This week we have three major events we would love you to attend:
TONIGHT 9/28: Opening Celebration for our Art Action– Imagine Freedom: Art Works for AbolitionRSVP here
THURSDAY 10/1: Launch of the Abolition & the University Series by our Abolitionist Educators Network, with a webinar on "Anti-Blackness, the University & Policing" Register here
THURSDAY 10/1: Launch of our AbolitionNOW Network's series with another webinar on "Black and Indigenous Liberation through Abolition" Register here.
TONIGHT @ 5pm PST
Join us for the OPENING CELEBRATION of our online art auction & exhibition! RSVP here
Tonight's opening event will be a celebration of art, abolition and liberation, co-hosted by the Bayview Opera House & Critical Resistance! We are thrilled to feature acclaimed artists, cultural organizers and performers for a light program and Zoom room toast. Host Committee members Amy Kisch, Steven Canals and Dana King (our MC for the evening & featured artist!) will be joined by artist Melinda James for the screening of “Oklahoma is Black.” We'll also have a music performance by Amanda Joy, Atlanta-based soul and funk singer and lead vocalist for The VIBErance. Every RSVP will receive a custom cocktail recipe from acclaimed chef and Host Committee member Bryant Terry!
Stay late with us for an after party on @KQEDArts on IG Live with KQED Arts' Pendarvis Harshaw and artist Traci Bartlow on IG Live. RSVP now!
THURSDAY @ 1pm PST/4pm EST: Join us for the Abolition and the University Teach-in Series, organized by our Abolitionist Educators Network!
Teach-in #1: Anti-Blackness, the University and Policing Oct 1, 2020
1-2:30pm PST | 3-4:30pm CST | 4-6:00pm EST
Panelists:
Lester Spence (Johns Hopkins University)
Cathy Cohen (University of Chicago)
João Costa Vargas (UC Riverside)
Savannah Shange (UC Santa Cruz)
Moderated by Dylan Rodriguez (UC Riverside & co-founding members of Critical Resistance)
This first teach-in addresses how the university has historically functioned to reproduce and sanction anti-Blackness and policing. This panel of scholar-activists discusses how anti-Blackness has been foundational to the structure, organization and policies of the university and has operated to police bodies, disciplines, knowledges, movements and activism, often under the cover of rhetorics that promote liberal multicultural inclusion and diversity.
Learn more about the Abolition & the University Series on our website here.
THURSDAY @ 4pm PST/ 7pm EST:
Join us for the AbolitionNOW: Webinar Series Launch!
In this moment of constantly shifting political conditions and in the wake of continued attacks on Black, Brown and poor people who are fighting for our lives, it is important to be grounded in why the call to defund the police must be an abolitionist one.
In 2019, Critical Resistance launched a national political education project called the Abolitionist Training School (ATS). We strategically partnered with different movement organizations to strengthen and develop shared organizing skills, analysis and tools for prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition. Through these partnerships, ATS has now grown to become a larger network of abolitionist organizations and movement partners, now called the AbolitionNOW network.
On Thursday, October 1, the AbolitionNOW network presents its first webinar engaging the current moment. We hope you join us!
The webinar, "Black and Indigenous Liberation through Abolition" will be a workshop on the relationship between settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism that ties the threads of Black and Indigenous resistance through abolition of the PIC.
