Author: Jean Chisholm

The Emily Carr Faculty Association supports the Scholar Strike and Teach-In (https://scholarstrikecanada.ca/) scheduled for September 9-10, 2020. Professors and students are outraged at the relentless police killings of Black, Indigenous and racialized people in the US and in Canada. We understand that these violent killings result from normalizing white supremacy and that we need to work together to build a culture and society that ends the systemic racism creating the conditions for this constant devaluing of racialized lives.

In the midst of a triple pandemic – corona virus, climate crisis and the systemic racism inflicted by colonization – we realize it is important to work together with honesty, compassion and care for one another, so that we can face the challenges of our times. There are many ways to connect to the larger social movements for justice that we are part of.

Some faculty are attending and encouraging their students to attend public events posted at https://scholarstrikecanada.ca/schedule/
Some faculty will make space in their online classes for a discussion around how to contribute towards building racial justice.
Some faculty are sharing materials on how to address these topics in our different courses.
Some faculty and students may take the days to rest and reflect on these questions in whatever ways are healthy for them.

This is an evolving moment that will be whatever we collectively make of it. We are living through what could be considered growing pains, as we hopefully mature towards a culture that truly respects the lives and lived experiences of Indigenous, Black and racialized peoples.

We respect that faculty and students will do what makes sense for them in their contexts. We voice our solidarity with and gratitude for the people out in the streets refusing to accept unjust violence. We feel not only rage and grief, but also love and care for the ones who’ve been lost and who continue to be endangered by systemic racism. We are grateful to be living on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, Sto:lo, where we strive to become better relatives with the people and the land.

The Faculty Association at Emily Carr University of Art + Design joins with millions of people to voice our solidarity with Black and racialized communities in response to the unlawful killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, D’Andre Campbell, and many more Black people. We situate these recent murders in the context of historical and ongoing state-sanctioned violence against Black communities in North America. We acknowledge and feel the pain and anguish caused by these murders and by the repeated denial of justice and human rights to Black Canadians, Americans and people the world over. We assert that Black lives matter.

The Faculty Association commits to dismantling the obstacles that prevent Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Colour from living full lives, and in some cases, from just living. We believe that efforts that focus on individuals, opinions, or points of view may fail to address the root of the problem that faces us. We call on the ECU community to reflect on the issues of anti-Black racism and racialized oppression on a systemic level. 

Such an approach must begin with addressing and educating those within our own communities, including ourselves. We recognize that as an institution, ECU perpetuates a culture of anti-blackness and systemic racism. We recognize, with grief, that faculty have contributed to, or been complicit in, normalizing this violence in conscious and unconscious ways. This is further evidence of the systemic nature of what we are fighting, and the structural factors that prevent active change. To this point, many of us have been struggling with the contradictions between our commitments to justice and the institutional norms that have systemically obstructed these commitments. 

If we are to address unjust systems, then we need to build communities and support networks grounded in respect, mutual aid, and care for one another across our differences. This includes:

• Recognizing the historic settler colonial attitudes in the nation-building of Canada that pervades to this day, with structural racism practiced implicitly as well as explicitly in its governing bodies and institutions;
• Building curriculum that focuses on the struggles of Black and other marginalized communities, and practicing an active pedagogy of liberation and resistance to these oppressions;
• Practicing intersectional solidarity and recognizing that it takes work and dedicating resources to the dismantling of these unjust systems; 
• Acknowledging that this work is done on unceded Coast Salish territories, and we have a responsibility to decolonize and build better relations with one another;

In addition to these actions for which we must hold ourselves accountable, the Faculty Association supports faculty and student agency in actively planning for, and achieving comprehensive equity, diversity and inclusion. The Faculty Association understands that faculty members and students in the Social Justice Working Group (formerly the Intersectional Working Group of the past two years) have long been calling for an open community forum to build the changes we need as a community. We support this open community forum as a crucial first step.