06/16/2020

ORWAC Stands in Support of Action Against Anti-Blackness

Message from the ORWAC Leadership

The leadership of the Organization for Research on Women and Communication (ORWAC) stands with protestors both in the United States and across the world who are taking action against the structures of anti-Black oppression, police brutality, and state-sanctioned violence that murdered George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others. In doing so, we commit to take action as an organization as well, laboring to examine our own complicity in anti-Black racism, planning anti-racist organizational transformations, and immediately putting them into action. During these times, standing through solidarity is performed through action, rather than just words. As a feminist organization, we recognize the role that white women have played and continue to play in constructing and maintaining white supremacy, and the concomitant responsibility we have as a feminist organization to root out such structures in our own discourse and operations. We also recognize that struggles against anti-Blackness intersect with other forms of racism, heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism and coloniality, and ableism. As an organization, we continue to take action to make ORWAC a space where scholars of color, international scholars, disabled, and LGBTQIA and nonbinary scholars are centered by revising our organizational policies, bylaws, website, social media, grant requirements, award procedures and any other gatekeeping structures. We are also working to ensure that Women's Studies in Communication, our organization's journal, is an inclusive space that is attentive to the intersectional complexities of the struggles against anti-Black racism. Today, we solidify our commitment to making ORWAC a more socially just organization. We hope that our organization is also a space where you, our members, feel comfortable raising awareness when our trajectories move or are perceived in a manner that does not reflect our commitments, so we are able to change directions. #BlackLivesMatter 

Signed, 

Leslie J. Harris, Immediate Past President
Diane Marie Keeling, President
Jenna N. Hanchey, Vice President
Tiffany Lewis, Membership Officer
Alyssa A. Samek, Treasurer
Claire Sisco King, Editor, Women’s Studies in Communication
Sarah J. Jackson, Conversation and Commentary Editor, Women’s Studies in Communication
Marian Levina, Book and Media Review Editor, Women’s Studies in Communication
Danielle C. Biss, Graduate Student Representative
Sarah C. Dweik, Graduate Student Representative
Kristen D. Herring, Graduate Student Representative