We created this manifesto to represent our internal compass––the beating heart of the Intergroup Dialogue Collective. Our collective was formed organically for and by caretakers with the knowledge they hold. 

We believe that autonomous leadership of the collective is required to maintain the integrity of IGD’s methodology and tradition.

We respond to the call of Intergroup Dialogue “to explore issues of diversity and inequality and [our] personal and [our] social responsibility for building a more just society” (Nagda, Gurin, Sorensen, & Zuniga, 2009). 

Love, as defined by bell hooks (2003), is our foundation for understanding how to intentionally build hope and healing into our communities. It is through the transformative power of love that we invite others to trust in and commit to doing the hard work of dialogue in the hope that we change culture and communities for the better.

We recognize that the process is a product––an intentional suspension of the need for a specific outcome. As a result we curate facilitated learning spaces where we:

• Refuse to be co-opted by an institution/organization for the purposes of providing “services;”
• Refuse to  believe “that’s just the way things are’” 
• Refuse to accept perpetual inequality;
• Place ourselves thick in the middle of change.

We instead create learning spaces, both inside and outside of the classroom, which are:

• Spaces of dialogue rather than of persuasion or debate;
• Spaces not about right or wrong but of being in community of intentional processing;
• Spaces where there is a “second moment” for engagement;
• Spaces where we can learn before action and acknowledge that our learning is an action to address how power, privilege, and systems of oppression have….
• Space where we can heed Sandy Grande’s call  “One of the many ways the academy recapitulates colonial logics is through the overvaluing of fast, new, young, and individualist voices and the undervaluing of slow, Elder, and collective ones.”

We draw upon the histories of the multiple attempts at engagement by and for marginalized communities.

We recognize both the need to be true to what we feel, believe and know now as our Manifesto while allowing the fluidity for change as we respond to the needs of our community. 

Sources: hooks, b. (2003). Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis Group.

Nagda, B. A., Gurin, P., Sorensen, N., & Zúñiga, X. (2009). Evaluating Intergroup Dialogue: Engaging Diversity for Personal and Social Responsibility. Diversity and Democracy, 12(1). doi:https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/evaluating-intergroup-dialogue-engaging-diversity-personal-and