Better Elders

Better Elders is a movement to center and normalize abolition as a political and cultural position for white people. Better Elders is a cohort-based project that calls in white people to permanently divest from white supremacy—but not in isolation, which failed to work in 2020—but in community. Better Elders believes that 'whiteness' and white identity function as a coercive, maladaptive ideology, much like a cult. This is why Better Elders is building a scalable 'whiteness deprogramming' organizing framework that centers on community care, accountability and practice. We consider white peoples' commitment to 'whiteness' to be a public health emergency with many of the same effects as any addiction epidemic, which is why we utilize harm reduction strategies as a part of our deprogramming whiteness process. Because of the relationship between 'whiteness' and carceral-thinking, Better Elders incorporates centuries of elder wisdom around restorative and transformative justice, which makes a path for white people to acknowledge lifetimes of harm, make mistakes, learn, and take redemptive action. Graduates of the Better Elders program are prepared to lead new cohorts in the deprogramming whiteness process.