FSNE Winter Series #2: Building Multi-Racial Movements for Equity & Justice

Racial Equity Leadership: Building Multi-Racial Movements for Equity & Justice in the New England Food System and Beyond

Please join us for the second event in FSNE’s 2022 Winter Series, bringing regional food system participants and aligned friends together to dig into our shared work, learn together, get inspired, and deepen our connections to one another. Please come for part of all of this event.

Hear from our special guests about how we can advance racial equity and wellbeing in these challenging times, what opportunities exist to advance equitable belonging and to make change across food, farming, and fishing sectors, and how we can best direct our collective efforts. 

Registration is open. Get the most out of this event by taking some time visiting the websites of our guests as “pre-work.”

The first part of this event (10:00 am to noon) will feature Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr. and Debby Irving, inspiration for FSNE’s version of the Racial Equity Challenge. Our “keychord” panel will also include special guests Katya Fels Smith and Tanya Tucker from the Full Frame Initiative in which you’ll gain valuable insights for your own work.

The second part of this event (12:30 to 2:30 pm) will be a participatory skill-building workshop led by Curtis Ogden of the Interaction Institute for Social Change and Karen Spiller, UNH Haas Professor, FSNE Ambassador, and principle in KAS Consulting. The workshop will focus on tools and processes to advance work for racial equity and equitable wellbeing.

As we grapple with pandemic disruptions and political polarization, reckon with emboldened white supremacy, and face ever-growing challenges from the climate crisis, the importance of standing firm in a commitment to racial equity and justice in our food system is growing. 

• What does racial equity look like in our communities and institutions? 
• How can we advance multi-racial movements for justice and wellbeing? 
• What are some of the opportunities we can lean into now?

This session will be held in English and will be recorded for later viewing. Facilitation by Karen Spiller and Curtis Ogden with support from the FSNE backbone staff at the UNH Sustainability Institute.

Get the most out of this event by taking some time visiting the websites of our guests as “pre-work.”

More About our Guests:

Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr. has pursued and achieved success in academia, business, diversity, leadership and community service. In 1996, he started America & MOORE, LLC to provide comprehensive diversity, privilege and leadership trainings and workshops.

Dr. Moore is recognized as one of the nation’s top motivational speakers and educators, especially for his work with students K-16. His interview with Wisconsin Public Radio won the 2015 Wisconsin Broadcasters Association’s Best Interview in Medium Market Radio, 1st Place [http://www.wpr.org/shows/newsmakers-december-4-2014], and he is featured in the film “I’m not Racist…Am I?”

Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr., currently serves as Director of The Privilege Institute (TPI) and The National White Privilege Conference (WPC), both founded under his direction to provide opportunities and possibilities for research, publications, speaking and collaborations by those committed to true social and institutional change. He received his Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies at the University of Iowa and under his direction and inclusive relationship model the White Privilege Conference has become one of the top national and international conferences for participants who want to move beyond dialogue and into action around issues of diversity, power, privilege, and leadership.

In 2014 Dr. Moore founded The Privilege Institute, which engages people in research, education, action and leadership through workshops, conferences, publications and collaborative partnerships and relationships. The non-profit umbrella organization now includes not only the White Privilege Conference but also a fully on-line peer reviewed journal, “Understanding and Dismantling Privilege,” of which Dr. Moore is a founding editor, a Speakers Bureau for speaker connections, research opportunities for social justice and collaboration opportunities through outreach and service-learning. The Black Male Think Tank meets yearly at The White Privilege Conference and is committed to being a visible and community-based asset to the lives of young black males and providing them with the Action, Serving, Healing, Innovating, Educating, Loving and Developing that “affirms their existence, cultivates their excellence, supports their development, raises their consciousness and protects them from white supremacy and other forms of oppression.”

Debby Irving: “Inspired by my own two-steps-forward, one-step-back journey away from racial ignorance, I educate other white people confused and frustrated by racism by transforming anxiety and inaction into agency and action.

I’m a white woman, raised in Winchester, Massachusetts during the socially turbulent 1960s and ‘70s. After a blissfully sheltered, upper-middle-class suburban childhood, I found myself simultaneously intrigued and horrified by the racial divide I observed in Boston. From 1984 to 2009 my work in urban neighborhoods and schools left me feeling helpless. Why did people live so differently along racial lines? Why were student outcomes so divergent? Why did I get so jumpy when talking to a person of color? Where did the fear of saying something stupid or offensive come from, and why couldn’t I make it go away? The more I tried to understand racial dynamics, the more confused I became. I knew there was an elephant in the room, I just didn’t know it was me!

In 2009, a course at Wheelock College, Racial and Cultural Identity, shook me awake with the realization that I’d missed step #1: examining the way being a member of the “normal” race had interfered with my attempts to understand racism. What began as a professional endeavor became a personal journey as I shifted from trying to figure out people whom I’d been taught to see as “other” to making sense of my own socialization.

My book Waking Up White is the story of my two-steps-forward-one-step back journey away from racial ignorance. I continue to study racism and strategies for its undoing while working to educate other white people confused and frustrated by racism. I remember these feelings all too well and am passionate about transforming anxiety and inaction into agency and action, be it for an individual or an organization.”

Katya Fels Smith grew up in New Jersey and went to high school in Massachusetts, where she volunteered at one of the state’s first shelters for homeless families. While getting a degree in biology from Harvard, Katya continued working with people who are homeless, eventually becoming co-director of one of Cambridge, MA’s first emergency shelters.
A hit-and-run of one of the shelter’s guests, uninvestigated by police, combined with the advice and vision of other shelter guests, led her to found Cambridge-based On The Rise, Inc. in 1995. On The Rise was widely recognized for its Full Frame Approach to working with women facing homelessness, trauma and crisis. In 2007, Katya left to work on what would become the Full Frame Initiative. She launched FFI’s systemic collaborations that are bringing a wellbeing orientation to Missouri’s juvenile justice and child welfare systems and the St. Louis County courts, and a multi-system effort in Massachusetts to reframe the government’s approach to the intersection of homelessness, sexual assault and domestic violence. A former Research Affiliate with MIT’s Community Innovators Lab, Research Fellow at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Echoing Green Fellow and Claneil Foundation Emerging Leaders Fellow, Katya speaks, publishes and advocates nationally for addressing poverty, violence, trauma and oppression by removing barriers to wellbeing. Katya is a contributor on the Forbes.com leadership channel where she explores the role of leadership in finding new frameworks for social change. She has an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School, and a deep belief in the power of people to do good by and for each other. This, combined with her sense that our country isn’t fully living into that potential, feed her commitment to FFI, bolstered by amazing colleagues and copious coffee consumption. Katya is a terrible gardener and decent cook who lives in Western Massachusetts with her amazing husband and kids, and an unwieldy menagerie of dogs, cats and donkeys.

Tanya Tucker has over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit, education, and youth development fields. Her career has focused on supporting low-income and underserved youth, building relationships with external partners, developing innovative programs and leading dynamic results-oriented teams. Supporting communities and partners to drive cross-sector, systems-level change so that every young person has the opportunity and support to achieve adult success has been at the heart of her work for over a decade. She spent 13 years with America’s Promise Alliance, a national organization devoted to helping create the conditions of success for all young people, including the millions being left behind. As the Chief of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships, she served as part of the senior leadership team helping set the strategic direction and priorities of the organization. She led the development and implementation of all the programmatic work and engagement of the cross-sector Alliance of over 450 national organizations, over 200 communities, and thousands of individuals dedicated to making youth a priority in this country. Prior to joining America’s Promise, Tanya served at Educational Services, Inc. for six years directing a portfolio of education initiatives that focused on service and service-learning programs, mathematics and science teaching and bridging the digital divide. Tanya also spent nine years at the Association of Science-Technology Centers working on YouthALIVE! (Youth Achievement through Learning, Involvement, Volunteering and Employment), a grants program that supported museum-based enrichment and work-based learning programs for underserved youth. Tanya earned a Bachelor of Arts in Public Communication from American University and completed the Education Policy Fellowship Program sponsored by the Institute for Educational Leadership in Washington, D.C. Tanya is an avid and fiercely loyal Boston sports fan (Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins). When she’s not following sports she loves to spend time with her family, particularly her nephew, Robbie.