Cultivating Collective Care within the International Justice Space

Emergent Justice Collective’s 2024 Support and Solidarity Offering

In this moment of struggle for accountability before the international (legal) system, which comes with collective grief for this system’s repeated failure to centre transformative visions of justice, invisibilisation and erasure of colonial genocides and other mass/structural violence, we invite the international justice community of practice to co-create and hold space for collective grief and sense-making as forms of collective care and resistance to violence.

Practising re-orientation and adaptation within EJC, we have decided to re-open the call for participants for our 2024 Support and Solidarity offering:

As we seek to fight injustices and systems of oppression in our work and lives, we often reach a point where we acknowledge that these systems are also active within our organizations as well as within ourselves. The majority of our workplaces are structured as hierarchical systems, anchored in patriarchy and white supremacy cultures. Many of us have incurred considerable harm due to the absence of cultures of collective care and support in our organizations.

In October 2022, we launched the Support and Solidarity Offering (SupSol) to collectively hold and facilitate a safe(r) and brave(r) space through regular (virtual) sessions for those working in movements, groups, and institutions in what we might call the ‘international justice space’. Together, we aim to co-create intentional and authentic cultures of care by reclaiming communal spaces where we can practice vulnerability and accountability. We aim to nurture a counterculture of international justice that takes a firm stance against the dominant cultures of individualism, productivity, perfectionism, and competition. We believe that we can only provide strength and support to one another, and work towards truly transformative and liberatory horizons if we are resourced and supported to hold change and transformation in our daily lives.

Gloria Anzaldúa reminds us that to change the world, we need to change ourselves. And adrienne maree brown observes: “we will not be able to claim something as a collective that we have not been in the practice of claiming for ourselves, in our bodies, with our time and our decisions”. Inspired by HJL’s powerful Rehearsing Freedoms project and Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s life-work, we recognise our collective need to “rehearse the social order coming into being” (Gilmore) so as “to collectively envision and practice futures free from oppression” (HJL).

Objectives

Build a support network that helps navigate harmful discriminatory and oppressive systems and practices in our communities, including harmful work environments or movement spaces.
Collectively hold space for releasing and moving through difficult experiences and emotions, including those brought up and produced by conflict and oppressive systems.
Support one another through deep reflective and empathetic listening, introspection and self-inquiry practices in a supportive and compassionate space.
Co-create a generative space that offers insight into the wisdoms held by our inner worlds and connections with each other.
Collectively design and pursue strategies to not only survive, but thrive equitably by proactively building and sustaining a culture of collective care.
Interrogate, with tenderness and radical compassion, our respective positionalities, privileges and relationalities with a view to enabling us to practice self-responsibility and collective accountability.
Build a group that can exchange knowledge and engage in embodied learning that nurtures and grows an inclusive, antiracist, intersectional, trauma-informed, and community-centered culture and praxis.

Who can sign up?

We invite those working in movements, groups and institutions in the ‘international justice space’, broadly defined, in and around the areas of social justice and human rights, international criminal justice and conflict accountability, migration justice, gender and other areas of intersectional justice, and who feel that they long to contribute to and could benefit from such a support network.

We are hoping to invite 8 individuals to join this second cohort of the SupSol Program. Preference will be given to those who are in practice of holding space for change in themselves and others including by being vulnerably open and actively engaged in a journey around social transformation. We acknowledge that everyone has different boundaries and is at different (non-linear) stages in their (un-)learning. We feel like our ‘selection’ can therefore only be made subjectively, and we wholeheartedly welcome your active input and feedback throughout this process.

When

In March 2024, we will invite those who registered interest for an introduction call. During these calls we hope to get to know each other, explain the program further, answer any questions you might have and learn about why you would like to join the program.

We will hold our first meeting as a group at the end of April 2024.

How

Virtual meetings of 90 min, scheduled every other week over the course of four months.

Price

We do not currently have dedicated funding for this programme and only one small grant for the entirety of the collective. We are facilitating this space with love, and without pay for our time. We do not ask you to pay for the sessions but would be hugely grateful if you were able to make a solidarity contribution to the collective’s expenses pot.

Interest?

Register interest until 10 March 2024 by filling out this form.

If you have any questions please reach out to us at contact@emergentjusticecollective.org.

While we hope to collectively decide on the precise timing of the sessions as a group, please only register interest if you have the capacity and time to join most of our sessions every two weeks over the course of four months. We look forward to getting to know you!