GID 2020
Racism
Global Integrity Day 2020
Confronting the Corruption of Racism
Love Truth, Peace, and People
Reflections
We are standing in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the USA and all around the world who are fighting the corruption of entrenched racism as well as the many forms of exploitation including massive human rights violations, gross inequalities, and pervasive multi-dimensional poverty. You must not be forgotten and forsaken. In new ways in the coming days, we call on us all to not only demand change and work for change, but to be the change ourselves. And in the process, to respect and uphold the values which underlie democratic societies, including the promotion of "social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom" (Preamble, UN Charter).
--Letter from a Birmingham Jail (16 April 1963), Martin Luther King, Jr. One of many important principles/quotes: "Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity. "
Resources
--UN IASC Statement on Racism and Racial Discrimination in the Humanitarian Sector
(10 September 2020)
--A Love Note. Erin Noëlle, 17 June 2020. IG: @erinnoelle.22
--World Federation for Mental Health: "Condemns all form of racism and calls for an end to inequalities, racism, and police brutality." (8 June 2020) Read the full Statement here.
--Is Racism Part of Our Reluctance to Localise Humanitarian Action? (5 June 2020). Hugo Slim, Humanitarian Practice Network
--American Psychological Association: Action Plan for Addressing Inequality (2 June 2020)
See also the website section with various resources We Must Unmute
--Seven Ways You Can Step Up for Racial Justice Now, Global Citizen (2 June 2020)
--Another One Dead (May 2o20). Song by Kolton Harris, Ryan Parker, and Jeden Williams. Background on the song here.
--Healing Racial Trauma, Hope and Resilience Blog, Psychology Today (25 May 2020). Features an interview with Sheila Wise Rowe and her book, Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience (2020)
--Anti-Racism Resources compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein (May 2020)
--The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism (2019), Jemar Tisby. Watch the book trailer here.
--Between the World and Me (2015). Ta-Nehisi Coates "But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” (page 10). Two-minute video/excerpt from book read by the author HERE