If you are not already reading ChangeLab, I am about to turn you on to an inspirational and thought provoking new site by the folks behind RaceFiles. After more than 5 collective decades of struggle against racism in America and abroad, Soya Jung, Scot Nakagawa, and their team share strategies and vision for racial justice organizers in the form of blogs, in depth reporting, and dialogue.
ChangeLab is a grassroots political lab that explores structural solutions to achieve racial justice. They conduct research, convene people across sectors, develop movement-building tools, and provide platforms for dialogue, analysis, and strategy building. They are motivated by their vision and driven to grapple with the tough questions around race and justice. The website explains it like this. “While there is incredibly courageous organizing happening today, the racial justice movement overall needs to get bolder. We need space and time away from business as usual to debate, to get creative, to experiment, to draw on all of our knowledge, and develop a fresh and truly radical vision of change.”
Their first report is entitled Left or Right of the Color Line: Asian Americans and the Racial Justice Movement and is the result of 82 Asian American organizers, leaders, intellectuals, and artists working in the racial justice field throughout the United States. The ChangeLab team also talked to five non-Asian American racial justice leaders doing promising work that cuts across all communities of color. Their report is a comprehensive look at the racial position of Asian Americans and racial justice organizers can learn much from it.
Look up ChangeLab the first chance you get. Read and think on their work, but most importantly, join the conversation at changelabinfo.com.