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Tuesday night’s #StopRacism call was AWESOME. Before I talk about why the call itself was awesome, I want to tell you about the way I participated in it that made it extra-awesome.
Usually, I am on these calls tucked into a windowless conference room, hunched over a computer. I sometimes work 15 hours a day that way. That is very very bad. So bad, in fact, that yesterday morning my back went out—with spasms so bad that it took me 2 hours to crawl to my phone.
By yesterday, the spasms had subsided enough that I could walk again. In fact, I realized that my back hurt every time I sat, but not when I walked. So I walked. I walked the entire hour long call. 3 miles. I felt great. Sure, I had to juggle with the mute button so the rest of the callers didn’t hear the traffic noise, but other than that, I was fully present.
And what better way to spend a gorgeous California evening than getting an hours worth of exercise and helping to #StopRacism at the same time? Nothing. Nothing could have been better than that hour I spent with brilliant people working together to solve one of the most difficult problems on the planet.
And what did we talk about? Oh, so many things! Language, and the way it is sometimes used to manipulate conversations—especially about the difficult conversations like race.
We came up with an idea for a group project where we would have people make a pledge to commit to just one activist action per month, from a dozen or so menu options. We talked about the movie Thirteenth, which we are all going to watch for homework and talk about 3 things we didn’t know. (You can probably learn 3 things from the trailer, below).
We quickly reviewed the four types of people in a movement: The helpers, advocates, organizers and rebels. We used examples from recent news to give clarity to those roles so we could see how a movement could come together. And we told stories, stories of our own very different but somehow exquisitely similar. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m pretty sure people left that call with a feeling of YES, WE CAN. YES, WE CAN DO THIS.
We got a lot accomplished in an hour. And I got a 3-mile walk in.
These calls are ROLLING. That means you can join in any time. If you missed the previous week—that’s OK. We’ll bring you into the conversation anyway. We review concepts so people can really internalize them and create action items around them. If you miss a week—no worries. Join any time.
If you haven’t yet RSVP’d for our groups’ weekly calls, please do so here. Hope to catch you next week, on the flip side!
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Related: The official trailer for “13th” on Netflix. Watch and listen:
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Photo credit: Getty Images