Student Edition
“Our society will not be free until the most vulnerable people are able to access the resources and full human rights to live self-determined lives without fear, discrimination, or retaliation.” -SisterSong
We have not published an edition of the magazine since Fall 2022, shortly after the overturning of Roe v Wade. A year later and our reality feels all the more dyer. A genocide wages on in Gaza, division and chaos fester here at home. I keep saying I have never witnessed this much divisiveness, vitriol or rhetorical violence in my life. More than the Trump years, more than Covid, more than the political uprisings of 2020. Not to mention the actual violence and destruction that unfolds on our phone screens. I often find myself paralyzed by shock, by fear, by confusion, by sadness, by hopelessness. I question my choice to bring children into a world that seems to be quite literally burning. I doom scroll hoping to find the voice of reason, hoping to find someone or something that will capture my feelings, thoughts and sentiments in this moment. But my search always comes up empty, only getting lost in the images of death, and words of anger. Where is the hope?
A year later, and the above quote rings all the more true! The people of Gaza and Palestinians deserve to “to live self-determined lives without fear, discrimination, or retaliation.”1
Sistersong goes on to say “to achieve reproductive justice we must…analyze power systems…address intersecting oppressions…center the most marginalized…[and] join together across issues and identities.” This is the idea of liberation that has become my beacon of light amidst all the chaos. This is the framework for liberation that I remind myself of when I become hopeless. This is the framework for liberation that I teach in all my classes as a professor.
This Fall semester I had the pleasure of teaching a class on Reproductive Justice. Finally, I was able to showcase my professional expertise and lived experiences on this topic so close to my heart. I shared my own personal stories, I shared all the amazing work that the folks in my community do. I created space for conversation, for complexity and nuance on topics that are often covered superficially. We dove into abortion, into the pill, into forced sterilization, into pregnancy and body literacy. We talked about ancestral ways of knowing our bodies, ancestral practices of reproductive health.
In the middle of the semester, our world was hit with yet another global tragedy that put my own values and principles to the test. What do I stand for in the midst of historical violence and generational trauma playing out before our very eyes? What do I say to my students? How do I hold space for them, for myself, for my community? I remember that my Chicana feminist foremothers laid the path when they said we must always connect theory to practice. We must embody the theory. In this way, reproductive justice is not just words on a page to read and understand, but directives to follow. We must analyze the power systems that both normalize acts of dominance on our bodies as well as normalize state violence as an act of freedom and safety. We must address intersecting oppressions both in terms of access to reproductive care and in terms of understanding the impact of global politics. We must center the most marginalized to address both the Black birthing mortality rate and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. We must join together across issues and identities both in terms of white women working with women of color to assure all people have access to reproductive care, as we must join together across issue and identities to stand against all forms of oppression, be it islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-blackness, racism, transphobia, homophobia, etc. We are not free until we are all free.
It is in this spirit that we bring you this newest edition of the magazine. This edition features work from students in my Reproductive Justice class at Cal State LA. This was their final project meant to showcase student’s understanding of the class in a way that also puts my own pedagogical theory into practice. We decolonize epistemology by creating spaces for students to showcase their knowledge, their stories, their lived experiences. In publishing the work of students on a public platform we intend to demonstrate the ways ways in which, as Paulo Freire says, “The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is [them]self being taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.”2
Please take a look at the beautiful work of these amazing students, the work of the next generation of leaders and change makers.
By Dr. Renee Lemus
- Sistersong.org- https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice ↩︎
- Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum, 2009 ↩︎
