Conversation and change in a world reaching for justice

Loba Wakinyan Azul, a student in the MFA in Creative Writing Program in Port Townsend, started a conversation at residency about race in relationship to Goddard’s responsibility as a community and to “make what we offer available to a broader racial community.”
In describing their [preferred pronoun] facilitated work, Loba shares that, “We began the discussion by talking about our own racial privilege and marginalization. We then generated ideas for the types of action we can take as a school and as students.”
It is their stated intention that this work will grow into an ongoing action-based conversation. The MFAW residency in Port Townsend has a student-run Talk About Diversity group.  Loba’s desire to take Goddard’s work visibly out into the world is compelling; it suggests that the College “walk the talk” in communities that may have barriers to accessing it. In this way, the hard and needed critical conversations about marginalization and privilege will exist as part of the College’s work in order to promote the justice, equity, and social change that Goddard names as its values.

Note: an abridgment of this story appears in the article, “Is Activism Dead?” in the Clockworks Fall 2015 issue on page 11.