The US Protest Law Tracker, part of ICNL’s US Program, follows initiatives at the state and federal level since November 2016 that restrict the right to protest. Click this link to see the full Tracker.
What Is Accountability? Conceptions and Challenges of Accountability in White Anti-Racism Organizing
The term ‘accountability’ in anti-racism work holds an array of understandings, as well as criticisms, and is heavily contextual in nature. Deemed a necessity by nearly all within anti-racism work due to the socialized racial superiority of whiteness and white culture, in general accountability aims to minimize oppressive manifestations of this internalized superiority experienced by white people and expand white racial identity awareness with the intent to work non-oppressively and collectively towards racial equity and justice. This qualitative research aims to more concretely conceptualize ‘accountability’ within white anti-racism work to provide clarity around such a laden, nuanced and often overused term. The research intended to focus on personal accountability, which I identified as individual practices of accountability in relation to oneself, and interpersonal accountability, which I identified as the understanding and practice of accountability in relation to others. However, as evidenced in the findings, the approach and framing of the research in such a way came with its own issues and critiques.
This study contributes the voices and opinions of ten white anti-racism organizers and educators who were interviewed on their understandings of accountability, as well as the criticisms and challenges that surface in their work in its conceptualization and application. Although both literature and participants emphasized the importance of self-examination, mutual accountable interracial relationship building, and collective focus towards a shared analysis and macro-level goal of systems change to enact real change, participants highlighted further complications and challenges in the nature ‘accountability’ has been used in the work, including tokenizing people of color, reducing diverse social identities into one monolithic concept, the concept and directional flow of power, as well as an awareness of one’s underlying motives in this work. The research identified significant challenges in the application of accountability, further highlighting the complexity that white people navigate in anti-racism work.
Cultural Competence Law and Legal Definition | USLegal, Inc.
Cultural competence means the ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures. It is a set of attitudes, behaviors, and policies that combines knowledge about groups of people into
About this Collection | Protests Against Racism Web Archive | Digital Collections | Library of Congress
The police murder of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020 was the one major act which sparked American and global civil unrest during 2020 relating to institutional and systemic racism, police brutality, and unsettled issues from the era of colonization and the African slave trade. The Protests Against Racism Web Archive contains a selection of websites documenting protests and activism sparked by the murder of George Floyd, where Mr. Floyd was the “tipping point,” the “last straw;” the web archive also includes websites documenting earlier killings of victims of racism and police brutality. Coverage encompasses protests against racism and police brutality against Blacks, police reform (both the liberal and conservative reactions to police brutality); critical grassroots movements (i.e. local Black activism, multiracial activism). This project covers “Black Lives Matter” protests and protests named in the idea of "Black Lives Matter" but not organized by the Black Lives Matter organization; the impact of these protests in various aspects of society: police reform; racism in sports, business/corporations, legislation and legislative-related activism, educational institutions, religion; reaction of Conservative America (i.e. local, regional, and state groups); other areas of society impacted by these nation-wide and global expressions, etc. This is a highly selective collection that primarily focuses on U.S. sites, and includes a small global component. Social media platforms were out of scope for this collection.
“One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist.'” ― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
The following 11 titles, a mix of history, social science, and memoir, offer facts and reflections on systemic racial injustice as well as ways to channel feeling into action.
Here are the finalists for the 2022 National Book Awards
Three of the five finalists for fiction have been nominated for their debut novels, while all five finalists for young people's literature are being honored for the first time.
Welcome Back! The law library is developing a collection of materials we are calling the Antiracist Collection. The items in this collection include cross-disciplinary resources in addition to boo…
Voice of Witness (VOW) is an oral history nonprofit that advances human rights by amplifying the voices of people impacted by—and fighting against—injustice.
VOW’s work is driven by the transformative power of the story, and by a strong belief that social justice cannot be achieved without deep listening and learning from those marginalized by systems of oppression. Through our programming, we work with communities to ensure that:
voices of marginalized and silenced communities are centered in narrative contexts (education, media, movements, and policymaking);
students and communities have the tools and training to tell their own stories through oral history;
storytelling practitioners and institutions use ethics-driven methodologies to gather narratives.
The VOW Book Series depicts human rights issues through the edited oral histories of people, VOW narrators, who are most deeply impacted and at the heart of solutions to address injustice. The series explores issues of race-, gender-, and class-based inequity through the lenses of personal narrative.
The VOW Education Program brings unheard stories and our ethical oral history methodology to classrooms and organizations across the US, connecting students, educators, and advocates with training and tools for storytelling in order to advance social change.
Through our partnerships and consulting, VOW offers expert storytelling and program support to nonprofits, activists, schools, foundations, and more. These customized projects and workshops use VOW’s award-winning approach to promote empathy, build relationships, and amplify community voices.
Books We Love: Recommendations for nonfiction : Pop Culture Happy Hour
NPR's annual Books We Love project rounded up hundreds of books that scratch whatever your reading itch might be. Today, we're going to talk about some of the nonfiction we loved.
Books We Love: Great books about identity and culture : Pop Culture Happy Hour
The latest edition of NPR's Books We Love project rounded up hundreds of book recommendations from critics, writers and NPR journalists to try to give you just the read you're looking for. Today, we're giving recommendations for our favorite books about identity and culture.
Reading List: Power Dynamics at Play in Social Change (SSIR)
Ahead of the 2022 Frontiers of Social Innovation conference, “Power at Play in Social Change,” a collection of articles exploring shifts in philanthropy, place-based social change, public interest technology, and more.
Virtually all the experiences in your daily life are affected by laws enacted by state legislatures--from roads and local services to criminal justice, women's autonomy, individual privacy, funding...
A Call to Ditch the Term ‘Racialized’ When Describing BIPOC Communities
By Lynie Awywen Recently I have been job-hunting (yes – it is still as awful as you remember) and I have noticed a recurring pattern which prompted me to think about the ways in which ‘whiten…
Free COVID-19 tests ending for uninsured Americans
Patients without any insurance will now start to see some of those free Covid testing options disappear as further Covid relief funding remains stalled in Congress.
Opinion: If you say you're a trans ally, this is what you have to do | CNN
Given how many legislative attacks there are on transgender people's lives and existence, allies need to take the time to speak up on Transgender Day of Visibility, which is March 31 each year, to defend the lives and experiences of trans and nonbinary people.
Fighting to breathe : race, toxicity, and the rise of youth activism in Baltimore - Nicole Fabricant
"Industrial toxic emissions on the South Baltimore Peninsula are among the highest in the nation. Because of the concentration of factories and other chemical industries in their neighborhoods, residents face elevated rates of lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses in addition to heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular disease, all of which can lead to premature death. 'Fighting to Breathe' follows a dynamic and creative group of high school students who decided to fight back against the race- and class-based health disparities and inequality in their city. For more than a decade, student organizers stood up to the proposed construction of an incinerator and to unequal land use practices, and initiated new waste management strategies. As a Baltimore resident and activist-scholar, Nicole Fabricant documents how young organizers came to envision, design, and create a more just and sustainable Baltimore"--
#HashtagActivism : networks of race and gender justice - Brooke Foucault Welles; Genie Lauren (Foreword by); Sarah J. Jackson; Moya Baile
"The beginning of the 21st century brought forth a number of social media platforms that have allowed activists to increase their audience exponentially and with relative ease. Under hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo to the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements, digital social activision mobilized people and movements like almost never before. In #HashtagActivism: Networked Counterpublics in the Digital Age the authors examine how and why Twitter hashtags have become an important platform for historically disenfranchised populations to advance counter narratives and advocate for social change. We contend that members of these marginalized groups, in the tradition of counterpublics, are using Twitter hashtags to build diverse networks of dissent and shape the cultural and political knowledge fundamental to contemporary identity-based social movements. Given shifting understandings and ongoing conversations about the role of social media in 21st century democracy, and considering recent high-profile public debates about racial violence, feminist inclusivity, and sexual identity, #Hashtag Activism will provide readers with a model of how to study political identity and meaning-making processes within digital spaces while highlighting compelling cases of counterpublic activism and dissent"--