The IU CommUNITY Education Program and Enough is Enough organizers collaborated on a virtual interactive panel discussion about activism called “Enough is Enough” at 2 p.m. Saturday. The event was the first of multiple virtual events the IU CommUNITY Education Program plans to offer as part of its MLK Civil Rights Immersion Trip three-part series.
The program usually takes an annual educational trip, but this year created virtual events due to COVID-19.
The event, with around 30 attendees, began with an introduction of the Enough is Enough nonprofit and its mission of ending racism and institutional oppression by uplifting Black leadership, business and art in local communities.
After the introduction, Enough is Enough co-organizer and junior Ky Freeman led an activity in which participants reflected on parts of their identities. The activity asked participants which of their identities they were most conscious of in their everyday life.
This included identities relating to age and ability, race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, national origin and religion.
“I enjoyed the event, I loved how it was part engaging and definitely informative,” sophomore Autumn Stringer said. “I gained a lot, and it makes me want to be more aware of organizations and other opportunities where I can learn and grow.”
IU graduate student and co-organizer Selena Drake then highlighted the origin of the Enough is Enough movement from summer 2020 in a presentation.
“What we did was tell everyone our intentions and tell them what we want,” Drake said. “We tell them we are here, we want our voices to be heard but in a peaceful way. We have no efforts to riot, we have no efforts to do any of that. We just want to bring our community together.”
A large portion of the event emphasized the importance of active, hands-on work behind moments with missions to provoke change. In addition to making flyers and communicating with community members, the organization’s June 5 protest also had volunteers help make signs and pass out masks and water.
Diversity in the leaders of these movements is pivotal, Freeman said.
“Blackness is not monolithic, but neither did we want this movement to be.” Freeman said. “We had to address the accessibility concern. We had to address who’s hearing this message, who’s going to be coming to this and how do we get those who have typically not felt emboldened to do these types of things to come out.”
The CommUNITY education program’s next events will be March 20 and April 17.
