Beyond Sustainability: Cultural Organizing for Social Justice
Curated and moderated by Chinatown Art Brigade with Marlon Dylan Herrera, Yin 英, and Pati Rodriguez
Monday, May 17, 2021
6 pm
Pay What You Wish

This spring, Bard Graduate Center is partnering with Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB) to support its activities and actions. As part of this collaboration, BGC presents this conversation curated and moderated by CAB members to shed light on how cultural collectives have developed new pathways for grassroots organizing, mutual aid, and creative activism, all while celebrating community resilience and resistance. Questions to be explored include how we approach our frameworks and conversations so that they go deeper than mere sustainability, especially in the face of COVID-19, and how collectives are re-evaluating, adapting, and creatively shifting to meet the challenges of this moment. This program will highlight collectives that use cultural organizing practices to address gentrification and structural racism through an intersectional lens.

Collectively Imagining De-Gentrified and Abolitionist Futures
Curated and moderated by Chinatown Art Brigade
Thursday, June 17, 2021
6 pm
Pay What Wish

As this nation confronts the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and structural racism, what does it mean to truly reckon with, reclaim, and re-envision a liberated future for all through a decolonized, de-gentrified, and abolitionist framework?

Black, Indigenous, and all communities of color have been suffering from racialized capitalism since long before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has exacerbated land displacement, rent burden, economic inequality, and police violence. The past year has felt dystopian at times, compelling us to think outside of the box, to reimagine a radically different society that is more just and upholds our common racial, economic, climate, and social justice values. This program will highlight cultural collectives that are unleashing popular imagination and shared vision to build an abolitionist and de-gentrified future, and discuss concrete ways that we can enact this future together.