We Can Get There From Here: Exploring Racial Liberation (Q4 2024)

Dr. Tanya Williams and Dr. Heather W. Hackman designed this three-part workshop series to move beyond the standard racial equity training, and address this unique, powerful and painful moment in history.

This series will provide a deeper analysis of race, racism, and social change, imagining a world of racial liberation. What would organizations and the communities they serve look like without racism? How can envisioning a future that explicitly centers people of color in organizations and communities drive progress toward equity and liberation within them today?

As a result of participation in this workshop series, attendees will:

• Explore how the system of racial oppression (race, racism and whiteness) operates, providing space to explore the question of who we might be, and what organizations and communities would look like, without its pervasive influence (Session One)
• Identify tools and cultivate skill-sets that support individual and collective decolonization and development of a liberatory consciousness (Session Two)
• Participate in affinity groups (BIPOC and white) to explore the complexities of this work and its intersections with anti-Black racism, class, gender and colorism (Session Two)
• Engage in collective liberatory work in which participants envision and co-design how organizations and communities can operate in ways that center people of color, mitigating structural racism and white supremacy culture (Session Three)

This workshop series will not provide a blueprint for liberation, but it will hold space in which to imagine the possibilities of a future not defined by structural racism and white supremacy, developing participants’ skill and competency to shift organizations and communities closer to that vision for equity and liberation in the present.

Participant expectations:

• Have an existing analysis of structural racism and the social construction of whiteness. This is not a workshop series for individuals just beginning a process to explore the significance of race, racism, whiteness in their lives and work.
• Have the capacity to persist and remain engaged through discussion of racialized trauma and its affects on individuals, organizations and communities
• Attend each of the three sessions in their entirety

Facilitator commitments:

• Tanya will bring her best story-telling and Heather her humor in order to keep participants engaged and create a Zoom experience that is interactive, and not mind-numbing
• Breaks, breakout sessions, and other opportunities for folks to engage their bodies will be used to keep participants physically present and mentally engaged

Equity in the Center is now using a tiered pricing model to better align with best practices among equity-focused organizations.

We ask that organizations purchasing tickets on behalf of their staff purchase tickets in the tier that aligns with your organizational budget and sector. And for individuals, we ask that people with greater privilege purchase tickets at the higher end, which will allow individuals with historically less access to wealth, disproportionately BIPOC folks, to pay the lower fees. EiC's new tiered budget categories are based on Rockwood Leadership Institute's pricing model.

DATES & TIMES

Participants must be available to fully participate in each session:

• October 24, 2024: 2:00 - 5:00 PM Eastern Time (1pm-4pm CT / 12pm-3pm MT / 11am-2pm PT)
• November 7, 2024: 2:00 - 5:00 PM Eastern Time (1pm-4pm CT / 12pm-3pm MT / 11am-2pm PT)
• December 5, 2024: 2:00 - 5:00 PM Eastern Time (1pm-4pm CT / 12pm-3pm MT / 11am-2pm PT)

are available.

FACILITATORS

Heather Hackman

Dr. Hackman has been teaching and training on social justice issues since 1992 and was a professor in the Department of Human Relations and Multicultural Education at St. Cloud State University in St Cloud, Minnesota for 12 years before she began focusing full time on consulting. She has taught courses in social justice and multicultural education (pre-service and in-service teachers), race and racism, heterosexism and homophobia, social justice education (higher education leadership), oppression and social change, sexism and gender oppression, class oppression, and Jewish oppression. She received her doctorate in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2000 and has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Westfield State College, Springfield College, St Cloud State University, Hamline University, and the University of St Thomas.

In 2005, she founded Hackman Consulting Group and consults nationally on issues of deep diversity, equity and social justice and has focused most of her recent training work on issues of racism and white privilege, gender oppression, heterosexism and homophobia, and classism. She has published in the area of social justice education theory and practice, racism in health care (with Stephen Nelson), and is currently working a book examining issue of race, racism and whiteness in education through a model she calls “cellular wisdom”.

Tanya Williams

Dr. Williams has over 25 years of diversity, inclusion, and social justice teaching, programming and facilitation experience in higher education including professional roles at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, and most recently, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York as the Deputy Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Community Engagement. She’s taught courses such as Social Diversity in Education, Exploring Differences and Common Ground through Intergroup Dialogue, and the Psychology of Racism and facilitated workshops and presentations at the National Conference of Race and Ethnicity (NCORE), the White Privilege Conference (WPC) as well as National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) and American College Personnel Administrators (ACPA) conferences. She had done consulting work with colleges and universities, non-profits, and K-12 schools including NYU Stern School of Business, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), American College of Greece, The Moth, Brooklyn Community Foundation, Spence School, Harvard University Law School and others.

She holds an MS in Educational Administration, a BA in Journalism and English from Texas A&M University, and a doctorate (Ed.D) in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her dissertation was entitled “A Process of Becoming: U.S. Born African American and Black Women in a Process of Liberation from Internalized Racism,“ focused on internalized oppression and liberation.

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