Honored to be facilitating one of #DecaturDinners historic events tonight where over a thousand residents will gather simultaneously at over 100 dinners around the city to discuss racism and the path to racial justice. decaturdinners.com
The (mostly potluck) #DecaturDinners are all being hosted & facilitated on a volunteer basis & are being intentionally engineered to make sure that each of them is as diverse as possible. Most of them will have about 10 participants. I dig the cost model & decentralized structure
#DecaturDinners will start with a performance piece by @OutofHandATL and then flow into a shared meal were total strangers who live in the same community will have a chance to open up to one another about racism and how its complex iterations effect their daily lives.
There is no fixed agenda or goal beyond this. Just get people together, offer space for truth telling, & see what emerges. I'm gonna do my best to take my scholar/activist/organizer hat off for a second and just be there as a resident and participant. #DecaturDinners
Having said that, I'm curious if any Emory faculty members have collaborated with #DecaturDinners, @ProfCAnderson @dwightamcbride @MichelleYGordon @CrespinoJoe @EmoryAAS? While I have questions from a pedagogical standpoint, it seems something worthy of study if nothing else.
With a population of approximately 20k people, this means that almost 5% of the city will be having the exact same conversation about racism at the exact same time. I'm fascinated to see what #DecaturDinners come up with in terms of the action items at the end of the discussions
As someone new to Atlanta and Decatur, I'm wondering if activist organizations have embraced #DecaturDinners knowing that it is less outcome driven and simply opening up channels for future collaborations and solidarity.
While conceptualizing #DecaturDinners as a recruiting opportunity for activist orgs would largely undermine the spirit of the event, I think it also might help certain orgs do just that while re-imagining what base building and organizational development can look like.
Anyway, looking forward to it and stay tuned to #DecaturDinners for more (and less preliminary) thoughts. #Twitterstorians #BlkTwitterstorians
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