The QMUCU anti-racism working group is inviting you to join our second Anti-Racism Training and Workshop which will take place on 25 March at 1pm. You can register here.
This workshop follows-up from our first workshop held on 13 November, at which over 50 members engaged in a discussion around what needs to change within our union spaces to enable us to use the resources we have to work toward an anti-racist university.
Two key principles emerged clearly: solidarity, and accountability. As one participant explained, institutional racism operates both structurally and via its interlocutors. In other words, targeting the institution of Queen Mary is important but not enough: we need to hold individuals, structures and systems accountable, ensuring racist behaviours, practices and those systems that protect and enable them to breathe, are brought to light and removed from the university. This requires moving beyond the limited procedures offered by the university, to building networks of solidarity, support and community beyond the institution.
This will be the main objective of this second workshop. Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya will be facilitating a discussion of the ‘Community Accountability Programme’ developed by the UCU’s Black Members’ Standing Committee, with the aim of adapting it to our university and our union. Prof. Bhattacharyya (who has been the object of forced redundancies targeting union activists as well as gender and critical race scholars ) has worked extensively on developing this programme, as part of a rethinking of what accountability might mean through an abolitionist lens. This involves both a collective investigation into our own and others’ complicity with systemic racism at the university, and building new anti-racist networks with the capacity to challenge and change those systems. Register here and spread the word.
This workshop invites all QMUL staff and students – QMUCU member or not – as well as our connected networks and communities to take part.
The Community Accountability programme we will be working with can be found hosted on our website here and here.
And for those who couldn’t attend our first workshop, please find the recording of the presentations delivered by Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya, Dr Akanksha Mehta, and Christopher Nicholas here.
Contact us at qmucuarwg@gmail.com if you have any questions about the event or if you would like to join the working group.
qmucu.org 