All Events
Conscious Conversations Series
ONLINE - Racism in Policing on Campuses
Charmaine Chua, Dylan Rodriguez, Krystle Farmer Sieghart, Kavya Suresh
Online Discussion
(1/7/21) - This event is now online.
Racism, racial violence, and police brutality impact our local community and our youth. This conversation seeks to highlight the current and on-going racial injustices, both in higher education and K-12, that are embedded through policing on campuses. Learn the racist origins of policing, the impacts of policing on communities of color, and how police divestment is an investment in our future.
Panelists consist of Charmain Chua, an Assistant Professor of Global Studies at UCSB and is a founding member of Cops off Campus, Dylan Rodriguez, a Professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at UCR and was named to the inaugural class of Freedom Scholars, Krystle Farmer, a co-founder of Healing Justice Santa Barbara, Kavya Suresh, a sophomore at San Marcos Senior High School and a founding member of the Cops Off Campus SB Youth Coalition, and moderated by Geovany “Geo” Lucero, a UCSB student organizer and this year’s A.S. Student Advocate General.
Panelist Charmaine Chua is Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her interdisciplinary scholarly and political work is on logistics, racial capitalism and terrains of internationalist struggle under U.S. empire. Her work has been published in The Boston Review, The Nation, Theory and Event, and Antipode, among other venues. She organizes for prison and police abolition with the Abolition Collective and is a founding member of Cops Off Campus.
Panelist Prof. Dylan Rodriguez is a teacher, scholar, and collaborator who works with and within abolitionist and other radical communities and movements. Since 2001, he has maintained a day job as a Professor at the University of California, Riverside. His peers elected him President of the American Studies Association for 2020-2021, and in 2020 he was named to the inaugural class of Freedom Scholars. Dylan is the author of three books, most recently White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide (Fordham University Press, 2021). He has participated in dozens of podcasts, live interviews, experimental media projects, and livestreams and loves being invited to join form of collective study, thought, and planning that build capacity to survive and revolt against oppressive conditions.
Panelist Krystle Farmer Sieghart (she/her/her) is a mother, Black femme, a grassroots activist, a womanist, and a liberation consultant. Krystle has served more then 6 years as an experienced community organizer, facilitator and mentor, with a demonstrated history of working in higher education, underserved communities, and the non-profit industry. Krystle is skilled in public speaking, social media, teaching, social justice advocacy, cultural competency, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and community outreach. She is a strong community and social services professional, currently holding a Bachelor of Science – B.S. in Organizational Leadership from Los Angeles Pacific University. Krystle is a co-founder of Healing Justice Santa Barbara and has several years of experience creating youth-centered curriculum.
Panelist Kavya Suresh (she/her/ella) is a sophomore at San Marcos Senior High School and a founding member of the Cops Off Campus SB Youth Coalition, an organization of students working to abolish police presence from Santa Barbara Unified District’s schools. Kavya is passionate about using her platforms to promote a reimagined definition of safety that utilizes community healing, education policy reform, and restorative justice as mechanisms to combat violence and discrimination on campuses. As an Indian American student and a daughter of two immigrants, her unique intersectional experience in the education system inspires her activism to create more equitable, safe, and nurturing learning environments for marginalized youth.
Moderator Geo Lucero (they/them) is a non-binary, queer, and Latine fifth year Feminist Studies major at UC Santa Barbara. They have been involved in various aspects of campus life and advocacy throughout their time at UCSB such as with A.S. Trans & Queer Commission, MCC Council and Hermanas Unidas. Currently they are serving the student body as one of five executive officers for Associated Students as the Student Advocate General. They further represent their peers as the MCC’s Communication liaison. They hope to work towards a positive and equitable livelihood for all.
Resilient Love
ONLINE - Radical Self Love as Transformative Activism
Sonya Renee Taylor
Online - REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Sonya Renee Taylor is the Founder and Radical Executive Officer of The Body is Not An Apology, a digital media and education company with content reaching half a million people each month. Sonya’s work as an award winning performance poet, activist and transformational leader continues to have global reach. She is a former national and international poetry slam champion, author, educator and activist who has mesmerized audiences across the US, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, England, Scotland, Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands as well as in prisons, mental health treatment facilities, homeless shelters, universities, festivals and public schools across the globe. She was named one of Planned Parenthood’s 99 Dream Keepersin 2015 as well as a Planned Parenthood Generation Action’s 2015 Outstanding Partner awardee. She was named one of the 12 Women Who Paved the Way for Body Positivity by Bustle Magazine and, in September 2015, she was honored as a YBCA 100, an annual compilation of creative minds, makers, and pioneers who are asking the questions and making the provocations that will shape the future of American culture; an honor she shared alongside author Ta-Nehisi Coates, artist Kara Walker, filmmaker Ava Duvernay and many more. Sonya and her work have been seen, heard and read on HBO, BET, MTV, TV One, NPR, PBS, CNN, Oxygen Network, The New York Times, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Today.com, Huffington Post, Vogue Australia, Shape.com, Ms. Magazine and many more.
REGISTRATION AT UCSB SHORELINE IS REQUIRED: https://cglink.me/2dD/r1402535
Co-sponsor: The A.S. Black Women’s Health Collaborative
Cup of Culture
ONLINE - Rafiki
Online Film Screening
(1/7/21) - This event is now online.
Rafiki, Swahili for “friend,” follows two young women, Kena and Ziki, as their romantic relationship unfolds amidst political and cultural pressures around LGBTQIA+ rights in Kenya. The two find a way to love each other despite the watchful gaze of the neighborhood.
REGISTRATION ON SHORELINE IS REQUIRED: https://cglink.me/2dD/r1421140
Race Matters Series
ONLINE - Shaping the Way America’s Children are Educated: Latina Teachers in Majority-Minority Schools
Professor Glenda Flores
Online Discussion
(1/10) - This event is now online.
Today, Latina women make up the fastest growing non-white group entering the teaching profession at a time when it is estimated that 20% of all students nationwide now identify as Latina/o and are more likely to attend majority-minority schools. Through ethnographic and participant observation in two underperforming majority-minority schools in Los Angeles, as well as interviews with teachers, parents and staff, Flores examines the complexities stemming from a growing workforce of Latina teachers who work in schools where the majority of parents and children are Latinx, Black and Asian.
Glenda Marisol Flores is an Associate Professor of Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her book, Latina Teachers: Creating Careers and Guarding Culture won the 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from the Race, Gender and Class Section of the American Sociological Association. Her research on Latina professionals, in particular Latina teachers, has been published in several venues such as Qualitative Sociology, City and Community, Ethnography and Gender, Work and Organization. Her research agenda centers on the social mobility patterns of Latinas/os into the middle class, and their workplace experiences in the white-collar world, especially teaching and medicine, and how Latinx cultures emerge in their fields. She is a co-principal investigator of a nearly $3 million National Science Foundation funded project that seeks to improve STEM success among underrepresented students. Her new book project is on Latina/o/x physicians.
