Ending racism

After the spate of killings of unarmed black men in 2014, a working group of AFSC staff have gathered to assess what can be done to assure justice is achieved and to further examine how AFSC can best support solving this critical issue.

Dustin Washington, Community Justice Program Director for AFSC's West Region, shares three tips for anti-racist organizing based on his experience as an organizer with the Tyree Scott Freedom School.

AFSC’s Sharon Goens-Bradley says that the desire to be seen as “good” causes much of the harm in the world, and that the difficulty of hearing when we’ve caused harm can cover up opportunities to truly heal.

On the plane to Seattle to attend one of AFSC’s Tyree Scott Freedom Schools, I was seated across from a young white man who looked roughly my age. Toward the end of our flight, we struck up a conversation. He was from Oklahoma, he told me, the youngest of five. He was only the youngest by a very small margin, as he was one of triplets. I had never met a triplet before, I told him. He had never met a Quaker. 

In Seattle, AFSC’s Tyree Scott Freedom School brings together young adults to discuss issues of institutional racism, systemic poverty, and the prison-industrial complex, and to learn organizing skills to tackle these issues.

Strained and sometimes antagonistic relationships between police and communities of color in Seattle have led to the disproportionate incarceration of youth of color—and ugly, racially charged incidents have been caught on tape. AFSC’s Seattle Community Justice Program is trying to do something about it.