Marya Axner, Talking to Children About Racism

Marya Axner has spent the past 30 years as an activist working against oppression of all kinds and also working as parent educator. She speaks and leads workshops on the topic of anti-Semitism and racism on college campuses, at social justices organizations, and at worker organizations. Fifteen years ago she was the director of a parents’ program in the Somerville Public Schools, supporting parents to be involved in their children’s education. She has worked as a multicultural consultant for collaborative of schools near Boston. She has also worked for the nonprofit Everyday Democracy, which encourages people to have small group discussions that lead to lasting change. More recently, she was the director of the New England Jewish Labor Committee, where she organized the Jewish Community to stand up with workers for their rights.

Marya Axner has taught listening skills through Re-evaluation Counseling for many years. Axner has also been active in United to End Racism (UER), a project of Re-valuation Counseling. United to End Racism is group of people of all backgrounds in many countries who are dedicated to eliminating racism in the world. UER does this by teaching people to listen to each other, thereby undoing the damage done to people through racism and thus enabling people to speak out about racism, interrupt it when it happens, make deep friendships with people of different races, and take leadership in removing racism from society’s institutions.