Please mark your calendar for Undoing White Supremacy Austin’s August’s Unlearning Circle on Saturday August 14, 2021 from 10 am to noon. Register for this event HERE.

Gatekeeping is the topic for this month. The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond defines the anti-racist principle of gatekeeping as follows:

Persons who work in institutions function as gatekeepers. Gatekeepers are expected to ensure that the institution perpetuates itself. The gatekeeper becomes an agent of institutional transformation by operating with anti-racist values and networking with those who share those values and maintain accountability in the community. Gatekeepers regulate the progress and speed of social change.

What do you see in your mind’s eye when you imagine a gate? What are the gates that you keep?

In some way, we are all gatekeepers. We control information flow. We interpret, define, measure, evaluate, translate, and speak for people-with or without their permission. We titrate the progress of social change.

We manage the gate, but we don’t own the gate.

We all have power. When we don’t understand, or fail to acknowledge our power, we are dangerous particularly to those who are most directly impacted by not having access to that power, those who are Black, indigenous and people of color and who have other marginalized identities.

In this Unlearning Circle, we will explore together our roles as gatekeepers. We will help each other discover how, in our gatekeeping roles, we can be accountable for the power we have to support racial justice.

Please join us for this juicy conversation.

In solidarity,

The UWSA Organizing Team