All Events
One Woman Show: Radical Time Travel and Other Acts of Resistance Denise Uyehara
MCC Theater
Award-winning performance artist, writer, and director, Denise Uyehara, asks difficult questions through solo and collaborative projects: If Columbus were assassinated, how would life today be different? What does life look like for an undocumented worker in Tucson? How do we begin to break the cycle of injustice happening over and over again? Through action, ritual, text, and video, Uyehara explores these questions, providing layered and complicated responses instead of outright answers, challenging us to look deeper in these troubling times.
Cup of Culture
Sorry to Bother You
MCC Theater
“An outrageous and uncompromising assault on capitalism, consumerism, racism and other unpleasant -isms that have come to define these United States of America” - Creative Loafing. Sorry to Bother You features Cassius Green, a young black man in modern-day Oakland trying to surpass his current living and financial situation. Brought in to the world of telemarketing, Cassius finds that, to succeed, being himself isn’t enough. In a blockbuster film that is sure to turn heads, audience members are taken on a journey between what is “right” and “wrong” as Cassius’ budding success makes him choose between the money and the social activism that accepts him for who he is. A discussion will follow the film screening. 1h 51 m.
DIVERSITY LECTURE
Race, Rights and Resources: Bringing “Home” Three Decades of Activist Research in Latin America Charlie Hale
MCC Theater
Charlie R. Hale is an acclaimed anthropologist and the new SAGE Sara Miller McCune Dean of Social Sciences at UCSB. In 1977, he began what would become four decades of research and practical work with people seeking to better their lives through economic, political, and cultural empowerment, first in Bolivia (77-81), then Nicaragua (81-90), Guatemala (94-2002), Honduras (2003-04), and Southern Mexico (2008-2017). This talk reflects on the unlikely transition from those commitments to an administrative position at UC Santa Barbara, emphasizing how insights gleaned through activist research in seemingly faraway places might offer pathways and principles for engaging major challenges of intersectional justice and democratic efficacy at home—in higher education, and by extension, in society at large in our troubled times.
Race Matters
Lives Still in Limbo: UnDACAmented and Navigating Uncertain Futures Roberto G. Gonzales
MCC Theater
Due to the political gridlock in the U.S. Congress, the fate of more than two million young immigrants remains uncertain. In 2012, President Obama introduced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and at the five year mark, more than 800,000 young people had benefited from the legislation. Things quickly changed under the Trump administration when U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced an end to this policy. What does this termination mean for these young people and their families’ futures? And what is the role of communities in this new policy’s wake? Based on a six year study, involving interviews with 481 young people in six states, Professor Gonzales provides some interesting answers to these vexing questions. Roberto G. Gonzales is Professor of Education at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.
