Dialogues

About Us & Our Work

In 2017, SURJ SF started Dialogues, facilitating interactive events exploring race, white supremacy, identity, privilege, and community. Dialogues exists for the purpose of strengthening our anti-racist practice and action for racial justice. 

One of the things that makes this space a community is that we are not experts, but companions in a movement that is bigger than ourselves. We all bring our own backgrounds and experiences to this conversation. We want to create a space where that experience — the successes, the failures, the lessons learned, the anxieties —  can all be shared to make each of us more impactful in our own work.

What does an event look like? How do Dialogues work?

We do not see Dialogues itself as “the work” but rather a support and growing space as we take action for racial justice and work toward personal and collective liberation. In order to challenge racism and dismantle white supremacy, we need to unlearn racism and discover the ways we internalize and enact our privilege. This can be a long, difficult, and sometimes painful process. 

It’s helpful to have a community with others engaged in this process that can support and challenge us as we grow together and stay in the work for the long haul. A typical event agenda looks like this:

Upcoming Dates

Check out our Facebook page for our upcoming Dialogues events.

Our next Dialogues is June 4th. Click here to register.




Activities


Agreements

We use agreements to establish a foundation for our events and set communal expectations. We frequently use the following resources to do this:

Brave Space Agreements from AWARELA 

Characteristics of white supremacy, From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun

Past Topics

Some recent Dialogues topics have included (click arrow to expand):

Interested in organizing with Dialogues? Please fill out this form, or email SURJSF@gmail.com.