Drylongso Award 2020

Community Change, Inc. invites you to an evening of celebration and a virtual tour into the many racial justice programs CCI has fostered locally and regionally. Come see your friends and hear about our new Racial Healing Project or order a drink from our online bartenders. See you there!

We honor the courage and persistence of ordinary people doing extraordinary anti-racism work to confront our nation’s racial history. In this entertaining and interactive event we will be inviting our supporters on a virtual tour into the many racial justice programs CCI has fostered locally and regionally.

Friday, November 13th

6:30-8:30 PM, Celebration & Virtual Gala

CCI Virtual Studios

Throughout this intense and challenging year the CCI staff and volunteer leadership has continued developing and offering our programming to keep on taking our place in the local, national and global anti-racism UpRising.

In this energetic and interactive online event, each room you choose will offer brief and energetic ways to experience the full breadth of CCI's work and to witness the cultural voice of our movement thru poetry and song. We are especially looking forward to sharing our new Racial Healing Project and unveiling our Theory of Change together!

One week after the election, make a date to take a night out with your chosen movement family as we move forward together in the face of all the forces trying to stop us or slow us down. You may even get to order a unique virtual drink to satisfy your wildest dreams for the UpRising from one of our Movement Mixologists!

Dr. S. Atyia Martin

Keynote Speaker

Susan Naimark

2020 Drylongso Celebration Honoree

6:30 PM - 7:00 PM

Gala Networking & CCI Virtual Studios
Experience how CCI connects you to the Movement

White People Challenging Racism Room: Your Personal Action Plan

Boston Knapsack Group Room: Can We Talk?

​Racial Healing Project Room: We Need All of Us to Get There

SURJB Room: Get Involved with Showing Up for Racial Justice / Boston

CCI Mixologists Room: Our Bartender's Create Drinks for What You Crave

Movement Self-Care: Experience Healing Exercises to Calm, Center and Stay Lively

​The UpRising Studio: Feel the Spirit of the Movement in Poem and Song

7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Main Event: Program & Drylongso Awards Celebration

Guest Speaker - Dr. Atyia Martin, CEO and Founder, All Aces, Inc

2020 Drylongso Celebration Honoree - Susan Naimark, CCI Board Chair

8:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Gala Networking & CCI Virtual Studios, Continued
Experience how CCI connects you to the Movement

White People Challenging Racism Room: Your Personal Action Plan

Boston Knapsack Group Room: Can We Talk?

​Racial Healing Project Room: We Need All of Us to Get There

SURJB Room: Get Involved with Showing Up for Racial Justice / Boston

CCI Mixologists Room: Our Bartender's Create Drinks for What You Crave

Movement Self-Care: Experience Healing Exercises to Calm, Center and Stay Lively

​The UpRising Studio: Feel the Spirit of the Movement in Poem and Song

For our more than 50 years, we have depended almost exclusively on donations from individuals. We know that the funding world tends to be led and directed by established rules of whiteness. For example, most grant funders require measurable outcomes tracking numbers rather than qualitative indicators of success.

We recognize how traditional funding has been wrapped in a history of white supremacy, but we also know that reaching out and building relationships -- authentic partnerships -- with established businesses and funding organizations is now a vital part of our work on “the white problem” of racism.

For the past five years Shay Stewart-Bouley, our first black executive director, has led CCI in insisting white people go way beyond merely “getting woke” and find a way to risk their privilege in joining others to move the dial on racism. As the anti-racist UpRising grows stronger we need your partnership and investment to fully support and hopefully grow our staff and programs so we can continue to play our essential part in this movement.

We are hopeful that you will recognize the value of our decades long efforts, our current work, and our future plans. Work that directly calls on white people to step up, learn something and take action in accountable relationships with black and brown communities is not easy work to fund. We invite and welcome your partnership.

Established in 1989, the Drylongso Awards honor ordinary people doing extraordinary anti-racism work in Greater Boston. The Drylongso Awards are inspired by the book Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America. In that book, anthropologist John Langston Gwaltney details the daily struggles of Drylongso, or ordinary African Americans fighting racism.

The Community Change Antiracism Leadership Awards Celebration is an event held annually in November. The event grows out of an expansion of the Drylongso Awards Celebration which CCI has hosted since 1989. The first CCI Leadership Awards Celebration was held on November 10, 2009.

Please get your tickets, learn more, or make an immediate donation in support of our staff and programs. We hope you can join us!