001: What local anti-racism organizing can look like for white people and how to get started

Episode Highlights

How Meredith and Tia, 2 white women, got involved in anti-racism work in their local neighborhood

How Neighbors Against White Supremacy started

The difference between organizing around relationships vs. crisis mode

Challenges and success in their organizing work against racism

NAWS (Neighbors Against White Supremacy): NAWS organizes white people in Central Queens to challenge white supremacy and anti-Black racism in ourselves and our communities.

NAWS Facebook

Carribean Equity Project

Meredith Reitman is a qualitative and quantitative researcher who specializes in exploring how race operates within workplaces. As an academic, she studied how racial belonging influences the experiences of men in the IT workplace. In her current role, she continues to use the framework of critical race theory to place racism as commonplace within systems, to reveal meritocracy as a myth, to explore race as embedded within multiple oppressions, and to promote storytelling by people of color as necessary. Her clients are any organizations interested in examining how racial power dynamics are at play within 1) recruitment, hiring, and vendor selection, 2) belonging, retention and culture, and 3) evaluation, pay and promotion. She currently co-leads Neighbors Against White Supremacy (NAWS) Central Queens, an

affiliate of Showing Up for Racial Justice. She lives in Kew Gardens with her husband, dog and two cats but don't tell the coop board.

Tia Keenan is a New York City-based writer, cheese specialist, cook, stylist, and community organizer.  She writes the “Cheese Wisely” column for the Wall Street Journal and is the author of The Art of the Cheese Plate: Pairings, Recipes, Style, Attitude (Rizzoli, 2016), Short Stack Chèvre (Short Stack Editions, 2018) and Melt, Stretch, & Sizzle: The Art of Cooking Cheese (Rizzoli, 2018). Keenan co-leads Neighbors Against White Supremacy (NAWS) Central Queens, which organizes white people in Queens to challenge white supremacy in themselves and their communities through reparations and resource redistribution. Keenan lives in a "movement house" in Queens with her husband, son, dog, small flock of backyard chickens, and rotating cast of visiting cooks, organizers, artists, and refugees.