On this page, learn more about Collective Action Against White Supremacy (CAAWS): our values, how we stay accountable, our working groups, and some of our history.
On this page, learn more about Collective Action Against White Supremacy (CAAWS): our values, how we stay accountable, our working groups, and some of our history.
We acknowledge that white supremacy is a reality in the United States and that racism happens on the internal, interpersonal, institutional, and ideological level. We recognize that anti-Blackness is a central component of racism, and that state violence against Black people is a crisis. We accept that it is our role and responsibility as white people to organize ourselves to dismantle white supremacy. We will do anti-racist work within an intersectional framework that also challenges patriarchy, capitalism, and other systems of oppression. We are grateful for the love, wisdom, and sacrifices of freedom fighters that have come before us and shown us the way.
We will work together to find ways to take action without waiting to be told to step up, without speaking for or taking space away from Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC).
We will stay committed to navigating through complexity knowing that if we wait until things are perfect we will never do anything. We will seek guidance before we take action and feedback after we take action and we will learn by doing.
Our goal is to challenge white supremacy so that means that we have to directly confront white people, white cultural institutions, and sites of white power.
We want to be good to each other. We seek to build reciprocal relationships and share resources, knowledge, time, and energy. We want to build with white people and white organizations so we can be more effective in challenging white supremacy. We want to respond to calls from Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and support BIPOC-led organizing in Greater Boston.
We acknowledge the need for white leaders to provide mentorship, support, guidance to other white people and sometimes call-in and collect each other. We want to increase the number of white people equipped to take principled action against white supremacy. We will celebrate and follow the leadership of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) seeking liberation and self-determination.
We value a wide range of strategies toward the goal of dismantling white supremacy and we prioritize direct action. We will not demonize or stigmatize organizers taking principled actions against white supremacy using tactics that we may not choose for ourselves. We strive to be strategic which means that we target sites of white power (without speaking for or taking space away from people of color) and we aim to have our actions benefit Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC).
We will name our own needs and be real about our commitments/limitations. We will try to recognize the learning, healing, and work we need to do on our own so that we can sustain ourselves, engage in healthy relationships with comrades, and contribute positively to movement work.
We will do what we say we’re going to do. We will follow through. If we are not able to follow through with a commitment we made, we will communicate that as soon as possible and ask for help. We recognize the need for discretion and security and will not let that make our group unwelcoming or exclusive or hierarchical.
We will keep these values in mind in all spaces we’re in whether it’s in monthly meetings or affinity group meetings or in actions, and live them all the time in our lives.
Accountability is a value, a goal, and a process. We aim to be accountable to:
Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) individuals, and groups led by them. CAAWS creates relationships with BIPOC individuals and groups to discuss our work, and we reflect and make constructive shifts in our organizing based on that feedback.
Our values.
The Prison Abolition Action Partnership is a working group of CAAWS working in solidarity with people directly impacted by incarceration, the prison industrial complex, and policing to fight for an end to prisons and build a new vision for justice and liberation.
We recognize that racism and white supremacy culture are embedded in public education and harmfully impacting students, teachers, and parents/guardians. We are accountable for taking action to support people of color-led groups working to create a more equitable and just education system for all students in Boston (and the surrounding area). Our goals are to increase civic engagement of white people for racial justice in our school system, activate teachers to be racial justice advocates in their schools, and support/provide resources for existing PoC organizations and parents in our schools.
The Confronting White Supremacists Action Partnership mobilizes in direct response to local violent white supremacist, misogynist, and fascist groups, proactively and strategically; and offers resources and political education (both within CAAWS and for our wider community) on local alt-right organizing, how the institutional structure and history of white supremacy fosters this organizing, and how the state itself perpetrates fascist violence.
We support the cultural, psychological, and economic freedom of Indigenous Peoples, honoring and respecting Indigenous sovereignty. We follow the lead of local Indigenous tribes and other Indigenous-led organizations and work to develop relationships with them. We advocate actions they have endorsed. A key part of our work is ongoing political education for ourselves and others related to Indigenous sovereignty and decolonization.
This team brings a racial justice lens to organizing the surge of white people who are fired up by the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, embodied by the Trump regime.
We mobilize activists—particularly within the CAAWS network—to support immigrant-led organizations and fight against systemic racism and deportation. Operating in solidarity with groups like LUCE and the Boston Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN), the partnership coordinates resource sharing, educational events, and direct community support.
Key activities include attending and promoting community actions, amplifying fundraisers and mutual aid resources, hosting discussions and political education events, and engaging volunteers in direct aid such as rides, housing, and accompaniment. By offering clear entry points for activists to take meaningful action, the group bridges the gap between community needs and activist capacity to foster an inclusive, anti-fascist movement.
The Palestinian Liberation working group is dedicated to organizing for a free and liberated Palestine as an essential component of the fight for racial justice. Emerging from a peer-led education series in 2022, the group coordinates chapter-wide support for pro-Palestine actions, engages local communities through educational initiatives and book clubs, and actively collaborates with coalitions such as the Boston Coalition for Palestine and Together for an Inclusive Massachusetts. By building trusting relationships with Palestinian-led organizations and local allies, the group works to raise awareness, fight local manifestations of oppression, and support divestment and direct action initiatives in the Boston area.
Our Operations group organizes our chapter information, communicates on email and social media, compiles our weekly actions and updates newsletter, ensures CAAWS is an open and accessible space to people with disabilities, handles our fundraising and finances on the technical side, and coordinates the logistics around chapter events.
Community Development is the beating heart of CAAWS. It is responsible for supporting our Base Groups and bringing in new CAAWS members. Community Development also organizes the monthly chapter meetings, and aspires to build up our skills (such as in transformative justice, conflict resolution, mutual aid, and more) and internal political education work.
In 2015, we began organizing as the Boston chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). In August 2026, Collective Action Against White Supremacy (CAAWS) disaffiliated from the national SURJ organization. We remain on good terms with SURJ National, but have diverged over the years to be more focused on local, grassroots organizing led by BIPOC and working-class partners. We continue our same work with our partners and the public, just under a new name!