Rooted in Love: Resist the Patriarchy

Join us for the second Zoom presentation of the Rooted In Love Speaker series, happening every Saturday in September. The forum on Sept. 12th will be led by Professor Loretta Ross and Terri Bailey.

Bios of Speakers:

-Loretta J. Ross is a Visiting Associate Professor at Smith College in Northampton, MA in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. She teaches courses on white supremacy, human rights, and calling in the calling out culture. Since beginning her academic career in 2017, she has taught at Hampshire College, Arizona State University, and Smith College as a visiting professor of clinical practice teaching courses on White Supremacy in the Age of Trump, Race and Culture in America, and Reproductive Justice.

She has co-written three books on reproductive justice: Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice in 2004; Reproductive Justice: An Introduction in March 2017; and Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique in October 2017. Her current book, Calling In the Calling Out Culture is forthcoming in 2021.

She has appeared on CNN, BET, "Lead Story," "Good Morning America," "The Donahue Show," the National Geographic Channel, and "The Charlie Rose Show.” She has appeared in the New York Times, Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Oprah Winfrey Radio, among others. She is a member of the Women's Media Center's Progressive Women's Voices. More information is available on the Makers: Women Who Make America video at http://www.makers.com/loretta-ross.

Her activism began at 16 when she was tear-gassed at a demonstration as a first-year student at Howard University in 1970. As a teenager, she was involved in anti-apartheid and anti-gentrification activism in Washington, DC as a founding member of the DC Study Group. As part of a 50-year history in social justice activism, until her retirement from community organizing in 2012, she was the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005-2012, and co-created the theory of Reproductive Justice in 1994.

Ross was National Co-Director of the April 25, 2004 March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history at that time with 1.15 million participants. She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia from 1996-2004. Before that, she was the Program Research Director at the Center for Democratic Renewal/National Anti-Klan Network where she led projects researching hate groups, and working against all forms of bigotry with universities, schools, and community groups. She investigated the links between the white supremacist and anti-abortion movements, adding a gender lens to anti-fascist work. She launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s, and was national program director of the National Black Women’s Health Project. She was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s, launching her career by pioneering work on violence against women, as the third Executive Director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center. Before that position, she worked as an assistant at the National Football League Players' Association.

She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree awarded in 2003 from Arcadia University and a second honorary doctorate degree awarded from Smith College in 2013. She also has credits towards a PhD in Women’s Studies from Emory University.

Loretta is a rape survivor, was forced to raise a child born of incest, and she is also a survivor of sterilization abuse at age 23. She is a model of how to survive and thrive despite the traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color. She also serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection which also contains her personal archives (see https://www.smith.edu/library/libs/ssc/pwv/pwv-ross.html).

She is a mother, grandmother and a great-grandmother. The one thing left on her bucket list is to see Venus and Serena Williams play tennis live. She is an avid pinochle player, competing in tournaments across the country, because this is how she balances her activist life with apolitical hobbies.

-Terri L. Bailey is a graduate of Atlanta Job Corps Center, Bethune Cookman University (BS Elementary Education - Magna Cum Laude, ESOL Certification), and Southern New Hampshire University (MA in English and Creative Writing with the distinction of Outstanding Graduate Student).

She is a Yaya (priest in African Traditional Religion), as well as a speculative fiction and black horror writer, poet, and spoken word artist. Bailey is also a certified Life Coach and EFT/TFT Practitioner.

When Terri found that maintaining a job as an educator was almost impossible because of care challenges for her severely disabled daughter, she created the Bailey Learning and Arts Collective (BLAAC -pronounced black), a nonprofit organization that focusses on building socially responsible communities and leaders through grassroots organizing, community education, and the arts. BLAAC is an incubating company at the Santa Fe Center for Innovation and Economic Development. The company’s first official program is The Queens Room Women’s Empowerment Group. This program offered her the opportunity to return to her roots as a frontline worker in the Black woman and feminist health movement. The Queens Room was developed through the University of Florida Entrepreneur Diversity In Tech Program (EDIT) and fine-tuned via The Women’s Collaboratory at the UF Innovation Hub (both are certificate programs). The Queens Room offers empowerment tools such as self-care plan development, EFT/TFT (tapping) services, and writing to heal workshops.

Ms. Bailey hopes to inspire women by sharing the stories of how she survived and flourished despite being a high school drop-out and experiencing poverty, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. Before obtaining a 501c3 status, Bailey used innovative funding methods to conduct low and no cost community education workshops, offer art exhibitions, workshops, and competitions and host events that presented paid opportunities for poets and visual artists to perform and exhibit.

Terri currently is working on a Masters in Women’s Studies at the University of Florida. She lives in her beloved Pleasant Street District (Gainesville, Florida’s oldest Black settlement) with her husband, artist Turbado Marabou and daughter Aaliyah.