What are our next steps after the Racial Justice Teach-In?

Hi everyone, after waiting seemingly years for the administration to confirm our event, we have a date for the Town Hall (it's tomorrow). Hopefully we can do a bit of brainstorming over beers regarding some of the issues brought up here. The email Ryan sent out is copied below.

This Friday, April 30th from 5:30-6:30 PM (EST), the CSJ is hosting our final event of the semester, a Town Hall Happy Hour. This event is STUDENTS ONLY! This community space is an outlet for students to voice any of their grievances, hopes, disappointments, and aspirations for anything St. John's related. If you're interested in attending, please RSVP here, and/or join directly with this Zoom link. Pharoah will be taking anonymous notes on what is discussed for potential presentation to administration. Refreshments are encouraged but by no means mandatory.

This event is also not limited to CSJ student members, so if any non-CSJ member St. John's Law students are interested in joining, please forward them the necessary links. Thank you! We look forward to seeing you all one last time this year!

I'd like to see more public dialogue among students similar. Maybe a 2.0 of "No More Talking: What are We Gonna Do About It?" could be planned for June to measure our progress and think about where we want to go as an institution?

Before student orgs plan all their programming for the fall, recentering, grounding, and evaluating how we do things and why might be a great place for us as students to continue this work amongst ourselves and push for administrators to do the same along with us in a truly authentic rather than performative way.

I love that folks are inspired by the FFBC and that's one way to go, however, I think it limits the discussion to issues raised by the books chosen.

Idea for remaining connected over the summer: CSJ book club to keep the momentum from first Friday's rolling. Students will likely not be as busy so it won't be as difficult to get them involved as it has been over the school year.

Not a direct answer to the question, but I saw a lot of trauma brought up towards the end, with a lot of students asking for some type of closure. I found myself not really knowing what to do with myself afterwards. I think either a "grounding" component at the end of these events or discussion groups with mental health professionals like we had for the Black and Asian Solidarity Dialogue would be extremely helpful.

It's been really hard to connect with first year students this year on NLG. Has CSJ fared better in connecting with first years? Especially ones that were active in the chat today, I hope they are getting plugged in.

I agree, the energy today was great, and we need to do what we can to keep it going. I'm not sure what the best way forward is, especially given the timing, as many of us might not have the ability to do much in the few weeks between now and finals. I would love, however, to hear from the 1Ls and 2Ls about what they think needs to be done (and how those of us who are about to graduate can help in the next month) to make sure that this energy is maintained next fall, and St. John's becomes an institution that actively practices anti-racism & racial justice, rather than just talking about it once or twice a year.