MWSM is going to Creating Change this year in Balitmore Maryland. We would like to appreciate and give thanks to our sponsors (AAPI Institute & Eric Rofes Memorial Scholarship) that made it possible for us to attend this year creating change as a collective. 

If you are wondering “What’s Creating Change?” Creating change is: Only the premier annual organizing and skills-building event for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and their allies.

The conference is run by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and attracts more than 2,500 people from all over the country every year. Presenters and participants come from all walks of life and include members of the business community, elected officials, students, faith leaders and staff and volunteers of non-profit organizations.

Our five-day program features over 250 workshops and training sessions, four plenary sessions, and tons of networking opportunities.

Check them out at: http://www.creatingchange.org/

MWSM meets every Saturday from 10am to 1 pm.

Dee & Mindy @ the 2011 Overcoming Racism conference

What is overcoming Racism conference?

Conference Mission:  Advancing antiracist transformation of ourselves, our institutions and our communities

Conference purposes:

• Address colonization*, historical trauma* and decolonization*—the colonizer and colonized interactions, social arrangements, and mindsets
• Communicate how historical trauma developed (who? why?)
• Understand how oppressive legacies are embedded (policies, institutions, social systems) and perpetuated today (practices, belief systems, behaviors) in the form of institutional and structural or systemic racism* as well as its individual manifestations.
• Understand what oppressive legacies looks like/how they manifest themselves, how they get all of us stuck (oppressor/oppressed), and how we get unstuck; what this understanding implies and demands in action (So what?)
• Provide models, skills and tools for advancing antiracist transformation that participants can apply in their daily lives, their work and their institutional and community contexts.

Participants will:

• Understand the challenges and benefits to having honest conversations about systemic racism, ongoing colonization, white privilege and white supremacy as manifested in and flowing from historical traumas resulting from the violence of colonialism
• Gain practical skills and tools for countering racism, facilitating difficult conversations about race and racism, and for challenging institutional racism in their own life contexts.
• Explore the unique challenges, possibilities and practical application of racial justice skills, tools and facilitation in their particular settings

Chong, Dee, Doua and Mindy