Lessons to Ponder

Posted on April 02, 2026

Every April, WLRC and CAN draws the campus’s attention to Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), a time when universities and organizations around the country give focus to the pervasive nature of gender-based violence. A hallmark of SAAM’s programming remains the centering of the voices and perspectives of survivors to guide how we do prevention work and shape how we talk about the problem and the solutions.

The New York Times recently reported on Dolores Huerta’s experiences of sexual violence during her time helping to lead the U.S. farmworkers’ movement and to create the United Farm Workers union. Her interview with Maria Hinojosa was heartbreaking, enraging and eye-opening, all at once. Women experiencing sexual violence even as they work for social justice in the context of social movements is not new to those who read history, or who read the silences in - and between the lines of - the stories that women activists tell about their experiences as they devote their lives to changing the world and undoing oppressive conditions that so many face. Scholars of new social movements have long shown that regardless of the focus of movements - whether they be nationalist, labor, environment, etc. - the fair and respectful treatment of women in that movement is often seen as secondary to and even a distraction from the larger goals of the movement. Dolores herself notes that the main reason that she waited until she was 96 years old to disclose the tremendous harm done to her was because to do so during the movement would have derailed the movement and undone all of what it has accomplished to that point. Derailed. Because the problem is [was] so deep, pervasive, and intractable that there was no choice but to stop everything and pay attention to the movement leaders’ abuses of power and the many harms and costs that women were silently bearing. There are many lessons to ponder. But what we know is that as long as patriarchal values, and all its permutations and lives, undergird how we live, love and organize, no space is really safe from gender-based violence, even the ones we create to address other kinds of structural violence. I hope that women will continue to speak their truth about the personal costs of trying to create societies that are more just. I also hope that current movement leaders and participants alike can learn from the dangers of supporting, promoting, and emboldening messianic leadership. What happened to Dolores was deeply wrong and that wrong reverberates through generations. When members of MeSA (Mexican Students de Aztlan) and FUA (Fearless Undocumented Alliance) reached out to WLRC to push for a conversation about how to respond to and heal from sexual harms like those endured by Dolores, I felt their pain. The young women who look to her as elder and inspiration are asking, if this can happen to her, what is possible for me? The answer to that question depends, in part, on how honestly we who are veterans and leaders answer the question of how power actually operates in social movements, and what we put our energies towards changing so that younger generations don’t have to fight the same battles that Dolores did.

WLRC is taking one small step in helping the current generation of activists at UIC deal with these issues.

On Friday, April 3, Deana Lewis (IRRPP and Love & Protect) will lead the workshop “We keep us safe: Abolitionist approaches to conflict in activist spaces”. The aim is to engage UIC students allied with the Centers for Cultural Understanding and Social Change (CCUSC) and provide them with the language, skills, tools and frameworks to make their organizing work safer for everyone to participate. This is ongoing work that we are happy to embark on and welcome the participation and support of other campus units who recognize that the university campus remains a formative space for future leaders and changemakers. Let’s do what we can to make sure they become leaders who are committed to growing a world without gender-based violence.

Mark your calendars for upcoming events at WLRC, 1700 Student Services Building, 1200 W. Harrison:

What do new faculty need in order to navigate an academic career at UIC successfully during these times? How can mentoring relationships and practices help to address these needs? Our biannual “faculty tea” on April 8 will feature a panel conversation among senior women of color faculty at UIC. Women and nonbinary faculty of color who are new to UIC (since 2024) are especially welcome to attend to network and to hear from others.

Until then, take care of yourselves and each other,
Natalie Bennett

Modified on April 10, 2026