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Despite “social isolation”, movements for justice have also been galvanized worldwide. During the pandemic, already existing inequalities and injustices of the capitalist world became even more evident in a resounding way. Therefore, the “return to normality” suggests a continuation of systemic oppressions, and inequalities that existed prior and during COVID. In this theme, we hope to explore the social movements that have responded to these structural inequities that were galvanized during a time of “physical distancing”: movements against racialized, gendered, and sexual violence; movements against police brutality and state violence; movements to topple statues and rename colonial places; demands for Land back and decolonization, living wage, and safe supply.
Panel 3: "Decolonizing senses of justice and normality in pandemic times"
Panellists: Remy Hellstern, Jassi Murad, Tonye Aganaba, Shá Cage
Moderator: Niki Franco is an abolitionist community organizer, writer, and facilitator of spaces for collective study. Seeking to disrupt the institutionalized bureaucratic frameworks of academia and transactional ways in which relationships exist under capitalism, her work experiments with truth-telling, radical history and thought, and revolutionary imagination. She also curates educational and cultural programming that navigates the current urgency on global solidarity, environmental and ancestral preservation, and strategies on building emotional and intellectual capacities to dismantle systems of oppression that inform and deform our current lives. She is the host of "Getting to the Root of It with Venus Roots," a podcast that leans into conversations with artists, theorists, and organizers.
She is currently based in Miami, where she serves as the Political Education Director for (F)empower MIA and Lead Community Organizer for Power U Center for Social Change.