Still We Rise: Building Community is Love and Hope in Action

AMSA Reproductive Health Project eNews #61 – December 20, 2025

Greetings from the AMSA Reproductive Health Project!

This is our final newsletter of 2025, and much like everyone else, we are taking this moment to look back over the past year, and look ahead to 2026. It’s the end of the year, which coincides with a multitude of holidays celebrated by societies and cultures throughout the world, and we want to first extend our wishes to each of you for a meaningful, joyful, and fulfilling holiday season, in whatever ways that looks like for you.

For many, 2025 has been a hard year. We find ourselves alive at a moment when many human-created systems and institutions no longer serve people in the interest of the greater good – and in some instances no longer even pretend to serve the interest of people, and have fully unmasked themselves as interested only in hoarding more and more power, money, resources, and control over people’s lives. We have witnessed governments, including our own here in the US, backslide on protections of human rights. We have witnessed academic institutions, including some of our medical schools, betray their commitment to intellectual and academic freedom and evidence-based practices, in order to curry favor with authoritarian State power. We have witnessed misogyny, transphobia, anti-Black racism, and anti-Indigeneity motivating cruel and dehumanizing policies, many of which strike at the very notion of universal human dignity, agency, and bodily autonomy. 

But still we’ll rise.

And it’s not like 2025 is even particularly exceptional – it’s just another year in a string of years in which the power-hoarders of the world keep maintaining the upper hand, while wielding a violent fist against pretty much everyone else. And it’s not like 2026 is somehow going to magically, instantly be different, be better, be the year we finally break the power-hoarders’ iron grip on power. 

But still we’ll rise.

Maya Angelou’s famous poem, Still I Rise, has been in my mind recently. I’m a cis white man – that poem was not written about me and definitely not written for me, but it’s for exactly that reason that I pay particular attention to it. It’s a portal into a human experience that I have not experienced in the particulars, but in my humanity, I can connect to Maya Angelou’s defiant stance against the ideologies, systems, institutions, and flesh-and-blood people which sought to deny her her humanity, her dignity, her agency, her bodily autonomy, her personhood. Through her poem – through her poetry and prose – I encounter another human who, in the instance of Maya Angelou herself, quite literally had to reclaim her voice (stolen from her for over five years in the trauma of being raped by the man who was her mother’s boyfriend when she was 8 years old), and then she said, “Still I rise.” 

Maya Angelou wrote her poetry as someone deeply aware of her interconnectedness to her ancestors (“Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, / I am the dream and the hope of the slave”), to other Black women, to anyone and everyone whose full humanity has not been recognized, protected, cherished, honored. In reclaiming her voice, and in reclaiming for herself the dignity, agency, bodily autonomy, and personhood that many tried to deprive her of, she modeled for so many of us the truth that defiance in the face of dehumanization is the ultimate act of self-advocacy, which is a form of self-Love. In refusing to stay down (“you may trod me in the very dirt / but still, like dust, I’ll rise”), she also demonstrated what it means and what it can look like to rise again, as many times as necessary. Refusing to stay down – no matter how many times and no matter in how many ways the power hoarders will strike with violence (“You may shoot me with your words, / you may cut me with your eyes, / you may kill me with your hatefulness”) – is how we enact both Love and Hope (both are verbs) for ourselves and for each other. It’s how we manifest Beloved Community, even when we find ourselves still very much in the Belly of the Beast.

She ends her poem with a declaration, defiant to the end, and with utter certainty, repeating it three times (for those in the back):

I rise,
I rise,
I rise.

We don’t know what 2026 will bring – what violence, what injustice, what social travesty, what systemic denigration of our individual and collective human dignity. But what we do know is that there are those who have come before us who have modeled for us what we must be and do for ourselves and for each other, no matter what the power hoarders might hurl our way. In the face of whatever we will have to face in 2026 and beyond, we can join in the collective chorus of humans who are refusing to stay down, and who declare with unapologetic Love for self and other and defiant Hope for a future not yet determined:

Still
I rise,
You rise,
We rise.

As we close 2025, we want to express our gratitude to each and every one of you who seek to be in community with all those who are doing the work of freedom-fighting, justice-making, and collective liberation. 

You are the community we seek to be a part of. 

Continue on in this issue of newsletter to revisit some highlights from the past year, and be sure to read the beautiful note and invitation to experience AMSA community written by AMSA’s national President, Nikitha Balaji, and AMSA’s Legislative Affairs Director, Donya Ahmadian.

Cultivating Connection, Belonging, and Hope at AMSA

Written by Nikitha Balaji, AMSA National President and Donya Ahmadian, AMSA Legislative Affairs Director

In the last several months, we have thought deeply about what we love so much about our AMSA community and the ways we can continue to nurture meaningful connections with you. This is of course important always, and especially in this current moment, as the very nature of what we hold dear can feel at risk. As we lean into the holiday season, it is especially important that we consider the value of coming together and to create spaces where this connection can flourish. 

As this year has evolved, we have witnessed increasing attempts to deny us all our fundamental human rights. In the face of this, we know that it is an especially hard time to be a student, and, moreso, a difficult time to exist in our full personhood. Between the rigor of our lives as students and the deeply troubling times we are living in, it is easy to feel disconnected, disjointed, and fragmented from a sense of community and this world. That is where the safe harbor that we have built together can stand tall- a place where we can rest and return to ourselves. At times such as these, AMSA endeavors to provide structured support and companionship in equal measure, as we find the courage within ourselves and in others to call for a more just version of medicine, medical education, and our world. 

In the fight for universal human rights and health justice for all, we at AMSA want to affirm that hope is a verb. We enact hope when we tell our stories, organize for collective action, and gather together to make a difference. This important work is made possible when we are empowered to connect with one another as a practice of Love, and in doing so, we open ourselves up to the experience of joy in manifesting Beloved Community. Whether you are feeling energized, exhausted, hopeful, heavy-hearted, or a mix of these and so many more- as we often are- this space is for you.

With hope is a verb in mind we invite you to join us in slowing down together as we draw the year to a close with our first Community Building Holiday Happy Hour tomorrow, December 21st at 5:00 PM ET. This virtual gathering will be the first of many that has been intentionally designed with you in mind- a place to rest our hearts, minds, and spirits. There is still time to sign-up and we would love to practice this art of stillness together. Our original invitation can be found below. 

Know that however this season is meeting you, you will forever and always have a seat saved for you in this circle. 

RSVP HERE