All Events
Race Matters Series: Stories We Carry
John Jairo Valencia
MCC Lounge
Join us for a storytelling night centered on the lived experiences, histories, and identities that shape our communities. Facilitated by cultural worker, artist, and storyteller John Jairo Valencia, this teach-in will introduce storytelling as a practice of cultural memory, community building, resistance, and collective healing. Following the interactive lesson and reflection, students are invited to share performances—including spoken word, poetry, narratives, and music—while practicing collective listening and reflection around themes of identity, belonging, resilience, migration, family, disability, and resistance.
Through storytelling, participants will have the opportunity to connect across identities and recognize the ways our individual experiences are connected to broader histories and communities.
John Jairo Valencia is a Two-Spirit Xicanx/Colombian artist, herbalist, dancer, storyteller, cultural worker, and scholar who grew up on Gabrielino/Tongva/Kizh territory in California. For over 10 years, they have facilitated workshops, cultural programs, and community projects centered on art, culture, storytelling, and collective learning.
Their artwork has been exhibited throughout California and Texas, and they have collaborated with social justice and cultural organizations as a freelance illustrator and animator. Since 2020, they have also co-facilitated Hood Herbalism, an autonomous QTBIPOC-led community herbal education project.
John Jairo is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Chicana/o Studies at UC Santa Barbara and works with Las Maestras Center for Xicana[x] Indigenous Thought, Art and Social Praxis. Their work explores storytelling and cultural memory as liberatory and decolonizing practices that can strengthen relationships, preserve community histories, and create space for collective healing.
You can learn more about their work at elotedreamz.com
Resilient Love
Resilient Love Series: Healing Beyond Survival
Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson
MCC Theater
In 2016, UCSB’s Division of Student Affairs launched the Resilient Love series to explore how we might respond ethically and honorably to hate and violence through love-driven conversation and creative work.
This year, join the UCSB MultiCultural Center for Healing Beyond Survival, an evening exploring what it means to Survive → Heal → Love → Thrive. Featuring a fireside conversation with Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson, UCSB Professor of Black Studies and historian of freedom struggles and cultural politics, the event will explore what becomes possible when survival is no longer the only goal. Through powerful conversation, reflection, and an opening student performance, this evening will explore how we can build relationships and communities rooted in safety, trust, joy, softness, and collective care.
Come as you are and imagine what we can build beyond survival.
Gaye Theresa Johnson is Professor of Black Studies and Director of the Blum Center on Poverty Inequality and Democracy at UCSB. She is a historian of freedom struggles and cultural politics and an award winning author who has published four books on various topics from Black radicalism, cultural politics, and migration and practices of sanctuary. Gaye is deeply invested in community, and as part of this work is the lead facilitator and trainer for the Central Coast Social Justice Academy and a frequent learner in movement spaces.
She is a past Board President of the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) in Ventura, California, a board member with California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, and an advisory board member for the Goldin Institute and the Rosenberg Fund for Children. She wrote the curriculum and trained high school teachers to offer the first Ethnic and Social Justice Studies courses in the Ventura Unified School District.
Her proudest achievement is being a mother and a part of the circle of friends and family that constitute the core of her life.
Holistic Safety Plan Series – Home is What We Build: A Housing Mutual Aid Cafe
MCC Lounge
Join the MCC and Basic Needs Department for A Housing Mutual Aid Cafe, part of the Holistic Safety Plan Series. Finding a place to call home can be shaped by so much more than having a roof over our heads. Housing is connected to food, money, transportation, work, family, disability, and our sense of safety and belonging. This event creates space to acknowledge those realities while also focusing on the ways we can show up together and build a web of support.
Through conversation, resource sharing, and community care, students will explore housing as a collective issue and learn how mutual aid and community care practices can help us reimagine how we approach housing insecurity.
Bring what you know, take what you need, and help us imagine how we can build home and support one another together.
