Film Discussions

Race: the Power of an Illusion (March & June 2017)

After the killing of Philando Castile in July of 2016, we felt we had to do something. Grounded in the idea that you can’t change what you don’t know, we decided we should educate ourselves and our community on racism. We had heard recently about the “Race: The Power of an Illusion” series and decided we would show it and have community discussions about it. We were fortunate that 3 area churches agreed to host the film series. We hosted this entire series 3 times. Once at area churches, once at the library in partnership with the Human Rights Commission of the City of Roseville, and again at a local seniors apartment. Unexpectedly the Roseville Chief of Police, Rick Mathwig attended the first series, and this is what he had to say.

This taught us a lesson that has impacted everything we do. The lesson is that we never know who will participate in our programs and we can’t know the further reaching impact. Therefore no matter how many people attend our programs, we always believe they are the right people, and we trust the impact is greater than we can imagine.

Here is a link to the website for this series:

https://www.racepowerofanillusion.org/

As of 2023, the series is available for free through Kanopy, the free streaming service of the Ramsey County Library, Here is a link: https://www.kanopy.com/en/rclreads

We would like to thank the three Roseville churches that provided us with the space and volunteers to made the first series possible:

Galilee Lutheran Church
Calvary Baptist Church
Church of Corpus Christi