FAIR News: Standing Up for Pro-Human Policies
FAIR News: Standing Up for Pro-Human Policies
Newsletter
FAIR Ontario Responds to ‘Racial Equity’ Bill 67
This week the FAIR Ontario chapter has responded to Bill 67, known as the Racial Equity in the Education System Act, as many Ontarians turned to FAIR for help. The bill aims to ensure that anti-racism and racial equity are key aspects of Ontario’s education system from kindergarten through post-secondary education. Submitted as a Private Member’s Bill, the bill has now passed a second reading and is awaiting social policy review committee hearings.
Despite the fact that Bill 67 was introduced months ago, there has been little press coverage until this week. Many Ontarians have been surprised that these substantial changes could be made to Ontario’s education system without much warning or public discussion or consideration.
While its proponents suggest this bill is “anti-racist,” our concern is that it will, in reality, further racism. The bill defines racism as “the use of socially constructed ideas of race to justify or support, whether consciously or subconsciously, the notion that one race is superior to another.” The bill’s proposed summary convictions for racist speech, as well as its requirements for teachers and council members to “have a proven commitment to racial equity or take anti-racism training,” runs the risk of inviting and affirming divisive ideological frameworks.
Read FAIR Ontario’s full comments on Bill 67 here.
FAIR To Be Featured in Listen First Project
This Friday (March 18th) FAIR will be the featured organization on the Listen First Project's “Listen First Friday.” Each week, the Listen First Project highlights one of its 400 coalition partners, who all share a commitment to building bridges between people who disagree and advancing civil liberties by first acknowledging our common humanity.
The Listen First Project aims “to make a special effort at least once a week to positively connect across differences with folks they naturally encounter and in more intentional conversations” in an effort to foster “connection, understanding, trust, grace, hope, and healing.”
Learn more about the Listen First Project here.
Become a Pro-Human Values Advocate
Are you ready to be an effective advocate for pro-human values in your community? You know in your heart of hearts our common culture of fairness, understanding, and humanity requires you to be civically engaged and actively organizing and advocating in your community.
But how do you get started?
We’ve got you covered with the FAIR Grassroots Leader Training series.
Register to learn practical tools for organizing your community, how to be a more effective advocate, and ways to create positive, bottom-up change in our culture and country. The sessions include:
Grassroots Leader Session 1 | Bottom-Up Organizing
Grassroots Leader Session 2 | Finding Your Place At FAIR
Grassroots Leader Session 3 | Organizing Your Organizing
Public Speaking Training | Keeping Your Audience Captivated
Register now for the next Grassroots Leader Training series.
Join the Movement—Intern at FAIR!
Do you value the civil rights and liberties of all individuals regardless of their skin color, ancestry, or other group identity? Are you interested in supporting and learning more about FAIR’s nonpartisan and pro-human mission, and how FAIR promotes fairness, understanding, and our common humanity? Then join us this summer as a FAIR Intern!
We are seeking highly motivated and open-minded undergraduate students and recent graduates for paid, full-time summer internships. Ideal candidates will value curiosity, compassion, and courage, coupled with communication and leadership skills and a passion for FAIR’s pro-human values and vision. This internship will provide you with real-world experience in a nonpartisan, dynamic, and mission-driven organization, while also empowering you to develop resources and become ambassadors for FAIR’s mission in your own communities.
Applications are due on April 8, 2022.
Visit our summer internship page for more information.
Have Something to Say? Write for Us
We want our FAIR Substack to be the go-to publication for people interested in sharing and reading diverse perspectives on culture and civil rights. Whether you’re a seasoned author or an amateur writer with a story to tell that contributes to our mission of promoting fairness, understanding, and humanity, we would love to receive your stories, opinions, investigations, reviews, interviews, and more!
Please submit your piece to submissions@fairforall.org
Submission guidelines:
Complete articles only (i.e. no “works in progress”).
No submissions that have already been published elsewhere.
We have no hard word count limits, but prefer submissions between 1000 and 2500 words.
In the email, please include a short personal introduction and brief (one paragraph) summary of the article.
We hope to hear from you!
FAIR Perspectives
Our guest this week is Chloé Valdary.
Chloé is a writer and entrepreneur whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Newsweek, USA Today, Tablet Magazine, The New York Post, and many other publications. She is also the founder of Theory of Enchantment, a startup that provides a compassionate version of anti-racism training, and hosts her own podcast entitled The Heart Speaks.
We talk about her new podcast, art and working in multiple mediums, her Theory of Enchantment and how it differs from other anti-racism programs, how pop culture can be a tool for teaching people how to love, how obsession with identity in art divides us, Beyoncé, The Kardashians, the victimhood mentality, responding versus reacting, and whether we can transcend race.
FAIR News Podcast
For audio versions of our FAIR News and FAIR Weekly Roundup newsletters, subscribe and listen to our FAIR News Podcast.
Stand Up for What You Believe In
This week, FAIR paralegal and FAIR in the Arts coordinator Reid Newton discussed how a new intolerant orthodoxy has suddenly swept across broad swaths of our society and culture.
It feels as if our culture pivoted overnight. Whether you’re a woman, LGBT, or a racial minority, you are now expected to hold a specific set of views based solely on your group identity. If you’re a woman with the wrong views, you’ll be called a “gender traitor.” LGBT and the wrong views? You’re a “TERF.” Black and the wrong views? You’re an “Uncle Tom.”
To stray outside of the through line of acceptable jargon is heresy, even sacrilege. One misstep, and exile is on the table.
Although Newton has lost friends and received abuse for disagreeing with certain ideological tenets—such as the insistence that we should all center our identities around our immutable traits—she maintains that “the fear of these things is a lot worse than the actual things themselves,” and calls upon everyone to be brave and stand up for what they believe in.
FAIR Wellness Webinars
Every Tuesday (the first four Tuesdays of the month) from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. EST, FAIR Advisor Zander Keig will be hosting a series of FREE Wellness Webinars for FAIR members.
FAIR Diversity Training
Meet FAIR Diversity: What It Means to Be Pro-Human
For all FAIR Members and volunteers. These events are typically held on the last Monday of each month.
Monday, March 28th, 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. EST
FAIR Chapter Events
Chapter Events
March 17th:
FAIR San Bernardino Chapter Meeting
7:30 p.m. PST, RSVP
March 19th:
FAIR Washington - PESB Educational Advocacy Info Session and Q&A
5:00 p.m. PST, REGISTER
March 31st:
FAIR Atlanta - "How do I talk about Pro-human values?" with FAIR Advisor Zander Keig
6:00 p.m. EST, REGISTER
Chapter Leader Training
March 21st:
Chapter Leader Series 1: Pro-human Approach to Inclusive Dialogue
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. EST,
Meeting ID: 859 8742 9884
March 23rd:
Chapter Leader Series 2: Pro-human Approach to Inclusive Leadership
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. EST
Meeting ID: 868 8969 6734
April 6th:
Chapter Leader Series 3: Now What? (follow-up debrief (pilot))
MUST have attended both a Series 1 AND a Series 2 training
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. EST
Meeting ID: 851 0018 9385
FAIR Educator Alliance ‘Happy Hour’
Teachers often feel isolated and alone in their schools, but FAIR is here for you! The FAIR Educators Alliance brings together educators from all levels to share experiences and concerns and work on developing resources that can support teachers, community members, and FAIR chapters.
We have an informal “happy hour” every Thursday evening at 8 p.m. EST, and we also hold more formal monthly meetings that will address issues based on your interests and needs.
We welcome all teachers and hope you will get connected.
For more information, contact educators@fairforall.org or, for Canadian educators, contact educators-canada@fairforall.org.
The Zoom link to our weekly happy hour can be found here.
Join the FAIR Community
Become a FAIR volunteer or to join a FAIR chapter:
Join a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission, or watch a previously recorded session in the Members section of www.fairforall.org.
Sign the FAIR Pledge for a common culture of fairness, understanding and humanity.
Join the FAIR community to connect and share information with other members.
Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.