Ashley Benner

Background

About Ashley Benner

As an educator, writer, researcher, and organizer, I collaborate with BIPOC, women, and queer-led organizations, activists, funders, educators, and artists fighting for our collective liberation in the U.S.(on Turtle Island) and across borders. Everyone should be able to live – in freedom, safety, and full political, legal, economic, social, and cultural equality. I work at the local, state, national, and international levels to transform narratives, culture, policies, practices, laws, and systems. I've worked on campaigns and projects related to police violence, Indigenous rights, redistricting, fair lending, hate crime prevention, environmental protection, and genocide and other mass atrocities. In Palestine, I taught human rights and writing at Bard College – Al Quds University in East Jerusalem. I love creating and managing communications, advocacy, and organizing campaigns, crafting written products, designing and leading research projects, developing policy, legal, and other analysis, creating curricula and syllabi, and teaching. I have seen up close the saviorism and White supremacy in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors – and the tendency to address symptoms rather than dismantle systemic racism, violence, and inequity. In the U.S. and other countries, we face many of the same or similar issues, dynamics, systems, and players – uniting our struggles within and across borders. I believe we can do things differently by centering people and the environment, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, systemic change, and do no harm and by building more and bigger bridges across issues and countries. I'd love to hear from you!