I’ve got the power!: a feminist take on slow justice and power in Dallas, Texas

This Masters thesis is set to converse with Neville and Martin’s (2022) conceptualization of slow justice: “The spatially and temporally dispersed forms of repair, restoration, and resilience that may accumulate slowly and in casual complex ways.” Using the theoretical framework of slow justice, my research is designed and written to answer the following questions: 1. How do feminist approaches to political nonprofit organizing conjure and harness political power? 2. What does a deep dive into a slow justice approach to political organizing look like? and 3. How can embodied activism include the intrinsic shift of refusal to the status quo? I examine Dallas Area Interfaith (DAI) and analyze my own experience of organizing as a case study to better understand the intersection of feminist theories of care, critical reflexivity, and relationality in conjunction with slow justice and power. My fieldwork as a participant observer with DAI demonstrated how focusing on the banal acts of life and rethinking what it means to be political, who has power, and what power is, ordinary (non)citizens can act according to the needs they suffer from. This unconventional ontology to Western thought prompts those who organize for public action to sit with ambiguity and discomfort, focus on the development of the person, and to strategize for more long-term, yet slower, goals. Ultimately, this thesis aims to contribute to a broader discussion on how the scale of the banal is one praxis for more radical and transformational liberation.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geography

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Sanchez, Ileana Melina

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wilson, David
• Butcher, Sian

• Feminist Geographies
• Political Organizing
• Slow Justice
• Banal Activism

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Ileana Sanchez

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129961

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F129961