All posts by Social Justice Center

UPDATES – February 2022

Creative Cafe

Creative Cafe is a monthly series open to all students to create space for conversations on culture, entertainment, and politics that center and empower communities of color. Students are invited to join a diverse group of creative scholars from different specialties for intensive workshops and discussions throughout the academic year, with the objective of broadening the artistic scope using a social justice framework while working with a mentor to bring ideas to life.

During the fall semester, the Creative Cafe hosted three events in Boston and one at Emerson Los Angeles. Spring events are currently in development.

Elma Lewis Center

Over the last three years, the Elma Lewis Center has focused on social justice multimedia story work. During this time, programming and projects have quadrupled, and include:

The Elma Lewis Living Stories project, which documents one of Boston’s most important female Black luminaries, Miss Elma Ina Lewis, who would have been 100 years old this year. This project is in collaboration with the Social Justice Archive Network (SJAN), a group of people, mostly members of the same communities as the story sharers, collaborating with us to document these stories. And stay tuned for our ongoing Elma Lewis Living Stories Kitchen Table Conversation, a year-long series of live video podcast conversations (virtually) with people who knew Miss Lewis best.

FIREWATER Poetics is a monthly open-mic series (virtual and in person) emceed and curated by Black poet and artist Letta Neely, who is breathing life into this gathering. It is inspired by an open mic gathering that she and other artists of color hosted 20 years ago in New York City. This space is intended to be a safe, healing, welcoming, and inclusive community for people of color, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ+ communities, trans, intersex, women, femmes, and earthlings of all intersectionalities.

Social Justice Solidarity Circles is a year-long series of workshops with Emerson students focused on social justice and community organizing education and practice and includes an intense collaboration with a local social justice organization or group within the community.

The ELC also continues to support vibrant youth programming with Youth LEAD, CCN (Creative Community Network), and the TIDE Conference. The first two are Sharon and Boston-area based year-long workshops with high school students from 14 schools and 15 communities focusing on social justice education and practice and community building through the arts.

Emerson College
(617) 824-8528

Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2021

Dear Community Members,

As the College honors Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we acknowledge the ongoing movements for justice many Indigenous communities work for every day of the year. We wish to share resources and information from the powerful ongoing presence and joy of Indigenous people. We also seek to share content that further examines the history of colonization, settler colonialism, and the ongoing struggles that Indigenous communities face across the world.

Background images and artwork by Mer Young @youngmer

NDN Collective

NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.Learn more: https://ndncollective.org and @ndncollective

Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness

Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Orange Shirt Day

On September 30, 2021, Canada honored its first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, remembering the victims and survivors of Indigenous residential schools. The day is also known as Orange Shirt Day, in honor of Phyllis Webstad from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation. In 1973, on her first day at St. Joseph’s Residential School in Williams Lake, BC, Phyllis’s shiny new orange shirt was stripped from her, never to be seen again. Learn more at https://irshdc.ubc.ca/orangeshirtday.

Aboriginal Movements in Australia

Image of dark skinned hand holding an art instrument on a background of yellow with three horizontal black wavy lines.

Think Aboriginal art from the bush is not political? Think again. article by Clair Coleman
“Protest is common across the entire world of Indigenous art, from the city to the place city folk imagine is the “bush”. It was always there from the beginning. All you need to do is learn how to look at Aboriginal art, how to read the language. Once you know what you are looking for you learn something important, Indigenous protest art is everywhere.”

Australian land returned to Eastern Kuku Yalanji people.

Rainforest, Cape Tribulation, Daintree National Park, Queensland, Australia.

Amnesty International: Indigenous Peoples

Learn More: Global Indigenous Communities

There are 370 million Indigenous people around the world and spread across more than 90 countries.https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/indigenous-peoples/

Social Justice Center

UPDATES – September 2021

Dear Community Members,

The staff of the Social Justice Center, which includes the Healing & Advocacy Collective, the Elma Lewis Center for Community Engagement, and Access, Equity, & Title IX welcomes you to the 2021-2022 academic year. We are grateful for your presence in this place, space, and time.

Included in this newsletter are some of the updates and offerings we hope to share with you, as well as a variety of resources and links should you be interested in exploring.

The month of September is one of excitement and transition. And yet, as we settle into the school year, we continue to be surrounded by change in many forms.

With love and gentleness, we remind you:

“All that you touch you Change;
All that you Change changes you;
The only lasting truth is Change.”
– Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

[Image Description: blue background with blue mountains. In all caps: SJC IS HIRING EMERSON STUDENTS. SURGE: STUDENTS UNAPOLOGETICALLY RESISTING, GROWING, AND ENGAGING. MORE INFO @ HTTPS://BITLY.LY/SJCSURGE]

Healing & Advocacy Collective

We warmly welcome Deborah Johnson and Lauren Brumfield who will be interning with the Healing & Advocacy Collective for the 2021-2022 academic year.

Deborah Johnson (she/they) is a Master of Social Work student at Boston College who loves talking about decolonizing mental health and creative wellness. Deborah is a multidisciplinary artist and yoga teacher, and in their free time loves adventuring outdoors (even if that means just staring at the clouds in the park!).

Lauren Brumfield (she/her) is in her final year of the Master of Social Work program at Boston University, and is especially interested in holistic healing from trauma and violence. In her free time, she loves trying out new recipes, listening to Phoebe Bridgers, and doing sudoku puzzles. She is so excited to meet everyone!

Deborah and Lauren are available to meet with individuals for advocacy-based counseling. You’re welcome to email advocate@emerson.edu to reach the Healing & Advocacy Collective.

[Image Descriptions: Black square with blue accents. A gray triangle that says “Sign up today” in cursive. Text says: 5-week series. Tuesdays: 12-1PM (ET) Sept. 28, Oct. 5, Oct. 12, Oct. 19, and Oct. 26. Under a green, white, and orange book titled “Care Work” is text saying: A Book Club Won’t Save Us: study, act, reflect, repeat.]

Staff, Faculty, & Grad Students: A Book Club Won’t Save Us – Fall 2021

What does principled struggle mean? More importantly, why does it matter? Staff, faculty, and graduate students are invited to join Samantha Ivery in a five-week series to begin a praxis of “study, apply, reflect, repeat.” Participants will meet weekly with the goal of:

  1. Taking personal responsibility for increasing personal awareness and knowledge of societal norms linked to systemic oppression;
  2. Developing critical thinking skills to integrate dissonant themes into practice;
  3. Building a repertoire of reflective practices; and
  4. Leaving motivated to repeat.

The first book of the Fall 2021 semester is Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

“In this collection of essays…longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all…Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.”

Register for A Book Club Won’t Save Us – Care Work

Students: Creative Cafe Meet & Greet 9/30 7pm

The SJC is launching a monthly conversation series open to all students focused on culture, entertainment, and politics that centers and empowers communities of color.

The Creative Cafe is an opportunity for students to broaden their artistic scope through the lens social justice while bringing creative ideas to life with the mentorship of faculty, staff, and industry professionals. Students will join a diverse group of creative scholars from different specialties for intensive workshops and discussions throughout the academic year.

Interested students are invited to a Creative Cafe Meet & Greet on Thursday, September 30, at 7pm in Walker’s Common Ground (10th Floor, 120 Boylston St.) featuring music, conversation, games, and a Creative Cafe overview presentation.

For more information, contact Jae Williams, Director of Special Projects, at jae_williams@emerson.edu.

Elma Lewis Center for Community Engagement

 

The ELC is excited to share new and ongoing collaborations with artists, youth, community organizers, students, elders and more in our communities. Join us September 15, 5:30-6:30pm for Happy 100th Birthday Miss Elma Lewis! The Elma Lewis Legacy Circle, some who knew Miss Lewis all 83 years of her life, will share stories, video clips, and family album photos in celebration of their relationships and work with Miss Lewis. This will launch our Kitchen Table Conversations: Celebrating the Life, Legacy and 100th Year of Miss Elma Lewis, a monthly live video series September 2021 – September 2022.

Links to join us September 15: Zoom Link or Facebook Live.

We are also excited to welcome a new ELC team member, Coco Rosenberg (they/them), Assistant Director of Youth Programming.

This semester, the ELC is also launching two new programs: Firewater Poetics, a monthly open mic poetry session hosted by artist and poet Letta Neely, and the Social Justice Solidarity Circles program. For more information about our work and opportunities to spend time with us this fall, please check out our website and stay tuned for this month’s email ELC Newsletter!

Nourishment & Connection

Facebook: @SocialJusticeCtr

Instagram: @SocialJusticeCtr

Emerson College: Social Justice Center

The Renewal Collective

We acknowledge the pervasiveness and impact of all forms of systemic oppression for women and gender-expansive people in Asian, Black, Latinx, Multi-racial, Native American and Pacific Islander communities, and because we believe that no one is disposable, we endeavor to create transformative spaces for individual and collective healing.

Join us this fall for our Monthly Intentions & Meditations on Wednesdays at Noon (ET) September 29, October 27, and November 17. This fall, Samantha Ivery, tamia jordan, and Tikesha Morgan will be leading these gatherings. Follow us on IG (@therenewalcollective) for inspiration, affirmation, joy, and Renewal Collective updates.

“We all deserve a place to land safely.” The Renewal Collective welcomes you to Boston and to the Emerson College community.

Radical Guide for Social Justice

Social Justice Center

UPDATES – July 2021, Farewell from Sylvia

Dear Members of the Emerson Community,

Consistent with a longstanding tradition, the SJC Community Update typically begins with message from me. In those messages, I often share a reflection about what’s happening at Emerson or in the world. Sometimes I scribe a short message intended to speak to the heart. This update is no different, except that this will be my last message to the Emerson Community
as Vice President for Equity & Social Justice.

“All that you touch
You change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is change.”

– Octavia E. Butler

My friends, it has been a wild ride—full of incredible moments, deeply moving experiences, and the most wondrous and unexpected opportunities for personal growth. I must say that so many of my most treasured memories at Emerson have happened in community with students—with the activists and advocates, agitators and accomplices, the co-conspirators and the curious—all of you who have cared enough about Emerson to call on it to live up to its highest promises. Please know that you gave me life. There have been so many times when I was in awe of your fearlessness, your ability to speak truth to power, and your deep commitment to moving in solidarity with one another. You all know who you are. Please know that while I am leaving my role at Emerson, I am not leaving you. I am so honored to have crossed paths with you and we will find each other. Look me up on social.

In the past nine years, there have also been moments that were unbelievably challenging. Of course, some challenges are to be expected with my position, a role that by its very nature disrupts the status quo and disquiets the comfortable. There have been times when I have witnessed and experienced harm, times when people have disappointed me, and times when circumstances revealed things about us as a community that I wish I had not known. All of this, the good and the not so good, comes with being in a community struggling together to become its better self.

While I will not be around to see all of the change that we wanted to see come to pass at Emerson, I know that there are so many kindreds among this community of students, faculty, and staff who will carry this good and important work forward. I thank you for your labor toward making Emerson a place where people—Black, Brown, Queer, Trans, Disabled, First Gen, people without government papers, the religiously diverse, and those struggling financially—can show up fully in all of their beauty in a beloved community of care. We should never settle for anything less.

To the staff of the SJC, past and present, “What’s up, Family!” I thank you for your fierce commitment to justice, your quirky and raucous humor, the fantastic home-cooked meals we have shared, and your willingness to trust in me. There just might be a few “self-actualized jewels,” among you, after all.

Finally, one of the things I have learned during my time at Emerson is how important it is to control the narrative. My departure from Emerson will be framed in a number of ways, some of it will be accurate and some of it will not.

So, if you hear someone say that I left because I wanted to work closer to home, or I left because President Pelton left, or I left because of campus activism, please know that none of those things would ever be enough of a reason.

During the pandemic, I found myself frequently summoned by an internal question—“What am I called to do with the precious life force energy that I have been given?” Over many months, I discovered that I am called to find the cure for what ails higher education. That’s why I came into higher education in the first place. So, my leaving is actually a continuation of a quest that was started many years ago.

Today, I can’t think of a better use of my life force energy than working to develop an educational model that honors and serves the students who are the most marginalized but who have so very much to offer the world.

In Solidarity,
Sylvia

*****

Best Wishes for Greta

It is with mixed emotions that I share that Greta Spoering, Associate Director of the Healing & Advocacy Collective, and Survivor Counselor/Advocate, will be leaving Emerson for another opportunity across the river at Harvard as the SHARE Senior Clinical Coordinator within the Office for Gender Equity where she will continue to do prevention and response work, while taking on the task of opening a new space to support those who have been impacted by power-based interpersonal violence on Harvard’s campus. Greta’s last day will be July 23. As many of you know, Greta’s contributions over the past seven years have been far reaching and deeply impactful for so many Emersonians. Greta has been a source of solace and support for those impacted by power-based violence and other harms, a fierce advocate for trauma-informed practices, and a caring and compassionate space holder for so many individuals and groups. She has also been an expert educator and facilitator who has developed enduring relationships across the campus. Not only has Greta increased consciousness about the personal and systemic  impact of oppression on people and communities, but she has made significant contributions to shifting the culture at Emerson.

Greta has also been a vital member of the Social Justice Center staff. She helped to shape much of what the Social Justice Center has become in so many ways. She contributed to the development of the Bias Response program, now the Identity-Based Harm program, when students had nowhere to bring their concerns. She was also a significant contributor to Mapping the Margins of RePresentation: A Response to Students’ Call, also known as the “black book,” published by the Social Justice Center in 2019. She was a key player in the development of the SJC LIVE Facebook Series, the many SJC poster campaigns that we have launched, the person behind our thought-provoking social media posts, and so many other programs and events.

Greta has been an extraordinary teacher and guide to all of us in the SJC, nudging us to deepen our social justice practice by sharing yet another book for us to read or suggesting another podcast of note. But, most importantly, Greta has modeled for us every day what it truly means to show up for people. The Social Justice Center and Emerson is better place because Greta has been part of this community.

I am forever grateful for Greta’s friendship, wise counsel, and her magical ability to turn into a powerful super human, whenever the situation warrants it. I wish Greta the very best as she continues to embody what it means to live justice in every breath.

*****

Healing & Advocacy Growth and Transitions

Building on the incredible work that Melanie and Greta have done building a place of support for people who have been impacted by power-based interpersonal violence, the Healing & Advocacy Collective will be growing to address community need. In response to the ESOCWeekOfAction Student Demands, Healing & Advocacy received approval for an additional employee position. The search has begun for staff to join Healing & Advocacy to assist with advocacy-based counseling and prevention. In addition, graduate interns will be joining Healing & Advocacy in September. Additional staff will strengthen and enhance our continued support of community, especially for Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Trans and Genderqueer folks, and community members with disabilities.

Healing & Advocacy is available to support individuals and communities impacted by power-based interpersonal violence, including sexual assault and harassment, stalking, abusive relationships, child abuse and neglect, identity-based harm, and additional experiences of trauma. Healing & Advocacy plans on continuing our work in solidarity with those most impacted and committed to social justice and liberation. We invite you to join us as we continue to explore opportunities for healing, community-building, artistic expression, anti-oppression and liberation work, and prevention through culture change.
*****
Summer Exploration
We Want to Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622408/we-want-to-do-more-than-survive-by-bettina-love
Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.
The Right to Maim by Jasbir K. Puar.
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-right-to-maim
In The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of “debility”—bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors—to disrupt the category of disability.
Finding Our Way Episode 12: Harm, Punishment, and Abolition with Mariame Kaba
In this episode, Prentis sits with activist, organizer, educator, and author, Mariame Kaba, to discuss abolition and its connection to healing work. This conversation asks us to confront difficult truths about our enacting of relationship, our striving for innocence, and how much we might actually draw pleasure from punishment.

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Social Justice Center

UPDATES – June 2021

Juneteenth FlagA Letter from Sylvia Spears on Juneteenth


Dear Members of the Emerson Community,

This Friday, Emerson will observe Juneteenth as an official holiday for the first time in the College’s history. Although Juneteenth may be new to some members of the Emerson Community, observances in the form of gatherings, celebrations, musical events, and religious services have been taking place in African American communities for a very long time. Against the backdrop of what is now being described as a time of racial reckoning in the United States, Juneteenth has come more fully into the public’s awareness. States, cities, businesses, organizations, and a host of colleges and universities have added Juneteenth to their official holiday calendars. And, yes, that is a good thing.

Yet, I continue to think about all of the historical and present-day complexities surrounding the holiday, especially our understandings of what abolition might truly mean. Juneteenth recognizes the day that the Union Army freed the last group of people in the United States who remained enslaved for two years beyond Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Think about what it means that the U.S. government made slavery illegal in 1863 but it continued in Texas for two more years. What does that reveal about our reliance on government-granted rights to ascribe value to our humanity, especially if those rights can be given, ignored, or taken back? What does it mean to celebrate the abolition of slavery while many continue to fight for the fundamental promises of abolition? Further, how might we think about abolition beyond the release of iron shackles to the transformation of the consciousness that allowed slavery to happen and still permeates our society today?

These questions cause me to ponder what it means for Juneteenth to slowly become mainstream. This year, more companies than ever will observe Juneteenth—Best Buy, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Google, J.C. Penny, J.P. Morgan, Master Card, the NFL, Nike, Target, Twitter, Workday, and many more. Is this a sign of growing commitment to racial justice? Just yesterday, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Are these groups and organizations committed to growing their anti-racist practices or is observance of Juneteenth a symbolic gesture driven by the politics of appearances and devoid of any effort to address the myriad of injustices that affect the lives and well-being of African American and Black communities? These are the questions that weigh on my heart as I also honor the ancestors who fought for freedom.

Today, I wonder how we, at Emerson, might meaningfully observe Juneteenth in light of the long arc of history in which “freedom is a constant struggle.” For me, Juneteenth cannot solely be a time for celebration. It must also serve as an act of resistance. It is my hope that we will all choose to reflect, to learn, and to act in ways that help us to realize true abolition and liberation for African American and Black communities, along with all other communities who are affected by oppression.

Juneteenth Resources: https://websites.emerson.edu/juneteenth-resources

_____
 

Mural by artist Wesley Cabral in Hayes Valley featuring a portrait of Gabriella Momah

Deepening Our Disability Justice Practice

On April 6, Access: Student Disability Union, Emerson’s first affiliated student organization for disabled students, informed the Emerson Community of the Access Advocacy Project (linktr.ee/AccessSDU). In their materials, the group called upon the College “to do the hard, but important work of making itself more equitable to disabled students and community members.” In addition to sharing an Action Plan for Disability Equity as a starting point for change, Access: Student Disability Union noted that “…anti-ableism work requires a communal, continuous effort….” The staff of the Social Justice Center extend gratitude to Access: Student Disability Union for their call to our community to make the College more accessible and equitable for students and community members with disabilities.

We pledge to work with sincerity and sustained commitment to deepen our understanding of disability justice, to address instances of ableism within our practices and at Emerson, and to work toward true liberatory access for members of our community. To this end, the Social Justice Center had entered into a more in-depth study of disability justice and will be working to realign our practices accordingly. Please know that changes in our practices will be deliberately considered and a work in progress.

We invite the Emerson Community to join us in this important work. For resources related to Disability Justice, please visit the SJC’s Radical Guide for Social Justice at https://guides.library.emerson.edu/radical. The selected materials center the experiences and perspectives of people within the disability community.

“I want to say unequivocally that disabled people are everywhere. We are one of the largest oppressed groups on the planet. We are part of political movements, even if you don’t know or don’t acknowledge that we are. No matter what community you’re working with, you are working with disabled people. “ Mia Mingus – Longmore Lecture
https://longmoreinstitute.sfsu.edu/mia-mingus-longmore-lecture-video-now-available

_____

Elma Lewis Center
As part of the refinement of the College’s strategic goals in 2012, Emerson sought to increase its engagement in communities within the Boston area. At that time, a new center was created as an administrative hub for some of this work. This new center was named after Elma Lewis, an Emerson alumnae ’43, who was arts educator and the founder of the National Center of Afro-American Artists and The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts. With permission of Miss Lewis’s family, Emerson’s new center was named the Elma Lewis Center for Civic Engagement, Learning, and Research (ELC).

Over the past several years, we have noted that the language that describes this body of work has shifted away from the nomenclature of civic engagement, and moved to a more community-based language and practice. In keeping with this shift, we are updating the name of the ELC to the Elma Lewis Center for Community Engagement (ELCCE). The scope work of the Center remains the same and we will continue to support all of the ways in which community engagement, cross-community learning, and community-centered research pratices occur. Please check out what is happening at the ELCCE at https://www.emerson.edu/social-justice-center/elma-lewis-center.

_____

Summer Exploration

10 Laws with East Forest - Bayo AkomolafeTen Laws Podcast with East Forest, #112 with Bayo Akomolafe: Uncovering Bones

https://ten-laws-with-east-forest.simplecast.com/episodes/bayo-akomolafe-uncovering-bones-the-invitation-being-made-112 and where podcasts are available

Bayo Akomolafe is globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action, activism and social change. He is an international speaker, poet, and activist for a radical paradigm shift in consciousness and current ways of living. His readings of ‘knowledge’, ‘development’, ‘progress’ and ‘truth’ as Eurocentric metanarratives led him and his wife, Ej to develop the first International Workshop on Alternative Research Paradigms and Indigenous Knowledge Promotion (WARP, 2011). Bayo has authored two books, We Will Tell Our Own Story! and These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home.

A Third University is Possible by la papersonA Third University Is Possible by la paperson

Uncovering the decolonizing ghost in the colonizing machine. Drawing parallels to Third Cinema and Black filmmaking assemblages, A Third University Is Possible ultimately presents new ways of using language to develop a framework for hotwiring university “machines” to the practical work of decolonization.
www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/a-third-university-is-possible

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Finding Our Way Season 2Finding Our Way Podcast, Season 2

Finding Our Way is conversation between Prentis and activists, artists and leaders to discuss how to realize the world we want through our own healing and transformation. This isn’t a podcast about answers. 

Hosted by Prentis Hemphill where podcasts are available.

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Emerson College
(617) 824-8528
www.facebook/SocialJusticeCtr

UPDATES – May 2021

Exhale: A Meditation

This has been an unusual year. In so many ways, this year has been a portal; a portal that opened a window into the greater Truths of our existence. It showed us who we are, who we can be at our best, and who we can be at our worst.

It also revealed the gap between our dreams, institutional promises, and our lived realities. It illuminated a schism; a kind of brutal disappointment in the very institutions and systems that we thought would serve us. We have been holding our collective breath for far too long. We must embrace the power and promise of a long, deep exhale.

As more and more people become safe from the virus, our collective sense of comfort in the world slowly and cautiously begins to return. We Exhale.

As communities work toward change together, we see the possibility of transformation in places that were previously perceived as intractable. We Exhale.

As we gather together with newfound intersectional solidarity, we feel the power of collectivity and what it means to be in community. We Exhale.

As the Spring reveals its rich fullness, we recognize that all around us change is constant and we are part of that change. We Exhale.

And those of us who have been fighting for justice…we are coming to understand that justice cannot exist outside of us until it exists with us. We Exhale.

And as we move to the close of the academic year, it is my hope that you will now allow yourself to exhale. Exhale away anything that doesn’t serve you. You can Breathe now.

Breathe for those who no longer have breath.
Breathe  for those who can’t catch their breath.
Breathe for those yet to have breath.
Breathe for the planet so that she may be healed.
Breathe so that we may remember to remember who are and that freedom begins at the Exhale.

******
Congratulations, SJC Graduates!
We congratulate Ashley Tarbet-DeStefano in the Elma Lewis Center for completing her MS degree in Critical Ethnic and Community Studies from UMass Boston, and Jeeyoon Kim in the Elma Lewis Center for completing her MA degree in Digital Marketing and Data Analytics from Emerson.On The Move:
It is with sadness that we inform the Emerson Community that Jeeyoon Kim will be transitioning out her role as Assistant Director for Youth Programs, and leaving Emerson. Jeeyoon played a critical role in guiding the development of some of the College’s distinct youth programs, more specifically, Creative Community Network and the Youth LEAD Sharon program. Jeeyoon has had a significant impact on the young people with whom she worked and has been a valued member of the Social Justice Center team. We extend our thanks and appreciation for Jeeyoon, as she and her partner make moves in the world. Jeeyoon, thank you for who you are and all that you have to done to create a vibrant learning community of young people. We are all better because of the time we have spent with you. Best wishes to you for what comes next in your life.

******
traces remain the wooden bookSeed to Harvest: The Wooden Book, a touring book project where the people and communities write the pages, launched its Boston-area tour from Emerson’s Elma Lewis Center in April. Seed to Harvest: The Wooden Book is the first in a series of books that will travel throughout the United States and 14 U.S. territories collecting stories in the form of memories that will serve as medicine for its readers. In collaboration with Arts Emerson artist-in-residence, Toshi Reagon’s Parable Path Boston, the Traces/Remain ensemble is inviting people in communities to join them on a Sower’s journey that uses memories as medicine. You may submit your original content in response to one of four narrative prompts. The prompts include reflections on personal connections with trees, to memories of what you are ready to pass onto others for the purpose of healing, to what are you planting and what will you sow. Original poems, essays, short stories, articles, drawings, paintings, music, etc. may be submitted. We encourage all Emersonians to consider submitting their work. Entries may be made via email at seedtoharvestentries@gmail.com and more information can be found at artsemerson.org under programs.
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Title IX in black lettering on blue backgroundAccess, Equity, & Title IX
During the 2020-2021 academic year, Access, Equity, & Title IX (AET) received and evaluated 110 reports, 80 of which involved prohibited conduct under the College’s Power-Based Interpersonal Violence Policy. Reports involved a wide range of behaviors, including sexual harassment, sexual assault, stalking, and relationship violence. AET authorized two requests for a formal resolution processes (investigation and adjudication) and implemented supportive measures in response to 21 reports, either at the request of students or based on an assessment by AET staff. These measures were singular or a combination of measures, including but not limited to No Contact Orders; Stay Away Directives; requests for academic, residential, or workplace modifications; policy reminders; and targeted inquiries for safety assessment.

BIAS

Identity-Based Harm (Bias)
This academic year, we received 39 reports of identity-based harm, a significant reduction in the number of reports received last year (62). The classroom continues to be where a majority of harm is occurring. Experiences of harm related to ethnicity/culture, race, and gender identity/expression continue to be the most reported, as well as an increase in the number of experience of harm related to disability. Over the summer months the Social Justice Center will be in conversation with Academic Affairs, Campus Life, and Human Resources regarding additional options for reporting experiences of bias, microaggressions, and identity-based harm that will allow for direct reporting to the areas noted above while also maintaining an option of anonymity for those who report. This revised system will allow Academic Affairs, Campus Life, and Human Resources to monitor, track, and respond to experiences within their areas of the College. The Social Justice Center will continue to provide support and advocacy for those impacted by identity-based harm.

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Summer Exploration

 

Decarcerating Disability by Liat Ben-MosheDecarcerating Disability by Liat Ben-Moshe. Liat Ben-Moshe provides case studies that show how prison abolition is not an unattainable goal but rather a reality, and how it plays out in different arenas of incarceration—antipsychiatry, the field of intellectual disabilities, and the fight against the prison-industrial complex. Her analysis of lived experience, history, and culture charts a way out of a failing system of incarceration.
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/decarcerating-disabilityWe Do This 'Til We Free Us by Mariame KabaWe Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba. What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1664-we-do-this-til-we-free-us

Sorrowland by Rivers SolomonSorrowland by Rivers Solomon. A genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374266776

Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline GumbsUndrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals. Undrowned is a book-length meditation for the entire human species, based on the subversive and transformative lessons of marine mammals. Alexis Pauline Gumbs has spent hundreds of hours watching our aquatic cousins. She has found them to be queer, fierce, protective of each other, complex, shaped by conflict, and struggling to survive the extractive and militarized conditions humans have imposed on the ocean. Employing a brilliant mix of poetic sensibility, naturalist observation, and Black feminist insights, she translates their submerged wisdom to reveal what they might teach us. The result is a powerful work of creative nonfiction that produces not a specific agenda but an unfolding space for wonder and questioning.
https://www.akpress.org/undrowned.html

Updates – January 2021, MLK Day

Dear Members of the Emerson Community,

In honor of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., we offer a collection of words and events that create opportunity to think more deeply about MLK’s work. As we enter into a week of change, knowing that every breath is a moment of transition, we look beyond the most revered and memorized quotes of singular humans to enter into a place of self- and systems-reflection, -analysis, and -accountability.

— Social Justice Center

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Marc Lamont Hill – author, social justice activist and organizer – @marclamonthill and www.marclamonthill.com

“Today, let us remember Martin Luther King as he was: A Black radical anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, revolutionary Christian who died as an enemy of the State. Anything else is just a lie.” 

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SJC MLK Reflection – 2019

Each January, cities and towns, business and corporations, schools and universities mark the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. In celebration, we dust off our fragmented memories and pieced-together understandings of King’s life and legacy. Some communities hold church services that conclude with arms linked and slightly off-key renditions of “We Shall Overcome.” In some places, we step out of our daily routine to do community service, demonstrating our commitment to a “day on and not a day off.” And in other places, we come together to discuss society’s most pressing problems against the backdrop of King’s soaring speeches and compelling narratives – “I have a dream that one day…. A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere…. Darkness cannot stamp out darkness only light can do that….”

Once during the year, we lift King up, resurrecting him from our collective consciousness. In doing so, we also resurrect our better selves, our yearnings for justice, and our dreams of freedom. We make King kind and generous, patient and conciliatory, and a champion for inclusion in its most sanitized forms.

We choose to forget the King who shut down White clergy who opposed him with the power of his pen in a letter he wrote while in Birmingham Jail, the King who out of frustration exclaimed “Why We Can’t Wait,” and the King who called out “The Three Evils of Society” at the National Conference on New Politics in 1967. This speech is considered one of King’s most revolutionary speeches but we hear little of it.

“We are now experiencing the coming to the surface of a triple prong sickness that has been lurking within our body politic from its very beginning. That is the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism.”

Some contemporary writers consider King’s speech, “The Three Evils of Society,” a prophetic commentary on the state of the United States today. They are connecting King’s observations about excessive materialism to the present day weaponization of poverty, his remarks about racism to colonialism and the extractivist nature of our society, and his commentary on militarism to border imperialism that is taking place at our southernmost border and all over the world. For me, King’s work is relevant today not because of his poetic calls for us to be better human beings but because of his deep and searing analysis of what prevents us from being better human beings and a better nation. The problem is that we are acculturated to the supremacy of some and the oppression of others, the flow of capitalism instead of the flow of compassion, and our most base urgings toward violence instead of our inner callings toward peace.

Instead of relegating King to a single page in a history book or to a celebration once per year, we need to consider what King’s “radical revolution of values” would look like. What might happen if we all became “maladjusted to injustice”?

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Bernice King – thought leader, peace advocate – @BerniceKing and https://berniceking.com

“Please don’t act like everyone loved my father. He was assassinated. A 1967 poll reflected that he was one of the most hated men in America. Most hated. Many who quote him now and evoke him to deter justice today would likely hate, and may already hate, the authentic King.” – Bernice King, Twitter @BerniceKing

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Patrisse Cullors – artist, author, educator, organizer – @osopepatrisse and patrissecullors.com

Patrisse Cullors shares a reflection on what it means to feel connected to King in our current movements. Watch this brief video on Instagram @osopepatrisse

“I feel more connected to King now. Not as a big civil rights icon but more as a human being. Someone who probably loved to dance and sing and laugh and be joyful, but had to spend most of his time fighting for our freedom.”

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Events

The People’s Inauguration – January 21, 2021
Only we can bring our communities together, tend our wounds, and begin the labor of reckoning, reimagining and remaking our nation block-by-block, heart-to-heart. Will you join us? Visit https://thepeoplesinauguration.org

Radical Imagination for Racial Justice – January 22, 2021, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
In May of 2020 Radical Imagination for Racial Justice launched with a call to ALAANA+ / BIPOC artists and creatives living and/or working in Boston. Grounded in the belief that artists of color know what is essential for the freedom and liberation of their communities, RIRJ has sought to support artists’ creative practices and their collaborative world building visions for racial justice. Please join us in celebrating the inaugural cohort of RIRJ artists! Friday, January 22, 5:30-7:30pm. Learn more about the RIRJ artists at https://www.imaginejusticeboston.org

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Emerson College
(617) 824-8528
www.facebook/SocialJusticeCtr

Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Asco wequassunnúmmis Netompaûog (Hello, My Friends, in the language of the Narragansett People)

On October 12, the College will observe both Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day. Holding these observances simultaneously in our consciousness requires some mental gymnastics, especially for those of us who understand the deeply problematic history of the United States in relation to Native people. To observe Indigenous Peoples’ Day absent a commitment to examining the status of those very people serves as a performative nod to the existence of Native people without concern for the issues facing Native people.

In the United States, Native people represent approximately two percent of the population. They are a diverse community of people with cultural norms that are expressed in a variety of ways. There are more than 550 tribes that have obtained federal recognition, which is supposed to support the sovereignty and self-determination of tribes as independent nations. There are many tribal communities with state recognition as well as communities who persist absent recognition from any government entities.

Sincerely,Wind Dancer (Sylvia, member of the Narragansett Nation)

Below Are Some Issues Affecting Native People in the United States

Education
Native students represent less than 1% of the students in the U.S., yet the dropout rate for these students is twice the national average, more than any other racial group. This dropout rate is often related to insufficient school funding in Native communities and the treatment of Native students in schools in predominately white communities. Only 17% of Native students continue their education after high school. The percentage of students who identify as “American Indian/Alaska Native” at Emerson is 0.1%.

Health Disparities
The life expectancy for Native people in the U.S. is 5.5 years less than the national average. According to the Indian Health Services, not only do Native people die at higher rates than people of other races, but they are disproportionately affected by diabetes, liver disease, homicide, and suicide. Tribes in the U.S. are currently disproportionately affected by COVD-19.

Land Disputes and Tribal Resources
Conflicts over tribal land began before the founding of the United States and continue today. Land disputes between tribes, states, and the federal government are often motivated by private interests in the natural resources on or near tribal land. Tribal lands have been exploited for economic gain and have threatened these areas with climate change effects. Tribes have fought in federal courts to retain their sovereign land rights, to preserve sacred lands and burial grounds, and to protect the environment for the generation to come.

Violence Against Native Women (Content Warning)
Native women are subject to violence at alarming rates. According to Indian Law Resource Center, “More than 4 in 5 Native women have experienced violence, and more than 1 in 2 have experienced sexual violence.” Department of Justice data suggests that 80% of the physical abuse and sexual assaults experienced by Native women are perpetrated by non-Native people. Throughout Canada and the U.S., a disproportionate number of Native women, including two-spirit and trans women, go missing or are murdered.

Loss of Native Language
Most Native people in the U.S. speak English. According to the Indigenous Language Institute, only 175 out of more than 300 native languages remain today. Many tribes are working to retain their native language and have launched language reclamation projects to help their communities keep their languages alive. It is predicted that without action to salvage the remaining languages, about 20 will be left by 2050. The founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian said, “Language is central to cultural identity. It is the code containing the subtleties and secrets of cultural life.”

Voting Rights
Although Native people have the right to vote, they are often unable to exercise that right due to the lack of accessible polling places in their areas. Additionally, many Native people on reservations are unable to register to vote because reservations don’t always use standard street addresses, which leads to their voting applications being rejected. Absent voting abilities, the interests of Native communities go unaddressed.

How You Can Support Native Communities

  • Take time to learn about indigenous history. Learn about the real history of Native people in the U.S. Find out what the real story of Thanksgiving is. You will be surprised and may think of your Thanksgiving gathering in a very different way.
  • Learn about the lives of Native communities through an indigenous lens. The history of Native people is often presented through the lens ofcolonizers, ignoring indigenous perspectives and experiences. Support Native people in claiming their right to tell their own stories.
  • Celebrate Native culture respectfully. Understand that cultural appropriation is a form of theft of culture and identity. Mascots and Halloween costumes are disrespectful and hurtful. If you value indigenous culture, find and buy goods from indigenous businesses, artists, and designers.
  • Support organizations advocating for Native communities. There are a number of organizations doing comprehensive advocacy work for indigenous communities. The National Indian Education Association and the National Indian Health Board are working in areas where inequities and inequality are most felt. The National Congress of American Indians does policy and advocacy work, focusing on collecting data to better serve indigenous populations.
  • Support the needs of your local tribes. The best way to have a meaningful impact is to let local tribes determine where your advocacy and activism is most helpful. For information about tribes in your area, please visit: https://500nations.com/500_Tribes.asp

UPDATES – SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Dear Members of the Emerson Community,

This community update was written before yesterday’s ruling by Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, regarding the indictment of officers involved in the shooting and death of Breonna Taylor. In many ways, the content of much of this newsletter feels out of sync with this moment and what some members of the Emerson Community may be feeling or needing in this moment. Regretfully, there is no measure of consolation that I can offer to sufficiently address the pain that some of us are experiencing today.

I don’t know all of what happened in Breonna Taylor’s apartment that night. We may never know.

What I do know is that Breonna Taylor was not a suspect of a crime. She was an EMT who was working to save the lives of people during a pandemic.

What I do know is that she was sleeping in her apartment when all hell broke loose resulting in six shots being fired into her body.

What I do know is that she is one of a long list of unarmed Black people who have been killed as a result of state sanctioned violence.

What I do know is that I am grieving for her, her family, communities of color, and those of us who don’t have the privilege of safety while we sleep, run, drive or even breathe.

Today, I will grieve. Tomorrow, I will continue to work for change.

– Sylvia

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The Social Justice Center has a number of new programs that are available to the Emerson Community.

Panic & Patience Podcast – Building Community Through Art, Education, and Social Justice

The Panic & Patience Podcast series is hosted by Jae Williams, Director of Special Projects in the Social Justice Center. This series highlights the work of artists, educators, entrepreneurs, athletes, and community leaders as they explore issues affecting marginalized communities, and how we as leaders can create space and support efforts of change. “This is a space where Black and Brown folks can see themselves and their experiences reflected all of their inherit brilliance, fullness, and power,” said Sylvia Spears, Vice President for Equity & Social Justice. This series is anchored in an understanding that this work is an urgent ever-changing process of dismantling social constructs, unconscious bias, and systematic oppression, while also working to build for a future that encourages cultural humility, inclusion, and community growth. Panic & Patience is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Season One is available at Panic & Patience on Youtube. Feel free to check out Jae’s personal Panic & Patience website: https://bit.ly/ourpanicandpatience

 
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Radical Guide for Social Justice
A collection of texts, videos, podcasts, and other multimodal materials gathered by members of the Social Justice Center as we work to deepen our individual knowledge and collective practice. We share this collection for those who are also interested in doing their own work for social justice. These topics provide an entry point for further exploration into social justice, anti-oppression, liberation, and organizing movements. As you expand your interest in any particular area, we encourage you to take an intersectional approach by exploring other topics as well. Visit https://guides.library.emerson.edu/radical
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Healing & Advocacy

We’re still available and can connect via email, phone, and through video calls! Some additional ways to connect are though:

Trauma Informed Yoga
Focused on listening to your body.
Wednesdays from 6-7 PM EST on Zoom
Register at: https://tinyurl.com/Y67j6RN0

Support Group
A space for folks to gather who have experienced PBIV.
For more information or to join, email advocacy@emerson.edu

What We Grow: An Intentional Practice Community
This Practice Community is an intentional 8 week-long space focused on growing self-accountability in our own lives through relationships and cultivating a beginning understanding of transformative justice. This group is inspired by the article ‘Dreaming Accountability’ by Mia Mingus, her work, and the work of BATJC, Just Practice, and many, many other femme, trans, and gender expansive communities of color who have long been rooting into practices of community accountability. For more information or to join, email advocacy@emerson.edu

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A Book Club Won’t Save Us: Study, Act, Reflect, Repeat
What does principled struggle mean? More importantly, why does it matter? Join Samantha Ivery, Director of Diversity & Equity Initiatives in the Social Justice Center, in a 4-week series to begin a praxis of “study, act, reflect, repeat.” Participants will meet weekly for a month to:
  • Take personal responsibility for increasing our own awareness and knowledge base of societal norms linked to systemic oppression;
  • Develop critical thinking muscles to integrate dissonant themes into practice;
  • Build a repertoire of reflective practices;
  • Leave motivated to repeat.
SERIES #1
Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England (Jared Ross Hardesty)
October 6, 13, 20, 27 – AFTERNOON 12-1PM
October 6, 13, 20, 27 – EVENING 5-6PM
 
SERIES #2
See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love (Valarie Kaur)
November 10, 17 & December 1, 8 – AFTERNOON 12-1PM
November 10, 17 & December 1, 8 – EVENING 5-6PM
 
Registration: Click the links above for the dates and time slot of your choosing. Please contact samantha_ivery@emerson.edu for questions or more details.
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What we have been reading and thinking about…

The Four Parts of Accountability: How To Give A Genuine Apology Part 1
How To Give A Genuine Apology Part 2: The Apology – The What and The How
Mia Mingus is a writer, educator and organizer for disability justice and transformative justice. Read at https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com

A Conversation About Healing Justice with Cara Page
Cara Page is a Black queer feminist cultural/memory worker, curator, and organizer. She joins Isha Weerasinghe, a senior policy analyst focused on mental health and works on CLASP’s (Center for Law and Social Policy) youth team. Watch at https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1420060828384539
Connectfulness Podcast 010: Mending Racialized Trauma: A Body Centered Approach with Resmaa Menakem
Rebecca is joined by healer, author, and trauma specialist, Resmaa Menakem. Resmaa helps people, communities, and organizations find strength and healing that’s both holistic and resilient. Listen at https://connectfulness.com/episode/010-resmaa-menakem-racialized-trauma
The Deep by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes
The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’ rap group Clipping. More info at https://www.riverssolomon.com/thedeep

Racial Justice and Survivor Advocacy

Pandemic, Protests, and the Redistribution of Power

The past four months have been a period of significant upheaval for people around the world, including the very communities in which we live, learn, and work. adrienne maree brown describes the pandemic as a period of compression, with those who are able to withdrawing from the world and going into the deep isolation of self-quarantine. adrienne suggests this compression, for some of us, resulted in a return to our truest natures, rediscovering who and what we value most in our lives. Some would say we have experienced a kind of spontaneous attunement to our higher and better selves.

And yet, this compression occurred against the backdrop of indisputable evidence of oppression, direct and structural violence, and systemic racism. We sit in the midst of a schism—a gap between what our higher selves want for our communities and the reality of the lived experiences of those in the margins. The result of this schism is rupture—the kind that creates disorder, shifts consciousness, and activates a desire for reclamation.

It is a time of reclaiming our bodies, our rights, our agency, our land, and our self-determination. This reclamation is revealing itself globally in the form of history-making protest. People around the world have taken to the streets to assert the rights of Black and African American people to exist in their fullest humanity. Many have realized that “none of us are free until all of us are free.” At the same time, the #MeToo movement has been re-energized and survivors are calling for individual and institutional accountability. They are naming names and daring others to live up to their promise of safety, care, and justice.

The pandemic has created an opening for transformative change. Who among us will step into co-creating the future of our deepest desires?

 
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Racial Justice at Emerson

Echoing POWER’s 2019 social media posts, blackatemerson, a new Instagram account, posed this simple question: “How have professors, administrators, and other Emersonians treated you?” In under a week’s time, over 115 students and alums, a majority who identify as Black or people of color, posted stories of their experiences at Emerson. These testimonies recount ongoing microaggressions, casual uses of the N-word, the fetishization and critique of Black women and their bodies, isolation from consistently being the only Black person in a setting, not seeing themselves reflected meaningfully in curricula, and expressions of what it feels like to be both hypervisible and invisible at the same time.

 

I am also seeing faculty and staff colleagues of color who carry the weight of supporting students of color, while also being tapped to guide their departments on diversity. All of this is occurring while they struggle to make sense of the ongoing murder and horrible treatment of people who look just like them. The emotional burden carried by students, faculty, and staff of color is tremendous, and yet they continue to do their best work in the context of an environment that every day reminds them that it wasn’t built for them.

This week, I was surprised by a message forwarded to me by a colleague at another institution, a place where I worked for five years. The letter was signed by the Board of Trustees, the President, and all members of the senior leadership team. Here are some of the commitments that college is making in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and their community’s call for racial justice:

  • Express support for movements across the nation to put an end to systemic racism, and join with them to say that Black Lives Matter and racial injustice must end.
  • Make implicit bias training mandatory for all students, faculty, and staff with commitment from the Board of Trustees to participate in the training.
  • Expand curriculum in areas addressing racial injustice, systemic racism, and institutionalized inequality.
  • Provide funding for recruitment and retention of faculty and staff of color and for Employee Resource Networks (affinity groups) to strengthen recruitment and retention.
  • Institute comprehensive exit interviews with departing faculty and staff of color to identify common themes, and begin an enhanced retention plan.
  • Increase access to therapists of color and ensure they understand race-based trauma.
  • Review and update training and policies for campus police to ensure empathetic, equitable, and just standard operating procedures.
  • Expect to be held accountable for their actions and not to expect colleagues of color—who for too long have shouldered the hard work—to lead this alone.

Only time will tell what actually happens at that institution. Maybe their commitments will lead to real and lasting change and maybe they won’t. Nonetheless, I can’t help but ask what we are willing to do at Emerson to make it the place that represents the aspirations of our better selves?

 
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Where To Begin?

Begin at the beginning by reflecting on your own beliefs and actions. Examine the ways you might be benefitting from the status quo. Then assess the norms, policies, practices of your program, your organization, your department, your office,  or your division for the existence of anti-racist practices. If you don’t know what that is referring to or you don’t see any of these practices present, then you know where to begin your work. Here are some thought-provoking resources. Warning: These resources are pointed and direct. They will make you uncomfortable. If they don’t, then you aren’t really doing the work.

Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources: http://bit.ly/ScaffoldedAntiRacistResources

A word for White People, in Two Parts by adrienne maree brown: http://adriennemareebrown.net

The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture: https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-supremacy-culture-characteristics.html

 
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Survivor Advocacy and the Importance of Knowing The Landscape

This past week, I have seen a surge in community concern and survivor advocacy about power-based interpersonal violence (PBIV) and the College’s response. Questions were raised about climate in student organizations and the College’s ability to hold student leaders accountable for harms they have caused.

Survivor advocacy is critically important. Not only does it play a role in community accountability, it also serves as a powerful catalyst for change. It was survivor advocacy that sparked the review of College processes in 2014, leading to a detailed Sexual Misconduct Policy, the hire of a full-time Title IX Coordinator, and the creation of the Healing & Advocacy Collective (formerly Violence Prevention & Response). It was survivor advocacy in 2019 that resulted in a Presidential Working Group charged with examining the “sexual misconduct ecosystem” among students. This current wave of advocacy has the potential to result in continued institutional as well as cultural change at Emerson.

As you push forward, please know that survivor advocacy is most effective when grounded in deep knowledge of the landscape, including what the laws and regulations allow and what they limit, what the scope of any relevant policies are, who has responsibility for what, as well as where power is exercised and by whom. As you work to address concerns, look for the root causes of issues by asking yourself why something is occurring. The first answer you come up with is never the root cause. Continue to ask why. Here are some places to start in understanding the landscape:

 
NINE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT TITLE IX AT EMERSON COLLEGE
  1. Title IX is a federal regulation that prohibits sex discrimination in educational settings that receiving federal funding. Power-based interpersonal violence (PBIV) has historically fallen under these regulations. The regulations will change on August 14, 2020. See: New Title IX Regulations Overview at bit.ly/sjcmessages
  2. The College must comply with Title IX regulations or risk loss of federal funding. This funding comes largely in the form of financial aid. 
  3. The Sexual Misconduct Policy outlines how reports of PBIV will be addressed by Emerson. See: www.emerson.edu/policies/sexual-misconduct 
  4. The policy does not cover what occurs within student organizations or the student leadership processes. Student orgs are governed by SEAL (www.emerson.edu/seal) and student staff positions are under the purview of many departments across the College.
  5. In most instances, Emerson’s Title IX Coordinator will not launch an investigation into a report of PBIV without the participation and agreement of the person who has been affected by the harm.
  6. The Title IX Coordinator is only one of many people at Emerson responsible for the addressing reports of PBIV, the provision of accommodations or supports to people who have been harmed, and the implementation of actions to increase the safety of individuals or the campus community. See Eco-Map for Student-on-Student PBIV at https://bit.ly/sjcmessages,
    which details the range of individuals who may have an influence on what occurs in response to a report.
  7. The Title IX Coordinator does not conduct the actual investigation of reports of PBIV. Investigations are conducted by an internal or external investigator assigned to a case.
  8. The Title IX Coordinator does not have the authority to impose sanctions on any member of the community. Student sanctions are imposed by a Sanction Panel. Faculty and Staff sanctions are imposed in accordance with Appendix B of the SMP. See: www.emerson.edu/policies/sexual-misconduct#AppendixB
  9. Most importantly, despite efforts to develop trauma-informed processes and to conduct trauma-informed investigations, this process will never be sufficiently supportive of the people involved. It is a process dictated by federal regulations that was created in the likeness of a flawed legal system.
If you or someone you know has been affected by power-based interpersonal violence, please feel free to contact Greta or Melanie in the Healing & Advocacy Collective by email: advocate@emerson.edu