A Note About the Current Collective Labor Actions, at U-M, and Across the Country

This academic year has begun like no other, with a global health pandemic, continuing racial injustice and state-sponsored brutality, economic crisis, and concerns about democracy globally. At Ginsberg Center, all of this has further elevated our focus on collective action.

Many have shared their thoughts, concerns, and needs as they strive to navigate their roles as professionals, staff, students, and community members. All of these thoughtful questions and concerns helped to crystalize the importance of sharing how we as a center are making sense of this uncertain moment.

The Ginsberg Center’s vision is for inclusive democracy; thriving, diverse communities; and equity and social justice. Our principles center collective action as a grounding tenet of community organizing, activism, and protest toward social change. As educators, we work with students to maximize their understanding of their role in social change movements, as well as the many potential ramifications of their civic actions. This includes protests, upholding these non-violent actions as healthy, valid means to push for change within society broadly and our institution specifically.

As partners, in our relationships with students, faculty, and community organizations, we acknowledge and interrogate power and privilege. We connect individual stories and experiences with systemic inequities, and nurture individual skills and coalition-building to create a more just society. Like many of our educational partners across and beyond campus, the Ginsberg Center is committed to supporting our students to engage with and make meaning within this historic moment. We believe the collective action to challenge the present in which so many of our students are engaged will be a crucible moment in their lives as they strive to enrich the future.   

At Ginsberg Center, we are continuing to deepen our own learning about what’s possible in our current context and we believe that understanding more about organized labor and social movements can help. We also believe that reflecting on the following questions, with colleagues and students, can clarify our shared interests and paths forward.

As educators and partners, these are the questions we are asking ourselves:

  • What does it mean to act in solidarity? What does it look like?
  • Since we all have the capacity to be change agents with our spheres of influence, how do we work together to advocate for change on issues that matter to us? 
  • What is our role in disrupting the status quo, which is central to educating students to challenge the present to enrich the future?
  • What is our role in educating leaders who can engage in the difficult tensions with which we are presented? 

Moving forward, the Ginsberg Center will continue to consider these questions. We will also continue to encourage our students, academic, and community partners to do so as well that we may all find our footing and purpose in this present moment and continue to strengthen all of our efforts to advance social change for the public good.