Jennifer Witt

Please, call me Jen (she/they)! I teach and organize at the intersections of gender, racial, disability, youth, and class justice with a focus on deconstructing structures of violence in teaching and practice via transformative justice, critical pedagogy, intersectional organizing, and by-and-for models of justice organizing.  My work centers on social justice, resistance, abolition, dismantling of structural violence, social and youth movements, anti-violence organizing at intersections of gender, racial, and disability justice, transformative justice, bodily autonomy, and ending gender based violence. 

This teaching is not simply about “what” is taught, it is about the “how” of teaching and justice work. I co-create and teach with learning communities in popular education and critical pedagogy because we cannot learn about violence, systems of oppression, power, liberation, movement building and justice without working to decolonize the actions of teaching and learning. I believe that embodying multiple ways of knowing into a transformative process in a learning community provides opportunities to grow together in consent-based frameworks, dismantling colonized, white supremacist, classist, heteronormative, gendered, ablest, and ageist norms through the critical centering of the voices and knowledge of those most impacted as the holders of the knowledge on this harm and the solutions to end violence/marginalization and move towards our collective liberation.  

I’ve worked for over 25 years providing education, program development, systems change advocacy, and movement and coalition building at the local, regional, and national level to end gender-based and bias related violence.  The most meaningful part of my work is the deep conversations with communities of learners and each individual regarding the work that makes their soul burn.  Please stop by my office anytime for coffee/tea and conversation.

When I am not teaching, I’m generally spending time organizing or relaxing with my family. Things I love are chosen family, time outdoors, resistance and fierce love, sex and body positivity, communities of care, anti-sexual violence activism that centers those most impacted, pets in later life, learning, and reading.