A number of discussions bringing awareness to topics such as feminism and immigrations to clean eating and economic justice drove in over one hundred attendees from Fullerton College, Cal State Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Cal Poly Pomona Friday, November 20 at Fullerton College.
The message of the conference went as follows:
“Through this summit, our intent was to bring critical social issues to light and discuss them in depth with the hopes of creating better selves, a better campus, and a better world. At this summit, we encourage the audience to make this a place of healing. Be aware of your words. Respect all the identities and roles we each have. Be open minded. […] Keep good intentions; assume others have good intentions. […] “
The summit offered a quiet space, a gender-neutral bathroom, and even a “safe space.”
The stated intent of the conference stated, “A Safe Space is a place where anyone can fully express themselves without fear of feeling uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe due to their race or ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity or expression, cultural background, religious affiliation, age, or physical or mental ability.”
The summit was free of charge and combined vendors, campus clubs, and guest panelists to speak about the social injustices happening in society.
The summit held three sessions that each lasted an hour long and a final keynote at the end of the day. Each session had seven different discussions, workshops and round tables for attendees to choose from.
One of the workshops, “Fresh + Love: Eat Well, Live Right(eous)” was held by Cora Love One, an artist and vegan, who promoted clean eating and highlighted the benefits of giving the body what it needs to fully function in the correct manner.
Love even provided samples of healthy and decolonized food at the end of the day for the keynote.
The summit also touched on subjects such as education reform.
The round table, “The Ivory Towers are Cracked: Sustaining Social Justice in Scholarship, Community, Engagement, and Student Learning,” brought together Dawn Dennis Ph.D from CSULA and other various instructors and students to discuss the effort to bring in new dialogue and new knowledge in the learning community.
Dennis believes, “education is not a capitalistic endeavor to push students through the system with false hopes; rather education is a place to challenge false ideologies, facilitate dialogue, learn new knowledge, and apply critical thinking skills in an effort to support a just society.”
FC’s MEChA sold out their pork, chicken and cheese tamales that were provided as a courtesy from a local business to raise funds for their club.
Fullerton College student and MEChA co-chair, Imelda Rodriguez-Mora, was hoping the summit would “bring awareness to the social issues going on in the community because a lot of it is not published or advertised in the media.” She believes it is “a student’s responsibility and their own independent work to be aware.”
One of the vendors by the name of Willorna Mendiola is the creator of the collection 3Fourths, a line that promotes a calm, tranquil, healing atmosphere with art through characters that she paints, her planet kids, and her nurturing characters.
“3Fourths is symbolic to the earth because they would say three-fourths of water covers and protects the art,” Mendiola said. “My art is about protecting, nurturing, preserving, healing and caring.”
At the end of the day, the summit held a keynote with guest speakers; Jennicet Guttierez, trans Latina activist, Lupita Cisneros, President of the FC Dream Team, Cihuatl Ce, politically-charged hip hop artist, and Remi Kanazi, a New York based writer.
