This year’s keynote guest will be activist and author Shanae Watkins, who will speak on Saturday, Oct. 28, at 3 p.m., in the McConnell Theater in the Daniel Arts Center on campus. The event can also be streamed virtually on Zoom. Photo courtesy of Simon’s Rock.
Great Barrington — Simon’s Rock hosts the Symposium on Social Justice and Inclusion, an annual program sponsored by the Council for Inclusive Communities (CIC). This symposium provides a designated time and space for the Simon’s Rock community to use the theme to dismantle barriers to action on important social justice issues in the classroom and in everyday life. This year’s theme is “Collective Activism.”
This year’s keynote guest will be activist and author Shanae Watkins, who will speak on Saturday, Oct. 28, at 3 p.m., in the McConnell Theater in the Daniel Arts Center on campus. The event can also be streamed virtually on Zoom.
The keynote event will be preceded by a screening of the documentary “Girlhood,” about Watkins’ childhood, at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 27, at the Fisher Lecture Center. Both parts of this event are free and open to the public.
Dr. Sarah Porter Riddell, Dean of Students and Equitable Communities at Simon’s Rock, explains this year’s theme:
“At this year’s Symposium Week, we are focusing on collective activism. At a time when many of us have felt hopeless and isolated, we have come together to bond, grow, and We began to fight back by thinking of ways to learn and experience new things. We began to understand what the world and our country would look like beyond COVID-19. But now we face the uncertainty of war internationally and the challenges of government at home. This wave of anxiety and fear challenges us to find our voice, make change, and find balance. Collective activism provides that balance. As we look at the many social issues around us, we give voice to those who have been silenced and give voice to those far away. We choose collective activism as a shield of strength to bring awareness to the issues we feel about and make appropriate efforts to bring hope to society.Change society.
“Collective activism is action undertaken by a group of individuals who share a common goal of changing and improving the circumstances of others and themselves. The origin of the word is ‘collective’. By that I mean a group of individuals who, despite differences in background and access, are determined to work together to achieve goals and make things better. If 2023 has shown us anything, it’s that now is the time to join arms and push for change. ”
Additional events for the Social Justice and Inclusion Symposium will be held throughout the week on the Simon’s Rock campus. These events will be open to the Simon’s Rock community.
Shanae Watkins
Shanae Watkins changed course and shed every negative label society tried to place on her. Failure. It’s a refusal. violent criminal. She finished everything by the age of 11. Her painful but short past set Shanae on a difficult and often alone path, but the labels that rang out from her headlines further set her on a path of hardship and hardship throughout her teenage and young adult years. roused him to battle. After a confusing experience of being kidnapped, followed by a hit-and-run and attempted escape around the age of 5, her innate curiosity and wisdom beyond her years led her to evolve into a “runner” and to take charge of herself. I left home for weeks at a time without being sure. She can be placed anywhere, so she wants to be anywhere. These choices, some of her own, and others made innocently and often predatorily on her behalf, accelerate her from a girl to a teenage girl and her desire to be free. She fell into the hands of someone who took advantage of her and misled her, and her freedom was inevitably taken away. Away.
Having healed as a woman through the hardships of being a single mother and the rejection and abuse from a world where she wanted to feel safe, she is now 100 percent invested in her healing as she considers it a valuable lesson every day.
She was first introduced internationally in the cable documentary “Girlhood” and has appeared on “Oprah,” “Gerald,” “The Montel Williams Show,” MSNBC, and on regional panels, where she discusses youth justice experiences, children’s I appeared on a panel that talked about trauma in adulthood. .
Today, Shanae is a proud and loving mother of three children, one son and two daughters. She is a business owner and customer service expert providing services that cater to femininity and adult health and wellness. She co-hosts a podcast created to help women find clarity in love, life, and spiritual healing, which will be released in long-awaited electronic and hard copy in 2022. She is also the author of From Girlhood to Womanhood. She is a feminine, dynamic flower of light with an infectious spirit that captivates the hearts of everyone she meets.
Despite her circumstances, and despite an inner voice that sometimes chimes in with the naysayers, Shanae refuses to accept whatever experiences society has tried to use to define her. She refused to answer to the name that society tried to give her. Twenty years later, she is a rose that bloomed in the darkness, using her own light to be honest, unapologetic, and good. She makes her debut as an author with her book From Girlhood to Womanhood, which tells her own story through her very personal words.
