All Events
Resilient Love
Black Trans Lives Matter
CeCe McDonald and Elle Hearns
Online
Join the MCC in welcoming CeCe McDonald and Elle Hearns for a virtual conversation moderated by Dr. Omise'eke Tinsley and centering the lives, joys, and strengths of Black trans women.
CeCe McDonald is a transgender activist and revered icon of the LGBTQ community. She captured international recognition in 2011 after surviving a white supremacist and transphobic attack, later receiving a second-degree manslaughter conviction and serving 19 months in prison simply for defending herself.
She has been profiled in Mother Jones, Ebony.com, and Rolling Stone, the latter praising her as “an LGBT folk hero for her story of survival – and for the price she paid for fighting back.” In 2014, The Advocate included her among its annual "40 Under 40” list. That same year, she received the Bayard Rustin Civil Rights Award by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. She is the subject of the acclaimed documentary, “FREE CeCe,” produced by transgender actress Laverne Cox. Since her release, she has graced stages across the country where she uses storytelling to articulate the personal and political implications of being both black and trans.
As one of the founders of the Black Excellence Collective and Black Excellence Tour, created with best friend Joshua Allen, she fosters important conversations around mass incarceration, sexuality, and violence. With energy and conviction, she highlights the hope she now fights for – that all LGBTQ people can live their lives free of hate and prejudice and confidently pursue their dreams without fear.
Elle Hearns is an organizer, speaker, strategist, and writer. Elle’s voice as a strategist community organizer and speaker were formed from her upbringing in Columbus, Ohio as a youth organizer. Ms. Elle currently is the Executive Director of The Marsha P. Johnson Institute an organization founded in 2015 that works to create a crucial entry point for Black transgender women to advocate for an end to violence against all trans people through advocacy, transformative organizing, restoration, civil disobedience and direct action. The organization is credited for organizing the first ever National Day of Action for Black Trans Women in response to the murders of Amber Monroe, Kandis Capri, and Elisha Walker and held organized events in multiple cities including New York City, Chicago, and Washington DC. As a speaker Elle has delivered keynotes and talks at Harvard University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,The Public Theatre,and for The National Lawyers Guild,Columbia University, Stanford University and NYU.
Co-sponsors: RCSGD, Director of LGBTQ Studies, AS Black Women’s Health Collaborative
Diversity Lecture Series
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
Robin Kimmerer
Online
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, and her other work has appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. She tours widely and has been featured on NPR’s On Being with Krista Tippett and in 2015 addressed the general assembly of the United Nations on the topic of “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.” Kimmerer lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
Conscious Conversations Series
Build Many Worlds – Cultivating Our Abolition Technologies
Cesia Domínguez López
Online
We can still see and feel the impacts of a world designed to center the carceral/domination technologies exported by WHITENESS since the 15th Century. While many of us have inherited this impact as intergenerational trauma, we have also inherited generational legacies of healing. Legacies of resistance, resilience, and (re)imagination. Our bodies are medicine.
We know we don’t want this harmful world, but what ecologies of care are we building for our new worlds? Join us in conversation to explore how we might use our medicine to nourish and cultivate a world where many worlds fit. What seeds can we be planting today for our future bodies? For worlds centered around care and dignity for all bodies?
Virtual Workshop
Building Racial Solidarity Networks
Connie Wun
Online
Connie Wun, Ph.D. is the co-founder and Executive Director of AAPI Women Lead. She has been working on issues of violence against women and girls of color for more than 20 years. She is also the founder of Transformative Research, a research consultancy that trains community-based organizations on participatory action and community-driven research. In this capacity, Dr. Wun has worked with organizations including Open Society Foundation, Girls for Gender Equity in NYC, Monsoon: Asian and Pacific Islanders in Solidarity, National Organization of Asian Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence, Policy Link, Survived and Punished, and the national Sexual Assault Demonstrative Initiative.
