Oct 22 | Speakers’ Podium for Citizens and Non-Citizens
Oct 22, 2016
1pm - 2pm
The Muffler Shop, 359 E Garfield Blvd, Chicago
The Mobile Speakers’ Podium for Citizens and Non-Citizens, created by artist Jenny Polak, is imagined as a deployable speakers’ corner that is both functional and symbolic. The two halves of the Speakers’ Podium rely on each other. Suburban house collides with prison fence to invoke the needed voices and ever-presence of the incarcerated among the free in a country that locks up 2 million people. The Speakers’ Podium is inspired by the effective coalition of citizens and immigrants/non-citizens who fought successfully to block the building of a for-profit detention center by Corrections Corporation of America in Crete, IL. Weekly programming will feature activists, poets, student groups, prison abolition groups, performing artists, and individuals who through their practice engage with conversations around mass incarceration, immigrant detention, and citizenship.
free and open to the public; rsvp
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Silvia Gonzalez performing with Michael De Anda Muñiz (pictured above)
Silvia Gonzalez is an Artist and Educator living in Chicago creating zines and curating workshops to address police violence, labor rights, imagination, play, freedom, and confinement. She engages creative work with intergenerational participants interested in critically questioning and disrupting current power imbalances.
Michael De Anda Muñiz is a Chicano educator/researcher who is currently a doctoral candidate in sociology at UIC. His work focuses on Latin@s, art, oppressive structures, and resistance.
Performers Silvia Gonzalez and Michael de Anda Muñiz are active members of the 96 Acres Project, an ongoing collaborative project lead by the Artist Maria Gaspar.The 96 Acres Project is a series of community-engaged, site-responsive art projects that address the impact of the Cook County Jail on Chicago’s West Side. The projects aim to generate alternative narratives reflecting on power, and to present creative projects that reflect the community’s vision of transformation. For more information: 96acres.org
bella BAHHS is a budding millennial leader, raptivist, public intellectual and scholar of popular US culture, contemporary social issues, gender and sexuality. Her work aims to foster a healthy, safe and empowering relationship between the producers of pop culture and the global Black population represented by their art and artifacts. Having earned a BA in communications from Dominican University, bella has a keen understanding of rhetoric and employs hip hop as a pedagogical tool to educate diverse, intergenerational audiences on the sociopolitical plight of Black people in the African diaspora and to provoke critical discourse around issues of concern to communities most impacted by police and state violence. While tapping into the rebellious nature of the hip hop community, she is revitalizing Black cultural vestiges of resistance and renaissance. Website: bahhsnotbars.com
Social media: instagram.com/bellabahhs / twitter.com/bellabahhs / soundcloud.com/bellabahhs
Matthew Epperson is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. His research centers on developing, implementing, and evaluating interventions to reduce disparities in the criminal justice system. His primary area of focus is understanding and addressing person- and place-level risk factors for criminal involvement among persons with mental illnesses. Professor Epperson’s interests also include developing conceptual, evidence-based frameworks for effective and sustainable decarceration. His scholarship and teaching aim to build and advance the capacity of the social work profession to address these challenges and opportunities for criminal justice transformation. Website: ssascholars.uchicago.edu/smart-decarceration-initiative
Malik Alim is the Illinois Organizer at Roosevelt Institute. He is responsible for cultivating a diverse network of students and developing new Roosevelt chapters at colleges and universities. As a trainer, facilitator, and organizer, Malik provides students with the tools and resources to mobilize their peers around policy issues, build strong chapters, and develop conscientious leaders.
Malik has previously been involved in several grassroots campaigns in Chicago, including the demand for an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC), the Chicago Police Torture Survivors Memorial, and the Coalition to Save Dyett High School. He also serves as the Chicago chapter Membership Co-Chair for the Black Youth Project 100, a national collective of young Black organizers. In his spare time, Malik enjoys taking road-trips, reading, and having spirited debates.
Social media: twitter.com/MalikOrganizes
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This venue is physically accessible. Please contact Arts + Public Life at 773.702.9724 with any questions or accommodation requests.
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