E.M./Elana Eisen-Markowitz is a xennial educator organizer currently in flux. Until Sept 2020, E.M. worked in NYC public schools - as a social studies teacher, a union chapter leader, a gender & sexuality alliance facilitator, and a “restorative justice coordinator.” For over a decade, she organized with Teachers Unite to help grow the power of workers, students, and parents at school sites to stand against oppression and collaboratively build the communities we imagine for ourselves. And, E.M. is a member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
Rachel Schragis is an artist and cultural organizer, born and raised and living still in NYC. She is the co-founder of Look Loud, where her visual strategy work supports community groups using direct action to take control of their own media narratives. A nerd for visual mapping practices, Rachel’s most recently completed poster is Unravelling Antisemitism—a collaboration with Jews for Racial and Economic Justic). She has also worked on the arts and cultural organizing teams for many climate justice organizing projects, including Sunrise Movement, the People’s Climate March, GreenFaith and Build Back Fossil Free.
We first met in 2009(ish) when Elana/E.M. participated in a “Justice & Jewish Thought” study group that was being hosted at Rachel’s house, but we really got to know each other through the New York Collective of Radical Educators when Rachel was working as a teaching artist and E.M. was a high school history teacher.
In 2015, E.M. visited Rachel’s studio, saw the venn diagrams Rachel was drawing, then started making her own as a form of journaling and processing the world. Elana came up with the name "VENT diagrams" to describe the way we both use this form to draw out fresh thinking from seemingly conflicting truths. We decided we wanted to work together to explore and share this efficient and powerful form, and thus @Vent_Diagrams was born and still thrives in our lives & work.