The NAAFA Board of Directors has committed to anti-racism and anti-oppression work. You cannot fight against the oppression of one group of marginalized people and ignore the oppression of others.

We, as a Board of Directors, are moving beyond our statement of anti-racism and taking action.
Action 1: The entire Board of Directors will be participating in anti-oppression training.
Action 2: The Fat Community Project Fund mini-grant program includes grants for anti-oppression work/training in and beyond fat community.

Grant Category: Solidarity with Other Anti-Oppression Causes
This category supports intersectional activism by providing resources to assist fat individuals or groups in creating or attending activities that work toward ending the oppression of other marginalized groups.

Examples: planning an accessible movie screening of Crip Camp, organizing a group to attend a Black Lives Matter rally, building a float for a Pride parade.

Action 3: We will be featuring anti-racist resources in our monthly NAAFA Newsletter and on our naafa.org website as part of our goal of education.

Action 4: We will continue to conduct webinars featuring BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual +) presenters. To find out more about our webinar series, go to https://naafa.org/webinars

I know that as we work on dismantling racism in ourselves and our organization it will lead to even more concrete action. This is important and necessary work that we as an organization are committed to do. We ask all of you to pledge to fight systemic racism and oppression in all its forms: in your life, in your community and in our country by learning more about racism and oppression and taking action.

One action you can take right now is in supporting this work through giving. You can designate any donation to a specific program area to further the goals of anti-oppression work. Go to https://naafa.org/joindonate and click on the "Main Giving Form" link. Select the Fat Community Project Fund to allow us to give more mini-grants to those seeking assistance in a community project. Select the Public Education Fund to donate to allow us to give stipends to presenters and to pay for transcription services to make transcripts available to hearing impaired people. All donations are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.

Racism in America is a systemic issue. It supports the marginalization of non-white people. As a white person, it is not enough to believe "I'm not racist." It's necessary for us to recognize the history of racism in our country and the systems in place that not only allow it to continue, but reinforce it. It's a requirement for us to take action to dismantle the system for everyone to be truly free and to have equality.

Each month, we will be featuring educational resources in this section of the NAAFA Newsletter. Some resources will be historic information about systemic racism. Others will be resources on doing the internal work of understanding ourselves and how we play a part in that system. There will also be actions that can be taken to directly oppose racism.

These resources have been shared with us. One action we can all take now is to share them with others.

This month, we are featuring these resources:

The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States (FULL Version)
Jeffery Robinson, the ACLU's top racial justice expert, discusses the dark history of Confederate symbols across the country and outlines what we can do to learn from our past and combat systemic racism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOPGpE-sXh0

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
An essay by Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.
https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf

Anti-racism resources for white people
A mega-document of resources compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BRlF2_zhNe86SGgHa6-VlBO-QgirITwCTugSfKie5Fs/edit

It is with great sadness that we share about the passing of long time NAAFA member Laura Hoesterey Baker, who passed away on July 19, 2020 after an extended illness. Laura left behind her husband, John and daughter, Katie.

Baker was the Vice-President of the Fat Disorders Resource Society (FDRS) and was a Special Education and General Education Teacher as well as Reading Specialist. Over the course of her 22-year career, Laura taught children from kindergarten through eighth grade. She was a Dercum's Disease, Lipedema and Lymphedema patient who experienced years of fat bias and lack of diagnoses. Her desire to educate healthcare providers and fellow patients about fat disorders motivated her to volunteer for FDRS.

Laura enjoyed writing, singing, sewing and swimming. Their two cats kept her company as she spent her time on home projects, writing interests and volunteering for the FDRS. NAAFA friends remember fondly the water aerobics classes she led at NAAFA conventions. Laura was inspirational as she courageously fought to raise consciousness of Dercum's Disease, Lipedema and Lymphedema. She is missed.

Earlier this month a group of Canadian doctors published Obesity in adults: a clinical practice guideline, "intended to improve the standard of, and access to, care for individuals with obesity in all regions of Canada". The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) believes that, upon close examination, these guidelines present no new information and perpetuate the myth that fat bodies are diseased simply because they are fat.

These guidelines hinge on the premise that excess fat is a disease. Against the recommendation of their own scientific advisors, the American Medical Association declared "obesity" a disease in 2013. Now Canada is going down the same precarious path. Many experts believe this will further damage the already fragile relationship between physician and fat client.

"I don't think these people are aware of the utter disconnect between what they are doing and what would be helpful to us. I don't think they would be happy knowing how this situation undermines the power of the therapeutic alliance, our respect for them, and their chances of achieving their intention to actually support health. For us, it is profoundly troubling to have to rely on people who are defining simply aging in our bodies as evidence of our bodies being diseased," stated Dr. Deb Burgard, Psychologist and Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, and NAAFA Advisory Board Member.

Some medical providers are beginning to accept the fact that diets don't work. Much of the public has also realized that their individual experiences of losing then regaining weight are not personal failures, but rather a feature of the weight cycling industry's business model. As the public wises up, the faltering weight cycling industry has had to convince doctors to be their marketing arm, propping up interventions that do not create lasting health or weight change in the long run for most people. By arbitrarily declaring a body size a disease, the money can keep pouring in because insurers are compelled to pay for "treatment," even though in this case it is generally ineffective.

The Canadian guidelines are an attempt to rebrand the same old thing with a dash of politeness. It is not supportive to health to keep prescribing failed treatments and then blame people for the health disparities that result. Real progress will come only when the medical profession turns its scrutiny on its own ghastly history of harm toward higher weight people and resolves to start over to do better, this time by actually listening to fat people.

On the web: https://naafa.org