Halloween is next Tuesday. If you will be getting into costume and trick-o-treating or partying, please don’t wear a culturally appropriated, sexist, or inappropriate costume. Before you put together your costume watch this video from Teen Vogue about why Moana and other culturally appropriate costumes are a no-no. Check out this list of no-go costumes in 2017, some are repeats of year’s past and some are newer like don’t dress up as “The (Trump) Wall” or Día de los Muertos.

This week’s blog post was crowd-sourced. I was drawing a blank on what to write about so I asked for some help on Facebook and the idea of a new BINGO board emerged. Thanks to Lilliann Paine for the idea and many of the square ideas. Thank you to others who suggested other topics which I promise to consider, I also tried to incorporate a few of those themes into the BINGO board. Keep the ideas for posts coming.

Power hoarding is bad. Power hoarding is concentrating power into one or a few people. Our goal should always be to share power and for dominant/white culture to practice power deference to people and communities of color.

How to Play Power Hoarders BINGO

Print out a copy of the BINGO board and when you hear or see someone doing something to hoard power mark the box.  I highly recommend you don’t use people’s real names. The goal of the board isn’t to offend people, but to also begin to open up conversations around how power shows up in our daily lives and work.

Some other suggested uses:

• Icebreaker at a meeting — print out BINGO boards and have people find others to talk a time they saw/participated/been involved with what is written.
• Self-reflection — Have you done these things? No need to write your own name in a box, but do think about how  to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
• Confused on why it is on the board — start a conversation with others about it. I’ll give you one hint, box O2, everyone should stand for the national anthem is on the board because it is vocal people trying to use power over people of color. White concentrated power telling many African American/Black NFL players how to practice their trade and what to believe.

PDF: Power Hoarding BINGO 

By Erin Okuno, with support from Lilliann Paine