Jews as Black Allies

“I think maybe we’ve been silent for a while and now need to start speaking again.”

(Update: Scroll down for archive recordings of the panel discussion)

Rachel Amaru is a member of a new activist group in Boulder rooted in the Jewish Community.

JABA (Jews As Black Allies) which has been mobilized by and in collaboration with the Black Lives Matter Movement and Denver Freedom Riders. Amaru says Jews played an important role in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and she says the Jewish community needs to get more involved in the current civil rights movement – the Black Lives Matter movement “there’s a sense that you have to speak out and you have to be there for people and I think that’s a core part of Judaism, in terms of social justice and activism.”

Jews as Black Allies kgnu

JABA is holding its first event on Thursday, May 28th from 7-9pm at Congregation Nevei Kodesh, 1925 Glenwood Drive, Boulder. A panel discussion “Will I Be Silent?”: Understanding the New Jim Crow is a basic and intense education on the Black Lives Matter Movement and police brutality, with a focus on the panelists’ individual experiences, in the context of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Panelists include Angela Sanders and Vince Bowen, both Denver-based Black Lives Matter Activists; Dr. Anne Rice-Jones, educator and faith activist; Derrick Jones, Independent Documentary Film Director; and Darren O’Connor, Boulder activist. It will be moderated by CU Associate Professor of Literacy and activist for marginalized student literacies and identities, SJ Miller.

This event is aimed at members of the larger Boulder County faith community and public who equally either want to become allies to the Black Lives Matter movement or feel unaware of the national and local experience of systemic racism.

May 28 Panel Discussion Recording, part 1: