Groundwork is a white anti-racist collective working to dismantle white supremacy and achieve racial justice in our communities. Our three main goals are:
1) Engaging White People of Racial Justice
2) Working in collaboration with organizations of people of color
3) Internal education and leadership development
We are committed to doing work against racism in our daily lives from the heart, with dignity, and integrity.
Our Goals:
(1) Engaging White people for Racial Justice: Work with other white people to dismantle white supremacy and all systems of oppression within our circles of influence, particularly within movements for social justice. Engaging white people in organizing for racial justice through trainings, education, support, on-going organizational transformation, organizational collaboration, racial justice campaigns, action alerts, and leadership development.
(2) Collaboration with People of Color led organizations: Create and sustain accountable relationships with groups that prioritize racial justice and are led by people of color. Build alliances with these organizations and individuals to participate in multi-racial movement building.
(3) Internal Leadership Development and Education: Support one another through self-education, reflection, and sharing our experiences of working against racism in our daily lives. Build our confidence, leadership, and analysis through this ongoing process.
We are rooted in Stokely Carmichael’s call for white people to do work within the white community to address racism. Individual members have heard this call repeated many times by people of color in our lives.
We do this work beginning with ourselves and one another within the group. From here we extend to our spheres of influence including all spaces in which we find ourselves: primarily family, places of work, community organizations, etc.
We alternate meetings between study-group sessions where we anti-racist work and logistical, organizational meetings. Some educational topics have been: raising anti-racist children, anti-imperialism, class, ableism, queer liberation, selected poetry, local indigenous and U.S. history, white supremacy culture, and movement building.
