Matthew Birkhold
Matt Birkhold is director of Visionary Organizing Lab, a think and practice tank that connects people to their creative capacity to shape the world and facilitate the systemic transition of the world-system into something new. He lives in Washington DC and is author of the forthcoming book, ”A Change Gon' Come: Lessons from Detroit's Black Power movement for Organizing in a Period of Systemic Transition.”
Presentations from Facing Race 2018
Beyond Allies: Antiracism, Visionary Organizing, and Co-Liberation
By collectively mapping the emergence of systemic racism, this session will explore the different ways that racism stunts the humanity of all people and challenge participants to engage with the limitations of ally and privilege based antiracist organizing. We will explore what it means to see ourselves engaged in a struggle for co-liberation and explore how visionary organizing can provide strategies to guide that struggle. To deepen this exploration, participants will be introduced to two strategic/theoretical frames for movement building: what it means for the anti-racist struggle to move beyond ally-ship toward co-liberation; and the concept of visionary organizing, which addresses the current ecological, economic, and political crises through a praxis grounded in people and communities developing the skills and processes needed to envision and to create a new more humane system.
Speakers: Matthew Birkhold, Tawana Petty