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By Ian Gustafson

Open Discussion

Online community forum being held tonight to discuss racism

Mar 2, 2021 | 4:19 PM

The Prince Albert Multicultural Council and the Prince Albert Common Ground Project have teamed up to offer P.A. residents the chance to have a conversation about racism in a community forum over zoom.

This evening from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. there will be several activities to promote discussion. Those who are interested can register for the free event here.

Lemoya Lorensen, project coordinator for the Common Ground Project, told paNOW that over the years they’ve discussed having a community forum quite often and thought now would be a good time to open up the dialogue.

“I think these are pretty tense times and we’ve created the forum to help build relationships as well,” she said.

The forum will open with an activity where they create a craft called a talking stick which will be an interactive activity. But she said it’s symbolic because the talking stick will lead to the discussion.

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“Some of the questions we will discuss are just getting to know each other in the community,” Lorensen explained.

They will then move on to the next activity where they move to smaller groups and discuss racism. After that they will wrap up by talking about what was discussed among the groups where people will be encouraged to share their thoughts and think of ways how they can move forward.

“It’s a safe space. Nobody’s right or wrong but it’s a space where we can just try to look at the issues that exist in our community and also address them,” she said.

She added not all questions will be directly about racism as some of the questions will be about people getting to know each other.

Lorensen said it’s a safe space to see where people stand on the issue, whether they’ve experienced racism or not.

“I’m not going to say Prince Albert is a racist city or that Saskatchewan is a racist place. I think racism exists in our world and we currently live in a very divided world,” she said. “And we just want to find a way to build bridges to open up the dialogue, help people understand what racism is and see what the community feels exists.

“This is an activity to build our community, we already have a strong community and we just hope to make it stronger.”

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Ian.gustafson@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @iangustafson12