Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

April 20th-June 6th: Disability Services and Women’s Resource Center Accessible Book Club:

Book: Academic Ableism Disability and Higher Education

Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center.  For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.

• Group date and time: Wednesdays, 4/20/22-06/08/22, 4-5pm via Zoom
• Group Details: This group is open to all interested students and staff. The format of this group will be flexible and adaptive and will be centering accessibility needs of all members.
• Registration Required: https://tinyurl.com/accessiblereadinggroup
• If you are interested in registering, have any questions about the group or accessing the text, want to talk through disability concerns, contact Kiera or otto.
• Kiera (Coordinator RC WRC): kiera.hansen@pcc.edu
• Otto (Disability Advocate & QRC Reorganization Consultant): otto.norton@pcc.edu

April 25th: Let’s Talk about Sex and Disability

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. WRC staff recognize that we don’t talk about sex and disability often and when we do, its often about people with disabilities, not with them and is centered around violence. The WRC and Disability Services wanted to do something different.

April 26th: Substance Use and Harm Reduction Lunch Chat

May 5th: Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women’s/Relatives Day

Details Here

Shout 2022

Are you a PCC student who feels strongly about body autonomy? Are you concerned about the future freedom of reproductive rights? Would you like to participate in a theater play raising awareness?

Shout 2022, is aimed at drawing awareness to matters of bodily autonomy at PCC. Shout 2022 wants to bring together discussions about gendered bodies, trans bodies, queer bodies, abortion, reproduction, hormones, inclusion, diversity, rebirthing oneself/ourselves. This project welcomes creative expressions by PCC students, alumni, faculty and staff around bodily autonomy in all possible areas & on all possible levels. The contributions will be curated into an interactive online experience, to be visited by donation. Donations will benefit the PCC Foundation Native Scholarship, hosted by the Multicultural Center at Sylvania.

• Please find a google form to gauge interest here
• A short video promoting the project can be found here
• The first 25 currently enrolled students who submit an entry will receive a $25.- gift card from a small local business.
• Questions? Contact Miri: miriam.sluis@pcc.edu

Returning Women’s Club

• Meeting times – see event listings above.
• To receive zoom link for meetings, sign up here.
• sign up, email sewrc@pcc.edu.

Join in for support from other women returning to college or starting college at a non-traditional age. Build community, share resources, get support connecting to campus! Questions? Email sewrc@pcc.edu.

Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance Club

Join in for conversation on feminist issues, open mic events, book group, and more! To sign up email wrc@pcc.edu.

Title IX Awareness Club

For details or to sign up email wrc@pcc.edu.

Students with Kids Club

For details or to sign up email wrc@pcc.edu.

Club de Lectura Feminista

Winter Term 2022 meeting times: Mondays 6:00 pm- 7:00 pm. For details or to sign up email alicia.gonzalez16@pcc.edu or magali.cruz@pcc.edu.

Stress Reduction: Categorizing Your Self-Soothing Activity Collection

In addition to Coordinating the Cascade and Rock Creek Women’s Resource Centers, Rebecca and I (Kiera) each regularly teach a section of CG 145: Stress Management. Winter 2022 Offerings are listed in that section of the Newsletter. We wanted to offer a moment of self-reflection around stress in our lives.

When we talk about stress relief- we often think of what we can do to calm ourselves down in the moment we are experiencing the stress feelings. We often pick an activity from our mental and/or physically documented list such as deep breathing, taking a slow drink of water, snapping a rubber band against our wrist, and/or a visualization meditation. These activities we do on our own to help ourselves are called self-soothing activities. Building up your collection of self-soothing activities is such a helpful stress management strategy.

Let’s be real for a second though: there are some stressors that can’t be mitigated by even the most skilled deep breathing practice. We experience so much in our daily lives depending on our identities and social locations. In the moment, not every self-soothing activity in our collection fits perfectly with a situation or physical/mental manifestation of stress. It can be helpful to understand the unique ways that certain stressors manifest for you individually, the why of the stressor, how it shows up in your body and what helps.

• What is one of your biggest stressors? Is it school? Finances, work, family, traffic, health concerns, a friendship or intimate relationship?
• What are the most common ways that stress shows up in your body physically and emotionally? Do you become tearful, irritable, or do you shut down? Do you stop sleeping, clench your jaw, or does your heart hurt?
• Do you notice that your stress response looks different depending on the stressor? For example:
  • Unable to sleep the night before a test
  • Become tearful when having difficult conversations with partners
  • Notice you are irritable when you think of managing your bank account
  • Clench your jaw in traffic

Recognizing these stressor specific responses in advance can be helpful for a multitude of reasons but for this exercise in knowing ourselves, it can help to know which self-soothing activity to try before, during and after.

What are your favorite self-soothing activities? Which stress responses do these self-soothing activities mitigate? Which big stressors do these stress responses usually pair with?
For me, I experience tightness in my chest when speaking up in a large group setting. It helps me to really focus on my breathing before, during and after the stressor. It also helps me to take a drink of water before and during if I notice my chest tighten back up. The stress I experience when I think I can’t pay a bill on time. When it comes to finances, my stress response is to avoid it. That is an entirely different set of self-soothing tools.

Want to share yours or to talk to someone at the WRC about stress? Contact us. If we can’t help, we will help you find someone who can!

Outreach and Advocacy Project Resource Share: Students Guide to Radical Healing

My name is Hayley Hayes (she/her). I am originally from Boise, Idaho, and am currently living in Northeast Portland with my partner, our puppy and our cat. My passions include cooking, being in the sun and water, and working in the anti-violence field as part of a greater goal of dismantling sexism and challenging a society that overwhelmingly says “we don’t believe you.”

I’ve had the honor of working alongside survivors of relationship and sexual violence through 24/7 crisis lines, emergency shelters, and hospital response for the past 7 years or so. In my current role as a confidential advocate here at PCC, I work to meet students who are experiencing this type of harm where they are at through safety planning, connection to resources, emotional support, and more based on whatever students identify as helpful to them.

The resource I am sharing is a wonderful tool created by students at the University of Las Vegas which was created with the belief that everyone has an innate capacity to heal from trauma, and deserves to know that what happened isn’t your fault, and there are tools out there to support you. Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all for healing, but I hope this resource can help send the message that your trauma is valid. The holidays can be a tough time for many reasons, so if you find yourself needing a break, or something to occupy your mind, take a peek at this resource and know that you are not alone.

https://unlvcare.github.io/healingzine/

If you have experienced harm resulting from intimate partner/dating violence, sexual violence, harassment, or stalking, or have questions and want to talk to someone, you can contact confidential and privileged staff and advocates through the Women’s Resource Centers and Outreach and Advocacy Project. Hayley is one of them!

PSU WRC Creating Feminist Futures Conversation Series

Want to catch up on past offerings in this series? Here are the recordings, courtesy of the PSU Women’s Resource Center:

• Land Back and Indigenous Feminism – Creating Feminist Future Series
• Black Feminism – Creating Feminist Futures Conversation Series
• Dismantling Carceral Logic – Creating Feminist Futures Conversation Series
• Trans Feminism – Creating Feminist Futures Conversation Series