Interpersonal group works to build community and drive social change

By Regan Bullers Redstone Review

LYONS – Last school year, I had the privilege of co-facilitating monthly meetings of a group of a dozen or so inquisitive, thoughtful, and caring community members in Lyons’ first SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) seminar. The SEED Project trains individuals (including me) to facilitate ongoing local seminars within their communities to drive per- sonal, organizational, and societal change toward greater equity and diversity.

I attended SEED New Leaders Training in August, 2022, and with former Adult Programming and Communications Librarian Vicky Reinold, planned and led threehour sessions from September to May with our first cohort of participants. For over 27 total class time hours, and over four and a half hours on their own, these community members dedicated themselves to examining their own histories, sharing their stories, and then listening to the stories of others so that they could better understand how society-wide systems of oppression work to uplift some and marginalize others.

These participants overwhelmingly responded on our end-of-session survey that they would recommend the SEED seminar to others. Their favorite parts were the small group discussions and the building of community with other participants. They also indicated that they would take something they learned from our sessions and use it in their lives to challenge a system of oppression.

These systems are sometimes hard to see, especially if you’ve unconsciously benefited from them. In SEED there is no blame, no shame, and no guilt. It is not about making people feel badly about who they are. Rather, SEED challenges participants to become more aware of their positionality in regards to different systems, specifically the ways particular parts of our identities, including our race, class, age, gender identity, ability, immigrant status, or sexual identity, put us in position to benefit from or be harmed by these systems. Once we are able to see the systems, we are in a position to act to expose them to others, interrupt, and ultimately dismantle them to make a more equitable and just society.

In an effort to bring some of this systems awareness to a broader audience, the 202223 Lyons SEED seminar cohort has arranged for a showing of the critically acclaimed documentary, This is [Not] Who We Are, directed by Katrina Miller and Beret Strong, about the distance between

Boulder’s self-image of progressive, liberal, and inclusive, and the lived reality of many of its Black residents. The film will be screened on Tuesday, August 29, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and will include a question-and-answer session with Director Katrina Miller. We hope many in the Lyons Community will join us for this opportunity to gain windows into the experiences of Black people in Boulder County.

In addition, a second Lyons’ SEED sem-