Liberation at Leicester

 

Hi I’m Tony Magaia, pronouns He/They, I am your Students Union Liberation Officer and I’m here to talk to you about, well …. Liberation!

So, what it Liberation you might ask? I found this very good response from Damam Wandke at DO.IT. Centre blog which says:

“…liberation is "being set free” or a "release from social stereotyping." My belief is that liberation is two-fold. One form comes when a person or group who is stereotyped chooses to overcome the labels set upon them by individuals or society as a whole, and therefore finds liberation within them self. The second, I believe, comes when an individual or society that places labels on others takes the time to look inside the labelled person or group rather than simply seeing the outside; and thus, become liberated in knowledge.”

 

I really liked this explanation because as it says, one part of liberation is you freeing yourself, and existing in a world that was not built for you, getting rid of the shackles and stereotypes that society or even you have put on yourself. It’s getting out of that proverbial box, and seeing the world and yourself in a different light.

 

It is also challenging the status quo, how the world is today, the privileges or lack thereof that you or the society around you has, being aware of that, and doing something about it. Challenging yourself and society to have difficult conversations that were never had before, and acknowledging your ignorance (which is not something to feel entirely bad about) and then doing something about it by looking for resources, or learning about the experiences of those you have not gone through yourself.

 

As you can hopefully see, it’s not a single person issue; yes, it starts with ourselves having that chat with the person in the mirror, but that is only scratching the surface. To truly work on liberation we need a community, and people willing to fight for change and justice. We all need to have an understanding of the issues that people from minority groups have, understand the structural barriers, and look into our privileges and biases.

 

I wanted to add this picture because it helps us understand what Liberation and Social Justice really is as its core. We can give as many boxes to the person as we want, but this will never fix the main problem, other that not everyone will have access to these boxes – that wall, only keeps the division, and reinforces the “there is us and there is the others”. Taking down the wall, solves the problem entirely, and we don’t have to constantly be giving out resources and a Band-Aid on a cracked aquarium. 

 

I often say, even though I’m the liberation officer, I can’t do this job alone. I don’t think there was a campaign, or fight for social justice that was won by one person because its BIG. It’s always a community. It’s the people on the ground. We can look at the Stonewall Riots back in 1969 – yes they were led by Queer and Trans People of Colour, particularly Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, but it took the combined efforts of an entire community to rally and change the world for LGBT+ people as we know and live today.

We do this to provide a platform for the voices that are not heard, to bring different experiences to the table and make sure that they are taken into account and acted upon. We do this because we want students to finally feel seen, represented and heard, not just another statistic. We want them to be able to come here, and feel safe, comforted that this is a space for them.

 

At Leicester this is what we’re doing. We’re building a community, we’re sharing resources, we’re creating an understanding of what Liberation is, and most importantly why we do it and why its to important. 

 

Anyways, If you’ve made it here, I applaud you. I’ve rambled more than I should, so here is how you can get involved:

• ­We have our Equality and Liberation Champions, which are assigned in each department, and they work on all matters Liberation and Equality (cleverly explained there). Representing your classmates at meeting with university staff from your department, working with the SU, running your own campaigns.
• Union Council, where you can join a network be it Sustainability, LGBT+, Trans, BAME, Interfaith, Wellbeing, etc (there’s quite a few), and work on campaigns, vote on Student Union Policy 

(Another good thing about this is that there sometimes there’s pizza involved – thank me later)

 

If you’re not sold yet, and you don’t want to be bound to the constraints of joining a team, you can always contact us, your Executive Officers at su-exec@le.ac.uk and let us know if things you want to work on, or if you just want to know the different things we’re up to.

Well that’s it from me folks, see you on the proverbial flipside!