Wee Chalk The Walk: #Family Day of Action

Follow the Family Summer 4 Black Lives Facebook page for updates on social media, or visit the Raising Luminaries #FamilySummer4BlackLives main page for the full summer schedule.

These events have been Coordinated by Wee The People, Revolutionary Humans, The Philly Children’s Movement, MassArt’s Center For Art And Community Partnerships, and Raising Luminaries.

Day 1: Make The Time

These family actions are designed to take less than an hour each day, and are primarily created for non-Black and white families.

Today – we’re setting expectations and our intentions for this summer.

1. Light a candle (or several) for the Black and Brown lives impacted and lost to the pandemic, to racism, and to White supremacist ideology.
2. Gather as a family without distractions, and start talking.
   1. Why do we care about fighting anti-Black racism, and how is our family impacted by it?
   2. What actions have we taken in the past? What have we learned from those actions?
   3. In what ways are we, or people in our community, complicit in upholding systemic racism?
   4. What are our family goals for fighting anti-Black racism this summer?
   5. What steps is our family taking to learn more?
   6. What specific summer actions can we commit to doing with the power we have, today?
   7. What questions do our kids have?

Day 2: Commit To Taking Action

Today’s action is designed for non-Black people of color & white families, while Black families rest, resist, and celebrate  with Wee The People’s Chalk The Walk Playlist & Reading List.

1. Bookmark, download, or print the Police Brutality Family Action Toolkit we’ll be using for the rest of our actions.
   In this resource, you’ll find a word bank to help explain complicated terms with kids, templates for advocacy letters, a bingo chart of kid-friendly actions, and resources to learn more.
2. Read the Hey Grownups Letter on page 3 of the toolkit.
3. Choose three non-Black friends with young kids who are interested in anti-racism. to share this toolkit with. Using the Hey Grownups Letter as a template, adjust as needed to explain why you’re sending it to them, and send the toolkit to them.
4. Stay Accountable: Re-post the toolkit on social media, affirming your engagement for action – and ask if anyone is willing to join you and help hold you accountable by checking in to see how your family is taking action for the next days and weeks.

Day 3: Commit To Hard Conversations

Today’s action is designed for non-Black people of color & white families, while Black families rest, resist, and celebrate  with Wee The People’s Chalk The Walk Playlist & Reading List.

1. Read the guidelines by Raising The Resistance: Talking About Police Brutality
2. Together as a family, review & discuss the 8 Talking Points for Families from the Police Brutality Family Action Toolkit
3. If kids seem antsy, put questions down, but not the conversation. Commit to a time that you will come back to it, and make it clear with kids that this is an uncomfortable conversation that is not optional.

Day 4: Be a Poet Advocate

Today’s action is designed to be affirming for Black families and the first step in public advocacy for families of color & white families. Whether Black families choose to keep this poem as an affirmation, or choose to self-advocate with them is up to them. Non-Black families should be mindful of how to proceed with these poems, without heading into saviorism.

1. Read the guidelines for how to be a poet advocate and the getting started guide on the Police Brutality Family Action Toolkit on how to support your child in creating an advocacy poem.
2. Be available with the word bank to support writers in creating their poems.
3. Assist pre-writers in creating their 8-word poem collage with the visual poet guide.

Day 5: Advocate Outside The Home

Black families may choose to display their poems at home as an affirmation, or share this poem in solidarity with others. For non-Black families, however, this step mandatory.

1. Follow the write a poem for your neighbor guide.
2. Choose a safe neighbor: Think about the difference between discomfort and danger in choosing a neighbor to share your child’s poem and companion letter with. Remember that you don’t have to put your family in actual physical danger – but you will have to be willing to have uncomfortable conversations. It can be hard to tell the difference. To figure it out, ask yourself: “Am I afraid to speak up because they will disagree? Or am I afraid to speak up because they might become violent?”
3. Adults – ask your child if they would like you to use the Caregiver Companion Letter Template to support them as they speak out, or if they’d like you to back them up in another way.

Day 6: Choose Actions That Are Life Affirming

1. Together with your child, review the actions on the kid-friendly collaborative action bingo. Try to aim for actions that are life-affirming, that appeal to your unique family resources and abilities. Tweak them if you need to.
2. Choose five actions to take over the next five days. Mark them in a visual calendar and tape it to the wall so kids can check them off as they go.
3. Ask your child if they’d like to invite 1-2 friends to join them in these actions (accountability buddies), and invite them to collaborate.

Days 7-13: Collaborative Action Bingo!

1. Follow through on your calendar of actions!
2. Check in with the accountability buddies you made on day 2 (for adults) and day 6 (for kids)
3. Talk with your accountability buddies about what you’ve learned with each action, what challenges you’ve hit, and what you’re looking forward to.

Day 14: Chalk The Walk

Via Wee The People:

1. Talk with kids and neighbors and create some bold, artful messaging for everyone who walks by. What do you want them to know and do right now? What kind of change do you want to see in the world?
2. SAY THEIR NAMES: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd — each one of them belonged to their own loved ones, their own families, their own communities. Design their names in chalk, in a notebook, on a T-shirt, with a paintbrush. Let the world know that their lives mattered.

Content

1. For inspiration, check out what #WeeChalkTheWalk families have posted on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
2. For an incomplete list of some of the most recent Black people killed by police in the US (as of June 2020), visit Know Their Names.
3. As your kids write the names of beloved people killed – talk about who they were. Who loved them, what they did for fun, who they helped in their lives. This is on us as adults to help kids understand these are more than hashtags and labels – they were people.
4. What was it like trying to find humane details on victims of police violence? How many websites did you have to dig through before you found one that didn’t reduce them to a name, an act of violence, and journalists and judges excusing their deaths?
5. Are you willing to write #BlackLivesMatter? If you’re not Black, and you’re nervous to write it – why?

Share

1. Take a photo of their work – get their consent before posting it to social media (tag it with #WeeChalkTheWalk) and explain in this post what it meant to do this as a family.

Follow-Up: How Has This Action Lingered?

Leave a comment – how are these actions impacting your family?