Over the past year, proactive and reactive acts of resistance have electrified our country and world. Immediate images that flash through our minds include the water protectors at Standing Rock, the millions around the world who participated in the Women’s March, those who rushed to the airports to volunteer translation and legal assistance to immigrants and refugees in the immediate aftermath of the travel ban.  

As these images of mass protests and large-scale actions continue to capture our attention, we also recognize the power of everyday acts of resistance. Social justice movements have been infused with a renewed sense of urgency, and for an ever-growing number of people, there is the will to be counted, to find voice, and to rise up.

While many are new to the struggle, the struggle itself is not new. We’re reminded by those who have long been active in these movements that the fight for justice is neither in its first breaths nor last gasps.

For the fifth annual Critical Social Justice, we’ll explore opportunities for building individual and collective resistance and resilience. Events throughout the week will challenge us to think about how we can do better, do more, and persist in doing it. How do we rise to meet the challenges of this particular cultural moment to work toward a vision of inclusive excellence—whether it’s in the classroom, online, or in our communities?

We’re excited to announce that our keynote speaker will be Native scholar and activist Dr. Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation), who writes about cultural appropriation and stereotypes of Native peoples in pop culture on her blog Native Appropriations. Keene examines the way Indigenous peoples are using new media to challenge racism, present authentic counter-narratives, and create innovative spaces for art and activism. The keynote lecture and reception will be held on Tuesday, October 24th at 6pm in the UC Ballroom.

Critical Social Justice: Rise will be held on October 23rd through 27th, 2017. Follow our blog, Facebook, and Twitter (#csjrise) for our calendar of events, updates and other news. For more information about the Critical Social Justice initiative, please email womenscenter@umbc.edu.

Critical Social Justice is a Women’s Center initiative with The Mosaic: Center for Culture and Diversity.

A reflection written by Women’s Center director, Jess Myers, tag-teamed with friend, Priscilla.

A few weeks ago, my dear friend, Priscilla, and I headed out on a road trip of a lifetime through Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. And, because we both solidly identify as feminists, this, my friends, was a Feminist Road Trip. We had a blast hiking through four national parks, camping under the stars, and being amazed by the vast beauty of nature.

As the mileage left on our trip got smaller and smaller, in addition to reflecting on our favorite moments, we began to reflect on our journey and what specifically made it feminist. We compiled quite a long list and what we each uniquely brought to our trip as intersectional feminists. For example, I wasn’t as conscientious about ensuring we were making an investment in the local economy when we booked our lodging and Priscilla wasn’t aware about the $5 a day campaign to ensure hotel workers are being fairly compensated for their efforts. We challenged each other along the way to think more critically about our feminist values and what that looks like in practice. For example, getting your truck stuck in the mud doesn’t have to be a women-only experience in getting un-stuck and accepting help from men doesn’t have to be un-feminist (even if you have to “uuuuggggh” it out together when you get back to the safety of your un-stuck truck – which by the way, we affectionately named Carol).

Here we are in Fort Collins, Colorado on Day 1 of our road trip with Carol!

At the Grand Canyon taking our official 10 year anniversary celebration photo complete with a handmade heart.

Learn the history of the place and space you’re traveling through… and then dig deeper. Honor who came before you and learn about the native and indigenous people who first called these places home. Where the story of women are not present, ask why, and when their stories are present, pause to read and reflect with each other. We particularly enjoyed the story of Sharlot Hall and the Vermillion Cliffs in AZ.

Support local businesses. Tip your guides and servers generously and leave at least $5 a day for your housekeeper for each day you stay in your hotel/motel.

Encourage other women on the trail and on the road.

Share your growing edges with each other and then keep reflecting and constructing a counter-narrative. For example, a theme throughout our trip as women traveling without our significant others was being mindful of saying “I” instead of “we” when recounting personal stories, goals, and hopes and the importance we hold in maintaining our individuality in a long-term relationship.

Gracefully accept help as needed.

Be body positive and affirming. Don’t judge other women for taking selfies. You never know what it may have taken for another woman to get to that summit.

Four Corners selfie with a selfie stick!

Play excellent women-empowered playlists and sing your hearts out (for some great ideas, check out NPR’s Turning Tables: 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women)

Honor your friendships with women and celebrate your milestones. Friendships can be just as valid and important as our romantic and/or blood-family relationships.

Here we are at Lower Antelope Canyon in Arizona. We had the best the guide who took this awesome photo of us.

For those planning your next feminist road trip, here’s some of our favorite travel blogs and hashtags (links do not represent endorsements) we used to prepare for our road trip state of mind:

• On She Goes: Travel Stories for All Women of Color
• Bearfoot Theory: Outdoor Adventure for the Everyday Adventurer
• #brownpeoplecamping
• #FatGirlsHiking
• Field Tripping – a bi-weekly column in Baltimore’s City Paper written by UMBC’s very own Dr. Kate Drabinski

Happy traveling to all our feminist wanderlusts out there!

A reflection by Amelia Meman on her feminist mentoring relationship with Assistant Director Megan Tagle Adams.

Megan (right) and I in the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) photobooth.

With Megan’s departure from UMBC (today!), I feel the Women’s Center is saying goodbye to a real social justice champion on our campus. Someone who was constantly striving for excellence in our institution. More than this, though, I feel I am saying goodbye to someone who has taught me what feminist mentorship—in its best iteration—can be.

Traditional models of mentorship are often paternalistic and hierarchical. Relationships are based on a transactional relationship between a mentor–older, more experienced in a particular professional setting, more “successful”—and their mentee—a younger novice looking for their niche, to expand their professional network, and to build on their skills.

2013-2014 Women’s Center staff photo; both mine and Megan’s first time on staff. From left to right: Jess Myers, Narges Ershad, Michael Fell (top), Amelia (bottom), Kelly Broderick (top), Madison Miller (bottom), Megan.

One of my favorite metaphors for this sort of relationship is Paolo Freire’s metaphor of students as containers to be filled—also called the “banking model” of education. In such a model, teachers deposit knowledge and students are meant to memorize and regurgitate. Such a pedagogical method is less about truly learning, and more about recitation. Freire argues, rather, that student and teacher should be able to learn from one another in a dynamic process. The central idea of Pedagogy of the Oppressed  is that pedagogy must be forged with, and not for the oppressed. I know, I know—mentorship =/= teaching; however, I think that Freire’s ideas can be applied to any social justice-oriented relationship—and that is what my mentorship with Megan is in many ways.

In Puerto Rico for the NWSA conference; from left to right: Jess, Amelia, and Megan.

Additionally, feminist and multicultural academicians have contested what mentorship can look like, especially in reaction to the restrictive and frankly stale traditional mentorship model described above. Feminists have developed new models that ask mentor and mentee to account for power dynamics, to treat both as learners and knowledge makers, and to continue reworking the tension around artificial boundaries between professional, political, and personal worlds. Ultimately, mentoring should be based on the feminist and social justice politics we champion.

I would like to take the following post to illustrate what a successful feminist mentorship can look like—using my mentoring relationship with Megan as a model:

Embrace a relationship of mutual empowerment

When I came onto the Women’s Center scene as an Honors College intern in 2013, I was new and so was our Coordinator (now Assistant Director), Megan Tagle Adams. It was exciting to be partnered with this spunky new purple-haired woman who was obviously super cool because she had so much experience in gender studies and feminist activism and all kinds of things.

At Take Back The Night (TBTN) 2015; from left to right: Amelia, Megan, Jess, Yoo-Jin Kang, and Bree Best.

It was in our first meetings together (before Megan had an actual office and when she was just behind a big glass partition in the front office) that we worked together on what would come to be Critical Social Justice.

I remember it so so clearly:

My idea was very vague and very ambitious. Initially, I wanted to do some sort of big, one-time event called an, “Inclusivity Fair,” where we would have UMBC community members and people from Baltimore City come and create engaging, social justice-oriented activities. The concept was fluid and gigantic, and my passion for it was white bright fire hot, which is really never a great combination for a truly successful event. Knowing all of this, Megan worked with me to whittle this giant pile of potential into what is now: an annual event on UMBC’s campus.

Together, Megan and I worked to create Critical Social Justice into an event, an initiative, and a way of working. Megan empowered me—and I her—and together (with the help of numerous others) we created CSJ. She helped me funnel my ideas and my energy into something comprehensive, sustainable, and organized—her strengths exactly. I helped Megan make an impact on our campus in her first year here, and we became quick and powerful collaborators. We empower one another to create great things.

Move away from transactional learning wherein knowledge is deposited—share the learning experience

Post-research presentation at Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) in 2015; from left to right: Megan, Amelia, Yoo-Jin, and Jess.

Although I have, in fact, learned a lot from Megan, I have to acknowledge that we have both been learning from each other. For example, Megan was my research mentor for URCAD. My research was an analysis of This Bridge Called My Back using a postpositivist realist theory of identity as a lens. I know. That’s a mouthful and a half.

Luckily, Megan had a lot of knowledge on feminist theories and especially This Bridge. Not as luckily, she was not steeped in postpositivist realist theory like I was. As my mentor, though, Megan allowed me to teach her about this. Rather than trying to learn all about this theoretical perspective and then take a top-down approach to my research, we came together, collaborated, and learned from one another. I taught her about the theory I was using, and she expanded my understanding of This Bridge. Together, we were able to share our experiences and perspectives, and create a research project that was comprehensive, dynamic, and unique. This was only enabled by our ability to teach and learn from one another.

Promote a holistic model of professional/academic life

As many might know, one of the first things Megan did when she got into the Women’s Center was created the Women of Color Coalition and began really centering conversations about racial justice and intersections with feminism.

From left to right: Megan, Amelia, and Jess. Picture by Yoo-Jin Kang.

In 2013, when both of us started, I had a lot of trouble understanding my racial identity. Megan and I would often come together and talk about what it meant to be biracial, white and Filipina. We understood the strange privilege and not-privilege that we occupied, how it was different from region to region, and how it translated into our cultural identities. Megan really helped me construct a sense of belonging with other women of color and racial justice activism networks.

The personal is political in feminism—and just so, feminist mentorship should rightly blur the lines to promote holistic success. Megan and I both had boundaries around certain topics (as any relationship should), but we also worked together to make professional, academic, and personal discoveries about ourselves and the world we live in.

Share power, share respect, embrace mutuality

As I believe all of these facets of our relationship have demonstrated, Megan and I shared power, shared respect, and embraced mutuality. We were collaborators, co-leaders, teachers, students, friends. As such, I believe our mentoring relationship was something so much more meaningful and enriching than what a “typical” mentorship looks like. It was never about Megan having more power and teaching me how to gain that power. Rather, it was always about sharing power, learning together, and making the world better with each other.

Selfie with Jess, Megan ,and I after we presented on campus activism projects at NCCWSL in 2016.

As folks pursue their careers and their goals, I hope you are able to find mentors that disrupt traditional models of mentorship. As I hope I have demonstrated, mentorship does not have to be limited to learning new skills and benefitting from someone’s established network. Feminist mentorship expands the potentials of this relationship and centralizes the idea of learning from one another to create a world where social justice is essential.

With my mentoring relationship with Megan, I believe we have both grown tremendously and have contributed much to UMBC’s social justice vision. I’m really going to miss my mentor as she starts on a new path as the Director of the  Women’s Resource Center at California State University, Dominguez Hills. However, like any other great leader, mentor, and friend, Megan’s impact will continue to resonate throughout UMBC long after she is gone.

Freaking out before Bell Hooks spoke at NWSA