Public Lecture and Training Opportunity With Award Winning Author and Social Justice Activist, Paul Kivel
Public Lecture: Thurs., April 12, 7pm
Location: Holland East School, 323 E. 24th Street, Holland, MI 49423
Cost: Free
Training Event: Fri., April 13, 9am-3pm
Location: Hope Church, 77 W. 11th Street, Holland, MI 49423
Cost: $35 (Lunch and snacks provided)
Registration: equitable-allies-training.eventbrite.com
The city of Holland prides itself on being a warm and welcoming community that boldly makes the claim on its website: “Everyone’s Welcome. From Dutch to Diverse: over the decades, the community originally settled by Dutch immigrants has become a community settled by people from all over the world.” As we aspire to live into this vision, Paul Kivel will invite us to explore our attitudes and assumptions that may create barriers to the full flourishing of people of color in our community. In his public lecture, Kivel will illumine the way that the history of Christian traditions and institutions often create these barriers and attitudes. In the all-day training, Kivel will equip allies to recognize, resist, and dismantle the unintentional barriers to racial equity in our community. This training will introduce people to the concept of providing “pycho-social accompaniment” for people of color who are working to recover their full agency and autonomy in a society that has systematically silenced, erased, and disempowered them.
Biography: Paul Kivel, social justice educator, activist, and writer, has been an innovative leader in violence prevention for more than 45 years. He is an accomplished trainer and speaker on men’s issues, racism and diversity, challenges of youth, teen dating and family violence, raising boys to manhood, and the impact of class and power on daily life. Paul has developed highly effective participatory and interactive methodologies for training youth and adults in a variety of settings. His work gives people the understanding to become involved in social justice work and the tools to become more effective allies in community struggles to end oppression and injustice and to transform organizations and institutions.
Kivel is the author of numerous books and curricula, including Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, which won the 1996 Gustavas Myers Award for best book on human rights, Men’s Work, Making the Peace, Helping Teens Stop Violence, Boys Will Be Men, I Can Make My World a Safer Place, and most recently, You Call This a Democracy?: Who Benefits, Who Pays, and Who Really Decides.