People's Institute for Survival and Beyond

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People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB)
AbbreviationPISAB
Formation1980
Founder Ronald Chisom and James Norman Dunn
PurposeAddress racism, poverty and social injustices
HeadquartersNew Orleans, Louisiana
Location
  • United States
Website pisab.org

The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB) is a non-profit organization that provides education and training to individuals, communities and organizations on issues related to systemic racism and social and human justice. [1] [2] The organization was founded in 1980 by civil and human rights activists and scholars Ronald Chisom and James Norman Dunn. [2] [3] [4] [5] The organization is based in New Orleans, Louisiana with several regional organizing hubs across the country. More than 2 million people, across the United States and internationally, completed PISAB's Undoing Racism and Community Organizing workshop. [2] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Contents

Programs and initiatives

Undoing Racism

The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond offers an Undoing Racism workshop that that seeks to increase people's understanding of systemic and institutionalized racism in our society. [10] [11] [12] The program uses a multi-dimensional approach that incorporates historical analysis, group participation, and community organizing strategies. [13] [14] Participants in the workshops engage in dialogue and discussions that are designed to support critical thinking, challenge their assumptions about race, privilege, and power. [4] [15] [16] The workshop is designed to be accessible to a broad range of individuals, organizers and organizations, including community groups, non-profits, government agencies, and businesses. [17] [18] It has been implemented in a variety of settings, including schools, neighborhood associations, hospitals, and social and service agencies. [18] [19] [20]

The workshops have been in different research studies that in some cases, required the participants to attend PISAB's Undoing Racism workshops;

Article publishedPublishing JournalYear of publishingRelationship with PISAB
Antiracism Expanding Social Work Education: A Qualitative Analysis of the Undoing Racism Workshop Experience Journal of Social Work Education 2018 [21] The study evaluated how student participants felt after attending the Undoing racism workshop. [21]
Participatory and Action Research Within and Beyond the academy: Contesting Racism through Decolonial Praxis and Teaching "Against the Grain" American Journal of Community Psychology 2018 [22] The participants attended a two and half days Undoing racism work that was organized by PISAB prior to taking the survey. [22]
The Art and Science of Integrating Undoing Racism with CBPR: Challenges of Pursuing NIH Funding to Investigate Cancer Care and Racial Equity Journal of Urban Health 2006 [23] The study explored how the principles of community participatory studies can be integrated with the processes of undoing racism program. [23]

People's Institute Youth Agenda (PIYA)

PIYA is an initiative of People's Institute for Survival and Beyond through which young people and community organizers committed to understanding the current issues that face our society and young people come together to making a positive contribution in their communities are educated and recruited to reach other young people and organize. [24] [25] The program was started in 1996 by an intergenerational group of veteran organizers and the young activists and is tailored for youths aged 12–18 years. [26]

European Dissent

This is an initiative that is specifically designed for individuals of European descent who are interested in working towards racial justice and equity. This anti-racism organizing collective seeks to address the ways in which white privilege and racism operate in our society, to strengthen the number of white people organizing for racial justice, and to empower participants to take action to dismantle racism. [27] [28] [29]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redlining</span> Systemic denial of services to some areas

Redlining is a discriminatory practice in which financial services are withheld from neighborhoods that have significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities. Redlining has been most prominent in the United States, and has mostly been directed against African-Americans. The most common examples involve denial of credit and insurance, denial of healthcare, and the development of food deserts in minority neighborhoods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental racism</span> Environmental injustice that occurs within a racialized context

Environmental racism, ecological racism, or ecological apartheid is a form of racism leading to negative environmental outcomes such as landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste disposal disproportionately impacting communities of color, violating substantive equality. Internationally, it is also associated with extractivism, which places the environmental burdens of mining, oil extraction, and industrial agriculture upon indigenous peoples and poorer nations largely inhabited by people of color.

Environmental justice or eco-justice, is a social movement to address environmental injustice, which occurs when poor or marginalized communities are harmed by hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not benefit. The movement has generated hundreds of studies showing that exposure to environmental harm is inequitably distributed.

Reverse racism, sometimes referred to as reverse discrimination, is the concept that affirmative action and similar color-conscious programs for redressing racial inequality are forms of anti-white racism. The concept is often associated with conservative social movements and reflects a belief that social and economic gains by Black people and other people of color cause disadvantages for white people.

The Tyree Scott Freedom School is an educational program in Seattle, Washington, with a curriculum on social justice issues and anti-racist community organizing in Seattle. The project also holds a monthly gathering of anti-racist educators, whose goal is to end institutional racism in the education system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">People's Action</span> U.S. progressive advocacy organization

People's Action is a national progressive advocacy and political organization in the United States made up of 40 organizations in 30 states. The group's stated goal is to "build the power of poor and working people, in rural, suburban, and urban areas to win change through issue campaigns and elections."

A fenceline community or frontline community is a neighborhood that is immediately adjacent to a company, military base, industrial or service center and is directly affected by the noise, odors, chemical emissions, traffic, parking, or operations of the company. These communities are exposed to hazardous chemicals, high pollution levels, and environmental degradation along with the threat of chemical explosions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-racism</span> Beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism

Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to create equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination and/or working to change personal racial biases. Major contemporary anti-racism efforts include the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and workplace anti-racism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Race Forward</span> American nonprofit racial justice organization

Race Forward is a nonprofit racial justice organization with offices in Oakland, California, and New York City. Race Forward focuses on catalyzing movement-building for racial justice. In partnership with communities, organizations, and sectors, the organization build strategies to advance racial justice in policies, institutions, and culture.

Prejudice plus power, also known as R = P + P, is a stipulative definition of racism used in the United States. Patricia Bidol-Padva first proposed this definition in a 1970 book, where she defined racism as "prejudice plus institutional power." According to this definition, two elements are required in order for racism to exist: racial prejudice, and social power to codify and enforce this prejudice into an entire society. Adherents write that while all people can be racially prejudiced, minorities are powerless and therefore only white people have the power to be racist. This definition is supported by the argument that power is responsible for the process of racialization and that social power is distributed in a zero-sum game. This view is commonly shared by social liberals and progressives. It also been used to define other forms of discrimination such as sexism, homophobia, and ableism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ibram X. Kendi</span> American academic (born 1982)

Ibram Xolani Kendi is an American author, professor, anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in the U.S. He is author of books including Stamped from the Beginning, How to Be an Antiracist and Antiracist Baby. Kendi was included in Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin DiAngelo</span> American academic (born 1956)

Robin Jeanne DiAngelo is an American author working in the fields of critical discourse analysis and whiteness studies. She formerly served as a tenured professor of multicultural education at Westfield State University and is currently an affiliate associate professor of education at the University of Washington. She is known for her work pertaining to "white fragility", an expression she coined in 2011 and explored further in a 2018 book entitled White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

Joseph Barndt is an American Lutheran pastor and anti-racism activist. He is the co-founder of the Chicago-based racial justice advocacy group Crossroads Antiracism Organizing & Training, and formerly served as its executive director. The ministry offers anti-racist training sessions to religious and community groups. He has been a pastor at Lutheran churches in Chicago, New York City, and Arizona. He is known for advocating for white people to dismantle the institutions that perpetuate racial inequality in America, rather than directly helping minorities. In 2008, Matt Miller of the Chicago Reporter wrote that Barndt "has put forth what some consider some of the most revolutionary anti-racism work of the day."

Bonita Lawrence is a Canadian writer, scholar, and professor in the Department of Equity Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her work focuses on issues related to Indigenous identity and governance, equity, and racism in Canada. She is also a traditional singer at political rallies, social events, and prisons in the Toronto and Kingston areas.

Julia Chinyere Oparah, formerly Julia Sudbury, is a faculty member at the University of San Francisco. She is also the founder of the Center for Liberated Leadership in Oakland, California. Oparah is an activist-scholar, a community organizer, and an intellectual focused on producing relevant scholarship in accompaniment to social justice movements. She has worked at University of California - Berkeley, University of Toronto and Mills College prior to the University of San Francisco.

Collins O. Airhihenbuwa is a Beninese public health researcher. He is Director of the Global Research Against Non-communicable Disease (GRAND) Initiative and Professor of Health Management & Policy at Georgia State University.

Chandra L. Ford is an American public health academic who is Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. She serves as Founding Director at the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health. Her research considers relationships between racism and health outcomes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Hardeman</span> American public health academic

Rachel Renee Hardeman is an American public health academic who is associate professor of Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She holds the inaugural Blue Cross Endowed Professorship in Health and Racial Equity. Her research considers how racism impacts health outcomes, particularly for the maternal health of African-Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tawana Petty</span>

Tawana Petty is an American author, poet, social justice organizer, mother and youth advocate who works to counter systemic racism. Petty formerly served as Director of Policy and Advocacy for the Algorithmic Justice League representing AJL in national and international processes shaping AI governance.

Ronald Chisom is an African American author, civil rights activist and a community organizer who was involved in fighting for justice and equality for marginalized communities in the United States. He was a co-founder of People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. and a medical researcher at Louisiana State University Medical School. Born in 1941 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Chisom grew up in a segregated society that was affected by racism and discrimination.

References

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