Truth Commission

Truth Commission Assessing Race Equity (Previously Known as the Race Audit)

As a Matthew 25 Presbytery, we are called to actively work to “Dismantle Structural Racism”. The Race Audit is currently underway. As the work progresses, please look for updates here, at Presbytery meetings, and from Invitations and Announcements emails. A team of 14 auditors (see list below) are working under the guidance of Jessica Vasquez Torres and Noah Kruis of Crossroads Antiracism and Organizing.

November 2024 Update – We need your voice to complete our work

We are excited to report that we have completed our Draft Report. The report is relatively short (16 pages) and we hope you will find it very readable. Our documentation and detailed analyses are in appendices. At the November 12, 2024 Presbytery Meeting, T-CARE Co-Moderators Linda Lee and Rick Leong gave an update on T-CARE. They explained that as T-CARE was completing their report, they realized that something was missing. That something is your voice! We want to bring the voices, experiences and thoughts of people within our presbytery into our Final Report. To accomplish this, T-CARE has scheduled five conversation circles between November and January. Please register using this link: Conversation Circle Registration. The schedule for the conversations circles are:

Sunday, 11/24/24, 2 to 3:30 pm, via Zoom. This meeting will be facilitated in Korean with English translation available.
Wednesday, 12/4/24, 6 to 8 pm in-person, Primera Iglesia Presbiteriana Hispana, Oakland. The meeting will be facilitated in Spanish with English translation available
Tuesday, 12/17/24, 7 to 8:30 pm, via Zoom. This meeting will be facilitated in English with translation(s) available.
Tuesday, 1/7/25, 7 to 8:30 pm, via Zoom. This meeting will be facilitated in English with translation(s) available.
Saturday, 1/11/25, 2 to 4 pm, in-person. Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, San Francisco. This meeting will be facilitated in English with translation(s) available.

When you register for the Conversation Circles, we will send you the Draft Report. The report will be available in four languages: Chinese, English, Korean or Spanish. Here again is a link to register: Conversation Circle Registration.

T-CARE will gather the feedback from the conversation circles for their Final Report. This report will be presented in a February 2025 Open Space. Then, at the February 2025 presbytery meeting, T-CARE will present their Final Report for approval.

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January 2024 Update

The Truth Commission Assessing Race Equity (T-CARE) is persistently serving in this challenging work. We marked our one-year anniversary in November of 2023. Our ongoing team includes: Rev. Talitha Amadea Aho, Sharon Bartlett, Sylvia Chatagnier, Lisa Justice, Rev. Evangeline Pua, Linda Lee, Rick Leong, Marda Quon Stothers, Rev. Matt Prinz, Rochelle Shaw, Daeseop Yi, and Linda Spencer (staff). We extend our gratitude and blessings to Mustapha Baksh, Angelina Garcia, and Marge Campany who asked to be released from the Commission. Please refer to the “PSF Racism Audit Overview” for an introduction to the scope of our work.

Talitha and Rochelle have completed a draft Continuum Analysis, a tool provided by Crossroads Antiracism and Organizing. This tool challenges us to look at multiple functions within Presbytery of San Francisco (PSF) and to rate them on a continuum scale. Our scale ranges between “Stage 2, Club” to Stage 4 “Critically Aware”. “Club” organizations may see themselves as antiracist but behave in a way that maintains white dominance and culture. “Critically aware” organizations are aware of their proclivity towards white dominance but are actively naming and dismantling this pattern. Despite the best intentions and good will of PSF, our collective institutional behaviors and structures have not yet reached Stage 4 and there are many that are firmly enmeshed in Stage 2.

Marda, Matt, Rick and Sharon are working on a second tool, the Matrix. The Matrix takes the Continuum to a deeper level by asking how our institutional behaviors within the Presbytery work to benefit white people/institutions/cultures and harm people of color/institutions/cultures. What are the ways in which we are conditioned to maintain and perpetuate systemic racism?

Evangeline, Linda (Lee), Linda (Spencer), Rochelle, and Sylvia have drafted a Survey that will soon be sent out to worshiping community leaders and Clerks of Session. It is a preliminary (Wave 1) survey to learn more about the racial/ethnic makeup of our Presbytery. We hope that it will be complimentary to the PCUSA annual statistical survey. We want to learn about each worshiping community’s founders and how each community is living into their Matthew 25 charge.

When the Continuum and Matrix teams have completed their work, we will work together to identify key concerns that emerge from patterns and themes. The Survey Team will take these key concerns and develop a survey that will deliver quantitative data on PSF’s institutional power dynamics. Stay tuned for our progress towards reaching this milestone!

Please pray for us as we continue this work. We have taken our time to build a team that trusts each other and is committed to completing our charge. As we continue with this challenging work, we are finding the rewards of liberation and transformation. Your support is appreciated!

T-CARE (A New Name)

We have changed our name to the Truth Commission Assessing Race Equity (T-CARE). Audits are often done by an external group, but we are doing this work internally. In addition, audits are usually financial in nature. After brainstorming, we landed on a name that is a closer reflection of the work we are doing.

We are working with our first assessment tool, the Continuum. The Continuum is a range of antiracist characteristics of organizations. We are looking at five components of the presbytery: personnel, products/programs/services, constituency, organizational structure, and mission/purpose/identity. Our assessment will look both reflectively and critically at the presbytery’s commitment to antiracism and race equity across each component.

We are excited to announce that Ruth T. West and Paul Gaffney will be working with the commissioners on building resiliency and on practicing restorative justice. They will be attending our monthly meetings offering action/reflection activities and Examen practices to incorporate God in the conversation. In addition, they are available to the commissioners for 1×1 support.

In late January 2023, the audit team began its “Formation Phase”. Between January and April we will be:

developing courageous agreements for working together
holding 1×1 conversations with each other
reviewing the Presbytery’s history relative to its collusion and resistance to racism
completing a “crash course” in Presbyterian polity
identifying co-moderators

Next, we will use apply three tools to audit the Presbytery:

Power Matrix,
Continuum Stages, and
Race Equity Survey.

After we gather data from these tools, we will analyze the results and identify strategic interventions. All our findings will be written up in a report and presented to the Presbytery for adoption. The audit is anticipated to take between nine to eighteen months to complete, depending on the pace of work the group can sustain.

We are grateful for the hard work that has taken place. We ask for your prayers for the hard work ahead. The audit team is: Talitha Amadea Aho (At Large), Mustapha Baksh (Irvington), Sharon Bartlett (Lafayette Orinda), Sylvia Chatagnier (Ygnacio Valley), Marge Campany (Clayton Valley) Angelina Garcia (Be Well), Lisa Justice (Clayton Valley), Linda Lee (Pres Church in Chinatown), Rick Leong (First Pres Berkeley), Matt Prinz (First Pres Oakland), Evangeline Pua (GKI), Rochelle Shaw (Sojourner Truth), Marda Quon Stothers (College Ave), Daeseop Yi (SFTS).

Committee Chair: Linda Spencer.

Committee Email:

Meeting Times: Every Month on the Fourth Monday at 1:30 p.m.

Walking the Walk

PSF Racism Audit Overview:

PSF’s Audit Support Team is currently conducting an internal racism audit to identify how systemic racism is embedded in our structures and culture. For more background information on the audit process and the work that has taken place to date, please refer to the “PSF Racism Audit Overview” for further details and information.

Antiracism Training – Toward Liberation Analysis Training:

This 5-week program takes a comprehensive look at how systemic oppressive, particularly racism is maintained by organizations. Together, we will build a shared understanding of systemic oppression.

Topics include:

The historical development of institutional racism in the US and how it impacts society today.
What is systemic racism? How does it operate institutionally and culturally in intersectional ways? How does it impact individual identity?
What analytical frameworks are needed to intersectionality examine PSF’s culture and values.
What are effective antiracist interventions? How can they facilitate the deepening of intersectional race equity within PSF.

Program Details:

Dates: Five consecutive Mondays from 2 to 5 pm beginning Nov 7th. The program runs Nov 7 – Dec 5.
Location: Online
Registration Link: https://forms.gle/CCBShxn3auYNvkfcA
Registration Deadline: October 29, 2022
Class is limited to 30 participants

Why take this class?:

To be in solidarity with Presbytery’s racism audit team
The collective experience of antiracism training in a group setting will deepen your experience
To reflect on antiracism work relative to yourself, your relationship to the Presbytery, and to this moment in history
To experience both the power and accessibility of antiracism training from Crossroads’ trainer Jessica Vasques Torres

For more information, please contact Linda Spencer, , (510) 816-4747.