Hot Topics Blog

Meet Marcee Harris
AMAZEworks is thrilled to highlight Marcee Mackbee Harris this month. We have been honored to have Marcee’s experience, insight, skills, and talent added to our team of trainers and facilitators. She’s “AMAZE”ing. Here are a few questions we asked her so you can see why we are so excited to introduce her to you. Tell us

Identity Matters – The Power of Narrative
(Click here to watch Rebecca present this 10-minute talk in a video.) Identity matters. I came of age in the 80s and 90s when Meg Ryan was one of the biggest romantic comedy stars. As an adolescent, all I wanted was to look like her with her blonde curly hair and piercing blue eyes. o

Building and Sustaining Relationships Through This Ongoing Pandemic
The pandemic continues to affect our lives significantly, especially in regards to our relationships with other people. This past year and a half forced us to change how we meet our social needs, including interacting with people in our communities, families, homes, and workplaces. We shifted from doing most activities in-person, to staying home and

What does Juneteenth mean to you?
Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans after the Civil War. It commemorates June 19, 1865, when news of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation finally reached the last of enslaved Americans in Galveston, Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Depending on your identity and lived experience,

Resilient Women in Our Community: Candace Whittaker
This month AMAZEworks celebrates Candace Whittaker as one of our resilient women of 2021. Born and raised in North Minneapolis alongside 10 siblings, Candace Whittaker has been sharing her gifts of resilience with our community for over 40 years. When asked to define resilience in her own words, she says, “It is the ability to

Resources To Support Children During The Derek Chauvin Trial
As the trial of the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin begins, I am struggling to find the right words to say that are beyond platitudes. There is so much uncertainty and trepidation I feel about the outcome of the trial, and I have great concern that it will be George Floyd’s life and not Derek Chauvin’s

Environmental Justice: Countering the effects of environmental racism
Despite systemic denial and minimizing across the world, decades of statistics support the harsh realities of climate change and its catastrophic effects. Since the Industrial Revolution, human-produced greenhouse gas emissions have increased, causing the Earth to warm and its climate to change drastically. Experts predict severe consequences due to climate change. These effects will diminish

Responding to anti-Asian hate and violence
Here we are again. Responding to identity-based hate and violence an organization, as a community, as a nation, and as individuals trying to process, reckon with, and respond to another spate of mass shootings, one of which was rooted in racism and misogyny towards Asian American women in large part because of the past year’s

Resilient Women’s History Month 2021
March is Women’s History Month – a month dedicated to highlighting and celebrating women’s contributions in United States history. Women*, including transgender women, have been advocating for and bringing about social justice change for centuries. Women continue to effect profound change on our society, particularly during this challenging time of a pandemic, social and political