WITF’s Toward Racial Justice — Conversations to educate, engage and inspire change.
Toward Racial Justice is WITF’s digital conversation series addressing systemic racism and injustice in Central Pennsylvania and beyond. To develop the series, we called upon the voice and perspective of a diverse organizing committee. It includes six community members and several WITF staff members. We’ve also partnered with Charles Ellison to host and moderate the bi-weekly web streams. Ellison is the executive producer and host of Reality Check on WURD in Philadelphia — the only Black-owned talk radio station in Pennsylvania. Launched in June 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, WITF felt compelled to provide a civil and safe space for people in community to talk open and frankly about institutional racism, mental health, housing discrimination, education, environmental and juvenile justice, and more.
After over 25 virtual events, production on the series paused over summer while our team worked to develop and host a series of listening sessions. We focused on three communities and asset mapped a list of local residents, young people, leaders and racial justice accomplices and allies. We wanted to hear their ideas and concerns around race, identity, and opportunity (or lack of) in our community. How can we achieve racial justice and help dismantle systemic racism in our community together?
In October we hosted three virtual listening sessions via Zoom. Each one was attended by 15-20 community members. We organized breakout rooms. WITF hosts, reporters, producers, and editors moderated 90-minute intimate conversations. We also enlisted the help and expertise of WITF's new Chief Impact Officer and a design firm WITF is working with on a brand analysis/relaunch. The firm served as scribes/notetakers and helped us synthesize the results.
We received powerful feedback that could strengthen Toward Racial Justice and help us re-envision how WITF presents these conversations in the future. Areas of opportunity include:
Continue to educate our core FM/TV audiences about the existence and pervasiveness of institutional racism and inspire them to become agents of change.
Focus on solutions by highlighting people, programs and organizations taking positive steps toward racial justice in our community.
Be a convenor. WITF is uniquely positioned to be able to connect the people, programs and organizations working toward justice--bringing them together to collaborate and work together. WITF is the spark, they are the flame.
Uplift BIPOC storytellers and creators in Central PA by forging new content partnerships.
The listening sessions are one way we, as an organization, can demonstrate our reciprocal relationship with central Pennsylvanians while also identifying new stories, sources, stakeholders, and relationships. Through this gathering and others coming up like it, we plan to produce multiple stories, source panels for our in-person live events, gather audio, and generate leads for future collaborations.
WITF is proud of the relationships we’re slowly beginning to cultivate. Building trust, truly listening and uplifting traditionally unheard voices takes time. We’re committed to engaging emerging audiences and working together to create impactful content that matters.
