The Intimacy of Occupation: Care and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the University

In March 2019, a group of Black and POC students at Goldsmiths College, University of London, occupied a key administrative and historically symbolic building on campus to protest institutional racism. Calling themselves Goldsmiths Anti-racism Action (GARA), the occupiers wrote a 12-point manifesto that detailed what the institution had to do to change its exclusionary white institutional culture, labor practices, curriculum, and pedagogy. This photo essay, collaboratively produced by two students and two faculty members involved with GARA, documents care and intimacy as the praxis of the antiracist occupation. Through the images we share, we point to the intimacy of occupation and to the politicality of intimacy as care, particularly in struggles for racial justice.