As director of Governors State University’s Social Justice Initiative, Phyllis West is driven by a desire to make positive change.
“For me, this is not a job, it’s part of my life’s mission,” West said last week ahead of the Oct. 23 groundbreaking for the new campus site of the initiative.
“I was made to do this work.”
West, who has a 30-year background in social work and has worked as a consultant to corporations and nonprofits on diversity, equity, inclusion, organizational wellness and conflict resolution, was hired as director nearly two years ago, when the initiative first launched. It was the brainchild of Cheryl Green, president of Governors State University in University Park.
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The mission of the Social Justice Initiative is to transform vulnerable populations and racial and economic injustice in the Southland and beyond. Its tools are research, policy, advocacy, restorative justice, and experiential learning, said West who also previously worked for the university for nearly 14 years as a senior lecturer in the School of Social Work and who grew up in Chicago’s North Lawndale community. She holds master’s degrees in public health and social work and has a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.
The initiative is in response to community need.
“In the state of Illinois, there are 20 cities with populations of 10,000 people or more with the majority of people living below poverty,” she said. “Six of those cities are in the Southland surrounding Governors State,” including Harvey, Chicago Heights, Dolton, Sauk Village, Riverdale and Kankakee.
“We know that we are surrounded by cities that experience more poverty and less access to services. The demographics alone highlight the need,” she said, adding that 80% of Governors State University students who graduate live and work in the Southland.
Since the initiative was launched, among major accomplishments was the opening in June of a legal clinic on campus. The clinic, which has two attorneys and is seeking pro bono attorneys, provides free self-help legal information to underrepresented individuals, families and communities who can’t afford legal counsel.
The clinic’s focus areas of law are family, immigration, housing and expungement, said West, who did her doctoral dissertation on mothers in the criminal justice system and who was certified in 2022 as a restorative justice practitioner. The clinic has partnered with the South Suburban Housing Center to hold a workshop on housing rights that covered evictions and foreclosures. It also has received technical assistance from Cabrini Green Legal Aid and partnered with the organization to hold a workshop on expungements and record sealing. The Social Justice Initiative is working with community partners to present an expungement summit before the end of the year and is seeking pro bono volunteers to train.
“Since the clinic opened, we’ve had over 150 phone calls,” West said.
To assist formerly incarcerated Governors State University students, the initiative is expanding the university’s Generating Hope program to create a welcoming environment and address legal and societal barriers that can interfere in students completing their education. This year marks a 50-year trend of mass incarceration in the U.S., which continues to have more people in prison than any other country in the world, said West, who teaches a class at Stateville Correctional Center.
Illinois ranks among the top 10 states with the highest prison populations, and the Vera Institute estimates 600,000 people nationally will be released from prison per year, she noted. Many will return due to systemic barriers. But education is an effective intervention for reducing recidivism, West said.
The goal of Generating Hope is to provide students with mentors, tutors and other academic support, access to case management services including housing, transportation and health services and to provide staff training on systemic barriers, trauma triggers, and caring problem-solving approaches to address the needs of formerly incarcerated students, she said.
“When people have a criminal background, you want to know that you are in a place where you feel a sense of belonging, a sense of membership,” West said. “We want GSU to be an academic home for them. If you have the determination to improve your quality of life, to learn and to master a skill set, you now have people who can assist you. Support and mentorship can go a long way.”
The Social Justice Initiative has started a clothes closet that provides donated ready-to-wear court and interview attire and that will open on campus Oct. 27, she said. Generating Hope will also host a Social Justice Resource Fair that day on campus in collaboration with REFORM Alliance and LIVE FREE Illinois.
Another focus area of the Social Justice Initiative is student leadership development and engagement via experiential learning, West said. She also has expertise in developing service learning and civic engagement curricula to prepare students for leadership, has taught and led international service learning public health brigades to Nicaragua, Panama and Ghana, and was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa.
As part of student leadership development, the Social Justice Initiative sponsors an annual civil rights tour and conference in collaboration with Joan Harrell, founder of the Becoming the Beloved Community at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, West said. It is a four-day experiential learning program where students travel to Alabama and engage in an intensive examination of American history and the civil rights movement and participate in group dialogue and reflections and are guided by restorative justice practices, she said.
Students have visited the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, the Bryan Stevenson Legacy Museum and National Lynching Memorial, the Clotilda, which is the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, and other historic sites. She added students created a documentary about their experience that was presented on campus at local film festivals and to the board of trustees. More than two dozen students have participated in two cohorts and another cohort is planned.
“When I assumed the presidency at Governors State in 2020, I had a vision of creating a Social Justice Center to remove barriers to education by resolving food and housing insecurities, educating voters, creating a legal clinic, and addressing root causes of mass incarceration and community violence,” said Green in a statement.
“I’m proud of the work we’re doing in social justice and look forward to making a deeper impact.”
West also looks forward to continuing doing just that.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime to serve the Southland,” she said.
“I was born to be an advocate, an activist, a social worker. I care deeply about community, and I am particularly passionate about the Southland. I know what we have the capacity to do. I believe we are the answer, and we just have to come together and make things happen.”
Francine Knowles is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
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