Show up for Racial Justice in the South Bay and beyond.
It is white people’s responsibility to educate ourselves about systemic, institutional and interpersonal racism and it is white people’s responsibility to excavate our own personal legacy of racism. That includes habits of entitlement that we might bring in to racially mixed spaces. More centrally, it is white people’s responsibility to organize other white people to dismantle white supremacy, because it is white people who historically and still today benefit from white supremacy. If you identify as a white person and share these principles, join us! If you identify as a person of color, we enthusiastically welcome you. It can be difficult to work with folks new to active anti-racist work, but if you are up for working with folks with privilege, we are so grateful to have you and we want to center your contributions.
We like to orient new members through one-to-one conversations. However, there is no barrier to entry—new members are welcome at ALL of our SURJ meetings. You don’t need to go on some sort of quest or pass a series of trials to join us! Currently many SURJ meetings are virtual and some in person. We are holding most of our once-a-month general meetings in person now, sometimes at Sacred Heart Community Service and sometimes in downtown Mountain View. Check out the action calendar for meeting info. Our general meetings are 6:00-8:00 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month. For general information, please email jenm@sacredheartcs.org. We are in two year plus campaign to move Santa Clara County away from incarceration towards noncarceral alternatives as well as a campaign to protect indigenous land from an open pit mine. We also take on campaigns related to housing and immigration when our partners request. You can learn more about our accountability partners here.
Save lives! Sign the petitions to expand access to TRUST!
TRUST is Santa Clara County’s non-police crisis response program for mental health and substance use. It includes both a call center with an emphasis on de-escalation and field teams that include a crisis intervention specialist/mental health professional, a peer supporter and a first aid responder. The field teams are trained to respond to mental health crises, give trauma-informed care, focus on prevention, and center the client and their loved ones to resolve the crisis. It is a great start but we want to see it funded to succeed. For example, right now the city of San Jose has only one field team. In December, we had a big win—getting the county to make the direct line to TRUST publicly available. And we used that momentum to continue to push for TRUST expansion. You can learn more about our campaign here. Our elected officials need to hear from YOU! Sign the petitions below!
Upcoming Meetings and Actions
The ABCD’S of SURJ at Sacred Heart
The ABCD’S of SURJ are a set of principles, developed by volunteer leaders, intended to operate as a compass for our decision making:
ACCOUNTABILITY: Show up for our partners in the ways that they request, leverage our privilege for their goals and check our privilege on the regular.
BASEBUILDING: Always be basebuilding. Use all campaigns and activities to bring in new members to build our people power and to strengthen sustainable, nourishing, joyful connections with one another.
CONSEQUENTIAL: Prioritize campaigns that will yield concrete and tangible anti-racist impact.
DEVELOPING: Always be developing. Develop new leadership skills in others and ourselves.
STRATEGIC: All activities should further the ABCDs. All decisions should use the ABCDs as guiding principles.
Credits
All photos on this site are provided courtesy of SURJ members (unless otherwise noted).