We at the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild stand with the Black Lives Matter movement’s campaign against violence and systemic racism towards Black people, and support them in advocating for freedom, liberation, and justice.
The murder of George Floyd, and the protests that have followed, has reaffirmed what has always been true: that systemic racism is woven into our daily lives. White people are the beneficiaries of this system, and at the expense of people of color.
The Chippewa Valley Writers Guild believes words are vitally important. Words launch movements, educate, build empathy, and shape the world. But beyond words, our actions matter, too.
As outlined on our website, the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild is open to all. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, ancestry, color, age, familial status, disability, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, lawful sources of income, national origin, or any other discriminatory practice. Our door is open.
And yet our door is not open nearly enough. We acknowledge that our organization’s own privileges, combined with institutional policies and practices, has created the conditions that make it easy to overlook systemic racism within our group. To rectify this, we must take a much closer look at ourselves, and our organization. We must acknowledge our shortcomings, too.
Since our founding in 2016, our organization has failed to adequately recruit Black, Brown, Indigenous, and all people of color both in our membership and as our guest speakers and presenters. We will redouble our outreach efforts, as well as continue to make fundamental changes to our offerings, in order to more fully become an inclusive organization. We are committed to elevating and centering underrepresented voices in all facets of our organization and will seek out every opportunity to do so.
Since our founding in 2016, our organization has failed to adequately recruit Black, Brown, Indigenous, and all people of color both in our membership and as our guest speakers and presenters. We will redouble our outreach efforts, as well as continue to make fundamental changes to our offerings, in order to more fully become an inclusive organization. We are committed to elevating and centering underrepresented voices in all facets of our organization and will seek out every opportunity to do so.
Additionally, we will draw greater attention to inequities in the publishing industry, both locally and nationally. In the United States, the voices and perspectives of white writers are still overwhelmingly elevated over writers of color. Not because these stories are somehow more valuable or valid, but because of deep-seated structural inequities that exist in publishing, educational institutions, and the media. As a service to our Guild members and anyone else who needs it, we’ve assembled a partial list of resources on how to collectively rectify this. Click here to view the list.
Finally, we pledge to work with our partner organizations—the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, Pablo Center at the Confluence, and the UWEC Foundation, among others—to ensure that equity, diversity, and inclusivity remains at the core of our shared mission to help create a more equitable world.
Together we can—and must—do better. And we will, by way of our words and actions.