Holding the Mess as We Heal: Mia Mingus in Conversation with Rania El Mugammar

Join us for Holding the Mess as We Heal Mia Mingus in conversation with Rania El Mugammar. We see over and over the ways that state responses to gender-based violence often reproduce harm and traumatize those who are exposed to them. Transformative Justice is was created by and for oppressed communities who are already facing state violence and often do not feel safe engaging with the criminal justice system. Join two incredible educators and advocates for Transformative Justice as they discuss approaches for healing and justice that seek to respond to gender-based violence without creating more violence (or intentionally lessening it) for all involved. This conversation will explore ideas, strategies and tools for creating justice together.

We Deserve Healing Not Harm is a speaker series focused on the ongoing widespread criminalization and punishment of survivors of gender-based violence. This series is an opportunity to unpack, explore paths for change and generate collective action. Through speakers, panels, resource sharing, and calls to action we will explore ways to recognize and challenge the intersecting systems that target and harm survivors.

Join Consent Comes First (X University), Consent is Golden (external link)  (Wilfrid Laurier University), and Sexual Assault Support Centre (external link)  (Carleton University), as we work towards systems that heal rather than harm.

About Holding our Mess As We Heal Speakers:

Mia Mingus

Mia Mingus is a writer, educator and trainer for transformative justice (external link)  and disability justice (external link) . She is a queer physically disabled Korean transracial and transnational adoptee raised in the Caribbean. She works for community, interdependence and home for all of us, not just some of us, and longs for a world where disabled children can live free of violence, with dignity and love. As her work for liberation evolves and deepens, her roots remain firmly planted in ending sexual violence.

Mia has been involved in transformative justice (external link)  work for almost 2 decades. She is a prison abolitionist and a survivor who believes that we must move beyond punishment (external link) , revenge and criminalization if we are ever to effectively break generational cycles of violence and create the world our hearts long for. She is passionate about building the skills (external link) , relationships (external link)  and structures that can transform violence, harm and abuse within our communities and that do not rely on or replicate the punitive system we currently live in. Mia speaks (external link)  and gives training about transformative justice throughout North America.

Mia was a member and part of helping to create the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative from 2005-2010 and later Program Director for 2 years at Generation5 before the organization closed down. She was a founding and core member of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective from 2011 to 2020. Over the past 2 decades, she has supported numerous groups, organizations, individuals, intimate networks, families and communities in addressing harm, violence and abuse using transformative justice.

Mia helped to create and forward the disability justice framework (external link) . Her writings on disability have been used around the world and are a regular part of college and university curricula. Her blog, Leaving Evidence, has become a staple resource for anyone wanting to learn about disability and she has coined language and concepts such as “access intimacy (external link) ,” “magnificence (external link) ,” “politically and descriptively disabled (external link) ” and “forced intimacy (external link) .” Mia has played a key role in connecting disability justice with other movements and communities and she has worked tirelessly to educate different communities about disability, ableism, access, disability justice and abled supremacy.

Her writings can be found on her blog, Leaving Evidence (external link) , as well as Make/Shift (external link) , Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence, Criptiques, Octavia’s Brood: Sci-Fi from Social Movements,  (external link) The Wind is Spirit: A Bio/Anthology of Audre Lorde and Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundation, Theory, Practice, Critique, Stay Solid! A Radical Handbook for Youth, Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics.

In 2013, along with 14 other activists, Mia was recognized by the White House as an Asian and Pacific Islander women’s Champion of Change in observance of Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.  Mia was a 2005 New Voices Fellow, was named one of the Advocate’s 40 Under 40 in 2010, one of the 30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30 in 2009 by Angry Asian Man, one of Campus Pride’s Top 25 LGBT Favorite speakers for their 2009, 2010 and 2011 HOT LISTs, and was listed in Go Magazine’s 2013 100 Women We Love.  Mia was honoured with 2008 Creating Change Award by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and a community activist award for her “dedication and steadfast activism” in 2007 by ZAMI in Atlanta, GA.

The Gender and Sexuality Plenary for the first United States Social Forum; the National Queer Asian and Pacific Islander Alliance conference; NGLTF’s Creating Change Conference; The Empowering Women of Color Conference; the UCLGBTQIA Western Regional Conference; SisterSong’s Let’s Talk About Sex National Conference; the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s Campus Institute; the Midwest Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, and Ally College Conference; the Regional Sexual and Domestic Violence Primary Prevention Conference; and the Femmes of Color Symposium.

Rania El Mugamma

Rania El Mugammar is a Sudanese Artist, Liberation Educator, Abolitionist, Anti-oppression Consultant, multidisciplinary performer, speaker and published writer. Her work explores reproductive justice, transformative justice & abolition, art as liberation and digital justice. 

As a writer, Rania's work explores themes of identity, womanhood, Blackness, flight, exile, migration, belonging, gender, sexuality and beyond. Rania's primary mediums are poetry, spoken word and oral storytelling. She is a published poet, storyteller and playwright. Rania is deeply interested in poetic form and the auditory texture of words as well as the visual/aesthetic impact of language and form. 

Rania is an experienced anti-oppression, abolition and liberation educator and consultant who is unflinchingly committed to decolonization and freedom as the ultimate goals of her work. She has worked extensively with contemporary art institutions, STEM-based enterprises, media organizations, educational institutions and community/grassroots spaces.