Some of our MHMSS Students recently participated in a symposium called Student Activisms and Activisions in the Age of Covid.  Check out their proposals below to see some of the awesome things our students are doing in the community!

LeRita Cavness

Unexamined Whiteness is an internal, Anglocentric, emotional disguise of elitism that governs individual choice and refuses an internal emotional audit. It proliferates every facet of American society and is the foundation of unintentional harm. The only alternative to unexamined Whiteness is anti-racism. Whiteness has no shared definition but includes expectations of entitlement, dominance, a vocabulary of oppression, a sense of threat and victimhood, desired hero status, and an unexamined and unhealthy love of self and others, among other attributes. There are a plethora of authors deconstructing the dynamic elements of Whiteness and tracing its historical roots. Important as each of these individual paths of research is, there is still a need to examine Whiteness’s total impact and network as every American has incorporated some aspect.

Whiteness is the workings of structural foundations within society that produce white privilege; it manifests within the construction, implementation, and enforcement of laws and policies.  Whiteness as normative race privilege is a standpoint from which to view society, a set of cultural practices, and something separate from, but frequently confused with being a White person.  Because minority interaction with unexamined Whiteness is an elusive experience, it is time that Whiteness and its interactions be examined.

Mark Curry

Democracy In Decline:  "An Interdisciplinary approach for an informed citizenry."  The danger to the health of a functioning democratic-republic and its solution occupies a space that spans ethics to civics and linguistics to law.  Therefore, an Interdisciplinary Research Process (IRP) is required to solve this problem.  An informed citizenry is a pre-requisite for a healthy democracy.  From Ancient Greeks to Founding Fathers to recent history, the warning of the fragility of democracy has been ignored at our peril.  An IRP incorporating History, Ethics, Sociology, and Civics will provide an expanded understanding of - and solution to - the problem of a disconnected, constrained, and unknowledgeable citizenry writ large.  Such an IRP is required and necessary.  We can nibble around the margin of our national structure, concerned with the very real and important environmental, social, and physical deficiencies of the individual parts of our national fabric, but, unless and until we focus our attention on an Interdisciplinary solution to the disease versus the symptoms, all other concerns will be delayed, dismissed, or doomed.  Early public introduction to ethics, civics, participatory government, volunteerism, and outreach programs for voter awareness provide the cursory 'first steps' to an informed, positively-activated community.

Spencer Cortney Green

The talk "When Face to Face Becomes Screen to Screen: Supporting Youth Activists During COVID" will discuss the work I have done through my nonprofit employer to establish a youth leadership program from August 2020 to present. Elements of focus include centering intersectional awareness and approaches when recruiting youth leaders and establishing group policies, supporting youth activists in digital spaces when such work has previously been most successful in-person, and how this work has influenced my own personal and academic understanding of activism. Key concepts: intersectionality, implicit bias awareness, critical analysis of systems of exclusion, nonprofit sector, direct youth support and education, employing theory in nonprofit spaces.

Eli Zane

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020, activists all over the United States took to the streets to protest police brutality. An essential component of the protests included fighting against unlawful sweeps of our unhoused neighbors, giving food, masks and hand sanitizer away to people due to the lack of government assistance during the pandemic. Folks were getting creative with their community involvement, which is when the community fridges began popping up in all major cities across the U.S. to bring free food directly to the community. The Denver community fridge project has been in the works for 7 months, and our grand opening was at Mutiny Information Cafe on December 5th, 2020, and have since opened 3 additional fridges. The refrigerators are plugged into a local business’ outlet in high traffic areas of the city, and left outside to be accessible 24/7 for donations which community members can bring for folks experiencing food insecurity. I was motivated to bring the fridge project here since Denver is a heavily gentrified city that is committed to consistently displacing its community members.