Beyond Us and Them: Follow Up Conversations

After participating in Beyond Us and Them, the next step is to continue conversations and begin putting plans of action into motion. In the posts below, you can discuss the breakthrough sessions you participated in and share ideas to continue working to make Silicon Valley a welcoming and inclusive community that stands up to bias and hate.

Action Steps: A Launch Pad for New Activity

After participating in Beyond Us and Them, where do you see room for improvement in your community? What can you do as an individual to fight hate? What actions will you take to make Silicon Valley a model of diversity, acceptance, and respect?

When The Population Shifts

How is your community changing? What will you do to promote cultural exchange and understanding in your community?

New Models for Confronting Bullying and Harassment at School

How do bullying and harassment in schools affect the community as a whole? How can we teach young people not only to not participate in bullying and harassment, but to stand up against these things in constructive ways? What models have you seen, and how do they work?

Welcome To Our Town: Creating Safe and Inclusive Communities

Many people feel that Silicon Valley is already a safe and inclusive community. After this event, what do you think? Where is there room for work and improvement, and what successes should be celebrated? How important is public awareness of a community’s commitment to diversity and inclusion?

Communities of Faith: Standing Against Bias

There are many different faith communities in Silicon Valley. If you belong to a faith community, how do issues of diversity, bias, and intolerance come up there? Could interfaith initiatives be helpful for sharing ideas about preventing bias incidents in addition to promoting understanding of different faiths?

The Challenge of Diversity in the Workplace

How does your workplace deal with the challenges of diversity? What ideas did you hear today that you could bring back to your own workplace? Share your own ideas and experiences.

Working Together With Law Enforcement

Did you learn more about how your local law enforcement is addressing issues of hate and bias? How can you work with them to prevent bias incidents? As law enforcement representatives, did you gain any insights about how to respond to bias incidents? How can you help to strengthen relations between your community and law enforcement?

Why "Beyond Us and Them"?

Why are we asking you to give up half a day to engage in a discussion about how to address intolerance?

Short Answer: Because we believe this community has the capacity to provide new models for preventing hate crimes that can be used by people across the country and around the world. This event is designed to spark action deep inside our communities that will raise awareness about bias and create an atmosphere that may help us to prevent hate crimes.

Not In Our Town is a national movement of civic leaders and community activists to address hate and bias in proactive, unifying ways. For the past twelve years, The Working Group has been documenting Not In Our Town stories of communities who are working together to address intolerance and prevent hate crimes. As these towns become engaged, they help build on a social innovation model that becomes more nimble and sophisticated as it progresses. Although the first two Not In Our Town films were created for a national PBS audience several years ago, we teamed up with KQED to create a first-ever regional special, Not In Our Town: When Hate Happens Here.

Our early screenings of this film for Palo Alto school leaders, students and teachers launched a deep and moving discussion—but more importantly, it led to action. Palo Alto Schools are now planning their third year of Not In Our School activities. Last year, we received a grant from Silicon Valley Community Foundation to plan two events that would help broaden the discussion and launch new action in other communities in the Mid Peninsula. The Not In Our School Event last November sparked a lively and meaningful discussion among three hundred students from Mountain View, Los Altos and St. Francis High Schools. (We’ll screen a short film clip from this event on March 13.) We look forward to follow-up action from students and school leaders.

It takes effort and sometimes courage to step out of our comfort zones to talk about bias and prejudice. But in the words of Billings, Montana Police Chief Wayne Inman who helped inspire the Not In Our Town movement, “Silence is acceptance.” We hope you will engage and speak out at this Not In Our Town event—and then take new ideas and actions into your community. We’d like to document your stories—and what you do next--and tell the world in our films and the on new social networking site we’re developing.

We look forward to learning from you.