ESOC is committed to building infrastructure for intercampus student organizing and providing learning experiences that foster critical consciousness. Our work is aimed at nurturing holistic wellness through political education, care ethics, and spirituality towards collective liberation.

Check out our team here!

Hi ESOC Community,

We’re back with our Spring edition of Between the Lines, and we have so much to share.

Spring represents renewal, possibility, and transformation—but also requires release. A shedding. A reckoning with what no longer serves us so that something more aligned can emerge.

At ESOC, we are ushering in that spirit of renewal through everyday resistance.

We are reimagining everything.

• Reimagining safety beyond policing and institutions

• Reimagining spirituality as resistance and fortification

• Reimagining leadership through Black feminist praxis

• Reimagining care as strategy, not an afterthought

• Reimagining campuses and communities as sites of transformation, not containment

As spring begins, we invite you to reflect:

What must we shed to create?
How can we engage in everyday resistance practices that root not only ourselves—but the collective?

With gratitude and vision,
The ESOC Team

This April, we are officially launching our ESOC Alumni Cohort.

This cohort is made up of previous leadership cohort members who have already created meaningful change through their Praxis Projects—and are now stepping into a new phase of expansion.

Participants will develop projects that:

• Initiate Change — Introduce new ideas or challenge existing norms

• Address Harm & Conflict — Promote healing, well-being, and transformation

• Confront the Institution — Critically examine systems of power

• Act as Intervention — Disrupt harmful structures and amplify marginalized voices

• Center Intimate Community as Praxis — Build or deepen initiatives within immediate communities as sites of healing and transformation

Alumni will receive:

• Coaching sessions

• Wellness and healing justice tools

• Project stipends

• Strategic mentorship and accountability support

• Opportunities to contribute to our upcoming ESOC Zine

We are investing in long-term leadership — not one-time programming.

This May, we launch our Reimagining Spirituality Series—a sacred and political learning journey.

We are inviting: healers, organizers, spiritual practitioners, artists, and cultural workers to collaborate, teach, and share their work.

This series centers ancestral technologies as tools for:
resistance, resilience, and collective transformation.

Featured Sessions Include:

• May — Trying to Mother During Revolution
  Exploring mothering, care, and survival amid political upheaval and systemic violence.

• June — Queer & Trans Wellness Through African Spiritual Cosmologies
  Participants explore gender expansiveness, queer ancestors, and healing beyond colonial binaries.

• July — Black Birth Workers, Ancestors & the Politics of Life
  Honoring Black maternal health, birth work, and ancestral protection as resistance.

• September — Solidarity Economies & Ancestral Cooperative Models
  Exploring pre-capitalist African and diasporic systems of shared governance and care.
  

• October — Caribbean Spiritual Traditions & Ritual Resistance (Jamaica Focus)
  Tracing Myal, Revival, and Afro-Caribbean healing traditions as tools of rebellion.
  

Selected contributors will receive stipends in recognition of their offerings. Use this form to submit your proposal for contributing.

This April, we launched our National Poetry Month edition of the North Star Series, honoring Lucille Clifton.

Mrs. Clifton reminds us:

• Care is political

• Our differences are creative power

• Speaking from the margins is a form of resistance

Her work affirms what we know deeply at ESOC:

Poetry, memory, and storytelling are not separate from organizing—
they are central to it.

Our North Stars guide us not toward nostalgia—but toward responsibility.

We also encourage you to explore the powerful work of The Clifton House if you’re ever in Baltimore, to support their programming, attend events, and help sustain Black archival memory work.

We also encourage you to explore the powerful work of The Clifton House if you’re ever in Baltimore, to support their programming, attend events, and help sustain Black archival memory work.

Reimagining everything is not just a theme.
It is a practice. A discipline. A commitment.

It asks us to build differently.
To care differently.
To lead differently.

And most importantly—
to do it together.

If you believe in this work, we invite you to:

• Partner with us

• Share this newsletter

• Contribute resources

• Join our upcoming programs

• Follow our socials IG: envisionsafetydc_md Youtube: www.youtube.com/@EnvisioningSafety 

  We are building the conditions for our survival—and our liberation.

Reimagining everything means refusing fragmentation. It means understanding that spirituality, political education, creative expression, and leadership development are not separate lanes — they are the ecosystem required for Black futures to thrive. Through our Reimagining Spirituality Series, our North Star tributes, and our expanding Alumni Network, ESOC is building living infrastructure for liberation — spaces where we study deeply, heal collectively, strategize boldly, and sustain one another beyond the moment.

If you believe in a future where campuses and communities are safer, spiritually fortified, and politically awake — we invite you to partner with us, reach out at esocnow@gmail.com or leadership@esoc.org to connect. If you believe in our work, we ask that you donate through our fiscal sponsor CTWO here and communicate that you’re donating in honor of ESOC’s work in the contribution information. Your support allows us to provide stipends to organizers, compensate healers and cultural workers, expand programming, and strengthen the care systems that sustain this work long-term.

Give. Partner. Reimagine with us. 

Where care meets political education.