Our spring season begins Wednesday, February 6, with the bi-weekly WACANupdate. In the meantime, WACAN has been working with three other groups planning the 2008 White Anti-racist Summit. The following is a letter to the white anti-racist community from the 2008 Summit Coordinating Committee. If you are interested in "building the base" of the white anti-racist community; starting a support, education and/or action group; or entering into dialogue about how the white anti-racist community can develop a significant presence in the United States and Canada, I encourage you to attend this event. Existing groups, please send a representative.

Jeff Hitchcock

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

We are very excited to announce plans for the 4th Annual White Anti-Racist Summit, to be held Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at the White Privilege Conference in Springfield, Mass.

At last year's summit we collectively shifted the dialogue to white anti-racist organizing and movement-building. This year, we develop and focus that dialogue with the goal of building a long-term vision, skills, and strategies for white anti-racist organizing and concrete steps for how we can begin that work in our local communities.

Don't miss this opportunity to join with folks from across the country to strengthen our local and collective work for racial justice!

Please see the Summit description below.
To register: http://www.wacan.org/summit.asp

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CALL TO SUMMIT 2008- Developing a foundation upon which to build our work

The 4th annual White Anti-Racist Summit enters a new phase as we develop a long-term perspective and plan for using the annual summits as a vehicle for building incremental and sustainable change. This year's summit is designed to build our collective capacity for white anti-racist organizing. The intention of these summits is to lay groundwork for building an anti-racist solidarity movement to organize in white communities across the US and stand allied with communities of color in resisting the white supremacist system and all systems of oppression. We hope these summits serve as a resource for building our capacity to organize in our local communities. Each summit will focus on a different aspect of white anti-racist organizing while we move collectively toward movement building. The hope is that after this summit folks will return home and start working to build capacity in their local communities.

This year's summit will offer skills building and collective strategy development by exploring 3 key questions related to White Anti Racist Organizing:

What do we really mean by the term "organizing" and how can we develop a common definition?

What are potential organizing strategies to use within white communities?

What does it mean to build a base and mobilize within white communities to take action for racial justice?

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This email sent on behalf of the 2008 Summit Coordinating Committee
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Chelsea Boilard - Y-STEP
Lila Cabbil - WACAN
Jeff Hitchcock - WACAN
Cameron Levin - AWARE
Lou Schoen - EPISCOPAL CHURCH-SOCIAL JUSTICE OFFICE
Hillary Stephenson - AWARE