Co-led by Michelle C. Johnson and Stephanie Ghoston Paul

Mondays, January 27th-March 27th| 12:00-2:00pm ET

Online Via ZOOM

Meeting in racial affinity groups is a common practice in anti-racist, social justice, diversity, and similar forms of educational endeavors. These groups provide a structured space where participants can explore how racism personally and systemically impacts them, process specific experiences of racism, receive validation and support from their peers, heal, and strategize next steps for challenging racism, white supremacy, and internalized racial oppression.

Michelle, author of A Space For Us: A Guide For Leading Affinity Groups for Black Indigenous and People of Color, and Stephanie, a contributor to A Space For Us, combined bring together over thirty-five years of experience co-leading racial equity work in community and within organizations and corporations. They are excited to offer a series focused on how to lead affinity groups for BIPOC, Bodies of Culture, and People of the Global Majority. 

They are excited to offer a series focused on how to lead affinity groups for BIPOC, Bodies of Culture, and People of the Global Majority.

This series is for any BIPOC or PGM person who has an interest in participating in and facilitating affinity groups.
This series is for those of you working and organizing in communities and institutions to dismantle racism and oppression.
This series is for those of you working within the realm of social justice.

This series is for any BIPOC or PGM person who wants to dive deep, build community, and learn invaluable facilitation skills. 

In this series, we will:

• Build relationships with each other as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

• Share a framework to deepen your understanding of the racial hierarchy and how it has impacted Black, Indigenous, and People of Color differently.

• Define and share common manifestations of internalized racial oppression and how it impacts BIPOC affinity group dynamics.

• Define anti-Blackness and develop skills to interrupt and address it.

• Share rituals, practices, and sample agendas for affinity groups.

• Practice and build new facilitation skills to support you in leading BIPOC affinity groups.

Session 1: Coming Into Community

Session 1 will allow us to come into community center relationship, create shared agreements, and create our container for the series. Session 1 will serve as a model for how you can create a container for affinity spaces. 

Session 2: Frameworks

This session will focus on context, analysis, and frameworks you can offer in your affinity groups. We will create a shared language, deepen our understanding of how social and institutional power operate, discuss the racial hierarchy, and how anti-Blackness affects our culture at large and can show up in our affinity spaces. 

Session 3: Internalizations

This session will focus on defining internalized racial oppression. We will offer a framework focused on how internalizations affect us physically, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. This session will teach you how to guide a group through self-inquiry about how internalizations affect individuals and communities. We will share rituals for healing to bring the self-system back into balance due to the imbalance that occurs from internalized racial oppression.

Session 4: My WHY

Session 4 will focus on your intention as an affinity group facilitator. You will be invited to write a job description for yourself of your role as an affinity group facilitator. You will learn skills to reground in your WHY as you facilitate and hold space for transformational change.

Session 5: How We Begin, Facilitation Skills

Session 5 will focus on the skills we need to be effective and, more importantly, transformative facilitators. We will provide space for you to reflect on the skills you embody as a facilitator as well as your growing edges in facilitation. We will discuss skills such as compassion, self-awareness, self-care, how to rely on structure and create enough spaciousness for group participants, the use of silence, listening skills, the ability to navigate intersectionality and conflict, and more! 

Session 6: Challenges + Scenarios

Session 6 is all about the various challenges that may arise as you facilitate affinity spaces. We will share information about what happens when white supremacy norms are being upheld in affinity space when anti-Blackness emerges in the space, the tension of time and the great tenderness that is present in affinity space, and when we as facilitators feel triggered by something that has happened in the group. We will spend time discussing challenging scenarios and how you might respond to them.  

Session 7: Accountability + Collective liberation

Session 7 will focus on accountability and its connection to collective liberation. We will explore harm, repair, healing, and how we collectively practice a different way of responding to harm, including developing conditions to better hold it. As a group, we will collect strategies, rituals, and tools for interruption and healing. We will also discuss how our affinity work is connected to larger social movements and the roles of accomplices/co-conspirators etc. 

Session 8: Emergence

For our final session together, we will focus on whatever else needs to be discussed and addressed. In addition, we are inviting contributors to A Space For Us into our space to share what they know for sure about facilitating BIPOC/PGM affinity spaces. It will be fantastic to hear from other facilitators with different lived experiences who embody a myriad of identities.