“Subverting the January 6th Movement: organizing white people for justice” webinar

On January 6th, 2021, the MAGA movement enacted a violent white nationalist insurrection at the US Capitol. Four years later, we are reaping what was sown that day– and for decades before it. In the midst of the chaos to come, one thing is clear: we must take seriously the need to organize white people away from the white nationalist agenda of the MAGA movement, and into movements working for justice. This is not everyone’s work, but one of the best contributions white people who care about justice can make under a Trump administration.

Over 60 years ago, the Black liberation movement issued a call to white people: go back to your own communities and organize them for justice. Founded 15 years ago, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) is an answer to that call. SURJ is the largest organization in the US that explicitly organizes white people for justice. Alongside our POC-led partner organizations, we have contributed to winning campaigns across the country, and take seriously the need for white people to organize our own.

Join SURJ in conversation with SURJ ED Erin Heaney and co-founder Carla Wallace, Maria Stephan from the Horizons Project, and leadership from the Movement for Black Lives to explore how we organize white people into multiracial coalitions, how the far right uses whiteness as a weapon of authoritarianism, and lessons from organizing white working class people.

In the training portion of this call, SURJ organizers will lead us in how to plan a public action in your community building up to SURJ’s national day of action where we’ll organize institutions in communities across the country to vow to not comply with some of Trump’s worst executive orders.

Here’s the recording from the call.