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Ending Racism in CTA and the Church: Where Do We Start?

The Anti-Racism Team (ART) of CTA (above) leads this training seminar. Systemic, institutional racism, as CTA leaders define it, goes beyond personal prejudice and bigotry to include the misuse of power by systems and institutions. Dealing with racism is painful. It is an untreated cancer living deep in our social, cultural and institutional structures. In the first hour Peggy McIntosh and Victor Lewis — who will co-present on the weekend — tell how they discovered their own race and gender privilege—usually not consciously recognized. Privilege is not a matter of credit or blame. It concerns unearned advantage and unearned disadvantage. After hour one, through special materials, film, and structured discussions, ART members open us to whole new understandings of racism and commitments about ending it — as the original Call To Action conference in 1976 resolved to do. ART presenters are Myra Brown, Tom Honoré, Amy Sheber Howard and Rose Stietz, OP. Brown is 15-year veteran parish minister at Spiritus Christi, Rochester, N.Y. (See separate parish workshop, page 4.) Honoré is retired HUD director of civil rights in Southern California. Sheber Howard is a coordinator of Justice Education at Regis University, Denver. Stietz’s social justice and antiracism ministry is in inner city Milwaukee. Friday, 9 AM-2:45 PM (1.01)

The Struggle for Peace in Latin America, Iraq and the Church Culture of Resistance: Afro-Colombian Survival Through Art

Roy Bourgeois, MM, knows that our greatest enemy in the U.S. is ignorance. We know so little about other countries, their histories, cultures and religious beliefs — and very little about U.S. foreign policy and what it means to the people of Latin America and Iraq. As people of faith we often feel powerless to be peacemakers. This workshop is for empowerment and hope in the struggle for change, for justice, for peace. A Maryknoll Missioner in Bolivia before he founded School of the Americas Watch in 1990, Fr. Roy still leads the SOA Watch movement of nonviolent resistance to U.S. militarism, determined to close SOA in Georgia where Latin American military are trained to trample on the human rights of their people. Roy has spent over four years in federal prisons for his efforts. His fact-finding trips have taken him to Iraq, Colombia, Venezuela and Central America since 2001. Added attraction: the Montaño Arboleda family bring Afro-Colombian music and dance that stirs the soul of the culture of resistance. For more about their performance, repeated Sat. evening, click here. Friday, 9 AM-2:45 PM (1.02)

JustChurch (JC) in Action: A CTA Nonviolent Action Training

Olivia Howard and Heidi Carlson are panelists with Edwina Gateley and Brenda Myers-Powell. in sharing their own real-life accounts. We hear in their own words their experiences of violence, rape, prostitution, drugs, discrimination and poverty. We enter their worlds and discover the amazing resilience of the human spirit and the power of God calling all of us to new life and hope. Writer and popular preacher, Gateley founded Genesis House in Chicago as a haven for prostitutes. Myers-Powell, caught in the sex trade from ages 14 to 39 but helped to freedom by Genesis House, is today the community health educator for Footprints, another Chicago agency that helps persons exit prostitution. Carlson and Howard have walked similar painful paths to new life. Friday, 9 AM-2:45 PM (1.05)

Native American Vision and Contemporary Wisdom: A Spiritual Exploration

Paul Ojibway is facilitator, but all of us are on this interactive quest. What can be learned for our times from the Native American vision of life as experienced in North America. By tradition, Native American wisdom-keepers find and sustain a life in harmony with creation. We probe the traditional understandings of personal, interpersonal and communal relationships to each other and creation. We draw mostly upon native women writers to focus small group discussion. Times of prayer and ceremony enhance the wisdom-talk. Our hope is to emerge with critical questions that will change our perception and ways of life. Ojibway is a Franciscan Friar of the Atonement and a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. He chairs the leadership of the National Tekakwitha Conference. For more about him and his shorter Saturday workshop, click here. Friday, 9 AM-2:45 PM (1.06)

Education, Justice and Racial Identities in the U. S. Catholic Tradition

Joseph A. Brown, SJ, discusses the history of Catholic education in the U.S. in the context of bringing schooling to “the Colored and the Indians.” How was justice underserved, or neglected? How do charity and “good works” substitute even today for real educational justice? Brown is director of the Black American Studies Program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Lecturing widely on African American spirituality, history and culture, he has written A Retreat with Thea Bowman and Bede Abram, and To Stand on the Rock: Meditations on Black Catholic Identity, among many other works. Friday, 9 AM-2:45 PM (1.03)