Tag Archives: books

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.

[Image Description: A wider horizontal bar of blue with white text, “617-824-8528. sjc@emerson.edu. Facebook/SocialJusticeCtr. www.emerson.edu/social-justice-center.”]

Social Justice Center

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.
******
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.

******

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