The Second Tuesday Race Forum is a community of individuals concerned with the issue of race/racism and its ongoing impact on our society. We provide a safe, non-judgmental, forum for inter-racial discussions and individual discernment.
Our Goals:
- Put current events in an historical context
- See the way race permeates every aspect of our lives
- Develop a common vocabulary
- Support individual growth
- Provide tools for participants to talk with others about racial issues
- Seek to overcome institutional racism and its systems of dominance and oppression
Our history:
In 1997, Joyce Meskis of the Tattered Cover Book Store and Clara Villarosa of the Hueman Book Store sponsored the first interracial conversation meeting as a book promotion event for the Report of President Clinton's Commission on Race Relations. The group has been meeting monthly since then (for 21 years in 2019) from September to May, with Harold Fields facilitating, with a pot luck celebration for Juneteenth, and summers off.
How you can find us:
We meet from 7 - 9 PM on the second Tuesday on most months in the basement of the Park Hill United Methodist Church on the corner of Montview Blvd and Glencoe St in Denver (entrance in the back off the parking lot on Glencoe St). You can drop in without an invitation or reservation. If you want to be sure we are meeting before you come, and to know what our topic for an evening is, you can contact us using the email address under " Contact Us" to send us a request. We will gladly put you on our mailing list to get a monthly notice of our meeting with the topic of the month as well as other timely notices of relevant events in Denver.
Our Logo:
MPATAPO
The "knot of reconciliation" is a symbol of reconciliation and peacemaking.
Mpatapo represents the bond or knot that binds parties in a dispute to a peaceful, harmonious reconciliation. It is a symbol of peacemaking after strife.
http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra/mpat.htm
Our Facilitators
Dena R. Samuels, PhD is an Associate Professor in Women’s and Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs (UCCS), and received the university’s Outstanding Instructor Award. As Director of UCCS’ Matrix Center for the Advancement of Social Equity and Inclusion and through her consulting firm: Dena Samuels Consulting ( www.DenaSamuels.com , dena@denasamuels.com), she provides keynotes, seminars, and executive coaching consultation to schools, campuses, nonprofits and organizations nationally and internationally on the processes of integrating diversity and building inclusiveness. Samuels’ latest book, The Culturally Inclusive Educator: Preparing for a Multicultural World (Teachers College Press, 2014) offers transformative strategies for building cultural inclusiveness. Her next book will provide mindfulness practices for self-empowerment and for building relationships across social difference as an antidote to social injustice. Samuels volunteers as co-facilitator of the monthly Second Tuesday Race Forum of Denver, and also serves as a culturally inclusive, trauma-sensitive yoga instructor.
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is the Founder of The Inclusiveness Project, dba iProject LLC; a business dedicated to helping organizations promote culturally positive experiences by creating a space for self-reflection, discovery, learning, sharing and development. She has been an advocate and optimist in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for over 12 years. She sees the journey as an opportunity to do better and be better together by moving away from fear, dispelling myths, and committing to taking actions that support an anti- racist environment.
She holds a B.A. in Business from Columbia College, and certifications in Change Management, Leadership in Working Groups and Technology of Participation (ToP) Facilitation Methods. She is determined to make a positive impact on the world by sharing her gifts where they can be of most benefit.
Harold Fields is active in restorative justice and racial reconciliation projects in Denver and around the nation. He has been the facilitator of our Second Tuesday Race Forum for many years. He was a founder of Multi-Racial Families of Colorado and was the national training director for the documentary Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, about the most prominent slave trade trading family in America. He currently serves on the Board Trustees for The Denver Foundation and chairs the Community Impact Committee.
Harold earned a degree in civil engineering from Oklahoma State University, and spent over 30 years with IBM and the airline as a systems designer and programming manager. He grew up in Tulsa with the survivors of the 1921 race riot as his teachers and mentors. This made a lasting imprint on him for seeking justice and civil rights. He’s part of a team that is planning a national truth and reconciliation movement that uses restorative justice as its foundation. He was deeply influenced by historians like John Hope Franklin and Vincent Harding to help us connect the dots from the past, through today’s events, and to a future vision that we jointly construct.
Second Tuesday Race Forum Flyer:
Click Here for a link to a PDF of a flyer that summarizes most of the content of this page along with a list of the monthly topics for several months in 2016.