IndyTV #10 Myra Brown organizer with ARM
Channel: Rochester Indymedia
Date: 2016-09-24

Rochester ARM (Anti-Racism Movement) has been instrumental in the recent struggle by community members to hold WHAM (Radio 1180) accountable for the racist, sexist and generally derogatory remarks of Bob Lonsberry, a local right-wing radio talk show host. But the group has been involved in a whole array of proactive programs to lead our community in the project to dismantle institutional racism throughout the past two years. This week on our 10th week of the new IndyTV, ARM organizer Myra Brown, joins us to discuss some of these activities. In our interview, Myra Brown outlines the importance of confronting the way we've been socialized; "We have to be willing to recognize that we've learned a lot of stuff wrong about each other. We have to be willing to unlearn those old socializations that have taught us that certain groups are scary, certain groups are incompetent, certain groups are more competent; that taught us that there is this transparent preference for whiteness and anything that doesn't fit into that should be put into the category as outsider.... We have to be willing to have conversations and have listening revolutions, to listen to other peoples' experience in the world and in our own cities and in institutions...we have to take some courage to create opportunities to hear what is hard to hear to make visible what seems invisible"