Call to Action Priorities
Read more about our Social Justice priorities.
Intentional messaging and spaces for meaningful and open dialogue on a continuous, ongoing basis. Spaces at a collegewide level, within discrete offices and areas, and spaces with our students. Progress Report
Individual and collective reflection and learning about race, racism, and developing equitable mindedness.
- Engage in the Vision Resource Center “Community Colleges for Change.”
- Engage in resources through the USC CCC Equity Leadership Alliance.
- Engage in unconscious bias assessment and training. Progress Report
Assess and make changes from an equity and social justice perspective in both the instructional and student service experience.
- Assess the classroom experience and create action plans to create inclusive classrooms and embed anti-racism curriculum across disciplines.
- Initiate a Cultural Competency Curriculum Audit.
- Provide workshops and trainings on student centered syllabi.
- Provide training and mentoring on effective teaching strategies for a culturally diverse student population.
- Assess student experiences with services and offices and create actions plans to create equity and anti-racist experiences.
- Review and update of first responder and direct service training and curriculum. Progress Report
- Focus the campus to implement specific actions called for in the Equity Plan.
- Provide sufficient resources and staffing to coordinate and support our anti-racism and equity work.
- Audit training and requirements for recruitment, hiring, and evaluation for equity in the process, for increasing representation, and for identifying social-justice minded candidates. Progress Report
Anti-Racism Resources
This list of guides and resources is a small sample of the abundant anti-racism resources online. We hope the following media links, authors, and classroom resources support you if are impacted by racism, and offer a starting point for all of us to become anti-racist allies in our community.
Call to Action for Racial Equity & Social Justice
Please read the Call to Action Packet.
Anti-Racism Resources
This list of guides and resources is a small sample of the abundant anti-racism resources online. We hope the following media links, authors, and classroom resources support you if are impacted by racism, and offer a starting point for all of us to become anti-racist allies in our community.
Statement of Solidarity
Dear Mission College Students, Staff, Faculty, and Administrators:
Mission College stands in solidarity with our African American brothers and sisters in mourning the loss of George Floyd and the countless other men and women who have been murdered unjustly at the hands of the police. We stand arm in arm with all who seek to dismantle the inherent and insidious racism and injustice that occur in our society and across our institutions today.
The death of Mr. Floyd is symbolic of how members of our community and under-served populations face systemic racism, bigotry and EXPLICIT biases daily. This is not microaggression but aggression; this is not simply marginalization but the willful degradation of the dreams and spirit of a people. To sit idly by and safe on the “sidelines” is to be complicit.
The heritage of racism and the ongoing disenfranchisement of the African American community in the United States runs deep beginning with the enslavement of African peoples in 1619. As the institution of slavery flourished, slave patrols using vigilante tactics to enforce slavery laws were the precursor to what we now recognize as the police.
Although African peoples were “emancipated” in 1865, legislation such as the Black Codes and later Jim Crow laws were enacted to subjugate African Americans and to deny them of their civil rights. To uphold these laws, “racial terror lynchings” were used during the period between the Civil War through the 1960’s to maintain strict control of African Americans through the systemic use of terror leading to intergenerational trauma.
Yet despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, black inferiority still permeates throughout our systems today as African Americans are more likely to be killed by the police than whites and are disproportionately impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic and within institutions of higher education.
We will not be complicit while institutional racism and white supremacy in America continues to enable the police brutality that has ravaged the Black community for centuries.
We must begin taking actions informed by the Mission College Equity Framework. But let’s start with critical self-reflection and leveraging this moment to recognize our own biases as well as the privileges and entitlements we possess. We must educate ourselves to begin the difficult conversations with family, friends, and colleagues to heal, take actions, and begin the transformation required to dismantle systems of racism and oppression.
Below are some immediate resources:
- 26 Ways to be in the struggle beyond the streets.
- How to protest safely against racism during a pandemic.
- List of Anti-Racism books powered by Bookshop.
Through the words of Ibram X. Kendi, “No one becomes ‘not racist,’ despite a tendency by Americans to identify themselves that way. We can only strive to be ‘anti-racist’ on a daily basis, to continually rededicate ourselves to the lifelong task of overcoming our country’s racist heritage.”
It is time for our institution to be on the right side of history, to not be complacent, and to refuse to take a neutral stance. Rather, we must become Anti-Racists and reverse the tide of oppression towards the African American community and to approach this with love, compassion, and empathy.
In Solidarity,
Daniel Peck, President, Dr. Aram Shepherd, Academic Senate President Dr. Leandra Martin, VP of Instruction Thanh Do, Classified Senate President Dr. Omar Murillo, VP of Student Services Alondra Martinez, ASG President Dr. Danny Nguyen, VP of Admin Services Lesley Geronimo, Mission College Student Trustee