Loving Your \u201cEnemies\u201d: Learning allyship and solidarity during moments of adversity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with our partners at the college’s Student Center for Belonging and Community, we held an MLK Day workshop on the urgency of allyship and solidarity, especially in support of transgender people and immigrants, who have experienced unprecedented attacks at a state and federal level. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s \u201cLoving Your Enemies\u201d sermon, the workshop invited participants to reflect on allyship as a community responsibility, navigating our complex lived experiences, identities, and narratives during hard times. Participants explored the inner work of allyship, which requires conscious consideration of one\u2019s power and positionality, as well as the recognition that allyship is a spectrum. Facilitators acknowledged that allyship can be uncomfortable, imperfect, and sometimes misses the mark. Allyship is manifested in many ways, but we\u2019re not typically afforded the time or space to process what it means to show up in the moment. Participants engaged in small group discussions about their own hopes and fears in allyship, and what intentions they hope to set for themselves in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Creating Refuge: Zine Making for Creative Community Building<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the past year, Harward Center programs have explored what \u201cCreating Refuge\u201d<\/a> looks like for the intersectional spaces that community and civically engaged work occupies. Given that the concept of community evolves over time, how should community engagement centers and practitioners adapt our work in response to complicated times? Questions like this lend themselves to creative exploration, which in this workshop took the shape of zine making. Throughout history<\/a>, zines have been popular avenues for sharing perspectives, art, or information that can be easily reprinted and distributed. At Bates, zine-making is an activity used by the nonpartisan student voting initiative Bates Votes to engage a variety of student organizations by offering a creative drop-in space for students to make their own voting zines based on the issues they care about. In this MLK Day workshop, participants explored zine-making as a dimension of creative practice and activism, enjoying an intergenerational space for art-making and political expression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking for Light in Political Darkness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This MLK Day session grappled with a new political era in which the role and function of the U.S. government has been rapidly changing, its impacts rippling across public and private institutions and touching nearly all facets of civic life. How can voters process the dramatic policy changes at the national and local level, and what can we expect in 2026? This workshop explored this question in conversation with leaders involved in the areas of gender equity, labor rights, and racial justice. Three esteemed panelists \u2013 Destie Hohman Sprague, executive director of Maine Women\u2019s Lobby and Maine Women\u2019s Policy Center; Jan Kosinski, government relations director of the Maine Education Association; and Shay Stewart-Bouley, creator of Black Girl in Maine Media \u2013 shared keen insights into today’s public policy landscape and potential strategies for change. Among their words of wisdom to those who wonder how to respond to a world that often feels overwhelming in its complexity and dysfunction was to make the picture we\u2019re looking at smaller by making a regular commitment, whether that\u2019s helping an organization with spreadsheets or data analytics, knocking on doors for a cause or candidate, or attending a rally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/files\/2026\/02\/image-1-900x671.webp\")
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