Reflections on the We Are Finding Freedom Workshop
“Who is organizing white women to join the future we all deserve?” - Alicia Garza, American civil rights activist
“I believe that no white woman can find freedom as a woman until she deals in her own consciousness with the question of race.” - Anne Braden
MEEA and Momentum Conservation hosted a 3-day racial justice workshop for white women and gender expansive people with the We Are Finding Freedom facilitators Susannah Bartlow and Dani Wilson earlier in November. We’re so grateful for the 22 people from the Maine environmental sector and other community members who took the step to show up for this learning opportunity at the Shortridge Center in Phippsburg.
The workshop created space for white people to practice calling in ourselves and others to show up to our racial justice commitments. We role played scenarios to practice bravely showing up when racism and white supremacy arise within ourselves, our families, friends, and work places. And we also practiced listening to the feelings and sensations in our bodies that are holding us back from speaking up.
“Finding Freedom re-energized and re-focused my commitment and activation in anti-racism and justice work, at a time when the enormity of need and confusion was stalling me. The workshop, facilitators, and other participants made it feel approachable and inspiring, while providing actionable and specific learning and strategy; it both challenged and empowered me.”
-Hadley Couraud, MEEA board member
We Are Finding Freedom began as a national online workshop series and offers sliding-scale 6-week workshops on its website. The organization has its rooted in the South founded by Kari Points and Evangeline Weiss, who have spent more than 40 years combined as white queer people working with communities, individuals and organizations that center racial, gender and economic justice. The Finding Freedom curriculum is steeped in gratitude for the leadership and expertise of the queer black women who founded Black Lives Matter and many other liberatory organizations and groups.
Maine is the first state to host a regional in-person workshop and to also host recurring workshop offerings over multiple years. Given so many of the workshop participants had attended our previously online Maine cohort, it is clear that white women in the Maine environmental sector want and need a space to continue to practice racial justice commitments.
Peyton Black of Momentum Conservation participated in the Maine cohort of "We are Finding Freedom" twice online, and now once in person. “While largely the same curriculum, I have absorbed and been impacted by the material differently each time. In a way that is different from online participation, I feel like having in person hard and vulnerable conversations about race, class, and historic harm will stay with me and keep me grounded and motivated to work towards a more just future. Dani and Suze are incredible facilitators and I am so grateful that they were able to come to Maine and continue to guide us through this important work.”
We also discussed the history of Maine and how racism continues to live on in the fabric of the places we live and work. “One of the most powerful parts of the workshops for me was when we began the workshop by sharing about the history of the place where the workshop took place, Phippsburg, south of Bath,” shared Emory Harger, MEEA’s Director of Communications. “I shared with the group that I learned at an Atlantic Black Box event that many of the towns along the Maine coast were where ships were built for the Atlantic slave trade, and many folks in the room hadn’t heard about this history before. Someone else shared about Malaga Island which is off the coast of Phippsburg, which used to be the home of a mixed-race fishing community forcibly removed by the state in 1912. It’s important to carve spaces for white people to discuss the honest history of this place called Maine we know and love. And how the ripple effects of that history still play out in our current lives here.”
“This training was so powerful for me because I was able to deepen my knowledge and skills and also build relationships with other leaders in the state who hold a similar vision to a collective liberated future that I am working towards both personally and professionally. This experience gives me so much courage, support, and motivation to keep making brave choices and to take risks to advance social justice in my community.”
-Olivia Griset, MEEA Executive Director
Here are some of the resources shared by the We Are Finding Freedom team that we used during the workshop that we wanted to share with you. Thanks to Susannah Bartlow and Dani Wilson for collecting these resources and your willingness for us to share them with our network!
• Calling in and Calling Out Guide — This is a supportive resource in knowing the difference between these concepts and can help us reflect, then act, in the ways we feel will best promote constructive change with our peers and communities.
• Sea Change: Navigating Oppression by the Fireweed Collective — Oppression hits us at multiple levels. Explore the emotional consequences and learn to navigate oppression in this short video.
• Contradictions of white people in racial justice work — It’s important to move through our communities holding these with multiple truths as we navigate racial justice work.
• The Weaponization of White Womanhood from On the Media WNYC - a short audio story about the importance of analyzing racial dynamics when looking at gender and power — and how we might get to a better place from here.
