The Breathing Room: Envisioning a More Just Post-Pandemic World

Join the Women’s Leadership and Resource Center in the Breathing Room, a virtual place to unwind, heal, and find community.

April 17, 2020: Envisioning a More Just Post-Pandemic World

Join us in a plática–conversation–on reimagining our lives post-COVID-19. How have world leaders responded to the pandemic? What resources have governments, businesses, and nonprofits suddenly made accessible, and what must we still demand? How have communities rallied to develop rapid-response mutual aid networks, and how can we sustain them? We take inspiration from poet and activist Sonya Renee Taylor’s call to dream of a more just world:

“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. we should not long to return my friends. we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature. What we have been forced to leave behind we needed to leave behind. what is getting us through is what we will need to take forward, all the rest is up to us. DREAM. While have so much time. DREAM of the life you want. DREAM of the world you desire to exist in. look for the places in your new dreams that have parts of the old world and remove them. what is the dream then? from there we can add to the collective weaving of whatever it is that is next. if we are gonna heal, let it be glorious.”

Facilitated by Jazmin Vega, UIC urban planning and policy graduate student and WLRC graduate assistant.

Register at go.uic.edu/breathingroom3 to receive Zoom info.

Please send any questions or accommodation requests to wlrc@uic.edu. We hope to provide CART live-captioning services during every session.