Ableism can be defined simply as discrimination against disabled people, but it is much more than that. According to a working definition developed by @TalilaLewis, ableism is  “a system of assigning value to people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. This systemic oppression that leads to people and society determining people's value based on their culture, age, language, appearance, religion, birth or living place, ‘health/wellness’, and/or their ability to satisfactorily re/produce, ‘excel’ and ‘behave.’ You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism.” 

Abolitionists politically advocate and organize for the abolition, or end, of carceral institutions, specifically the punitive, white supremacist, and classist state institution of the modern prison.

Apartheid describes an authoritarian government institution that enshrines racial segregation into law through a variety of measures, such as housing restrictions, requirements for extensive requirements extensive identification documents or passes for travel, and police surveillance. Though the term initially originates in the South African context, it has been applied to other similar forms of racial oppression, such as Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

Autonomy is the capacity to live according to your own choices and motivations rather than being controlled by other people or external forces. An autonomous person feels in control of themself and empowered to live their life the way they want to live it.

Bargaining and Negotiations describe the process by which unions argue with employers on behalf of their members in the attempt to win contracts that benefit employees. This longstanding process, in which unions represent their members as a collective, has been and is instrumental in winning employees pay raises, protections, and benefits.

Benefits are compensation for employees beyond pay, including but not limited to, insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and training. They help reduce costs that employees would have to shoulder otherwise. like longevity raises, they are often won through union/labor organizing.

Birddogging is a direct action tactic used to get targeted candidates, elected officials, administrators, police, etc.] on the record about the demands of an organization. Birddogging involves showing up at public appearances of the intended target with a group of people in order to corner the targeted individual and repeatedly ask questions. Last fall, UCUP birddogged Paul Alivisatos, cornering him after a meeting with faculty and asking him why he refused to agree to a public meeting.

Blockades are a type of protest in which we use our bodies to disrupt or protect an area or building. To learn more about blockades as a tactic, check out Blockades: a short guide to getting in the way. 

A Capitalist institution is one that is built and sustained on private ownership, the economic exploitation of workers and their labor, and the accumulation of wealth and assets against the promotion of human life and safety. Capitalism, as a social structure, contributes to social and economic inequality on individual, racial, gendered, class, national, and global scales. Racial capitalism is a concept that emphasizes how racism at a global scale interacts with capitalist exploitation to shape our society. Capitalism as we know it couldn’t exist without racism—think slavery, colonialism, and the prison-industrial complex (aka industries that profit from prison labor and mass incarceration). You’ll learn more about how systems of racism and capitalism intersect as you organize with us, but if you’d like to get started now, here are some resources:  

• What is Racial Capitalism?

• What Does it Mean to Dismantle Racial Capitalism Anyway?

•  Cedric Robinson - Black Marxism

The carceral system is the system that encompasses jails, prisons, systems of probation and parole, and logics of control and surveillance designed to revolve around the promise and threat of criminalization, with incarceration as its solution. Carceral care is an arm of the carceral state, involving the criminalization of mental and physical health as well as the removal of mentally ill and mad folks’ autonomy through forced hospitalization,. This  results in folks dealing with mental illnesses being incarcerated instead of provided genuine healthcare and support. In the United States, the prison system is the largest provider of mental health services in the nation, a direct implication of the US’s criminalization of mental illness. 

A caste system is a social and economic hierarchy in which people are divided into groups that are fixed at birth and based on heredity,  often justifying the oppression of groups that are lower in this hierarchy. In South Asia (and the South Asian diaspora), the caste system is rooted in Hinduism and is the basis for much of Hindu society but has been adopted by other religious communities as well. Casteism, discrimination against caste-oppressed people – those who are deemed inferior by the caste system – is ideologically and physically pervasive, including a swath of practices like barring caste-oppressed people from sharing the same food resources as upper caste people, forcing caste-oppressed people to do harsh and unsafe manual labor, and direct violence against caste-oppressed people.

Community care is supporting the well-being of one another. By leveraging our own strengths, privilege, and time, we can strengthen our communities. Community care looks like checking in on each other, participating in mutual aid, and coming together to organize against policies or institutions that harm people in your community. 

Contracts are agreements, won by unions on behalf of the workers they represent. They stipulate conditions and benefits for union members and legally require both employer and employees to adhere to a set of terms. The ability to fight for and win contracts serves as a critical legal infrastructure in the protection of workers rights.

Defunding the police is a systematic reallocation or redirection of funds away from police departments to public health agencies, social services, or mental health services.

Deregulation describes the removal or lessening of government oversight, regulation, or restrictions that had previously been imposed on corporations, sometimes within a specific industry or sector. This change often leads to a higher rates of incidents in which corporations mistreating workers or engaging in otherwise unethical business practices. Along with privatization, it is a hallmark of the economic shift towards neoliberalism

The term diaspora refers to the dispersal of often colonized or otherwise exiled people to lands outside of their ancestral homeland. A diasporic people is an ethnic or national group that lives outside of their ancestral homeland. Oftentimes, diasporic peoples are minorities in their new nations of residence, and maintain strong connections to their homeland. The African diaspora as a result of the transatlantic slave trade is an example of diaspora. 

Direct action is a way of making political change that uses what we have (our time, bodies, resources, etc.) to directly combat systems that harm us. There are many different forms of direct action. Some common examples include: sit-ins, boycotts, strikes, and sabotage.

Disability Justice is a framework for disability liberation. The 10 principles of disability justice are: intersectionality, leadership from the most impacted, anti-capitalist politics, commitment to cross-movement organizing, recognizing wholeness, sustainability, commitment to cross-disability solidarity, interdependence, collective access and collective liberation. You can learn more about Disability Justice and each of its principles with the following article: Moving From Disability Rights to Disability Justice. 

People and institutions who have money – such as the government and corporations – perpetuate disinvestment when they do not sufficiently invest in (and, in many cases, extract from) marginalized communities. For example, many primarily Black neighborhoods on the South and West sides of Chicago are considered disinvested communities because institutions like the city of Chicago have refused to put money into their infrastructure and social needs, instead closing clinics and schools, neglecting public infrastructure, and in many cases over-policing them. The framework of disinvestment allows us to recognize that all communities deserve to have their needs met, and communities lack necessary infrastructure because of an intentional effort to marginalize and suppress people of color, not because of some inherent issue with the people in these communities.

Campaigns  for Divestment call for institutions, in our case the university, to get rid of stocks, bonds, and investment funds they are holding that are unethical or immoral. Divestment campaigns are organized around many issues, including advocacy for removal of investment in Israeli companies or others involved with political and ethnic oppression and companies involved with the production of fossil fuels or other environmentally destructive materials

Elitism is the viewpoint that individuals that make up an elite deserve greater influence or authority because they are more likely to be constructive to society. Elitism does not take into account systemic inequities; instead it argues that those who currently have power deserve their power and influence due to their desirable qualities. 

Similar to nationalism, ethnonationalism is an intense identification with one’s state and state interests, where the state identity is defined in terms of a specific ethnic identity. Modern examples of ethnonational states include Israel and Malaysia, where political and economic opportunities are granted primarily to citizens of a certain ethnicity. Ethnonationalism is also seen as a driver of anit-immigration ideologies amongst some white Americanes, as these ideologies often correlate with a fear that immigrants threaten the “true” (white) American identity (ANES). 

Fascism is a certain political manifestation of extreme nationalism in which the rights and interests of the individual become completely subordinate to those of the state; it is characterized by authoritarian rule, extreme militarism, and political and social oppression. Fascist governments often take the criminalization of “others” to violent extremes, leading to genocides and widespread repression of political dissent.  

The concept of the Free Market refers to the belief that economic systems without government intervention will manage themselves, reaching a natural equilibrium. This ideology and advocacy for it are closely associated with support for capitalist economic systems.

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts or perception of reality through intentionally feeding victims false information. 

Grassroots organizations are run by and for everyday people who come together to make change in their communities. This change happens from the ground up through the people most impacted rather than top-down through outside institutions or groups. Grassroots organizing centers community participation to build people power!

Imperialism is a political and ideological structure built on the domination and exploitation of one country or region over another. Western nations (The US, Canada, Israel, Western Europe) have carried it out and continue to do so through the colonialist practices of conquest, racial violence, destruction of culture, and the exploitation of natural and human resources. Anti-Imperialism is constituted by political positions, actions, communities,  practices, events, and lifeways that run counter to the imperialist structures and institutions. Critically, anti-imperialism includes anticolonial revolutionary struggles towards the liberation, or freeing, of colonized countries.

Individualism is an ideology that values independence and personal advancement over solidarity and collective liberation. Individualism conceals the role that society has in shaping the lives of the individuals who live in it. For instance, an individualist attitude may lead you to believe that a rich person is rich because they worked hard and earned their wealth and that a poor person is poor because they didn’t work hard enough or didn’t make the right choices—this way of thinking misses the large role that factors such as race, economic class, gender, ability, and geography play in shaping the lives of rich and poor alike. Individualism is intrinsic to capitalism and white supremacy.

First coined by civil rights advocate, legal scholar, and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, to describe the discrimination that Black women experience, Intersectionality names a framework for understanding intersecting identities. According to Crenshaw, “Intersectionality is a metaphor for understanding the ways that multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves and create obstacles that often are not understood among conventional ways of thinking" ("Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics"). Organizers use the term to stress the importance of considering the way that systems of oppression often operate in tandem, so that we can understand their impacts and combat them effectively.

Islamophobia is discrimination and/or prejudice against Muslims, including interpersonally (e.g. harassment against women who wear hijab), culturally (e.g. demonizing portrayals of Muslims in media or dehumanizing language around Muslims in the news), and institutionally (e.g. increased surveillance by the Department of Homeland Security on Muslim Americans and profiling of Muslims in the carceral system).

In its most basic sense, Liberation means freedom. Historically, it has been associated with the freeing of the enslaved from bondage or captivity, the freeing of colonized countries from colonial powers, and struggles of minority or otherwise oppressed people outside of and beyond advocacy for political or social equality. Queer liberation means freedom from systems that harm the queer community (policing, anti-trans laws, criminalization of homelessness, etc.) as well as freedom to be our authentic selves. Queer liberation is not surface-level representation and inclusion. Instead, it demands and creates deep societal change. Queer liberation cannot be found in a corporate Pride parade but instead is built in and through community and political action. 

Longevity Raises are increases in salary not subject to review or approval by superiors, and they are awarded based solely on length of service. In a world where workers must bear the burden of rising costs, these kinds of raises prove crucial and save lives. Like benefits, in many cases they are won through union/labor organizing.

The Military-Industrial Complex refers to policy and monetary relationships between a nation's government, the military, and war profiteers, what some call the defense sector, including laboratories, universities, and weapon, aerospace, and technology companies. In the US, the military industrial complex manifests through defense sector lobbying, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby candidates and legislatures to maintain political power. 

A militarized police force is a police force that has been heavily armed, much like the Chicago Police Department with often surplus US military equipment. Militarized policing is most evident through SWAT teams, tactical units that often carry sniper rifles, machine guns, and shotguns, in the US most commonly deployed for drug searches. The militarization of the police stems from federal practices of making military equipment available to law enforcement agencies, resulting in a police force that defaults to officers viewing non-officers as always potential threats, leading to police violence and brutality especially in Black and Brown communities. 

Nationalism is an intense identification with one’s state and state interests, often in a way that inherently separates people into two categories: those included within a national identity and “others.” This separation has often been the ideological backbone of oppressive violence enacted by states against “others.” 

Neoliberalism is an economic ideology that typically advocates for a market with little or no interference by a state, or government, as well as minimal government services. Historically, it is most often associated with Margaret Thatcher’s time as prime minister of Enlgand and Ronald Reagan’s tenure as President in the United States as well as economic theory and policy developed at the University of Chicago. It fundamentally continues and reproduces inequalities and oppression along racial, class, gender, ability, and national lines.

The occupation of buildings as a direct action tactic has its roots in the sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Liberation struggles. Building occupations involve protestors taking over a building and refusing to leave until certain demands are met. Occupations are strategic, and the occupied building is often either significant to the movement or disruptive to the entity the movement is fighting against. In 1968, for instance, when Black Northwestern students occupied the Bursar’s office to fight for better conditions for Black students, they did so because it housed important financial documents, IBM machines, and cash holdings, all things necessary for Northwestern’s functioning. Occupations are a protest tactic meant to disrupt business as usual and force the entity organizers are fighting against to heed to certain demands. 

Under international law, an occupied territory is a territory that is under the authority of a hostile army, removing the possibility for sovereignty and self-determination from its inhabitants. Today, Israel illegally occupies the Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. According to international law, those living within an illegally occupied territory have the continuous right to self-defense. 

Overpolicing occurs when there is a disproportionately high amount of police presence and activity in a certain area. BIPOC and poor neighborhoods are frequently the targets of overpolicing. With more police, more searches and arrests are made, and even more police are sent into the community, justified by the apparent rise in crime (which isn’t a rise in the actual number of crimes committed but a rise in crimes detected and punished). This vicious cycle subjects poor and minority neighborhoods to police violence and diverts resources from what our communities need to truly promote public safety—namely, healthcare, education, housing, and the like. 

Patriarchy is a system of social structures, values, and practices that uphold systemic privilege for men. As a system, the social structures of patriarchy allow for men to dominate, oppress, and exploit women. 

Police surveillance is the act of observing or monitoring environments, groups, or individuals in order to gather information used to criminalize the surveilled group. Police surveillance is racialized, objectifying, categorizing, and oppressing Black and Brown folks. UCPD surveilles not only the UChicago campus, but its entire jurisdiction, extending from 37th street to 64th street, and from Lakeshore Drive to Cottage Grove Avenue. Police surveillance can look like policing practices like stop and frisk, technological practices like ShotSpotter and surveillance cameras, or even through undercover cops, as UCPD is known to use. 

Privatization describes the process by which services, programs, or resources formerly provided or offered by the government, which is public, are turned over to privately owned corporations. This often leads to a reduction in access or a worsening in services, which is harmful, especially for those who are low income or otherwise marginalized and rely on these services for survival. Along with deregulation, it is a hallmark of an economic shift towards neoliberalism.

Profiling is a policing practice used during investigations to allow law enforcement to identify a likely suspect. Profiling based on race, religion, sex, socioeconomic status, or nationality is based on the preconceived notions and biases of cops and leads to disproportionate numbers of illegal stops and searches, police violence, and harassment. 

Racially restrictive covenants are clauses in home deeds that prohibit the property from being sold to nonwhite buyers. Discriminatory covenants became widespread in the 1920s and were supported by the federal government, the real estate industry, and white homeowners. These covenants worked together with other racist practices such as redlining (if you’re not familiar, check out this quick explanation of redlining in Chicago) to segregate neighborhoods and inhibit families of color from building wealth. While discriminatory covenants were outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act and can no longer be legally enforced, their language exists today in home deeds throughout the country. The impact of racist housing practices is evident today in Hyde Park and beyond in the form of segregated neighborhoods and racial wealth inequality. 

Radical values emphasize the interconnectedness of various forms of oppression. Queer and trans communities that hold radical values understand that anti-queerness is deeply linked with racism, sexism, imperialism, and the like. While mainstream LGBT+ ideologies encourage assimilation into society, radical queer values empower us to realize that anti-queerness can only be overcome by dismantling all the systems that harm us and building a radically different society that is free from all forms of oppression.  

Reparations is a process of restoring and healing a group of people harmed by an institution and/or nation.  According to the Movement for Black Lives, reparations involves five factors: (1) cessation of the harmful act(s) and a guarantee of non-repetition, (2) reversing changes caused by the harmful act(s), (3) compensation, (4) satisfaction, including acknowledgement of harm and apology, and (5) rehabilitation. UChicago Against Displacement (@ucad.cba) organizes for UChicago to provide reparations to South Side communities for the harm it has perpetuated (and continues to perpetuate) through its ties to slavery and anti-Black gentrification.

Restorative justice is “a response to wrongdoing that prioritizes repairing harm and recognizes that maintaining positive relationships with others is a core human need. It seeks to address the root causes of crime, even to the point of transforming unjust systems and structures,” according to the Restorative Justice Exchange. Learn more about restorative justice and how it differs from conventional approaches to crime at About Restorative Justice.

Scholasticide is the intentional and systematic mass destruction of educational institutions in a particular place. Scholasticide is deeply linked with genocide and colonization. It may include the targeted killing of academics and students as well as physical destruction of educational facilities such as schools, universities, and libraries. In the time since October 7th, Israel has committed a scholasticide in Gaza.

Most simply, Self-Care describes the action or practice or protecting, preserving, or improving one’s own health and well being (whether physical, emotional, mental, environmental, social, spiritual, or financial) by making use of available resources, including those in one’s community.

Settler-colonialism is an ongoing system of power that perpetuates the genocide and repression of indigenous peoples and cultures. It is a form of colonization where indigenous peoples of a colonized region, i.e. the United States, are displaced by settlers who form a permanent society there. The United States, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are all settler colonial states. 

Solidarity is supporting ourselves and each other by being in reciprocal community with one another. Reciprocity means that everybody benefits and everybody contributes. Groups that value solidarity recognize that everybody brings something to the table, especially those that are most impacted by the harms we are fighting against. We experience solidarity when we recognize that our struggles are deeply connected and that therefore, we hold a shared interest in liberating ourselves and our communities. 

State violence is harm produced by the government as well as law enforcement, the educational system, and other institutions with ties to the state. These harms can range from police brutality to mass incarceration to genocide. State violence includes surveillance and repressive policies as well as physical violence.

Supply Chain Quotas: The term Supply Chain refers to the fact that we live in a globally integrated system producing and consuming goods. As a result, employees are often expected to work not according to their ability or capacity but according to Quotas, or expectations for production, that are often set by bosses and higher ups that have little to no knowledge or experience of what happens on the ground during day-to-day operations.

Specifically, the term Survivor refers to someone who has survived sexual violence or some other trauma. While the technical term victim refers to someone who has been subjected to a crime and provides certain legal rights and protections, some individuals and organizations use the term survivor to indicate empowerment, agency, and a process of healing.

Urban renewal projects reshaped cities in the ‘50s and ‘60s to replace so-called “blighted” areas with new developments such as shopping malls, office buildings, hospitals and universities, and highways. The neighborhoods that urban renewal demolished were frequently Black and brown neighborhoods that had been the targets of redlining in prior decades (if you’re not familiar, here is a quick explanation of redlining in Chicago). While some housing was built through urban renewal, overall these projects led to a net loss in housing that in turn caused the displacement of over 20,000 people in Chicago, most of which were people of color. For more information on UChicago’s role in urban renewal, check out these short articles:

Chicago's Urban Renewal Displaced an Astonishing Number of People in the 20th Century 

The University of Chicago, Urban Renewal, and the Black Community

White supremacy is a political, economic, and cultural system in which white people control power and material resources. White supremacy as a system leads to both conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority, perpetuating whiteness as normal and natural and non-whiteness as negative and unnatural. 

Xenophobia is hatred of people perceived to be “outsiders”—this may include immigrants, refugees, and people whose ethnic identities are associated with foreignness. Examples of xenophobia include: asking someone “where are you really from?”, blaming immigrants for societal problems like crime or job insecurity, anti-immigration policies, and violence against immigrants or people perceived to be immigrants.

Zionism is a political ideology and settler colonial movement that seeks to establish a Jewish state (aka Israel) in Palestine by violently displacing Palestinians. You can learn more information about Zionism at the following articles: What Zionism has meant for Palestinians and Our Approach to Zionism - JVP.