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Saturday, 1 April 06 :: on being an ally tommorrow

i'm co-facilitating a forum tommorrow on sexism in the progressive community. we're doing it because i got sick and tired of talking about sexist men and our community -- on the phone, at people's houses.. i figured -- i'm an activist, its time to take action. my fellow justice not war coalition members are being terribly supportive, for which i'm grateful, and my sweet friend g -- who is a heart of now facilitator and a man who has his stuff together around sexism -- is facilitating it with me being his co-pilot. tonight i'm putting together resources for it. here's the important one..

Being an ally means standing in between the oppressor and the oppressed and saying, "Don't run it at them, run it at me." This means on a personal and systematic level.

An ally is someone who:

Addresses issue, not just incident;
Mobilizes and organizes to respond to issue without prompting from target group member;
Is willing to take risks that may affect one's place, position/and authority within their dominant group;
Is visible, active, vigilant, and public (even when the target person is not in the room);
Is willing to recognize the inherent privilege and power of being a member of the dominant group;
Views membership in the dominant group as an opportunity to bring about change;
Is proactive more often than reactive. Is always intentional, overt, vocal, consistent, and public about being an ally ; there is no such thing as a passive/silent ally

What members of targeted groups should be able to expect from allies:

Respect, support, recognition;
That they use their power to promote social justice;
That they will "do their own work" (reflect on personal prejudices, learn more about issues of target group, for example);
That they will make mistakes and learn from them;
That they will believe what people of targeted groups are saying about their experiences without searching for "perfectly logical explanations" and signs of "oversensitivity" on our part;
That they will allow the focus of the discussion to remain on the issue at hand without looking for ways to connect it / compare it / contrast it to other forms of oppression (even when connections may exist);
That they resist the temptation to "rank oppressions" and do not allow others (including target group members) to do so.

Sources: Pruzynski, Williams, Cohen and Rafferty / LEAD; SABES/World Education

posted by brooke at April 1, 2006 09:31 PM

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about
i'm brooke, born in '73. i am currently a phd student in instructional technology. this is the blog where i capture all the neurotic, and the few non-neurotic, moments that seem to come with being a phd student (if you want to read less neuroses and more professionalism go to: oer's, dl's, reuse and culture: it's about a phd student researching digital resources in a multicultural world). i have been from eugene, oregon for a long time.. 8 years specifically (its my home now, but i grew up in southwestern virginia), but now i'm here in logan, utah at utah state university. after finding my roots in eugene i never could have expected that i would leave that liberal oasis and head to utah. but i did and there are days when its a blessing and days when i'm tempted to go back to oregon and beg the folks at lost valley educational center to let me move in. but i won't leave because there are days when this process is better than any kind of high i could ever imagine. what else? i collect things, i have 2 cats, 2 kayaks, 2 laptops (i'm a geek - one mac, one pc). i can be emailed at brookesblog@rivervision.com.