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Diwali 2021: Celebrating The Festival of Lights.
Every year, Hindus across the world come together to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, in October or November. The word Diwali (pronounced deh-vah-lee) originates from the Sanskrit word Deepavali which means “row of lights.” Diwali is widely celebrated in India, even amongst other religious groups such as Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism.
Dia de Los Muertos 2021: How are We Honoring Our Loved Ones This Year?
Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) takes place at the beginning of November every year and is a celebration, particularly for the people in Mexico and Central America and their descendants. It is a day reserved for celebrating the lives of those dearly departed family members, and welcoming their return from the spirit world through an altar.
Why Beloved Community: Kevin Lewis
If you plan on watching the first season of Lovecraft Country or haven’t finished it yet, this is a warning. Avoid the introduction to this blog post because it might spoil a story for you, if you care. There’s the warning. I want to frame the reason that I chose and continue to choose Beloved after nearly a year around the story of Hippolyta in episode 7.
Halloween 2021: Can We Not With Cultural Appropriation?
Halloween is my favorite holiday. Honestly, spooky season in general is the best time of the year. You’ve got apple cider donuts, trips to the pumpkin patch, all the candy you can eat, and the best Trader Joes snacks to look forward to! But the thing that continues to haunt me, yes even in 2021, is we still have to deal with people wearing problematic costumes.
Confessions of a DEI Professional
Working in diversity, equity and inclusion is complicated. There are the day-to-day difficulties: dealing with the delusions of white supremacy/supremacists, subconsciously looping a list of every injustice in the world, and constantly being called upon to “talk to” that family member, but we know that comes with the territory.
Lessons Learned at CRT Camp.
For a week in August, the African American Policy Forum (a think tank headed up by one of the most influential antiracist educators and critical race theorists in the country, Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw) hosted CRT Summer School to help folx across sectors understand the politically-motivated, unwarranted attacks against truth-telling in K-12 schools and institutions of higher education.
Why Beloved Community: Patrizia Santos
In 10th grade, during Premilitary Instruction (a mandatory class in Venezuela), we had to memorize our constitution, focusing on our rights and duties as people living in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It read like a fairytale.
What We Learned: New Orleans, LA Equity in School Cohort 20-21
In July of 2020, amidst dual pandemics in this country: both COVID 19 and systemic racism, Beloved Community launched our New Orleans Equity in Schools Cohort. This cohort marked our first all-virtual series in which we led eight synchronous sessions on Zoom.
Interrogating Inaccuracies: Hate Crime Data and APIDA Communities.
Anti-Asian violence is rarely categorized as a hate crime by law enforcement. In fact, it is worth noting that the very process of determining what constitutes a hate crime is deeply flawed, revealing how various legal institutions play crucial roles in reinforcing identity hierarchies and dismissing the intersectionality that shapes people’s lives.
Multiple Truths
People often don’t make space for the existence of others’ experiences due to a real fear of a false assumption: that doing so will erase the existence of their own experiences.