Dear DJN Members, Signatories, and Friends,

April 10-16, 2022, our Steering Committee team and staff will begin our first of 2022 DJN network seasonal pause. This is our first pause since launching our Mission, Vision, and Intentions late last year with the help of our DJN members. One of the ways we’re continuing to harness our collective energies for the work of design justice is by making intentional space for rest and wellness.

We believe in caring for the health of our network and for ourselves. We see intentional pauses as an important practice for sustained movements and see paid breaks as an act of generously honoring each other’s bodies beyond what or how much we produce. To show appreciation for our work in the world, one of the best things we can do is to give each other time and space to heal. By taking this pause, we want to model what it looks like to take the time we need to be well and recenter ourselves within movement spaces.

Taking an intentional pause is a living expression of aligning design justice work with practices of care. We’re learning how to model what it means to approach the work of design justice differently, in hopes that other movements can integrate time to pause as well. We recognize that taking pauses and care require resources, and that can feel like an impossible luxury, but we are doing our best in an unequal world to make it happen. We are thinking about how to seed and support everyone in DJN (and beyond) to do this through the new formation of Care Circles and more.

Moving into the week of April 10, we again encourage individual and organizational members and DJN Local Nodes and Working Groups to figure out their own approach to taking pauses and share that back with the Network in our Slack channel, #intentionalpauses.

With an orientation toward creating more rest within design justice,

Denise Shanté, Sasha, Wes, Boaz, Nour, Elena, and Marta, and DJN Staff, Taylor and Victoria

Upcoming Design Justice Network Pauses:

We will announce the remaining pause dates for 2022 soon!