^THE JOHN BROWN PARTY.ORG

...Summoning his Spirit, Celebrating his Courage & Nurturing the New Abolitionism...

TheJohnBrownParty (JBP) is a collaborative thinktank that is dedicated to inspiring, supporting, questioning, and challenging radical white antiracists who are insistent--unrelentingly and unapologetically--on expediting the movement of the world in the direction of love, justice, equity, and liberation.

Background & Overview

The JBP Forum

The JBP Community

Links and Other Goodies

About Us/Contact Us

JBP Intros

JBP Purpose

JBP Manifesto

JBP Terminology

THE JOHN BROWN PARTY INTRODUCTIONS

Greetings and welcome to the John Brown Party (JBP)...a collaborative think tank for radical antiracist white folks* who are deeply disturbed by the persistence and pervasiveness of racial oppression throughout our world (yes, even when we would prefer to minimize or ignore its permanence!), who are further troubled by the precariousness of our positions as its propagators and benefactors (yes, even when we claim to identify as allies to its victims and survivors!), and who are still undeterred and unwavering in our commitments to bring about its abolition by any means necessary (yes, even when that means just getting the heck out of the way!).

In other words, JBP is a virtual meeting place for antiracist white folks who want to engage, disrupt and dismantle white supremacy rather than continue to possessively invest in its functioning...who want to nurture certain aspects of, what the folks at Race Traitor call, the New Abolitionism.  

Therefore, the purpose of the JBP website is twofold: 

(1) to identify, examine and replicate certain radical white antiracist principles, perspectives, and practices that have contributed, however minimally, to the movement of the world in the direction of justice, love, equity, and liberation;

AND

(2) to provide white folks, in particular, with the personal, social, psychological, and ideological resources, strategies, and support systems necessary to ultimately help expedite such a movement.

JBP is a site for commemorating and conferencing...a refuge for rejoicing and reflecting...a place for inspiring personal awareness, reinforcing group accountability, and mobilizing collective action. It is an opportunity for white folks to renew our commitments, to question our beliefs, and to reinvigorate our passion and resolve.  It is a site for white folks to come together and teach, challenge and learn from one another so we can begin to take responsibility for educating ourselves or, as James Baldwin may have said, to take responsibility for freeing ourselves so that others may be free.

In following, JBP is founded upon the following assumptions that white folks:

CAN and OUGHT to be personally accountable for and socially active in dismantling racial oppression—that white people (regardless of social class, political affiliation, or life experience) have invariably contributed to and profited from white supremacy and thus have inescapable ethical duties to utilize our relatively empowered voices, platforms, and positions to truly decenter and disempower its features, functioning, and fallout;

CAN and OUGHT to be agents of meaningful and lasting change even if we are simultaneously invested in contributing to and benefiting from the maintenance and perpetuation of the status quo;

CAN and OUGHT to be critical examiners and contentious activists even if it is more personally and professionally rewarding to remain unaware, apathetic and disengaged;

CAN and OUGHT to stay awake to the pain of it all even if it is easier to become paralyzed by our own confusion, guilt, remorse, anxiety, and fear;

CAN and OUGHT to work together with other white people, challenging and supporting one another instead of passively waiting for folks of color to do the work for us—to embrace responsibility for abolishing racial apartheid instead of recusing ourselves from it; to conceptualize racism as our problem, not their problem; to imagine transformative solutions aimed at helping white people instead of developing strategies that tacitly assign blame, show pity, or reveal contempt for folks of color; to fight against racism in communities where we are likely to empathize rather than in communities where we are likely to pathologize;

CAN AND OUGHT to recognize that our struggles and triumphs are intimately linked to and furthered by the work of folks of color who have never been recognized, who are seldom thanked, and who are often demonized; to do transformative work without accolades or applause, without recognition or appreciation, without expectation of gratitude or the provision of an exceptional status;

CAN AND OUGHT to be a primary part of the solution even if we are invariably the primary part of the problem;

CAN AND OUGHT to do so, whatever it means and whatever it takes...

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*JBP understands that the utilization of this term is wrought with problems and contradictions.  For a more nuanced explanation of its usage, please see the JBP Forum post, On Radical White Antiracism.