Changes are afoot at Coming to the Table-RVA! So much has happened during the last three years: Thanks to you, we have met a wonderful matching grant challenge! We have funds and friends to start building, with our skeleton crew of dedicated workers, the organization we want to be for the next stage of our work. The foundation for our “house” is laid, and a “Raise the Roof” campaign is underway. Our foundation has grown from 28 public events in 2019-20 to 70 in 2020-21! That’s a lot of expansion for circles, tables, and work:
Movie and Book Circles for learning and relating deeply
Dinner tables for making friends and allies and practicing manners that keep us honest, create trust, and encourage us to enjoy each other even when we disagree
Conference rooms big enough for partner organizations to work with us in
Spaces to dream of new, improved systems in communities.
We love the NEIGHBORHOOD of the house we are creating in Virginia! There’s a lot of hard history here, along with some loved and varied culture and a lot of goodwill and hope.
We have learned and grown much through our connections with a national organization (CTTT) and all the local groups around the country. So what needs to change? Well, we think we have a mission that has grown and needs clarifying. Our vision will be reworded for our local scope, centering MLK’s dream in Virginia specifics. Our current name is “owned” by many (and is way too long!). It needs to change. We think we can serve our city and state better with a name that symbolizes more fully who we intend to be HERE, in Richmond, Virginia. It will be a sign of commitment -- vows to build this community, with all of its racialized past moving into a “new and improved” blended family future. Our local partners are excited by this focus, too. The logo will change to reflect our new name.
You have been involved in at least one aspect of our foundational identity. We hope you will be even more invested in the better defined vision and mission our committed leadership team is creating. We hope your reaction will be “YES!” when you see how the name fits us (and our email boxes). The Staff, Board of Directors, Leaders Circle, Facilitators, and Ambassadors are well along in the process. All are excited by a fresh outlook and future-oriented purpose. We hope you will be, too!
We at Coming to the Table- RVA are so grateful for the kind and generous donations you have given to us this year in the form of time, energy, and monetary gifts. All have been used wisely in our efforts to learn, grow, and build authentic relationships across the racial divide. And while we are pleased with the donations we received from our Giving Tuesday effort, we fell well short of our ambitious, but necessary goal of $20,000. We are hoping as you come to the year's end and you contemplate where your dollars will go, that CTTT-RVA will be on your holiday gift list. If you are so moved, please click this link here and make a tax-deductible contribution to help build our beloved community.
Thank you for being part of our growing family!
Building bridges together!
THANK YOUfor being a part of our family, and for helping to RAISE THE ROOF!
In January, we will discuss Perfect Black by author Crystal Wilkinson. She is from Indian Creek, Casey County, Kentucky, and is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poet movement. A 2020 United States Artists Fellow, she teaches at the University of Kentucky. Her work primarily involves the stories of Black women and communities in the Appalachian and rural Southern literary canon.
Wilkinson is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the 2016 Ernest Gaines Fellowship for Literary Excellence, the Kentucky Arts Council’s Al Smith Fellowship, The Judy Gaines Prize, Appalachian Book of the Year, the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature, the Hobson Prize, the Appalachian Heritage Award, among others.
Perfect Black is a captivating conversation about life, love, loss, and pain, interwoven with striking illustrations by her long-time partner, Ronald W. Davis.
Contact the Reading For Change Book Circle co-conveners to be added to their mailing list.
Our final movie for 2021 is Long Night’s Journey Into Day (2000). Apartheid lasted in South Africa for 46 years. This documentary chose four stories from the over 22,000 stories collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa to show the process that the country used to help itself heal. Was this effective? Is it a model that the US could use? Could the world apply this model in other areas?
Join us for a lively discussion of the December CTTT-RVA theme of Giving Back and Reparations. Since choral music is popular during the holiday season, click here to enjoy this version of Senzeni Na by The Joy, a South African group.
“Senzeni Na” means “What Have We Done” in Xhosa and Zulu, dominant languages of South Africa. "Senzeni Na" was an anthem during the anti-apartheid movement and is often sung at funerals and demonstrations.
The translation of the song follows:
What have we done? / Our sin is that we are black / Our sin is the truth /They are killing us / Let Africa return.
If you would like to receive the latest information about our Movie Circle events, please be sure to click here to join our mailing list. And click the blue button below to REGISTER for our upcoming Movie Circle Discussion on December 27th.
Join us for Reparations Sunday events that culminate in a Celebration of Black Life in America Concert with Commentary by Reparationists on how we can work together to create a culture of repair in metro Richmond.
First Presbyterian Church Unites with CTTT-RVA for Movie Series
on Racial Justice and Healing
CTTT-RVA joined with First Presbyterian Church (FPC) to watch (at home) and then together in person discuss a series of 6 movies between September 22 and December 1. This was the Coming To The Table-RVA's movie series addressing racial justice and healing. CTTT-RVA provided trained facilitators and African American "Ambassadors", whose voices were a welcome presence to provide the diversity of experience and exposure to new ways of thinking, being and doing much appreciated by a predominantly European American congregation.
Participants met outside under a tent until the weather turned cold. The last two sessions took place inside the church. People were divided into groups and remained together throughout the series, which helped to deepen conversations. About 30 people participated over the 6 weeks. The series consisted of a range of films from the heart-searing drama, American Son to the powerful documentary, I Am Not Your Negro.
This was truly transformative as people had an opportunity to grow and learn from each other. Stories and feelings were shared and relationships and friendships were formed. In the end, racial healing took place through truth telling and building bonds with one another. It was an exciting opportunity that left an indelible print on the lives of the participants.
STAY TUNED for a special mailing about our RVA honoring of the NDRH on January 18, 2022!
(Details TBD)
The National Day of Racial Healing is an annual day dedicated to #HowWeHeal from the effects of racism. Launched on January 17, 2017, it is an opportunity to bring ALL people together in their common humanity and take collective action to create a more just and equitable world.
From coast to coast, communities honor the National Day of Racial Healing in unique and meaningful ways.
This annual day, co-hosted by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) and Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) community partners, is held the Tuesday following Martin Luther King, Jr Day each year.
So many times the question is asked “What can I do? The problem seems so large. Can what I do really make a difference?” Each act of individual repair is incredibly important because it proves that repair and reconciliation can happen. If you would like to join the Reparations Circleand learn more about opportunities with which you can help, click below.
The movement for racial and social justice that swept the nation in recent years has drawn greater attention to life-threatening inequities, bringing widespread promises of reform along with it.
A new initiative will allow communities to build on that momentum and follow through on their commitments to change. In October, Healing Through Policy: Creating Pathways to Racial Justice — an initiative of APHA, the de Beaumont Foundation and the National Collaborative for Health Equity — released a set of policy papers that local leaders can use to improve health and well-being.
Seven months ago, a House committee advanced a bill to study reparations for slavery, after more than three decades of efforts to build support for the idea.
But the bill has not been taken up for consideration by the full House of Representatives even though it has the backing of some of the country's most prominent Democrats.
"Since April there has been very little movement on the bill by the leadership in Congress," said Kamm Howard, a national co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America.
Advocates for reparations are frustrated despite the fact that the proposal faces steep odds of fully passing the closely divided Congress even if the House did take it up.
The bill is H.R. 40, and it gets its name from the unmet promise that former slaves would be given "40 acres and a mule" as the Civil War drew to a close. It would establish a 13-person commission to study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination in the United States, from before the country's finding to present day.
