I greatly appreciated receiving messages from senior people about their participation in the June 10th #ShutDownSTEM #strike4blacklives #ShutDownAcademia.
In that spirit, I am sharing my email bounce message for tomorrow, and the message I sent to my research lab.
Email bounce:
I am not available by email today:
This June 10th is a day of action about understanding and addressing racism, and its impact on the academy, and on STEM.
-Jodi
Email to my research lab
Wednesday is a day of action about understanding and addressing racism, and its impact on the academy, and on STEM.
I strongly encourage you to use tomorrow for this purpose.
Specifically, I invite you to think about what undoing racism – moving towards antiracism – means, and what you can do. One single day, by itself, will not cure racism; but identifying what we can do on an ongoing basis, and taking those actions day after day – that can and will have an impact.
And, if racism is vivid in your daily life, make #ShutDownSTEM a day of rest.
If tomorrow doesn’t suit, I encourage you to reserve a day over the course of the next week, to replace your everyday duties.
What does taking this time actually mean? It means scheduling a dedicated block of time to learn more; rescheduling meetings; shutting down your email; reading books and articles and watching videos; and taking time to reflect on recent events and the stress that they cause every single person in our community.
What am I doing personally? I’ve cancelled meetings tomorrow, and set an email bounce. I will spend part of the day to think more seriously about what real antiracist action looks like from my position, as a white female academic.
This week I will also be using time to re-read White Fragility, to finish Dreamland Burning (a YA novel about the 1921 Tulsa race riot), and to investigate how to bring bystander training to the iSchool. I will also be thinking about the relationship of racism to other forms of oppression – classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia.
If you are looking for readings of your own, I can point to a list curated by an Anti-Racism Task Force:
https://idea.illinois.edu/education
For basic information, #ShutDownSTEM #strike4blacklives #ShutDownAcademia website:
https://www.shutdownstem.com
Physicists’ Particles for Justice:
https://www.particlesforjustice.org
-Jodi
