{"id":21705,"date":"2022-06-07T07:09:59","date_gmt":"2022-06-07T11:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=21705"},"modified":"2022-07-21T10:39:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T14:39:00","slug":"wee-the-people-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2022\/06\/07\/wee-the-people-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Wee The People Anti-Racism Workshops Cancelled By Westwood Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was an Instragram post by Wee The People the reason Westwood Public Schools<\/a> cancelled anti-racism workshops it had scheduled by the social justice education group?<\/p>\n

Francie Latour, co-founder and co-director of Wee The People<\/a>, says the schools had scheduled the Boston group to present a series of five two-hour anti-racism training sessions for faculty, staff and parents\/caregivers plus eight one-hour \u201cWhat Is Racism?\u201d workshops for fifth-grade students in May.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were told about the parent opposition around 1 p.m. on Friday, May 13. At that time, we were assured the workshops would continue. At 7 p.m. Friday, we were told the workshops were cancelled,\u201d Latour writes. \u201cOur understanding is that a parent objected to a 2021 Instagram post Wee The People re-shared in which we referenced the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. Our post re-shared the hashtag #whitenessisadeathcult. Based on the hashtag, some white parents in Westwood said they feared for the safety and well being of their children in the workshop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The school district did not respond to multiple emails I sent to Superintendent Emily Parks, Thurston Middle School Principal Michael Redmon and via the district\u2019s online contact form.<\/p>\n

Wee The People was founded in 2015 to teach children about protest, racism, class, xenophobia, gentrification, gender and difference through visual and performing arts so \u201cthat kids can engage on their level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wee The People has presented workshops and events at institutions across the region, and is scheduled to present \u201cWear Your Resistance: The Power of Protest Symbols\u201d at the Reading Public Library on June 10, \u201cFirst Comes Love, Then Comes Protest: Loving Day Cambridge 2022\u201d at the Cambridge Public Library on June 12, \u201cJuneteenth Unlimited\u201d at the Thomas Crane Public Library in Quincy on June 18, and \u201cJuneteenth Unlimited\u201d at the Plymouth Family Resource Center on June 22.<\/p>\n

Of the cancelled Westwood programs, Latour writes, \u201cOur biggest concern, though, is for the safety and well being of the district’s METCO director, who first reached out to Wee The People in 2020 and has sought to build support for our programming since then. We are also concerned about the signal the cancellation surely sends to the BIPOC and LGBTQIA families in the school community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Latour adds, \u201cBy cancelling at the 11th hour, the administration gave away a great deal of its power as a civic institution. It has done so at a time when the safety and humanity of people who are Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, and queer are under real attack. These are vulnerable, equity-deserving populations whose lives and well being need to be placed at the center of institutional decision-making. We stand in solidarity with them.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe devastating toll of whiteness as a construct and a set of practices has been written about extensively and for a very long time\u2014by W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison, among others. It has also been the subject of recent best-sellers like \u2018The Sum of Us,\u2019 \u2018Stamped From the Beginning,\u2019 \u2018Dying of Whiteness,\u2019 \u2018White Fragility,\u2019 and \u2018Caste,\u2019\u201d Latour writes. \u201cWhat these works share is a core premise of antiracism: whiteness as a category requires the domination\/oppression of Black people in order to have meaning. Whiteness has no other meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Latour writes, \u201cWhite individuals today are not responsible for the origins of this constructed identity. But every white individual has the power and responsibility to learn what whiteness means; tell the truth about it; understand how it benefits them materially (and diminishes them spiritually); and take action. Unlike the brutal lessons that Black children in Buffalo, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Chicago, Oakland, Louisville, and elsewhere inevitably learn through racial trauma, Wee The People programming supports children and adults in engaging with the uncomfortable truths of race and racism in an affirming, age-appropriate manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pictured at top: Wee The People’s Francie Latour presents “The ABCs of Racism” at Boston’s Old South Church, 2019. (Courtesy of Wee The People)<\/em><\/p>\n

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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2022 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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Was an Instragram post by Wee The People the reason Westwood Public Schools cancelled anti-racism workshops it had scheduled by the social justice education group? Francie Latour, co-founder and co-director of Wee The People, says the schools had scheduled the Boston group to present a series of five two-hour anti-racism training sessions for faculty, staff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,100],"tags":[161],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21705"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21856,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21705\/revisions\/21856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}