In the last session of the conference, Caroline asked everyone to divide up into four groups to plan out future ESJP activities. Each of the groups was asked to plan out a certain section of ESJP plans. They were:
Each of the plans are displayed below. Click on them for the larger picture.
Caroline led us in thinking about us as a “movement”. She asked Katy to create a liminal space out of the people at the conference to represent what she felt about ESJP. This resulted in the next 10 or so minutes with Katy silently arranging people to create a “living sculpture”. Caroline then invited attendees to share their feelings on what it felt to be included in the space and not included in that space. This was a technique from the “theatre of the oppressed” as theorized by Boal.
ESJP as a movement:
Then the conference participants were encouraged to go talk to their critical friend about goals for this conference. Katy cited the lack of industry partners as a point of concern, while others felt that their goal of learning more was very much reached as there was lots of information to process. My critical partner had the goal of rejuvenating during the conference by meeting old and new friends, which she did meet during the conference. Dean was interested in contributing to the sustainability of the ESJP community during the conference. Lizzie felt that she had several critical conference friends and they contributed greatly to her thinking.
Caroline pointed to Donna to address the critique of industry partners being absent. Donna said that “During this conference, many forms of oppression were put on the table like racism. It doesn’t mean white people aren’t welcome, it just means they have to acknowledge racism and deal with it. In the same way, capitalism is a form of oppression. Folks from industry are welcome as long as they are willing to critique capitalism”.
Caroline says that ESJP must allow those who are members of this “community” or “movement” to critical engage with dominant discourses in engineering and challenge the “business as usual” model in the engineering world. Dean added that it’s not just being critical of the corporate world but also critical of dominant institutions and structures.
Caroline addressed the issue of tension between newcomers to the social justice space and those who have more experience with it. Then she talked about ongoing activities in the ESJP network: