Spring 2021 Letter
Dear Northwestern Women’s Center Community,
I hope spring has found you healthy and whole. I feel invited by the ever-changing weather and the complexities of vaccine access globally to seek abundance and caution simultaneously. I look forward to walking that line with care and in good company in the coming months.
In our previous newsletter we featured Sekile’s send-off as she exits her role as the Director of the Women’s Center, a position she has held since fall of 2017. Sekile has been an inspiring leader, a compassionate colleague, and a source of innovative ideas that have moved this center and this campus forward. On behalf of our full staff, I wish her every success in her new role as the Chief Diversity Officer for Governor Pritzker.
Look Back at Winter Quarter
I am especially pleased that our collective efforts saw Sekile off on a high note. Associate Director, Njoki Kamau, brought her usual brilliance to an online International Women’s Day celebration, we played a delightful game, and we cheered for Trina Whittaker, the 2021 recipient of the Shujaa Award for gender equity. Members of Trina’s extended family from a variety of time zones attended, reminding me how vital it is that those engaging in the difficult and often uncompensated labor of seeking equity be acknowledged—for their efforts, and so that we might each have the chance re-ground ourselves in the impact of often invisible work.
I suspect many of you were with us also during our Annual Symposium, which featured a plenary discussion between Kelly Hayes and Dean Spade and a panel of Evanston-area and campus organizers. You still have an opportunity to watch the symposium on our website. While you are there, you may wish to check out all seven (!) interviews our staff conducted with Chicagoland mutual aid organizers. Each thirty-minute conversation provides a new depth of understanding for life and justice affirming work taking place all around us and the often intimate perspective of those who feel called to engage in radical community building.
The infographic shared below is meant to, in part, show our center some love for the reach of our Women’s History Month. But not all value is easily quantified. Our winter quarter was productive because when Kelly and Dean talked about the dangers of mainstreaming mutual aid to strip it of its politics, it served as a reminder that we are not in the business of making systems of oppression more palatable, but of ending them. Our work in March was successful because we thought we were out of energy, but we found it in each other. It is very truly my honor to be taking part in this work however I can. And because I know that many are invested in the future of this community, I want to take this chance to name directly where my attention will be during my time as the Interim Director of the Women’s Center.
Priorities for Spring & Summer
We will be working to organize a new student staff orientation process, with the aid of our campus partners, to help ground the extraordinary young people who work with us in our shared values and practices and to better prepare them for the aspects of feminist work that can be challenging.
We will continue to be a lead partner in taking account of and advancing gender inclusive initiatives across campus on behalf of OIDI, in coordination with MSA, GSS, SPAN, the Office of Equity and individuals who have offered their time and expertise. Separately, we will be moving on plans to make the Women’s Center itself a more gender inclusive and affirming environment. We are pursuing this through professional development opportunities for our full and part time staff and an intentional move, masterminded by our Program Coordinator melisa stephen, to get beyond offering trans-inclusive and toward offering trans-centered programming in the coming year.
A committee of both general advisory and student advisory board members will select next year’s Feminist in Residence, even as we join this year’s resident Hanky Song in celebrating the work of the han heung 한흥 恨興 media collective that she has fostered during her residency.
Dr. Veronica Womack and Njoki Kamau will be offering A Space for Us over the summer months to center the experiences of Black Women and Nonbinary Staff, Graduate and Professional Students, and faculty from the Evanston and Chicago campuses and serve as an opportunity to check in on each other, connect, share experiences, build community, and create strategies for navigating race and gender.
We will launch an audio, GPS guided, Feminist Campus Tour as part of a broader project of Social Justice Tours organized with Charla Wilson, University Archivist for the Black Experience and Jasmine Gurneau, Manager for Native American and Indigenous Initiatives. Though the launch event won’t come until fall, the website and all three tours—Feminist Campus, Black Student Experience, and Indigenous—will be made available on June first.
As summer approaches, melisa, Njoki, and I will be reviewing our programming and assessment methods so as to make some of the strides we have taken in accessibility during the remote work period a permanent part of our operations. One of the primary aims of this period of reflection will be to build on new relationships forged with faculty, staff, and graduate students based on the Chicago campus.
Njoki is joining me and the Institute for Global Health on our supplemental NIH grant. We are working with incredible faculty and staff colleagues at the University of Lagos who are revising policy and formulating training to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and misconduct within their institution.
We are planning the construction of a modest, raised-bed garden on our Evanston Center’s lawn. It’s a good opportunity for programming out of doors in response to lingering health concerns but it is also an apt and I would argue, necessary, metaphor for this moment in time.
And of course, we will look forward to being fully staffed again as soon as possible. We are privileged to have the full support of our new Associate Provost and Chief Diversity Officer Dr. Robin Means Coleman in making this transition run smoothly.
The below infographic asks you to “Check In” because it means to ground our community in our present moment, one in which we are mindful of all we accomplished under Sekile’s leadership and excited for what's just around the bend: sex week; a partnership with WIND, Hobart, One Book, and the writers of Grace House; and an international conversation about collectives and digital media, to name a few. I hope to see you at some of these virtual events and, before too long, within the very blue or purple walls of the Women's Centers.
Sincerely,
Please click on the image below to enlarge and gain access to links within.
All links and information are available also below in plain text, list form.
Check In with the Women’s Center
Duplicate content from PDF infographic in list form.
269 People watched our Women’s History Month Symposium. 126 logged into the webinar and 143 watched later on facebook.
You can watch the full event on our website.
Read about our theme here.
Or read about it in this article from the Daily Northwestern.
Every fourth Friday of Summer, A Space for Us will convene.
You can click here to access the first event page.
In 28 days we will launch the website for Social Justice Tours of Northwestern. No link.
Feminist in Residence Hankyeol Song is working with Block Cinema to host a films screening and discussion called Dreaming Rivers, Weaving Collectives.
Here is a link to the event.
Here is a link to more information about the event and the Feminist in Residence.
Here is a link to more information about the film.
Trina Whittaker was named Shujaa 2021.
Find out more about Trina and this award here.
In 11 days the Women’s Center is partnering with College Feminists to offer a screening and discussion with the filmmaker of erotica called Nueve Lenguas.
Here is a link to the event page.
Here is a link to the overall Sex Week schedule.
On May 26th, WIND, Hobart, One Book, and The Women’s Center will present “Women of Courage: Stories of Post-Incarceration Resilience” a recitation of original work by the women of Grace House.
8 women will share their work.
Here is a link to the event description and registration.
Here is a link to the organizers, Women Initiating New Directions.
Mutual Aid Interviews carried out by Women’s Center Staff had 1,333 total views on Facebook (as of last week).
We spoke with seven different organizations.
Here is a link to more information about these individuals and the groups they represent, and the page where you can watch the videos.
Go to this link to see a full list of our upcoming events.
Go to this link to find us on facebook.
Go to this link to find us on Instagram.
Go to this link to see our website home page.