THE General Body would like to invite all interested students, faculty, staff and community members to our free and open “Teach In to Act Out” this coming Friday and Saturday, January 30 and 31. This series of panels, workshops and performances focusing on student and community activism and the corporate university will be held at the Community Folk Art Center, just a short walk from campus at 805 E. Genesee St.

The event includes a keynote speech by Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey, a scholar in transnational anti-racist feminist praxis, armed conflicts, militarism and violence against women and theories and practices of social change. There will also be a creative non-fiction workshop led by Minnie Bruce Pratt, a writer, activist and SU professor of women’s and gender studies and writing and rhetoric. The event concludes with a workshop and performance by DarkMatter, a trans South Asian art and activist collaboration committed to an art practice of gender self(ie) determination, racial justice and movement building.

Our generous co-sponsors include the Democratizing Knowledge Project, Community Folk Art Center, Cold Case Justice Initiative, Black Political Thought, Asian Students in America and the Departments of Women’s and Gender Studies, Geography, Labor Studies, Anthropology, Cultural Foundations of Education, English, History, LGBT Studies, Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, Latino-Latin American Studies, African American Studies and Communication and Rhetorical Studies.

Students across the nation are mobilizing for change. On November 20, 2014, THE General Body, a coalition of student organizations, faculty and staff, left Crouse-Hinds after an 18-day sit-in. The movement called on university administration to promote better diversity and transparency in its decision-making.

Just one day before, students at UC Berkeley began a seven-day sit-in in their administration’s office to protest a forthcoming tuition hike. In the following weeks, students across the country rallied, marched and staged die-ins to protest the grand jury’s decision not to indict the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.

We hope you will join us in developing our organizing skills and placing our own activism within a broader historical context.

Please visit THEgeneralbody.org to see the event’s full schedule and register. We ask that participants register by Monday, January 26 so that we have enough time to plan food and any accommodations. Feel free to email THEgeneralbody@gmail.com with any questions.

THE General Body

Published on January 26, 2015 at 12:15 am