Hello Women’s Center friends!

With Critical Social Justice Week approaching, it’s important to remember what needs to be completed before the events! Below are two of the events that require preparation, so please make sure that’s handled in a timely manner:

Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon for CSJ: Ignite on Wednesday, October 24th. Please create a username ahead of time for Wikipedia to recognize your legitimacy. For more details.

Baltimore Walking Tour on Friday, October 26th. RSVP by Wednesday, October 24th so we know how many people to expect for the shuttle. For more details.

This year, CSJ’s theme is Ignite. This topic is especially relevant, as it focuses on the ability to embrace and participate in activism. Everyone with different levels of interest and involvement are welcome to attend all events, as there is something to gain from each of them. Additionally, this year brings an emphasis on STEM fields and activism within them. Often, those academic and career fields are encased in a strict culture that does not allow for much expression or empowerment. Each CSJ event offers the opportunity to learn how activism can be infused into STEM fields. Even if that realm of academia does not house your interests, the events and workshops are a wonderful learning opportunity to expand the horizons of activism within and outside the UMBC community.

See a list of all our events here and read our What You Need to Know blogs here!

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Ignite with our What You Need to Know series. Written by Women’s Center student staff member Hannah Wilcove.

On October 15th, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano posted the following message to Twitter: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted, write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” These sixteen words sparked the rebirth and rapid growth of a campaign created eleven years ago by activist Tarana Burke.

As you probably already know, the #MeToo movement has been a way for survivors of sexual violence to share their stories, or at least acknowledge their existence. Its recent resurgence came on the heels of powerful men like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby finally facing the long-overdue consequences for their actions, although other accusations still loom in the air, unresolved. The sustained prevalence of the movement over this past year, especially given the high volume of news we take in on a regular basis, is a testament to the strength of digital forms of activism. Me Too and other modern movements such as Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street are characterized by their decentralized structure and reliance on publicity through multiple forms of media. Our keynote speaker Deanna Zandt utilized both her social media presence and her participation in an episode of the podcast This American Life titled “Five Women” to not only share her story, but also to talk about the experience of doing so.

Like the consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s, the #MeToo movement is about recognizing commonality of experiences and the systemic factors that influence them. This is what the principle of “the personal is political” is all about: while each survivor has their own individual story, the #MeToo movement provides a way for people to recognize that they are not alone in their experience. As an important note, many women of color flipped the script of this common slogan during the time period known as Second Wave Feminism, and advocated that “the political is personal” in order to make it known that the politics of social movements had significant impacts on their everyday lives.

CSJ as a whole and this year’s theme of Ignite is in part about finding community while doing activist work. Whether you’re a seasoned advocate for the causes you believe in or totally new to fighting for social justice, we all need people to support us in our work and remind us that we are not alone. I hope to see you at one (or more!) of our many CSJ events building that community.

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Ignite with our What You Need to Know series. Written by Kaleigh Mrowka, Assistant Director for Residential Education, and Lauren Mauriello, Assistant Director of Student Conduct.

“[Restorative practices] provide a clear blueprint to ensure that on the path to making social justice, we model that justness in our own behavior – especially toward those people and systems we hope to change.” – John Bailie

Restorative practices is a form of democratic dialogue, which at its core, is about relationships within communities. According to the International Institute for Restorative Practices, the fundamental premise of restorative practices is that “people are happier, more cooperative and productive, and more likely to make positive changes when those in authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them” (Wachtel & Wachtel, 2012). Within higher education environments, this includes teaching students skills for being in relationship with their peers, understanding obligations that exist based on community needs, and engaging within a community to repair harms caused within those relationships.

Restorative justice techniques can be used to address instances of inequality, such as an incident of bias, but can it address the structural issues that sustain oppression? What does it have to do with social justice?

The modern practices of restorative justice have roots in the ways indigenous communities addressed harm. The idea that communities can and should seek to address social issues by including those most impacted by the harms or decisions that impact them is blunted by our western political and social hierarchies and our impulse toward retribution rather than reparation.  Kay Pranis (2005), an expert facilitator of a restorative justice technique called circles, highlights the capacity for restorative justice to pick up when we have reached the limits of democracy.

While it is only recently becoming a known methodology and philosophy in higher education, restorative practices and restorative justice have been popular in the criminal justice system, K-12 education, and other entities for some time as  From a Critical Social Justice perspective, restorative practices lens provides both a methodology and ethos to build stronger communities around difference, reduce power differentials, and create a sense of agency for all members of a community.

So what does that mean for us when considering social justice within a community like UMBC? As the quote that opens this blog post implies, restorative practices can serve as a blueprint for the creation of a more just and inclusive community.  By shifting the focus towards caring for all members of a community, we can seek to create communities that promote justice.

In talking about restorative practices within the framework of Critical Social Justice Week, we will explore the idea of restorative justice as a means to address systems of oppression by looking at methods and tools for restoring power to those who have been harmed, victimized or marginalize, and building individual and community capacity to address community problems. 

To learn more about Restorative Practices, come to our event on Monday, October 22 from 4-5 pm in Commons 329

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Ignite with our What You Need to Know series. Written by Courtney Hobson, Coordinator in the Dresher Center for the Humanities.

When you need to look up information on the internet, Google is the number one site we typically go to. If you type in “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” or “Aretha Franklin,” the first result will likely be an article on Wikipedia.

For those of you not in the know, Wikipedia is a free open-source encyclopedia which means that anyone can edit it. Most of the editors consist of academics or hobbyists who, with time, a computer and a steady internet connection, are generating informative articles that are viewed by millions all over the world.

As one of the top ten visited internet sites in the world, Wikipedia is not merely a tool to record facts; it is helping to shape our collective knowledge. Winston Churchill once remarked that, “history is written by the victors.” Knowing our history is important, but knowing the authors is even moreso. This brings us to editing articles on Wikipedia.

Less than 10% of Wikipedia’s editors identify as cis or trans women and the editors that do identify as women are more likely than men to have their edits reverted.

What does this mean? This means that women are not seen or valued as notable contributors to our society. The statistics are similarly dismal for POC.

Editing Wikipedia is a step towards challenging systemic structures that tell us what information is important enough to know. It is a step that I realized that anyone could take when I attended my first edit-a-thon in 2016 at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The edit-a-thon focused on expanding or creating articles about Black artists. With just 30 minutes of writing and research, I was able to create an short article or stub. I am now one of those hobbyists who edit articles for fun, but I focus on adding content about people from Baltimore, especially Black women.

For the CSJ: Ignite Wikipedia edit-a-thon, we will have a chance to discuss these issues in greater depth, as well as explore resources available through our library. But most importantly, we will inject Wikipedia with a bit of Baltimore and shine a light on figures and events who have shaped our city.

Further reading below:

• Gender bias on Wikipedia
• Wikimedia Foundation releases gender bias report
• Why didn’t Wikipedia have an article on Donna Strickland, a Nobel Prize winner?
• Doing the work: Editing Wikipedia as an act of reconciliation
• How Does Political Wikipedia Stay Apolitical?
• Why I’m making it My Feminist Mission to End Wikipedia’s Notability Policy
• Art and Feminism
• afroCROWD
• Women in Red Wikiproject

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Ignite with our What You Need to Know series. Written by Alexia Petasis.

Activism can be defined as a “practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue.” This can come in many forms and finding your own voice as an activist can be challenging. Something I’ve realized is that activism can meet you where you are at, and there is beauty in combining your passions with your role as an activist. The arts, whether that is performing arts (dance or theatre), visual arts (painting, photography, etc), or fine arts (poetry, music, etc) have the ability to convey complex stories, perspectives, and emotions and creates space to understand the experiences of others. As a powerful medium of communication, the arts can lend themselves well to activism and advocacy work.

As an introduction to Critical Social Justice week, the Women’s Center will be hosting Art as Feeling, Art as Knowledge: A Conversation, from 6:30 to 8 pm on Wednesday, October 17th in the Fine Arts Recital Hall. This event will demonstrate ways in which both the performing and visual arts can be used for social justice activism. In recognition of Relationship Violence Awareness Month, the dance, choreographed by Alexia Petasis, will reflect the development and progression of relationship violence. Alexia collaborated with the We Believe You student group and the Women’s Center to share her choreographed piece in April 2018 for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The dance provoked conversation and experiences that many found unable to understand before witnessing this dance piece. Read more on this Retriever review here. Jen White-Johnson, Visual Arts ’08, will be sharing the ways she uses visual art, specifically graphic design, to empower individuals with autism. Inspired by her son Knox and the intersectional identities he has, Jen’s photography, design, and writing celebrate the joy of being a child on the spectrum. See more of her work here.

Another event the Women’s Center will be hosting as part of CSJ:Ignite is our Community Art Project on October 23, from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm on Academic Row. This event aims to engage and create space for individuals to imagine what a social justice future looks like. Join us to come together as a community and use art as a way of expressing our own visions of a socially just future. There will be popcorn and lots of art supplies! If you are an artist and want to learn how to use your talents to speak out, if you are an activist and haven’t quite considered how art can be integrated within social justice movements, or if you are generally curious about all the knowledge that will be shared throughout this event, everyone is welcome!