Thread by @amymcquire

Next up is a panel for @War_On_Race feat @drcwatego @MuttonFatVille @ElizabethStrak @AlissaMacoun #AWGSA21

.@ElizabethStrak the history and present of Indigenous sovereignty is all around us here where we speak from - 'Southside house' in Wooloongabba - the hq of @War_On_Race

.@ElizabethStrak: This house is where we founded our enterprise the Institute for Collaborative Race Research (ICRR) @War_On_Race -

@ElizabethStrak ICRR was not only formed in a place but around a particular time: the peak of the BLM movement....its not a time to be silent, not a time to refuse to take sides, the war is violent in an intellectual & physical sense

@ElizabethStrak ICRR is a way to do work that directly and openly responds to this reality and can speak it clearly. we all have experienced the way institutions, esp academy, "unknow" race and colonialism - this is not just passive action.. it is a violent

... and active unknowing that has a backlash. ICRR formed slowly out of a realisation that this type of intellectual work is never going t be fully at home in the academy... but we continue to claim space in that academy.

@ElizabethStrak In forming ICRR we seek to care for one another through this, and find courage to speak clearly and directly on race through our own locations, and courage has throw on affect.

.@ElizabethStrak part of what brought us together was really practical around precariousness of employment in academy - we depend on institutions not just for work, but as a basis to hold together an intellectual community.

@ElizabethStrak creating a solid base in ICRR not dependent on the tolerance of any institution allows us to pursue longterm intellectual research agenda

.@MuttonFatVille: speaks of his experiences growing up in UK education system where he was deemed substandard due to his race - "very early on i had a sense of race, you could observe it in the school yard, in the way teachers treated you"

.@MuttonFatVille: speaks of encountering elite institutions in UK and Oz. "I found those places quite forbidding, especially for People of Colour - you weren't welcomed, certainly not warmly

.@MuttonFatVille I was conspicuous both cosmetically and intellectually. He came in with a knowing on race - and could see race everywhere. But what he didn't do was insist on particular study of race - "I listened for a really long time"

.@MuttonFatVille he listened and was mentored by Indigenous scholars, and is still mentored by Indigenous scholars - through both he sat around with senior Inidgenosu scholars all over teh world: "In those situations you sit and you listen".

.@MuttonFatVille now he is doing this work through @War_On_Race looking at sovereignty in local contexts: "I put a great value on listening and learning and not professing". "What we need to do is sit and listen and speak when called upon, and not before frankly"

.@MuttonFatVille speaks of the community as being inspired by friendship and solidarity.

@drcwatego speaks of what brought her to @War_On_Race is the work: "In the course of working for academy - so much labour is exhausted on insisting race is real." Eg; culture instead of race in health sciences.

.@drcwatego: @War_On_Race does not require us to appeal for peopel to believe race is real - it is the place that does the work for those who know race is fucking real - and needs us and calls us to do that work.

.@drcwatego there is a responsibilty to do the work to our communities, i'm always at a point where I'm trying to balance being of service to my community while trying to survive as a single mother of five kids

.@drcwatego the work within the academy - there was so many hurdles put in place to stop me from doing the work, but that also required me to convince them it was real - while going home to my neighbourhood where there was no Q race is real

.@drcwatego so this community at @War_On_Race is about the work. Not about jostling for positions as academics, rather than just doing the work. I really love the work I can do in this place - the work we do here does not pay the bills. We are building a community.

@drcwatego this is about building the infrastucture needed to do the work - what's exciting is the work we get to do when we're not distracted by the tasks that were meant to take us away from the work we are called to do.

.@ElizabethStrak: It's taken me the longest to learn and the longest to get here at @War_On_Race - my intellectual life and academy travelled together with reasonable comfort for a period of time..

.@ElizabethStrak my intellectual life has always been a great source of joy and identity for me - comes from my secular Jewish cultural heritage - to be an intellectual was valuable in and of itself - but I did go into institutions thinking they did what they said on the box

.@ElizabethStrak I always knew that intellectual gains were not enough. Speaks of doing debating - being assigned a side - you can intellectualise anything you want, but it doesnt get you closer to the truth.

.@ElizabethStrak it's like playing in a sandpit, thinking its the real world. There was a disjuncture for me that came to a head around - a number of students in casualed and racialised positions who were speaking back to institution demanding justice

.@ElizabethStrak I thought I should support them - but the backlash was phenomenal - she did not anticipate it. It was a revelation to her. She was told many times if I just say sorry, she could come back. She'd got the wrong side. the academic path fractured quite dramaticall

.@ElizabethStrak she instead found a place here at @War_On_Race where people do what they say on the box - what she envisioned for her career within the academy. She stresses importance of relationships, and learning from Indigenous and POC scholars

.@AlissaMacoun speaks from position of a queer, white woman - and as a poorly disciplined political scientist - academic interest is racism, and settler colonialism expressed in policy

.@AlissaMacoun One of the things that she learned early in the academy - you engage too much in Indigenous scholarship, you end up outside of the disciplines. As white women, she was offered paths back into academia if you are prepared to be strategic, or make compromises

.@AlissaMacoun what brought her to @War_On_Race is disconnect she felt.. and she was much more interested in learning and building communities of practice - in processes of research that allow her to listen and be in service

.@AlissaMacoun speaks of her precariousness in academia - "what this place offers me is a place where you can move away from empirical theory , from extractive process of work that everything in this place is a case study for a canon from somewhere else

@AlissaMacoun I want to think differently from that - I want to think about questions that don't look at us as roles of empire. I want to move away from an academy that is focused on eing handmaidens of the state

.@AlissaMacoun I couldn't do the work in the way they wanted me to do, and this place offers me a way to do the work in how I want to do it, as well as a community in how I can think strategically in how I can exist in academic institutions

The values of @War_On_Race are "Joy, Care, Spite, Accountability, Solidarity and Excellence". These are core themes that frame the company.

.@drcwatego speaks on "Spite" as a value. This family at @War_On_Race is brought togehter by Spite. All of us who have found a home in this house has been marginalised in our institutions, and have felt that sense of betrayal because we've done the work, good work

.@drcwatego spite is not vengeful - it drives the work. I'm driven by the fact if someone tells me i can't do something, I'm going to do it. This is about embracing that way of being in the world. The kind of work we do, there are reasons people tell us why we shouldn't do it.

.@drcwatego it's not about revenge, or hatred or nastiness. It's the drive to turn up when sometimes no one else is there. Oftentimes you will find yourselves alone, even in a community - you will find yourself questioning decisions, and the cost of that

.@drcwatego: "so that's where you need spite. Fuck them."

.@MuttonFatVille speaks on 'care': we have experienced the violence of institutions, and we've seen postgrads subjected to same kind of violence. So one of the motivations of this space is to care for each other.

.@MuttonFatVille speaks of the racial violence - "Coming to Australia, it is wall to wall racial violence" - and each of us doing this work are subjected to this violence on varying levels. We are a family, and we protect and stand up for our own

.@MuttonFatVille if you rock up to any rally in the aftermath of a horrific death in care - turn and count how many academics from your disciplines are standinng there - if you are going to do this work, double down because you know they are embarressed by own absence

@ElizabethStrak I'm talking about joy and the emotional labour and economy of academy - it works off emotions, money and labour. It works off anxiety.

@ElizabethStrak speaks of how academic can feed off hopes and dreams of early career researchers like fossil fuel to drive itself economically. You are told not to make trouble, be excellent, and eventually you'll get there...

.@ElizabethStrak but after extracting that labour with promise of IOU, there is now a stage where we are seeing that as a lie. The emotional economy where anxiety comp and hope is used to try and produce work is so profoundly diff from emotional world here where it is joy

.@ElizabethStrak actually 'joy' is what unleashes the work here at @War_On_Race - it is joy that unleashes our intellectual power and the intellectual power of the community

.@AlissaMacoun is going to talk about the value of "accountability" - i think as a middle class yt woman, what the academy wants me to do is be the knowing - the good white knower of black pain

.@AlissaMacoun model the benevolance of the colonial project - but i've really struggled with that. How to understand violence of this place, and my own complicity in it, when writing about it and teaching to it.

.@AlissaMacoun even when teaching my best courses, my body is telling the lie - even when i'm giving my students the tools to critique the myth of good yt woman, i'm undermining that story with my presence and my being

.@AlissaMacoun what this community is helping me do is be accountable to that at @War_On_Race - in coming to this place, I know i have a community that will hold me accountable for violence i do. A space where i can be a foot soldier but not a knower

.@AlissaMacoun It is a space where I can contribute, without telling that lie of virtuous white womanhood. Accountability - this is what @War_On_Race does, and where I'm happy to do. And the way this mixes with care.

.@AlissaMacoun We correct each other, and I've been corrected a number of times and I'm always so grateul for that. It's something this community at @War_On_Race offers me and which I really value. This is about accountability to a community, not the institution

.@AlissaMacoun: I know I have people who have my back, but to whom I am responsible. And that is profoundly powerful.

@ElizabethStrak says she is so proud of the biggest community they have built - speaks of establishing the house - its been a meaningful place for others for whose work I profoundly respect. This place is where they can draw strength from

.@ElizabethStrak she speaks of future of political intellectual work she looks at the generation of scholars who come to the house @War_On_Race - the kinds of thoughtfulness and care and ways of operating makes her feel honoured they come to this place

.@MuttonFatVille - the community they have built here has been a refuge away from academy. He has been working precariously for some years, and that brings its own violence because he has witnessed the distressing violence perpetrated against black colleagues

.@MuttonFatVille this violence is not exceptional - it is a low hum of violence that peaks every so often. This place has made it clear we are not wanted.

.@MuttonFatVille "we don't have the luxury of time. We just have to get on with the work. Because the level of violence being perp right across the board. I'm surprised that many more of us aren't shouting from the rooftops that this has to stop. What happened to that moment?

.@MuttonFatVille "Why didn't we hold our institutions to account in that BLM moment? Where was everybody and where are they now? I'm glad we have this community because it is from this place i can continue to shout, scream and rant."

.@drcwatego "I'm proud of the work we get to do here, ie work on coercive control with SistersInside. This isn't about fulfiling a gap in the marketplace, it is about doing work for peopel it is meant to be in service too. But its a work that we're proud to do

.@drcwatego speaks of work with @DebKilroy and Sisters - the value of that work is the diff knowledges we can bring to the table as a team and a collective. It is not about us being one against the other - it is about thinking together to make sense of this place and strategise

.@drcwatego this is not just about excellence - this is about ethics. that's a convo we do want to have - around an ethics of anti racist practice in this place. In more recent times, there are some serious issues about ethics of some scholars.

.@drcwatego I am proud that we have focused our attentions on where its needed most, not on individual academic careers. foregrounding Indigenous intellectual sovereignty is not something you write about, its something you do every single day.

.@drcwatego speaks of being proud of the way we do the work, not in a boastful way, but to shift to create a space to do work in thoughtful and respectful ways - its easy to focus on what we can't do, 1 thing blackfellas can teach is how to survive in a place that wants you dead

.@AlissaMacoun brings it back to spite - unis can be about selling out intellectual and political basing of your work - but what she has found is its easier and better to earn a place outside them.

.@AlissaMacoun the directors all still work in other institutions, @War_On_Race is no-one's fulltime job. What has been gratifying - 'we're doing the work and we didn't need them for it'. that's been a revelation for me.

.@ElizabethStrak speaks of being on a journey with sovereignty - not just Indigenous sovereignty but Palestinian sovereignty. She is learning is to speak more directly from her whole location as a person, and not in an abstract theoretical way

.@ElizabethStrak thought she was acknowledging INdigenous sovereignty, but she realised when she does that without locating herself & centring that sovereignty, she is re-enacting violence. There is an extra violence in yt critical scholars who understand themselves as critical

.@ElizabethStrak both thinking about her position as someone with Jewish heritage, & positioning as yt, she thinks of violence done when assumes she is marginalised, while still occupying a position of power. She has to speak of and from herself better and in relation to others

.@ElizabethStrak it is in her relationships and her place that she is able to speak in any usefulness and in a postiion of solidarity

.@MuttonFatVille - speaks of how POC can stand in psoition to sovereignty. Speaks of benefiting from tail winds of black anti racism, now it's time to step out and understand what it means to be in this place as POC. Many pple thinking of these issues

.@MuttonFatVille says they will fuck up. but that its something we need to get on with it - on how POC can work as a collective. We don 't need white patrons of race theory - he knows this space will afford him safety to do that

.@AlissaMacoun: she remembers thinking liberation would look like white queer feminists working in institutions - that was part of the way we could build change. But how is it when more queer yt women in higher positions, institutions felt more and more violent

.@AlissaMacoun speaks of failure to deal with complicity in deep structural violence - this is how it has affected her work. She thinks what this community is way to think through these things and be alot more brave in speaking out about these things