Events By Quarter
Race Matters Series
Unbreakable Resolve: Building Free-Dem Foundations in New Orleans
Jerome Morgan and Robert Jones
MCC Theater
Jerome Morgan and Robert Jones will make a powerful presentation about mass incarceration in New Orleans and their efforts to rescue young people from its grasp through mentoring and community development projects.
Morgan and Jones spent more than forty years combined in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola before they were exonerated and released. While in prison, at a time when it appeared they had no real chance to be free, they made a pact to one day reunite in New Orleans to set up a cooperative business and mentoring program that would serve young people in danger of being swept into jails and prisons. They enrolled in prison education programs, studied law, and learned trades. With the help of allies outside prison walls they won their freedom. Today Morgan and Jones run the Free-Dem Foundations, a non-profit community-based youth organization in New Orleans that fulfills the vision they created while incarcerated. Morgan works as the Dean of School Culture at Rooted School in New Orleans while Jones serves as Director of Community Outreach and Lead Client Advocate at Orleans Public Defenders. Morgan is also the Dean of School Culture at Rooted School.
Their presentation will cover their own personal experiences with incarceration that they have delineated in their co-authored book (with Daniel Rideau) Unbreakable Resolve as well as a report on the curriculum, mentoring, business start-up, and apprenticeship programs they are implementing in the work of the Free-Dem Foundations. Morgan will speak about his participation in the collectively written book Go To Jail, an archive of twenty years of writing by public school students and teachers, people incarcerated in prisons, academics, attorneys, and their community allies.
Diversity Lecture
Death, Violence & Deportation: The Politics of Children's Suffering at the US-Mexico Border
Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales, Ph.D.
Online
Dr. Negrón-Gonzales will talk about the killing of three teenage boys – Sergio Adrían Hernández Guereca, José Antonio Elena Rodríguez and Cruz Marcelino Velasquez Acevedo – at the US-Mexico border between 2010 and 2013. Through an examination of these murders at the hands of US Border Patrol and Customs and Border Enforcement Agents, she will discuss how these killings demonstrate that not all children are afforded the so-called universal protection of childhood. She will also draw the connection to the deportation regime, and her 15+ years of researching undocumented young people, to discuss the politics of children's suffering at the border and under the inhumane immigration system.
Bio: Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the School of Education and affiliate faculty in the Migration Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of education and immigration and speaks across the nation on issues related to diversity, equity, higher education and immigrant rights. Raised on the U.S.-Mexico border, Negrón-Gonzales has been working with, supporting, and researching the lives of
undocumented youth for the past fifteen years in multiple capacities: as a student affairs professional, a researcher, and as an activist.
Dr. Negrón-Gonzales’ work has been published in numerous scholarly journals including Harvard Educational Review, Latino Studies, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, The Journal of Latinos and Education, and Jesuit Higher Education. She is a co-author of Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World (2016, UC Press), co-editor of We Are Not
Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theoerize Undocumented Life in the United States (Duke University Press, 2020), and co-author of The Latina/o/x Guide to Graduate School (Duke University Press, 2023).
Co-Sponsors: Office of Equal Opportunity & Discrimination Prevention, Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - Undocumented Student Services
Cup of Culture
Letters2Maybe
Ana Maria Fabian Lomeli, Activist
MCC Theater
By embracing a kaleidoscopic style of storytelling to highlight the poetics and precarity that follow the craving for freedom, Letters2Maybe is an unfinished letter, articulating the ever-growing yet unflinching demand for justice and tenderness in our world today.
Speaker Bio: Yehuda Sharim is a writer, filmmaker, and poet. His work focuses on the relationship between the quotidian and poetic. Sharim’s films have appeared in film festivals, artistic venues, and universities across the world. His work offers an intimate portrayal of those who refuse to surrender amidst daily devastation and culminating strife, offering a vision for equality and a renewed solidarity in a divisive world. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Program of Global Art Studies, University of California, Merced.
Ana Maria Fabian Lomeli is a local activist from Merced. Ana advocates for undocumented communities and uses her voice to speak up for those who fear deportation. Through fierce vision and the longtime collaboration with Yehuda Sharim, she artistically encapsulates the experience of living in the Central Valley as a woman of color.
Post film Q&A with the Director Yehuda Sharim
Open Mic
MC David Rojas and DJ Dan Le
MCC Lounge
The MCC hosts a quarterly open mic for all to artistically express themselves using any creative outlet including spoken word, poetry, music, and dance. All are welcome to attend and participate!
David Rojas is a professional musician and director of music programs. He oversees the Turner Foundation’s Music & Imagination program (TFMI), a Santa Barbara based nonprofit that provides a free out-of-school resource for young people. Mr. Rojas also plays professionally as a guitarist and lead vocalist for one of Santa Barbara’s top blues bands, Rent Party Blues.
Dan Le (known as yunglay) is an Isla Vista based DJ and co-founder of Sound Society, a music production club at UCSB. He promotes local artists and provides opportunities to showcase talent through his organization. His love for electronic music translates into his energetic mixing, specializing in bass house and trap music.
