Chris Crass
he/him
Chris Crass has been building up white anti-racist organizing leadership, culture, strategy, and movement for over 35 years, and for the past decade, focused on white guy organizing for racial, gender and economic justice around the country.
As a young person growing up in white working class family and majority working class communities, he saw the ways that racism, misogyny, homophobia divide and pit people against each other, to maintain structural inequality. This led to a calling to build up multiracial, feminist, working class-based movements. He was trained, mentored and worked alongside movement veterans influenced by the Southern socialist organizing tradition of the Highlander Center, Ella Baker, Howard Zinn, and Anne and Carl Braden.
He was a founder of the anti-racist movement building center, the Catalyst Project in 2000, and was part of the cohort of leaders that came together to form and build up SURJ in 2009 (Showing Up for Racial Justice). He has worked with and supported hundreds of white anti-racist organizing efforts around the country. From SURJ chapters, to community groups, unions, and teaching online courses with White Awake/Comrades Education, to develop positive culture, leadership and momentum for social justice action. Rooted in his Unitarian Universalism, he works with congregations, seminaries, and religious activists to build the Religious Left.
In the past 10 years he has focused specifically on organizing white men as part of multiracial feminist movement building. This has including helping support groups focused on this task, supporting caucuses for white men in SURJ chapters, and leading political education courses, like “Defecting from Supremacy: organizing white men for collective liberation”. Since 2023, he is a leader with the Perennial Sunflower Project, building up a vibrant ecosystem of leaders, organizations, and efforts organizing white men and boys, in large numbers, for racial, gender, and economic justice.
He is the author of Towards Collective Liberation: anti-racist organizing, feminist praxis, and movement building strategy and Towards the “Other America”: Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter. He is a Dad, living in Louisville, Kentucky, raising his kids to become Jedi.
Overview: Chris Crass dives into the need for white people to bring positive, liberatory leadership in our communities, groups, and efforts. Leadership to help white communities get free from the nightmare of white supremacy and join in broad-based movements to defeat authoritarianism and advance multiracial feminist democracy.
Interview with Ancestral Ground Collective member Jeff Conant.
