Letter from SJI Director: New Year, New Updates

A Review of 2022 and Beginning 2023

Dear friends of SJI,

As most of you know, the Social Justice Initiative at UIC is a space for creative social justice learning and engagement. Our main project this past year has been a rolling symposium on social justice called The Portal Project, involving nearly 200 activists, artists and scholars from around the country. In 2023, we are now moving to publish booklets that sum up our discussions and debates.

This past year, we welcomed new members to the SJI team, Dr. Rhoda Rae Gutierrez, Roxana Espoz and Nathan Turman, all of whom bring valued skills and experience to SJI. We were fortunate to receive a generous grant from the Marguerite Casey Foundation. We have set up a program by which our community partners, the national cohort of Margaret Burroughs fellows, will be available as speakers in UIC classrooms to talk about their experience as organizers and changemakers. We are also in touch with other social justice programs in higher education as a precursor to forming a national network of some kind.

Closer to home, our student worker-colleagues and our Pipeline to Justice scholars continue to amaze us with their curiosities and their activism. We would love to support more students who are engaged in social justice work. Your contribution could help us do that. So, please consider donating to the program in the new year.

Our first public program is All Eyes On Haiti: Occupations, Migrations and Reparations at 2:00pm CT on January 19th. Please join the UIC Social Justice Initiative in collaboration with EqualHealth, a global community of health professionals, educators, and activists dedicated to the fight for health equity. Register to attend the virtual event by Clicking Here.

We hope to see you soon.

Here is wishing you all a happy new year. Let’s work for more joy and justice in 2023.

Best wishes for the New Year,

Barbara Ransby

Professor and Director, Social Justice Initiative