Coming Together, in alliance with other local individuals, from time to time sponsors a Black Lives Matter banner across South Pleasant Street in downtown Amherst.   When we say “black lives matter”, some people hear us saying that black lives matter more than other lives.  That’s not what we, or others, are saying.  We are saying, as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote, “We would like to create a country in which black lives matter as much as white lives in terms of physical safety, education, job opportunities, criminal prosecution and political power.”  We think it is important that those of us who live in the Amherst area be in discussion with each other about these ideas and their implementation both locally and nationally.  What are your thoughts?

Contact Us

Come to the Intro session January 16th to see if this group is for you.

Introductory session and monthly group for :

Sustaining Our Hope and Energy-
Taking on Climate Change and/or Racism

            These are challenging times – with racism and climate change doing immeasurable harm. Trying to look directly at how dire and severe the situation can bring up lots of emotions – heartbreak, rage, fear – for virtually all of us. Many of us avoid these feelings by not really looking. For some of us, having these feelings (or avoiding them) leads us not to be consistently engaged in taking action. For some of us, these feelings drive us to constant activity that takes a toll on us, or even risks burning us out.

A monthly group to:

• face how bad climate change and racism really are
• feel our feelings about them, and
• support each other

Led by Russ Vernon-Jones

• Introductory session: January 16, 2019, 7-9PM, location to be announced
• Monthly group: one Wednesday night per month, 7-9PM, in Amherst, Feb-June
• This experienced leader is offering this group free to support activists and those who want to take more action.

Come check out the Intro on January 16th so you can decide if you are interested in signing up for the Feb-June monthly series.  Please indicate your interest on the Google form here
 or e-mail Russ at russvj@gmail.com with questions or to sign up for the Intro so we can let you know where it will be.

*   *   *

            Russ Vernon-Jones is a climate and anti-racism activist who has 40 years of experience leading study groups and groups in which participants process feelings and move toward greater joy and more effective action. He takes a takes a no-blame approach, while holding out the possibility of “upping our game” and getting more connected to each other at the same time.

            This group is based on Russ’s experience that facing these realities and feeling these feelings (and sometimes releasing them with tears, raging, etc.) in a supportive group is healing and nourishing. This work can renew our energy and our hope, and build our connections with others. We will combine study of the depth of the problems with processing our emotional reactions.

            Anyone can come to the Intro session with no obligation to continue beyond that one night.  Those who are interested in continuing will be asked to commit to attending monthly from February through June. It is understood that occasionally illness or a conflict will require missing a meeting, but we want to try to create a stable group where we build trust with each other. There will be a possibility of continuing beyond June if participants are interested.

            The location (in Amherst) will be chosen based on how many people plan to attend and everyone who has expressed interest will be notified of the location in advance

In early 2014, a multi-racial steering committee formed, including 10 local people of color and 3 white people, to develop and guide the project.

In October of 2014 we began our monthly anti-racism film and video series which has offered a monthly presentation and discussion ever since (except during July and August) for a total of 38 events spanning almost 4 years.

We have sponsored or co-sponsored speeches by Dr. Barbara Love, Debbie Irving, Jacqueline Patterson, and Lois Ahrens; panel discussions on “Being Invisible – Being Hyper-visible: Living in Amherst as a Person of Color”, on Black Lives Matter, and an open discussion with a panel of local indigenous people; two “Community Conversations” , and a workshop for white people.

We’ve placed banners across S. Pleasant St on six different occasions including “Black Lives Matter”, “What Can We Do to Dismantle Racism?” and “Coming Together: Understanding Racism, Working for Justice, Building Connections – a community-wide, multiracial project for the Amherst, MA area”.   We offered Black Lives Matter yard-signs and 150 signs were displayed locally.

Our website at www.coming-together.org has had over 40,000 page views and continues to be an ongoing resource for people of all ages to learn more about racism, about identities other than their own, and about the project.

We played a key role in initiating the Amherst Sanctuary movement that led to hundreds of people getting involved in the Town of Amherst passing one of the strongest sanctuary community by-laws in the country, and built awareness that has helped support local undocumented immigrants currently in sanctuary.

We’ve sponsored three six-week study groups on racism/anti-racism, one yearlong book group, and monthly groups for “White People Undoing Our Own Racism: Challenging White Supremacy in Ourselves and Our Society”. One group has been meeting for a year and a half.

Our action groups have resulted in advocacy for bills in the state legislature on criminal justice; work in support of the School Equity Task Force; local anti-racism listening projects at local farmer’s markets, and explorations of connections between racial justice and climate justice.

Click here for “Racism and Climate Change are Connected”

The August hate-based rally in Charlottesville was horrible in so many ways. The obvious hatred, the overt violence and threats of further violence, and the sense that vile elements of Nazism and the KKK are virulent and public in our midst today are terrifying and disturbing. The intensity of the hate, fear, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism on display in Charlottesville is imprinted on the minds of many of us who saw video footage of the events. We must stand against every manifestation of neo-Nazism, white nationalism and white supremacy in the clearest and strongest and most united terms. We must stand with all who are targeted by these groups – people of color, Jews, LGBQT, immigrants, etc.

The fact that we cannot count on the highest leaders of our country to provide moral leadership now means that even more of the responsibility falls to the rest of us.  It is significant that many have spoken out forcefully against the neo-Nazi’s, white nationalists, and other hate groups; and so many have participated in demonstrations and counter demonstrations opposing race-based hatred and anti-Semitism.

While we need to respond to the specific incidents, we also need to recommit ourselves to the longer term work of eliminating racism, white dominance, and anti-Semitism from our society. It is encouraging that many white people are not only acknowledging that racism is a major force in our nation, but are also facing the fact that the problem is not just with those who appear openly racist.

All of us who are white bear some responsibility for the fact that we have not yet taken sufficient action, have not yet been outspoken enough, and have not yet sufficiently bridged the barriers that racism has placed between people, to eliminate the power racism has in our society. Mass incarceration, the increasing wealth gap between white families and black and brown families, continuing job and housing discrimination, the erosion of voting rights, and our continued failure as a society to provide young black and brown children with the lives and schools they deserve, are all examples of our collective complicity in allowing injustice based on race to continue to shape our society.

At the same time, blatant, explicit anti-Semitic acts, including harassment and targeting of Jews and defacing of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, have increased in the United States, spreading fear and dread. In the first quarter of the year anti-Semitic incidents were up nationally by 83 percent over 2016.   In Massachusetts there were 38 such incidents in the first quarter of 2017, compared to 50 incidents in all of 2015. Nationally hate-crimes against Muslims are up 91 per cent in the first half of 2017 compared to the same time period in 2016.

A large percentage of white people in this country are not in favor of explicit racism or the mistreatment of anyone based on their religious heritage. Nonetheless, racism continues, as do other forms of mistreatment.   This is, at least in part, because all of us have been subjected to a dominant narrative that says that white people have different interests than people of color; Christians have different interests than Jews and Muslims; that it’s okay for white people to have the bulk of the power and wealth in our country; that people of different races and different religious heritages don’t really want to be in each others’ lives; that perhaps white people really are in general superior to black and brown people; that significant social change is out of our reach; that society will work well if we each narrowly pursue our self-interest without regard for the effect on others; and our lives will be happier and easier if we don’t rock the boat and if we generally go along with the way things are.

This is the narrative we’ve been hearing from our media, many of our politicians, much of the entertainment industry, etc. for many years. This is a version of the same story that was developed to get white working class people to support slavery, even when they didn’t benefit from it. It’s the same story that led a great many white people to tolerate lynching, and support segregation, mass incarceration, and ongoing oppression of African Americans.

It is a story that separates people from each other. This separation allows the richest individuals in the U.S. to claim an increasingly huge and disproportionate share of the wealth of the society for themselves, while keeping the rest of us too divided to challenge their dominance. It’s a story that leaves our integrity compromised and our isolation from each other in place. It is a story which is false.

It is time for all of us who believe in social justice to tell a different story. We get to tell a story about how all of us of all racial and religious heritages are part of a single social fabric. That we are in this together. That it is natural and right for us to love each other. That as Cornell West says, ”justice is what love looks like in public.” That we want a society in which no one is exploited, mistreated, or left out, and in which everyone is respected and valued. If we can tell this story at every possible opportunity, then we can begin to live out this narrative .

We who are white can do the significant work we need to do to join other people as respectful partners, give up our expectations of white people being dominant, and thereby regain a piece of our humanity that we have lost. Together we can rectify the systemic injustices of the past and present. All of us – of every race and religious heritage – can reach for each other and build a society that works for everyone.   This will not be easy or quick. But over time, one relationship at a time, one study/reflection group at a time, one organizing project at a time, we can bridge that which has divided us from each other; we can unite to back each other’s key goals. As a united, diverse people we will be powerful – powerful enough to build the world we want.

Russ Vernon-Jones
August 2017

Note:  These are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Steering Committee of the Coming Together project.