Introducing Community Study
ID: Community Study logo: Light purple background with arched image in center of galaxy. “Community Study” white text arched across the galaxy image and background.
We Here is excited to announce this new member-conceived and facilitated offering: Community Study. From their webpage:
“Community study is an ongoing constellation of study groups, immersions, community learning spaces, and reading groups centered around Black and Indigenous folks and People of Color being and (be)coming together in study. We believe that learning and exploring together is a joyous and generative form of community (and community building) that facilitates curiosity, intimacy, and care—all of which are deeply needed now.
We are inspired and moved, reaching out and called to projects of study, by Alex Pauline Gumbs, The Night School, Freedom Schools, and many other beautiful ways of being together.”
About Their Accountability
“As we come together in study–learning, sharing, building community, each of us, ourselves, emerging in ways new and old–we may make mistakes, we may use language, make choices, or in other ways inadvertently enact structures of oppression; we may depart from our values, we may cause hurt. We all have the capacity to cause harm, and at some point we all will.
We hope you will be patient and compassionate, yet firm, with us if and when we do; we will do the same in return. We will do what we can to acknowledge and learn, then do our best to make it right. This is an active process we are committed to as we grow to see ourselves and each other more clearly.”
Who The Organizers Are and Their Roles
“As stewards of Community Study, as well as coordinators, facilitators, and conveners of individual groups and comings together, we recognize that we have power to shape the spaces we cultivate and the experiences of our participants and collaborators. We hold this responsibility thoughtfully and with humility; we will do our best to foreground consent, curiosity, and care and ensure agency is collective and shared in all of the many connections and encounters that constitute this constellation of spaces.”
Cared for + Organized By
Jorge López-McKnight
Jorge is a library worker in Austin, Texas; he is Mexican/Black.
nicholae cline
nicholae (they/them) is a mixed race Indigenous (Coharie), queer, nonbinary/gendervoid, disabled librarian living and working on land that was, is, and always will be home to the Myaamiaki (Miami), Lenape (Delaware), Saawanwa (Shawnee), and Bodwéwadmik (Potawatomi) peoples.
Sofia Leung
Sofia (she/her) is a 1st gen Chinese American librarian and facilitator on what is and was Massachusett and Wampanoag land and currently remains the home of the Mashpee Wampanoag people.
They are three librarians “invested in BIPOC solidarity and creating shared spaces for liberatory work.”
Questions about their work? Get in touch with them at communitystudying@gmail.com.