The April 5th Keynote event, A Conversation Between Friends about Race and Joy with Ben Philippe and Luis Correa is now available to watch:

It was an inspiring, heartwarming, and sometimes enraging conversation. Some of our favorite quotable moments:

"Silence is not neutral."

"It's not about the intention, it's about the impact."

The event was the official launch of SIBA's 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge. Over 75 people have already signed up to take the Challenge, including many booksellers, librarians, and book industry people nation-wide.

Registration will remain open until Sunday, April 11th. Register here

The self-guided Challenge consists of a daily email prompt to encourage reflection on the ways racism manifests in our lives and our communities, along with some suggested actions to take to counter it and resources to help us work for change. Prompts will also be posted on the Challenge blog, and more resources added as we continue.

SIBA encourages its member stores to make the Challenge available to their staff. Some bookstores have contacted us to say they will be taking the Challenge as a group, which is wonderful to hear. We were especially impressed with the response from Julie Wilder of Spiral Circle Bookstore in Orlando, Florida on the subject of store owners taking this journey with their staff (quoted with permission):

"Since we are in constant talks about this issue, I was able to pull aside my Black, Brown and Asian staff to let them know this was happening before I announced to the rest of the staff and let them know that they could opt-out at any point, that their trauma was not up for consumption for the rest of the staff unless they were willing to share, etc and to make sure they knew I would have their back throughout this process."

Wilder has worked out a comprehensive plan for the Challenge that includes regular communication with her staff, in-store meetings, and integration into their already ongoing work on anti-racist training in their store. "We are not a perfect organization," she said in her announcement to staff, "and there are microaggressions that exist in our environment. The goal here is to create a culture in which none of us feel we have to endure essentially sexist, racists, ableist, etc behaviors from one another or our patrons and discover a way to effectively, compassionately and firmly disallow this to perpetuate in our culture."

See the store's posted Anti-Racist Commitments