CAMPUS IMPACTS

Gloria Rolando, ACSJL Global Advisory Board member, is a renowned Cuban filmmaker and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars).

She met with the Black Student Organization and the Spanish Department

“Spanish department faculty (including me) and students have benefitted from events supported by the Arcus Center. In 2016, the Arcus Center co-sponsored a visit, public talks, and film screenings by renowned Cuban director Gloria Rolando. This was an important event in the development of the visual studies component of the Spanish curriculum. The physical space of the Arcus Center is unique on campus since it is welcoming to both members of the campus community and the wider community of the City of Kalamazoo. Many Spanish faculty, students and I attended the fundraising event to show solidarity and provide assistance to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and María in 2017“.

— Katie MacLean, Professor of Spanish

Dr. Gisela Arandia, a Cuban intellectual and author, was on a national tour and spent time as a Visiting Scholar in spring 2019.  

she met with the Black Student Organization (BSO) and with classes

“Dear Dr. Rojas,

I was thinking back on when you invited Dr. Arandia to speak to our class a couple of years ago. I remember you saying that you had gotten flack from some of your colleagues. The criticism was something like you were disregarding your objectives and that her presentation was off-topic. How could someone be so tone-deaf! If you are teaching a class on the colonial project, on the failed attempt at the obliteration of indigenous and African cultures, on outright theft of land, bodies, and life, on the mode of politics that disenfranchises subjects based on race, sex, and class, on a system of violence that we have inherited, then why the hell wouldn’t you subvert the machinery of the academy to let Dr. Arandia speak to us?! A class on the colonial beast requires anticolonial pedagogy. You took your classroom (a machine of the colonial university), a space for you to get up there and profess, and you gave it to someone else! Is that not the perversity we want, crave, and demand? Was that not the anticolonial ghost breaking the master’s tools (the dreadful objectives)?”

— Caleb Henning, K’22

Richard Lapchick, renowned sports and social justice leader spends two days in Kalamazoo.

The ACSJL collaborated with our Kalamazoo College Athletic Department, the Lewis Walker Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations at Western Michigan University (WMU), WMUs Sports Management Program,  and St. Joseph’s Transformation Spirituality Center to host Mr. Lapchick. Here he speaks at K College’s Chapel before a full house, and he looks over a book with Jean Hess, legendary Kalamazoo College volleyball coach.

Spaceship Building First-Year Forum

The ACSJL provided service to our Orientation office by regularly conducting First Year Forums for incoming students. While we did many, below is our Spaceship Building Workshop which encourages students to think beyond what is, to what could be in terms of social justice. Here ED Mia Henry leads the discussion as well as ACSJL student staff who are trained to conduct them as well.  

 Student of Color Mic and Mixer

 Midwestern Asian American Student Union Conference

“The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL) has been a necessary and welcoming space for myself, staff, and our students to learn about local and global inequities as well as how to fight to change those systems. I thoroughly appreciate and respect the work done by Arcus staff to engage our campus in a constant practice of self-reflection and collective visioning about who we collectively want to become. I have hosted a number of international education events in their building as well as attended events put on by other students and departments. It is one of the most comfortable gathering places to discuss layered, systematic injustices at the same time as we learn more about each other and build trust across the college. When visiting campus for my final interview for the position I now hold, a colleague in my department made a special effort to take me to see the Center that would soon after begin to feel like a second home—literally bringing our daughter to evening events for a meal and a moving documentary—after a long day of work. Arcus, its staff, and those who choose to engage with the place get more than a meeting space and new ideas, they collaboratively form something which we need so much more of – community.”

— Tony Nelson, Assistant Director of Student Engagement, Center for International Partnerships, Kalamazoo College

The last six years of my employment at the college I had the privilege of serving on the ACSJL advisory board. This involved everything from (sometimes) monthly meetings to helping plan two With/Out-¿Borders? conferences to evaluating activists and social justice collectives from all over the world competing for the conference Global Prize (in the latter I got to work with Nobel Peace Prize nominee Medea Benjamin). Because of ACSJL, I read books I never would have read, I attended lectures by speakers I never would have heard, and I saw documentary films I never would have seen. In short, I was introduced to the world of current social justice activism. There is no doubt in my mind that my experience is a microcosm of both the college and greater Kalamazoo communities.”

— Ed Menta, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Theatre Arts, Kalamazoo College

 “The Arcus Center has provided numerous opportunities for me to deepen my understanding of social justice issues, particularly issues in regarding human rights, class, and race. While I attended numerous workshops and public events at Arcus over the years, the global conferences have had the greatest impact on me. In Fall 2014, the Arcus With/Out -¿Borders? Conference provided me with the opportunity to put together a “think tank” entitled Bearing Witness: Human Rights Accompaniment in Latin America - Lessons Learned, Futures Envisioned. The idea was to bring together several human rights NGOs with a history of human rights accompaniment work in Latin America in order to reflect together on the lessons learned from years of on-the-ground work and to think creatively about new directions that this work might fruitfully take in the future. In the end, representatives from the Alliance for Global Justice, the Colombia Support Network, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala, and the Uwa Defense Project/Amazon Watch gathered to speak of their experiences, difficulties, hopes, and dreams. Thanks to the Arcus Center, I personally learned a tremendous amount from these on-the-ground activists, but the greatest benefits were clearly derived by the participants themselves, who expressed their sincere gratitude for the opportunity to meet one another, network, learn from each other, and envision how their work might be sustained and evolve in the future.

In Fall 2015, the Arcus global conference on Transformative Social Justice Leadership enabled me to meet the injured Colombian autoworker Jorge Parras, the founder of ASOTRECOL (the Association of Injured Workers of GM Colmotores [General Motors-Colombia]), which engages in a (still-ongoing) struggle by dozens of autoworkers who were unlawfully dismissed from their jobs after sustaining work-related injuries. ASOTRECOL has engaged in a variety of direct-action protests to attempt to get GM Colmotores to recognize and honor their workers’ basic labor rights under Colombian law. Most notably, they have set up a tent encampment across the street from the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, as an enduring symbol of their grievances against this U.S. multinational corporation. Since 2015, I have maintained contact with Jorge and have tried to assist ASOTRECOL’s struggle both from abroad (through letters of support) and in-country (as an intermediary with the U.S. labor attaché in the embassy; by introducing ASOTRECOL leaders to a former national Colombian human rights ombudsman who is currently assisting them to bring their case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; and through direct appeals to the Bogotá city government to prevent the forced removal of the ASOTRECOL tent encampment. Once again, thanks to the Arcus Center I have learned a great deal about the abuse of power by U.S. multinational corporations, and more positively, I have learned from, and been directly inspired by, the strength, endurance, and creativity of the injured Colombian workers in their struggle for justice.

Most recently, in Fall 2018 the Arcus With/Out ¿Borders? Conference enabled me to invite the Afro-Colombian group AFRODES to participate in a series of meetings on campus focused on how land plays an essential role in the lives of indigenous peoples. AFRODES works with people of Afro-Colombian descent who have been forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands. They engage in a peaceful struggle to ensure the survival of these Afro-Colombian communities and to defend their most basic human rights. Through the Arcus conference, I was able to meet and engage in sustained discussions with three AFRODES leaders: Luz Merina Becerra, Erlendy Cuero Bravo, and Paola Rivadeneira. These encounters greatly deepened my own understanding of the constant threats faced by Afro-Colombian communities and has informed my teaching about Latin American Politics. I have remained in touch with these AFRODES leaders, visiting all three in my most recent research trips to Colombia. While I have not played an active role in their ongoing struggle, through this contact I have been able to facilitate meetings of our students on study abroad in Cali, Colombia with representatives of AFRODES. The AFRODES activists themselves expressed profound gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the conference, share their experiences, learn from other activists, and have a brief respite from the constant tension of their on-the-ground work in Colombia.”

— John Dugas, Associate Professor of Political Science, Kalamazoo College

Indie Lens Pop-Up Series

For five years, the ACSJL contracted with the Public Broadcast System (PBS) to participate in their Independent Lens initiative which “is a neighborhood series that brings people together for film screenings and community-driven conversations. Featuring documentaries seen on PBS’s Independent Lens, Indie Lens Pop-Up draws local residents, leaders, and organizations to discuss what matters most, from newsworthy topics and social issues, to family and community relationships.” See below some posters and some evaluations from our 2015–2016 series.