Lessons from Anti-Racist Parenting for Collective Liberation: a discussion with anti-racist/racial justice parents and their young adult social justice leader kids
Sunday, August 30th 4 – 5:30 PM EST
Workshop led by Chris Crass with Attica and Ashanti Scott and Lijah and Cate Fosl
Chris Crass will lead a workshop on anti-racist parenting for collective liberation that will feature a discussion with Mother and Daughter, Attica and Ashanti Scott and parenting for racial justice as a Black family, along with Cate and Lijah Fosl, Mother and adult kid, anti-racists in a white family.
The lessons and stories that we will be focusing will draw from the experience of the parents and their kids, on what worked, what was helpful, over years of childhood and now adulthood. Attica, Ashanti, Cate and Lijah will reflect on their experiences within their family anti-racist cultures and also on bringing courageous public leadership for racial justice and collective liberation. Click here to register.
Chris Crass is one of the leading voices in the country calling for and supporting white people to work for racial justice. He’s a social justice educator who writes and speaks widely on courage for racial justice, feminism for men, lessons from past movements, and creating healthy culture and leadership for progressive activism. He works with community groups, schools and faith communities to develop leadership and momentum for social justice action.
He was a founder of the anti-racist movement building center, the Catalyst Project, and helped launch the national white anti-racist network, SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice). Rooted in his Unitarian Universalist faith, he works with congregations, seminaries, and religious activists to build the Spiritual Left, and he is a leader in the national network, Organizing White Men for Collective Liberation. He is also the author of Towards Collective Liberation: anti-racist organizing, feminist praxis, and movement building strategy and Towards the “Other America”: Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter. You can learn more about his work at www.chriscrass.org.
Ashanti Scott (pronouns she/her/ella) is a second year Student at the University of Louisville. There she is a Woodford R. Porter Scholar and she studies Political Science, History, Spanish and Public Health. She is also a Pharmacy Technician at Walgreens.
Attica Scott is a longtime social justice leader and is a Kentucky State Representative serving Kentucky House District 41.
In 2010, Representative Scott graduated from the first class of Emerge Kentucky which prepares Democratic women to run for office and was recognized as a Connector by Leadership Louisville as a civic and non-profit community leader. She was awarded the 2011 national “Woman of Vision” Award by the Ms. Foundation for Women. Representative Scott was a 2013 member of the Bingham Fellows of Leadership Louisville and was a featured Daughter of Greatness at the Muhammad Ali Center. In 2014, she helped to pass pivotal legislation on Louisville Metro Council including a Ban the Box ordinance and the historic minimum wage ordinance, as well as a resolution to restore voting rights to Kentuckians who have served their debt to society. In 2015, she was named a West Louisville Connector by the Leadership Louisville Center.
In 2016, Representative Scott defeated a 34-year incumbent to become the first Black woman in nearly 20 years to serve in the state legislature. In 2017, Representative Scott was named to Essence Magazine’s list of #Woke100 women in the U.S., became a Rise to Run Trailblazer and began serving on the Emerge Kentucky Board of Advisors. In 2018, she graduated from the national Women in Government Leadership Program.
Representative Scott provided leadership to a number of non-profit Board of Directors including Building Hope Kentucky, Women’s Network Commonwealth Institute for Policy Issues and Civic Engagement Board of Fellows, La Casita Center, Highlander Center for Research and Education “We Shall Overcome” Fund Advisory Board, New Directions Housing Corporation, Seven Counties Services, Looking for Lilith Theatre Company, Restorative Justice Louisville, National Organizers Alliance, Community Development Corporation at Greater Friendship
Baptist Church, Hispanic/Latino Coalition of Louisville, and more.
Representative Scott is a certified anti-racism trainer through Crossroads Ministry and the Commission on Religion in Appalachia. Her proudest accomplishment is being a mom to Advocate and Ashanti.
You can follow her on Instagram and twitter at @atticascott4ky.
Lijah Fosl is a facilitator and youth program developer who uplifts young people through engaging, creative, and skill-based trainings that are built on a framework of anti-oppression, coalition, and peer-to-peer leadership. At the Peace Education Program, they train youth and adults in conflict resolution, social media for social justice, empowered storytelling, peer mediation, and prejudice reduction. They helmed the development of the Youth Influencers curriculum for PeaceCasters, a program they joined at age 13.
Lijah is a lifelong student of nonviolence and the belief that, as Margaret Wheatley said, “relationships are all there is.” Their work facilitating youth and adults aims to empower people to build tools for interpersonal and community relationships that can be used to transform conflicts, collectivize across community divides, and dismantle violence at the personal and state levels.
Lijah has an honors B.A. in Journalism from American University and a wide array of advanced skills in visual media production. They are certified in Youth Mental Health First Aid, NCBI Prejudice Reduction Training, O.W.L. Sexual Education Youth Facilitation, and are recognized as an awarded Youth Activist by the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
Cate Fosl is an anti-racist feminist historian, writer, and professor of Women’s, a gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Louisville, where she also co-founded and directs the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research. She is the author of 3 books centered on social justice, including the award winning Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South.
Cate was born in Atlanta and began her journey into anti-racism through the injustices she witnessed when her rural Georgia schools began desegregating in the late 1960s. One of Cate’s most profound shaping influences that led her to become a historian was her work on and with Anne Braden, which is what brought her to Louisville and got her involved with pushing the Univ. of Louisville to engage more authentically with communities. Cate is a former journalist and social worker who loves dancing and taking walks and is working on several historical writing projects. She is married and the proud parent of two young adults.