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Dismantling Racism: Organizations Making Change
dis-man-tle
- to take apart
- to deprive or strip of apparatus, trappings, equipment, etc.
racism
- a system of advantage for white people
- the systematic oppression of people of color
- a belief in the supremacy of white people and the institutional power to enforce that belief
It has now been six years since the launch of the DR Project. Through this work we have seen inspiring successes and challenging pitfalls. The Project has taken many forms and, like Western States Center as an organization, our DR work has evolved over that period. We’ve captured some of what we learned through this work in Sharing the Lessons Learned: Reflections on Six Years of Anti-Racism Work.
In 2005, the Center is phasing the DR Project out as a stand alone, publicly accessible training project, although the tools and resources we have gathered and developed will continue to be available. This shift is the result of a broad strategic plan that clarifies the Center’s role in supporting racial justice organizing in the region.
At the same time that the Center launched the DR Project, we were also developing an overarching racial justice program called Research and Action for Change and Equity (our RACE Program.) The RACE Program’s defining goals are to increase the breadth and depth of racial justice organizing in the region and to help build power and capacity for organizations rooted in communities of color.
Over the past few years we have re-tooled the DR project to better support those goals. However, as the DR Project’s public recognition increased, so too did requests for support, especially among a range of institutions who were outside of the Center’s core constituency. With limited capacity, and the critical need to support infrastructure building and multi-racial people of color organizing, we are choosing to focus RACE program resources in ways that more directly and strategically support the organizing and base building work of people of color organizations.
The Center is not making this shift whimsically. Rather, it is the culmination of our evaluation, our experience and analysis of what strategies will best serve to strengthen racial justice organizing in the region. In addition, this shift does not mean that the Center will no longer utilize the effective DR resources and tools that we have gathered and developed during the past six years. Rather, our capacity is being developed in all of the Center’s field staff so that these tools and resources can be integrated into all of our field-work as necessary and relevant.
Finally, we remain committed to making our DR training materials available free of charge via our website, so that people and groups whom we cannot work with directly can still benefit from the tools and methodologies we have found most successful.
© 2005, Western States Center