Volunteer at Project Homeless Connect 9/29 – 9/30/16

Friday, September 30, 2016
(Setup on Thursday, September 29)

Baltimore Convention Center
One West Pratt Street – West Wing
Baltimore, MD 21201

Join your friends, coworkers and neighbors to help hundreds of homeless individuals, children and families access the services they need. As a volunteer guide, you’ll be paired with a homeless participant and accompany them throughout the event.

This year’s event will also feature our first Mission of Mercy dental clinic serving an estimated 1,000 patients. Additional volunteers are needed for the dental clinic on Thursday, September 29.

We’re looking forward to having you volunteer again. Thank you!

REGISTER NOW

Questions? Contact us at phc@uwcm.org.

 

 

 

 

 

Critical Social Justice: Baltimore 365 — October 19th through 23rd!

When the unrest swelled again in Baltimore on Monday, April 27th, 2015, UMBC was in the midst of studying for final exams and preparing for the end of the semester. For many, the Uprising seemed well removed from our campus, as a perceived sense of distance from the city belies the significance of the ‘B’ in UMBC. Aside from periodically checking the local news updates or receiving a swell of calls and messages from concerned relatives on Facebook, studying and campus night life went on as usual. For some students, the reality of a Baltimore in chaos mere miles away didn’t sink in until they saw fires burning from the 7th floor of Albin O. Kuhn Library.

But for many others, those fires were burning our city—our home.

As members of the Critical Social Justice team unpacked the events that transpired in Baltimore, we struggled to find balance in the divide between the university and Baltimore. The divide, for example, between staying at home in the city to engage in a movement for Black lives or leaving the city for UMBC to create healing spaces, meet with students in need, and challenge those who had yet to understand the complexities and vast differences between riots and uprisings. The reality of an “us” and a “them” felt very real as we navigated back and forth on campus during those next few days. While on campus, it was easy to think through theory, strategize, and simply talk about Baltimore in the abstract; however, at night with the sounds of helicopters and sirens invading through our windows, we desperately needed our other UMBC community members to think beyond Hilltop Circle.

Baltimore City and the pervasive violence and injustice there can no longer be talked about in the abstract. Whether or not Baltimore is your home, Critical Social Justice calls each of us in this privileged community of higher education to think and engage critically about Baltimore. We cannot only think about the city when we see a fire from the library or when the Ravens win the Super Bowl. Much like Critical Social Justice is a year-long campaign, our critical thinking, action, and care for Baltimore must happen all 365 days a year.

This year’s Critical Social Justice initiative aims to create space and learning opportunities to consider the ways we can cultivate deep and lasting commitments to Baltimore City that are meaningful to us as individuals and as part of the UMBC community. By focusing on Baltimore, we aim to engage with local social justice issues and activism while framing our understanding within the context of larger national movements and ongoing struggles against systemic racism and injustice.

Our campus and our city are not as separate as they may seem at our quiet university—nor are they as readily connected as our proximity and names might lead people to believe. Critical Social Justice: Baltimore 365 knits the UMBC and Baltimore communities together in the hopes of growing into a better UMBC through a better Baltimore.

Critical Social Justice: Baltimore 365 will be held on October 19th through 23rd, 2015. Follow the CSJ blog, Facebook, and Twitter for updates on scheduled events and other news. For more information about the Critical Social Justice initiative, or if you’re organizing a related event that week that might be included on the CSJ calendar, please email womens.center@umbc.edu.

Learn more about this year’s theme Creating Brave Spaces!

Critical Social Justice week is fast approaching (February 16th to the 20th) and the theme this year is “Creating Brave Spaces”. To unpack and explore this idea, we had the Critical Social Justice Student Alliance tell us what the theme meant to them and how we can use it in our social justice work. Emily Eaglin, incoming president of this new student organization, created this helpful video that documents our conversation and expands upon what brave spaces can be. Even our keynote speaker, Franchesca Ramsey, shared the video on her YouTube page! Check out the video below:

We were inspired by Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens’ article, “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces,” and for some highly recommended further reading, you can access it here.

If you’re interested in creating a program for the Critical Social Justice campaign, visit our About page for details!

Why “Critical Social Justice”?

Amelia Meman, ’15, Gender and Women’s Studies (GWST), is Grants and Marketing Intern at UMBC’s Women’s Center, Co-Leader of Women Involved in Learning and Leadership (WILL), and Director of Events with the GWST Council of Majors, Minors, & Certificates

To many, the words “Critical Social Justice” may mean little or maybe too much.

Is it a class?

A mode of thinking?

An event?

A movement?

To me, it is all of those things. It’s an introduction to an academic lens, a new way of thinking, a celebration, an ongoing effort, and my brainchild.

CSJ  came from my experiences as a student, a feminist, and an artist. I began to see all the gaps in social justice movements: the hierarchy of value associated with different forms of activism, the mainstream issues that take center stage and the issues that are silenced by the majority, and the lack of creative and critical programming on campus. There are so many ways to participate in social justice efforts, but they are not all recognized with the same amount of value and meaning. For example, the president of a reproductive justice lobbying group could be seen as the ultimate activist within mainstream feminist circles, but a part time artist who creates work on disability and her environment may not be seen with the same reverence as the president, though her work is powerful in a whole other way. Rather than replicating the social justice hierarchy in the creation of CSJ, we have consciously striven to create and facilitate a variety of different programs that open up a variety of critical dialogues on the UMBC campus. CSJ invites all different types of activists—whether a person is a student, a teacher, an artist, a musician, a writer, an engineer, a doctor, etc.—to talk about how they are creating change in their own unique ways. We encourage many different voices to come out and speak, because, in my mind, the contributions of a student forever questioning the status quo in class can be just as powerful a form of activism as a state senator pushing for prison reform.