Language Justice Reflections Workbook

Language Justice allows communities across the world to share our luchas, cosmovisiones, and full humanity in the languages and the ways that are truest to us. With LJ frameworks, we are able to envision multilingual movements, openings, and opportunities for connection, solidarity, decolonization and abolition. 

Language Justice is ma’ central for our collective liberation. Knowing this, we created an offering to you and the movement, The Language Justice Reflections Workbook.

The Language Justice Reflections Workbook draws on years of partnerships, juicy learnings, and breakthroughs set in the Move to End Violence context. This workbook is rooted in generations of movement work, community organizing, and our lived experiences. As Language Justice practitioners committed to this practice, we are welcoming you into deep Language Justice learning and reflection. We humbly see our experiences and praxis as one part of a long legacy of Language Justice movements and part of an ever-growing network of Language Justice practitioners.

In the workbook we acknowledge that the mainstream Language Justice landscape is dominated by Mestizx and white Spanish/English speakers. We start with our people and teams who made this work dynamic and nourishing. From there, we move to lessons of what it means to ensure these folks and our work are well resourced. Then flow into transforming how we do our work in service of Language Justice. In each section we offer moments for reflections and invitations to bring this back to your relationship to language and Language Justice. Before we close this resource you will have an opportunity to reflect on your relationship to language and Language Justice with the information, examples, and questions we offer.

For us, Language Justice is a strategy for the Gender Based Violence movement to build global anti-imperialist connections, community, and power, and has been a strategy and channel to bring healing in our personal bodies, homes, and beloveds. When we truly embody LJ, we experience how profoundly intertwined it is with Racial Justice, Black Liberation, Indigenous Sovereignty, Gender Justice, Disability Justice, Healing Justice -- and justice beyond what we can currently imagine.

We offer seeds and harvests from our garden of Language Justice so they can be planted, adapted in your particular contexts, and enjoyed. We hope the The Language Justice Reflections Workbook resource will continue to open possibilities for us and our communities. We are excited to continue to experience the ripples of our Language Justice praxis, and we are energized by the ways movements to end gender violence will shift and deepen to embody Language Justice in service of our collective liberation and healing. 

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Authored by ramelcy uribe (name/nombre, she/they, ella/elle) through years of partnership, conversation, and collaboration with Monica Dennis (she, ella).

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‍Muchisimas gracias a todes who made this resource possible.

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To Our Contributors:

Monica Dennis, MEV Co-Director & LJ Partner (she, ella)

Priscilla Hung, MEV Co-Director & Project Support  (she, ella)

Patricia Torres, Project Doula & Partner (she/they, ella/elle)

Onyx Ramirez, Visual Designer (she, ella)

Gloria Malone, Copyeditor (she, ella)

Miranda Sheffield, Copyediting Support, (she, ella) 

Jamila Craig from Jamii Linguists, Copyediting Support & Afrolingüístic Magic (she, ella)

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To Our Co-Stewards:

Sequoia Ayala, MEV Director of Operations (she, ella)

Latishia James, MEV Program Director (she/they, ella/elle)

Catalina Nieto, LJ Mover (she, ella)

Lila Arnaud, LJ Mover (she/they, ella/elle)

Telesh Priscilla Pascual López, LJ Mover (she, ella)

wendelin regalado, LJ Mover (we/she, nosotres/ella)

StormMiguel Florez, Video Editor (he, èl)

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Click here to download the workbook in English.

Click here to download the workbook in Spanish.

And check out our LJ Resource Garden in Spanish and in English.

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