collective resistance

A collage of destroyed posters on the wall of a building.
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The People Have the Power to Redeem the Work of Fools: A Toolkit for Resistance

ByBrenna Reading Time: 9 minutes

I promised a toolkit in this final post, and a sense of what resistance can look like. Sometimes I think the most helpful way to think about this work is to recognize that every choice we make every day is part of the larger constellation of resistance, which I get sort of sounds exhausting. I promise, I get that. And I don’t think we can possibly fight every fight or be ready for a fight every second of the day. But taking the “every day, every choice” approach also means that every day has myriad opportunities to challenge the status quo, to start a difficult conversation, to ask a question no one else is asking. I find that hopeful, because it means that when you do step back, or opt out, or take time to breathe, the next opportunity to make the small connection that sparks the change is just around the corner.

Here are the moves that I think should be in every post-secondary reformer’s toolkit.

A graffiti'd wall with the chemical symbols from the periodic table used to spell out "PUSH."
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The Worst Is Yet to Come, and Babe, It Won’t Be Fine

ByBrenna Reading Time: 8 minutes

So last week, we talked about fatigue and burnout, and I promised you I would give you some reasons to keep engaging with the things that matter. I didn’t promise a cheery chat — and the title today reinforces that! — but I am going to provide some reasons to hope even as I try to spook you into action.

Naomi Klein’s concept of disaster capitalism, as she outlines in the Shock Doctrine, is one that resonates. We’ve talked about it in these pages before: it’s the idea that bad, exploitative policy — of the neoliberal variety — typically follows on from crisis. Klein herself has acknowledged the parallels to this moment. And I’ve argued that we’re seeing this same thing happen in educational technologies, as universities floundered to sign agreements and then get stuck with tools they are ill-prepared to effectively manage and use.