The Ecotopia Bike Tour touches by it’s nature on many aspects of life where people with racial privilege will have a different experience than those without, for example crossing borders, hitchhiking to the bike tour, dumpster diving, camping in places where people may not expect us… We also find that during the bike tour, we often lack understanding of each other’s struggles. While Ecotopia has the values of antiracism and “trying to be open for all” we also find aspects of our own biases back in how we organize. It should also be noted that the bike tour remains mostly white, which results in an environment where we are more cautious when inviting our friends of color as we are uncertain they will feel supported within the bike tour. Something needs to change.
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This is why this year, we start the Ecotopia Antiracism Reading Circle! The next months we will have weekly meetings to learn together. Half of the meetings we will work through the reflection questions of the book Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad. The other half of the meetings we will learn about a range of topics that relate more specifically to the bike tour, such as borders and migration, passport privilege, racism in the European context, concrete tools on how to counter racism, and white supremacy within spaces that ecotopia draws from, such as the outdoor communities, leftist spaces, and queer spaces.
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Although the bike tour would be better for it, our goal is not necessarily to build a more diverse bike tour. People should always decide on an individual basis whether they want to join and there being more marginalized people on the bike tour doesn’t mean we have unlearned our bigotry. Our goal is to build a bike tour where marginalized people feel welcome when they decide to join, and where we improve ourselves and help each other learn.
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The Ecotopia bike tour is the people in it. Through educating ourselves, unlearning our own biases, learning to recognize white supremacy and other racism, and learning how to react to it and counter it, we are changing the bike tour.
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The reading circle is open to everyone who is interested in addressing white supremacy in Ecotopia and beyond. The meetings where we work through Me and White Supremacy will be most relevant to those of us with racial privilege, while we expect the meetings about broader topics to be interesting to a broader group of people. The meetings will be held online over Jitsi, and we aim to make the meetings accessible for those who want to join. Preparation or reading the materials beforehand is encouraged but not required.
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The reading circle will be on Sundays at 20:00 Central European Time. The schedule for the upcoming sessions is as follows:
- December 22 Me and White Supremacy p33-39 “day 1”
- December 29 Passport oppression
- January 5 Me and White Supremacy “day 2”
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Contact us (info@ecotopiabiketour.net) or join the signal group for the reading circle with this link: https://signal.group/#CjQKIHR-AsZyba0wNvdGLsN45qpDQ9CHK5rWzTGUGfCZPAk_EhDtSj3zMn_HIrOyZ3w4JUiH and we will send you the link and the reading material for the upcoming sessions.
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See you there and happy learning!