About the Program
The 'Staff as Students of Social Justice' (SSSJ) Program is an opportunity for campus staff (from the Division of Undergraduate Education and beyond) to participate in discussions about timely and important topics. Piloted in Fall 2020, the SSSJ Program is a unique opportunity to learn about the intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender; dig into subjects of personal interests; and build connections with faculty, students, and fellow staff colleagues.
Program Overview
- Attend online lectures and meetings for the core Staff as Students of Social Justice course.
- No exams, grades, or academic credit.
- Upon completion, you will receive a certificate signed by Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Oliver O’Reilly, which will be added to your HR file.
- Supplemental readings will be available and encouraged
Application Process
Students of Social Justice (SSSJ) is now accepting applications for the Fall 2024 program. Applications to participate in the session are due no later than September 9th. We will continue offering the seminar for staff led by Director of Pedagogy David Maldonado: “Material Anti-Racisms”, a deep exploration of abolitionism and higher education paired with content from our previous Spring 2023 lecture series “Aspirations of Material Anti-Racism: What’s Next.” Please contact us at sssj@berkeley.edu if you have any questions.
Project Title: "Carceral Capitalism," by Aly Jarocki, Gillian Edgelow, Krystle Simon, Mariana Matthews, and Robert Hold
Carceral Capitalism is projected developed by Aly Jarocki, Gillian Edgelow, Krystle Simon, Mariana Matthews, and Robert Hold by focusing on the third week of the SSSJ Summer 2021 Program. The third week interrogates questions such as how the category of the racialized debtor created and maintained? What does it mean, as Harney and Moten insist, to be in bad debt? Can “the debtor” be a political category? How has upward wealth redistribution created the category of "good debt”? Further, this week turns to collective of thinkers operationalizing debt within a mode of resistant politics, such as the Hannah Appel et. al. stretch Marxian paradigms to look beyond the category of “worker” as the condition of possibility for organizing, Jackie Wang’s work, Carceral Capitalism, which identifies how gendered and racialized debt creates an undeserving pathologized class of “irresponsible” Others, while corporate debt is cast as “the cost of doing business’ in a “free” and “fair” market. Carceral Capitalism infographic.
Project Title: "Abolition Geography" by Jasmine Valenzuela, Nancy Donovan, Tabea Mastel, and Vanessa Lujan
"Abolition Geography" is a final presentation prepared by Jasmine Valenzuela, Nancy Donovan, Tabea Mastel, and Vanessa Lujan, which is based on the lecture and readings of the second week of the Summer 2021 SSSJ Program. Week two asked participants to think about the processes of dispossession that operate along multiple axes of space, race, and the political economy. The readings focused on Ruth Wilson Gilmore whose work pushes beyond overly reductive analyses of race (reducing all carcerality to slavery) and of capital accumulation (reducing all carcerality to profit and corporate interest), and instead focuses on envisioning the building of already existing coalitions, those yet to be developed coalitions, and the material practices of politics and world making. Abolition Geography infographic.
Project Title: "Mutual Aid and Survival Pending Revolution" by Barbara Montano, Helena Weiss-Duman, Jenny Jones, Stacey Frederick, and Tanisha Muquit
"Mutual Aid and Survival Pending Revolution" is a presentation developed by Barbara Montano, Helena Weiss-Duman, Jenny Jones, Stacey Frederick, and Tanisha Muquit by focusing on the fifth week lecture and readings of the Summer 2021 SSSJ Program.
Recognizing that struggle is always dialectical, week five takes inspiration from survival programs. Readings this week included the influential (and top read) work of Dean Spade on Mutual Aid, which critiques the common sense faith in political projects performed at the “elite” level. One might wonder what a grassroots project of survival looks like, especially if it is invested in “solidarity, not charity.” Spades' work provides rubrics for thinking about what constitutes meaningful survival interventions and for thinking about which interventions can actually be demobilizing. Organizing, for Spade, is pedagogical. This week also incorporates discussions based on the Black Panther Party survival programs. The Panthers had a unique ability to deliver political education during survival and pending revolution. What lessons can movements learn from their lead? Mutual Aid presentation.