Our members share their thoughts about the resources they keep in their activist library:

Anti-Oppression

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh — A faded xerox of this article was handed to me as I started to move within the St. Louis social justice circles. It opened my eyes to intersectionality and challenged me to confront my own white privilege and begin the difficult work of unlearning racism. — C.J.

Sidenote: “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh was originally published in WILPF’s Peace and Freedom magazine in 1989.

Human Dynamics

’Social Equality – The Challenge of Today’ by Rudolf Dreikurs, M.D. copyright 1971 — [I] was becoming aware of Adlerian Psychology when my kids were 3 and 5 through Parenting Groups. It opened up a new world of Democratic principles, words like Social Equality, and Social Interest. The parenting groups stressed using democratic principles for raising your children, giving them as much freedom to make decisions as age appropriate and safe as you could. It brought home the idea that a democracy gives all humans the freedom to do or be what they want provided it doesn’t infringe on the rights or others. A mother is not a doormat, a child is not inferior. Democracy should take away ’superior’ ‘inferior’ adjectives for people. — P.F.