Dearest eyfa network,
*TL:DR synopsis: *
Since there is noopportunity for an eyfa network meeting this year, we
are keen to share the renewed priorities that 2020 brought to the eyfa
office.We want to be better at our solidarity work and particularly with
how we show up for racial and disablity justice struggles. It's our aim
to be aware of intersectionality and to apply this lens in our
understanding of issues,both internally andin our projects &collaborations.
Read on to find out:
Howto organise together with us next year
How our decolonizing process is going & tips*? for thoseinterested
in reflecting on the dominance of white supremacy culture in your
activist groups
How to participatein any of the trainings eyfa is offering next year
Wewould also like toknow how you are doing.Things are hard, but we
believe in the ongoing will to collaborate!
...Read More...
* 2020, a year of internal reflections on collective and societal
racial dynamics*
In case you've been wondering what we at the eyfa office have been
up to these past months (as so much of our programme has been either
canceled or postponed), we wanted to share with you a bit about the
internal, structural processes that we've been busy with. There are 2
highlights that might interest you:
1) we've been working on putting our values better into
practice, particularly in terms of what 'intersectionality' needs to
look like in our movements (this means an increased focus on racial
justice and disability justice!)
2) we've been working on decolonizing our modes of working,
dismantling white supremacy culture in our office, and reimagining what
it means to be a truly anti-racist organisation
In order to make these interventions, we've utilised various
anti-racist tool(kit)s (that we are happy to share with those who are
interested!), challenged ourselves to have more conversations about
race, relied on some valuable support from our board members who are
indeed comrades and friends, traversed some difficult interpersonal
landscapes together, putting in varied amounts of emotional labor, and
stuck to our commitment to each other and to collective
liberation/justice. We decided to structure our internal processes by
breaking it down in to several different aspects of how we organise and
work together (e.g. how we interact with the network, staff recuitment,
office agreements, etc.). We've approached these different aspects now
weekly for quite a few months and we're in a pretty constant state of
evaluating the process.
***What's been most challenging for us in all of this*
The whole process (of keeping up with all of our conversations
taking notes, checking again for consensus, revising, questioning our
own terminology, then proposing a new thing/idea - all while working
mostly virtually!) in itself is lengthy and requires patience especially
in theseuncertain circumstances. It can be demotivating to stay stuck in
avisionary phase with wanting to make some structural changes but
without much opportunityto actually take any action.
Also, it's been difficult to maintain consistency during moments of
emotional/mental drainage. At different times, on different days, we've
all felt more or less anxious or demoralised by the state of the world
and so we struggle to put in the energy to tackle theheavy topics(like
the harm that we may have caused each other unknowingly) when we finally
manage to meet together.
Maybe that's why it has taken us so long to reach out to you.
* What does this mean for our future work and how we're organising?*
In general, we are pushing for applying intersectionality as a lens
for all our projects, as well as our collaborations with other groups,
initiatives, and ourselves. In our upcoming projects, we want to give a
more central role to the topics of migrant solidarity, anti-racism,
critical whiteness, decolonization, etc. This means we wish formore of
our white comrades to be engagedin reflecting on their whiteness, white
supremacy culture, and their role in anti-racist movements, while at the
same time we want to reach out and collaborate with more groups and
individuals working within BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of
Color) and migrant communities.
We are in the process of recruitingnew office staffso that we can
have more BIPOC representation in the office and on the board. A
critical elementin this processis how important we see the normalizing
of difficult conversations surrounding racial dynamics, particularly in
spaces/groups professing non-hierarchical structures!
* Where is the eyfa network in all this?*
We aren't able to have a network meeting this year, so would instead
like to take this opportunity to envision collaboration with and among
you all.
*Participation Call Out:* In case you would be interested in
participating in 1 of 2 trainings that we hope to conduct in Berlin
early 2021:
1) *Empowerment workshop for BIPOC activists*
2) *Antiracism and Allies*
write us for more info and to see if there is still space available.
*Orga team call out + looking for tips:* Our overarching workplan
for next year is to explore the intersection between disability and
racial justice, within which we are hoping to conduct study visits,
create a publication, host an international youth exchange, and develop
an online course. We are looking for people to get involved in the
organisational process of these activities, from basic conceptualizing
and planning logistics, to more specific tasks like graphic and/or web
designers for the online course. We look forward to hearing from those
of you who would be interested in organising together! Also please share
this general info with your trusted comrades who might not be on this
list. Because of the topic of the workplan, we are expressly commited to
involving more disabled and BIPOC comrades in the orga teams. Further,
if you have any suggestions for groups or organisations that we should
contact to collaborate with on this workplan, share your tips with us!
*Put some anti-racist tool(kit)s to use in your own contexts:*we
would like to invite any of you who would be interested in conducting
some similar interventions in your own groups, to contact us so we can
share some of the materials that we have gathered. We acknowledge that
there is a hurdle sometimes in overcoming the different contexts from
which the materials are sourced, but we would be interested in future
collaborations involving translation and contextualization of these
materials. Maybe this is a future collaboration we can plan together!
*Share with us what's up:*it's been already quite awhile since the
last newsletter, the one connected to the crisifund, and we are curious
about how you are doing. How are you organising during these difficult
times?
*Proposals for collaboration:*wewould, now more than ever, like to
create space for collaboration amongst different groups/memebers in the
network - in the spirit of intersectionality. If that means that you'd
need any support from the office to share your materials or
announcements wider, or to simply find potential collaborators to bounce
ideas off of, let us know. You can also, if you haven't already, request
to be added to the Network mailing list, which is one that is more
interactive and intended for this exact purpose.
We acknowledge that the eyfa network has a somehow amorphous shape and
it's not always what we all want it or need it to be. We would like this
announcement to start a process where we can invite new groups to join
the network, so we can put our valuesinto practice together. We remain
curious about what shape the network has the potential to take, amidst
all its ambiguity and contradictions. We,in the office,are all finding
2020 pretty difficult, and we definitely didn't anticipate that we'd
have to go so long without seeing each other again. But that's all the
more reason to take these opportunities for reflection... so we're sure
when we do meet again, we'll have plenty to talk about!
in commitment, in collaboration, in solidarity,
the eyfa office
