Focusing Your Group and PTA Fundraising Inequities

Hi Friends,
Lots of things happening, so no reading material from me this week. Maybe share with the group what has been helpful or insightful to you lately?
First, the March for Racial Justice is this Saturday. I would love for you to join me. The website is https://www.m4rj.com if you have questions about details or logistics. Please come!
Second, thank you to everyone who responded to the survey! We have 10 responses so far and here’s what you have said:
Education/Schools — 10
Policing — 5
Development/Housing — 7
Voting/Elections — 3
Environment — 1
Parenting/Raising Kids — 9
We can definitely focus our future meetings on the most popular items, especially since the top three overlap so nicely.
Third, I’d love to hear from those of you with primary or secondary school children about your experiences so far in your schools’ PTA(s). I attended the local county-wide PTA meeting last night and learned quite a bit. One of the things we can all push in our respective schools is for the PTAs that do very well with fundraising to consider contributing to a collaboration initiative, which collects money from the PTAs that donate and then distributes grants to those schools that don’t have the same fundraising power for specific projects/needs. It just started last year and the more interest and support it gets, the more successful it will be in starting to address the inequities in our school system.
A group member has been working on ways to talk to friends and family who are pretty overtly racist, especially ways to discuss the issues without shutting it down. Has anyone else had success with these kinds of conversations? If you have, would you be willing to share your thoughts/experience with the group?
Thanks for reading!

More Resources and Educational Equity Intro

I have heard from many of you about your interest in focusing on educational equity issues in our community. This update is all about resources to consider as you educate yourself about systemic racism and educational equity issues:
“White people: what is your plan for the Trump presidency?” by Brittany Packnett in Vox. This one is particularly impressive given that it was written right after the election and is prescient about some of the things that have happened since. The headline sounds like it’s focused on partisan issues, but the majority of the content is about confronting racism.
“Going It Alone” by Rahawa Haile in Outside Online. This is a wonderful personal account as well as a touch on environmental racism issues.
“Are We Raising Racists?” by Jennifer Harvey in The New York Times. Related to parenting, this also has good advice for having conversations about race in general.
“It’s Time for White Parents of White Kids to Bring the Resistance Home” by Gayle Kirshenbaum in Huffington Post. I know it says resistance, but the subtitle is “Conversations about race have to start much earlier than most white people think they do.”
Integrated Schools on Facebook. This is a FB group called “Families Choosing Integration: Parent-to-Parent Grassroots Movement to Choose Diverse Schools.” This may have been on our resource list, but is worth sharing again.
“How Marginalized Families are Pushed Out of PTAs” by Casey Quinlan in The Atlantic. Please read this one especially if you are involved in your child’s PTA.
“School Segregation Didn’t Go Away. It Just Evolved.” by Alvin Chang in Vox. This one is REALLY long, but has wonderful graphics and a huge amount of very useful information. Keep visiting it to get through it.
Where do you see systemic racism?