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CDSC Events

Spring 2012

March 28 & April 25   Soulcial Justice Poetry Lounge

University Student Union (USU) Games Room 7:30-9:30

March 30 to April 1 - QPPOC (Queer People of Color Conference)

University Student Union (USU). Please access the conference site by clicking the following link: QPOCC 2012

April 16 - Rosa Martha Zárate Macías

A lecture/presentation by Chicana activist, organizer and musician - Manzanita Hall 114 7:00-9:00pm

Criminalization of Our Urban Communities Series

Sequoia Hall 104 4:00-6:00

April 11 - Criminalization of Youth

A Conversation with Vianey Ramirez, LA Public Defense Attorney and CSUN students

April 18 - When Will the Punishment End?

Film screening and Q & A with director, Marta Lopez-Garza

April 25 - Twenty Years of Struggle

A Conversation with Tamika Rice, UCSD Ethnic Studies Graduate Student and the Community Coalition

April 30 - Gender and Women’s Studies Student Conference

Whitsett Room

May 2 - Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to a New Wayof Life

A Film Screening and Q & A Session with Susan Burton, Founder, A New Wayof Life

All events are free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.


Related Campus Events

Please send information on related campus events to sheena.malhotra@csun.edu

 

CDSC Sponsors at CSUN

Academic Departments:

Resources

  1. Videos of Rev. Lawson's Public Lectures 2010-11
  2. Videos of Student Marches and Protests
  3. Article on "Why Civil Resistance Works"

Education Protests

4. Game link on Civil Disobedience

5. Curricular Resources on Nonviolence

6. CDSC - Working Bibliography

7. Film Series

8. Library Resources for Researching Civil Discourse & Social Change

9. Office of Student Affairs

 

Contact Information

Marta López-Garza

Chicano/a Studies & Gender and Women's Studies.

Chicano/a Studies Office Location: JR 121A

Gender and Women's Studies Office Location: JR 340

Office Phone Number: 818-677-4785 or x6488

email: marta.lopez-garza@csun.edu

Kathryn Sorrells

Communication Studies

Office Location: MZ 344

Office Phone Number: 818-677-2104

email: kathryn.sorrells@csun.edu

 

CDSC Sponsors at CSUN

Student Organizations

Administration

 

 

Click here for Site Credits

Civil Discourse & Social Change: Vision Statement

The problem is not a budget crisis but a vision crisis.

Reverend James M. Lawson Jr.

For a second year, California State University at Northridge has organized a campus-wide initiative on Civil Discourse & Social Change (CD&SC). As a center of reflection, learning and dialogue, our university undertakes the challenge of addressing current socioeconomic and political issues in light of historic movements, theories and methodologies for social change. The CD&SC initiative’s mission is to create a proactively engaged campus based on humanistic values, inclusivity and social justice.  The goal of our initiative this year is to collaborate and act constructively to provide affordable quality public education that serves the interests of students, their families and the community. Education is a Human Right captures CD&SC’s vision.

Education Protests

Many are alarmed by the current trajectory of our public education system. The de-funding of higher education threatens to re-establish exclusionary conditions reminiscent of the pre-Civil Rights Era. This transformation runs counter to California’s mandate of the 1960s to promote quality education for all. California’s economic success and technological growth, ranked among the highest in the nation in earlier decades, is dependent upon affordable post-secondary education.  Yet, massive budget cuts have resulted in dramatic tuition increases, limited access for new students and restricted classes and services across the CSU system. Consequently, the CD&SC initiative is working across departments and colleges and with surrounding communities to realize our vision, Education is a Human Right

During his time at CSUN in the 2010-2011 academic year, Reverend James Lawson, a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King and leading architect of the Civil Rights Movement, worked closely with California State University, Northridge campus community on our Civil Discourse and Social Change initiative.  Now in his eighties, Reverend Lawson has devoted his life to nonviolent social change informed by the philosophy practiced by Mahatma Gandhi. Nonviolence does not mean passivism. Rather, nonviolent action means engendering another view of power—an alternative to violent, destructive power—where people power is used to create equity and justice.

This academic year, Reverend Lawson will continue to anchor the CD&SC initiative beginning with a kick-off lecture/workshop on Monday, September 26th, 4:00p.m. in the USU Northridge Center.  All students, faculty, staff, administrators and community members are invited and encouraged to participate.

 


Reverend Lawson's Bio

James Lawson was born in Pennsylvania in 1928. His father and grandfather were Methodist ministers, and Lawson received his local preacher's license in 1947, the year he graduated from high school. At his Methodist college in Ohio, he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), America's oldest pacifist organization.

Rev. Lawson being arrested in Nashville during the civil rights struggle.

After spending time in prison for refusing the Korean War draft, he obtained his B.A. in 1952, and spent the next three years as a campus minister and teacher at Hislop College in Nagpur, India. While in India, Lawson eagerly read of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the emerging nonviolent resistance movement back in the United States.

By 1957, Lawson decided he could no longer sit on the sidelines. He began holding seminars to train volunteers in Gandhian tactics of nonviolent direct action. James Lawson helped coordinate the Freedom Rides in 1961 and the Meredith March in 1966, and played a major role in the sanitation workers strike of 1968. On the eve of his assassination, Martin Luther King called Lawson "the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world."

In 1974, Lawson moved to Los Angles to be the pastor of Holman Methodist Church. He spoke out against racism, and challenged the cold war and U.S. military involvement throughout the world. Even after his retirement, Lawson was protesting with the Janitors for Justice in Los Angeles, and with gay and lesbian Methodists in Cleveland.

Source: PBS website http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/witnesses/james_lawson.html