Racial & Social Justice Committee
We stand for racial and social justice in RECAMFT and seek to discover and remedy injustices that arise within our events, programs, and practices. We are committed to doing this through engaging in ongoing education and self-inquiry, and integration of member feedback. We hold ourselves accountable to RECAMFT and our community.
RECAMFT is committed to equity including addressing structural racism and systemic injustice. We endeavor to be inclusive and value individuals from all ethnicities, ages, races, sexual orientations, genders, languages, abilities, religions, citizenship statuses, and socioeconomic backgrounds into our chapter and into treatment. We strive to advocate, educate, collaborate, and strategize for positive racial and social justice change within our membership and our community. (Amended Feb. 19, 2022 by the RECAMFT Racial and Social Justice Committee. Amended Pledge approved by the RECAMFT Board of Directors on Feb. 22, 2022 by electronic vote.) We are so excited about our newest offerings! The December 2022 RSJC Meeting on Zoom. We created two Resource pages for members. Please check them out! We will be continuing to update these pages, and your suggestions are welcomed. Please email suggestions to therapy@recamft.org. Thanks! |
Committee Update 2021
On September 4, 2020 the previously named RECAMFT Diversity Committee met via Zoom and discussed group goals. Together we crafted a mission statement:
We stand for racial and social justice in RECAMFT and seek to discover and remedy injustices that arise within our events, programs, and practices. We are committed to doing this through engaging in ongoing education and self-inquiry, and integration of member feedback. We hold ourselves accountable to RECAMFT and our community.
Accordingly, we changed our name to the RECAMFT Racial & Social Justice Committee. We discussed how some committee members experienced the words ‘diversity’ and ‘multicultural’ as finite, inactive, or potentially complicit approaches to addressing traumatic ongoing historical injustices affecting our members, clients, local community and greater world.
We’ve held a number of meetings in which we’ve practiced accountability, kindness and self-regulation while directly engaging in uncomfortable re-examinations of our own and each other’s social lenses, language and behavior. Through open dialogue we created a survey that was open through November 15, 2020 to receive member input on their experiences of our organization and their work with clients regarding racial and social justice topics.
So far, committee demographics don’t reflect surrounding communities. We have LGBTQ and Jewish members, all of European/Caucasian descent. We have no BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) members, though most RECAMFT members live on unceded Pomo, Miwok, or Wappo indigenous land (https://settlercolonialcityproject.org/Unceded-Land). Per census.gov, Sonoma County is 27% Hispanic/Latinx.
Our committee demographics reflect the ongoing impact of systemic racism. We’ve discussed the complexity of understanding that anti-racism work must be undertaken by those who benefit from systemic racism whether they know it or not. We’re committed to keeping ourselves accountable for our own education and not burdening BIPOC RECAMFT members with having to ‘represent’ or educate others.
With the above understandings, we welcome BIPOC members who want to join our committee and create change in RECAMFT toward racial and social justice for historically and systemically oppressed people.
You can reach the committee by emailing therapy@recamft.org.
Update Feb. 19, 2022. Our committee voted to change the first sentence of our Racial and Social Justice Pledge to use the word "equity" rather than "equality". We are totally excited about the upcoming roll-out of The Justice Project to all our members!
Update May 1, 2021. Our committee chairs and the Board of Directors were excited to meet with Mariama Boney, LMSW, CAE, an expert on molding diversity, equity and inclusion into organizations. We've got a road map for our work!
Educate yourself! Committee recommended educational resources |
Systemic Racism Explained (4 min) 13th - A must-see to understand how slavery exists today (1 hr 40 min) |