All Events
Conscious Conversations Series
Gather & Grow: Mental Health Across Cultures
MCC Lounge
Join us for Gather & Grow: Mental Health Across Cultures, an evening dedicated to exploring how culture shapes our understanding, experience, and care for our mental health. Clinicians from Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) will lead a psychoeducational presentation focused on mental health in marginalized communities, addressing cultural expectations, chronic stress, stigma, and practical coping strategies. Together, we will unpack how identity, family dynamics, and societal pressures influence well-being and how we can move toward collective healing. The evening will continue with a cultural performance by Raices de mi Tierra, opportunities to connect with campus mental health resources, and a shared meal to foster conversation and community. Come ready to learn, reflect, and grow together.
Co-sponsored by CAPS.
Your Body, Your Agency: Empowerment Self Defense for Everyone
Professor erin Khuê Ninh
MCC Lounge
Join us for a day of self-advocacy as we explore strategies to defend our physical and emotional personhood hosted by erin Khuê Ninh, Empowerment Self Defense instructor and a Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
ESD teaches a set of skills based in social justice and intersectional embodiment aimed to protect people from the harms of harassment, violation, and assault. Learn verbal and physical techniques drawing from a tradition of feminist social analysis. We will review how to set boundaries and identify spatial relationships and body language. We will explore verbal responses and bystander intervention techniques to address dangerous situations. Please dress for comfort and movement! erin Khuê Ninh’s research centers on the model minority not as myth, but as racialization and identity. Throughlines in her writing and teaching are the subtleties of power, harm, and subject formation, whether in the contexts of terror and war, family and immigration, or gendering and rape culture.
Disability Joy – Disabled Power Zine-Making Workshop
Jennifer White-Johnson
MCC Lounge
Disability Joy is a programming series grounded in disability justice that centers empowerment, community building, and joy as resistance. The series intentionally creates space for celebration, laughter, and connection as powerful acts of care and resistance. By uplifting disabled voices, creativity, and lived experiences, the series challenges dominant narratives that frame disability solely in terms of deficit or hardship. Through engaging, community-centered programming, Disability Joy fosters connection and affirms disability as a source of strength, culture, and resilience while actively resisting ableism and exclusion. Join us for a zine-making workshop with Jennifer White-Johnson, a Black and disabled artist and activist. They will begin the workshop with a discussion of their art-activist practice, followed by a demonstration of how zine-making can be used as a tool for activism. Crafting materials and food provided for participants! Jen White-Johnson is a disabled and neurodivergent artist and designer educator who centers Black disabled joy and futures in her work, informed by a disability justice and a Black feminist disability framework.
Co-sponsored by A.S. CODE, Disabled Students Program (DSP).
MCC Jackson Intern Community Engagement Project Showcase
MCC Jackson Interns
MCC Lounge
The MultiCultural Center Jackson Social Justice Legacy Scholarship Interns present
Stop by the MCC Jackson Intern Community Engagement Project Showcase to explore the work of this year’s Jackson Intern cohort. Meet the interns, learn about their projects and partnerships, and see how their initiatives support communities on and beyond campus. Connect, ask questions, and discover the impact of student-led community engagement.
2:00–4:00 PM
Dominic Wang, Jackson Intern Rapid Response Training with SBResiste
Learn your rights, recognize and respond to ICE activity, access 805 rapid response resources, and get involved with community patrol efforts through SBResiste.
5:30–7:30 PM
Bryan Colin, Jackson Intern “Debí Tirar Más Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos)”
Cher Martinez will share insights into their creative practice, their engagement with mutual aid work, and the powerful role photography can play in documenting, preserving, and uplifting communities.
Register on Shoreline: https://cglink.me/2dD/r2271831
Social: @ucsbmcc Instagram, Facebook, TikTok
For more information or assistance in accommodating people of varying abilities contact the MultiCultural Center at 805.893.8411
