The faculty and staff of the School of Social Work will be joining the Scholar Strike for Black & Indigenous Lives in Canada on Sept 9 & 10, 2020. For these two days, we will pause our teaching and administrative duties to make it very clear that we do not consent to ongoing systemic racism and to support the demands of Black Lives Matters and other groups seeking deep and community-grounded social change.
During class time, we will provide teach-ins on racist police brutality and violence in our communities from both historical and contemporary perspectives, and discuss our responsibilities, as social workers, to be active allies in social justice. As the President of the University of Calgary and one of the supporters of this strike noted, “One of the key roles of a university is to have difficult conversations and fearlessly tackle big issues for the betterment of all.”
We will be joined by scholars and universities across Canada and the USA. Please see this link for more information.
As Min Sook Lee, one of the organizers of the strike in Canada argues, it is time to move beyond the symbolic to concrete action. We hope you will join us in this historic moment and we look forward to working with you to move this social justice struggle forward.
