienne maree brown on nurturing emergence and collaborative ideation
In her 2017 book Emergent Strategy, Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, adrienne maree brown wrote about the power of creating space and time for emergence to take place and imagining new possibilities altogether. I am re-reading this powerful excerpt as I move into the new year.
Read moreDigesting 2020 as You Intentionally Move into 2021
Here's an exercise for the new year! To get started, create some personal retreat time, a quiet afternoon or evening in the next couple of weeks. Think of this time and process as a way of gaining creative power in your life. Allow yourself to embody this personal inventory. It can be helpful to do this exercise outside of your usual environment to allow for more expansive thinking. You may wish to add more questions to this appreciative inquiry process, and that is GREAT! Make it your own! Do this exercise once for your personal life and once for your professional life... Or, ask yourself if the timing is right to bring yourself more into congruence in both areas.
Read moreFrom New Pathways to the BECMA Black Expo, Bridging Wisdom from Dr. Angela Davis Across the Commonwealth
Please read my remarks from Sunday, November 14 at the 2020 Mass. Black Expo of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts to introduce a virtual screening of Dr. Angela Davis’ (excerpted) keynote presentation at BRIDGE’s New Pathways Social Justice Conference November 6-9, 2020.
Read moreNew Pathways Social Justice Conference Remarks
Welcome to the launch of our New Pathways Social Justice Conference. Tonight we are here to pave new pathways of transformative justice and healing while we move the dial collectively on race, class, and justice strategies… I have the great fortune to speak about justice work and specifically about BRIDGE with Dr. Angela Davis on Sunday evening, including how our work has emerged differently over this past year. For now, I want to talk about tonight. Our theme is accountability and how that shows up in this liberation work. We will explore this alongside our amazingly fierce speakers... What is required of us in radical civil action, civic engagement, and our collective thinking right now?
Read moreDisrupting the white supremacy pattern of silence
About the hate speech, it leaves me to wonder who/what is targeting and who/what is being targeted? What is random and what is happening way closer to home than we want to admit? Why, each time there is an attempt to move ahead with honoring Du Bois, does there appear to be an orchestrated last minute "attack" on the effort? As for the inaction and silence my colleagues and I witnessed after the racist incident, this is white supremacy at work as well. In many conversations, I have asked, why the silence in the face of an assault? Why do people White people freeze in these moments? Asking these questions is my "calling in" for White folks who continually seek to call themselves allies. There is so much to unlearn, including the silence.
Read moreCelebrating the 51st Anniversary of the Dedication of W. E. B. Du Bois’ Homesite
As john a. powell encourages us, we have to stop othering across color and other lines such as religion, gender, and class that are all man-made constructs and recognize that we can be and do much more organically. As humans, as natural beings, we can co-create a future that acknowledges our “interconnectedness.” There, I would venture, is where we will all find belonging, peace, and strength working collectively towards a future we want to live in as we just did with the renaming of Great Barrington’s middle school.
Read moreThe Case for Renaming Great Barrington Middle School after W. E. B. Du Bois
Now it is time to have this community dialogue civilly about Dr. Du Bois, his legacy, and why every child in our District should be proud to be educated in a town where Du Bois was born. Every faculty, staff, and administrator should aspire to the lessons Du Bois has taught us on education. Every community member should learn from the model of civic engagement and care and love for the Berkshires Du Bois showed. Each of us tonight have a different message and voice to share, and we all promise to deeply listen to one another and... to also stand for justice.
Read moreBringing Positive Psychology Into Equity and Justice Work As We Build Anew
Without positive psychology, we can all too easily get stuck with all that is not working in the world. We can focus on negative emotions and ultimately get stymied. But, as I learned from Dr. Tal Ben Shahar when “we appreciate the good, the good appreciates” (appreciative inquiry). In our cultural groups and as a nation, I truly believe that we have the fortitude to deconstruct and build anew. We need to build from that strength. We will have to learn from our mistakes with a discerning eye (resilience) and we will need to practice self-care and co-create a shared vision for the future.
Read moreBringing Care Into the Practice of Recruitment and Retention
How do I personally show care for Black and other people of non-White, non-heterosexual, cisgender identities in environments where the leadership is white, cisgendered, and heteronormative; the cultural norms are white, cisgendered, and heteronormative; the workforce is white, cisgendered, and heteronormative; and/or issues of racial and gender diversity have not been addressed at all? Just as one example, I WILL NOT engage in diversity, recruitment, and retention right away. When you DO decide to hire Black people, then please, do it with care and support, and the long overdue preparation in the organization. Place them in leadership positions with adequate resources to be successful for what they were hired to accomplish.
Read moreStay in Relationship: Demonstrating Trust and Care in Racial Justice & Equity Work
Relationship-building is synonymous with building trust. So, when I hear folks say, “It is so hard to get started on equity and justice work” in their organization, I know immediately it is because the relationships aren’t there or yet where they need to be.
Read moreJuneteenth Will Be a Holiday About Liberation for Black People and Justice Work for Others
Snapshot: It’s June 2020, we are in the midst of a pandemic, and the U.S. is still reckoning with that reality. Some of us are focused on summer vacations while other businesses are just focused on going back to work. Our capitalist engine won’t stop. The #BlackLivesMatter Movement is a continual uprising. We are still facing police brutality, Black suicides, racialized terrorism... And then we come to a Black holiday, Juneteenth (learn more) and White people are organizing a beloved, sacred Black holiday when most Black folks I know are just exhausted.
As a Black woman, I just cannot shake this portrait. This holiday is very different for Black people, White people, and other people of color.
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