Social Justice Committee

The Rime Buddhist Center has partnered with More2 a social justice organization representing different faith traditions, cultural backgrounds, races, and economic means. We also encourage our members to work with SURj-KC a local network organizing white people for racial justice in accountability to the BBIPOC community. The following posts are activities of the Social Justice Committee.

Juneteenth Statement by the Rime Center and the Social Justice Committee

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Juneteenth is the oldest nationwide remembrance of the ending of slavery in the United States. Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas, with the news that the war had ended and emancipation was granted to the enslaved on June 19, 1865, almost two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.

There are many celebrations and events planned for Juneteenth in Kansas City and plenty of ways to participate. Please visit www.juneteenth-kc.com for a listing of celebratory and community service activities. In addition, additional information on the African American history in Kansas City and the nation can be found here – https://www.juneteenth-kc.com/history. In Buddhism, we believe in carrying the Bodhisattva spirit in our hearts and engaging in altruistic actions to benefit all sentient. The Rime Center and the Social Justice Committee encourages the sangha to reflect on the significance of this day.

His Holiness Dalai Lama’s Daily Prayer – “May the frightened cease to be afraid, and those bound be freed; May the powerless find power, and may people think of benefiting each other”

Letter of Support for George Floyd and the Black Community

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On behalf of the Rime Buddhist Center, I and the Rime Board of Directors want to express our sadness for the murder of George Floyd and all Black people who have been killed and oppressed over the last 400 years. The death of George Floyd is unacceptable and he is another victim in a long list of violence towards the Black community at the hands of police that must stop. Continue reading →

Rime Social Justice Film Screening-Hale County This Morning

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Tuesday, November 19, 2019 at 7:45 PM

In Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Ross offers an inspired and intimate portrait of a place and its people. The film presents Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, two young African American men from rural Hale County, Alabama, over the course of five years. Collins attends college in search of opportunity while Bryant becomes a father to an energetic son in an open-ended, poetic form that privileges the patiently observed interstices of their lives. The audience is invited to experience the mundane and monumental, birth and death, the quotidian and the sublime, all of which combine to communicate the region’s deep culture and glimpse the complex ways the African American community’s collective image is integrated into America’s visual imagination.

Rime Center Social Justice – Fall Book Discussion

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Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 7:45 PM

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Continue reading →