Events By Quarter
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.
Race and Religion
ONLINE - Innocent until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11
Dr. Maha Hilal
Online Discussion
(1/7/21) - This event is now online.
It's been two decades since the 9/11 attacks and the onset of the War on Terror. Addressing its catastrophic impact, Dr. Maha Hilal will share her insights on the last twenty years of the War on Terror including the role of official narrative in justifying the creation of a sprawling apparatus of state violence rooted in Islamophobia and in addition to outlining just how vast the War on Terror's apparatus is and has become. Centering the War on Terror's impact on Muslims and Muslim Americans, Dr. Hilal will also shed light on how some have internalized oppression, perpetuated collective responsibility, and how the lived experiences of Muslim Americans reflect what it means to live as part of a "suspect" community. Along the way, Dr. Hilal will reflect on what it means to dismantle and abolish the War on Terror.
Dr. Maha Hilal is an expert on institutionalized Islamophobia and has spent her career researching, writing on, and advocating and organizing against it. She is cofounder of Justice for Muslims Collective. Dr. Hilal holds a PhD in Justice, Law, and Society from American University and has received many awards, including the Department of State's Critical Language Scholarship, the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace, and a Reebok Human Rights Fellowship. Her writings have been published in Al Jazeera, The Daily Beast, Vox, and US News, among others. Dr. Hilal lives in the greater Washington DC area.
Cup of Culture
ONLINE - Woman of Earth
Director & Cinematographer Isadora Carneiro
Online Film Screening
(1/7/21) - This event is now online.
Mayara grew up in Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil and Latin America. She was a teenager surrounded by millions of people, technology, and everything the modern world could offer. But she still felt empty. In search of Brazil's roots, she traveled to indigenous, quilombola (communities founded in 19th century by runaway slaves), and rural communities. She was searching for women who could answer her questions. She found them. She calls them, Women of Earth.
Isadora Carneiro is a filmmaker known for her 1,001 uses: she films, photographs, edits and produces. She directed the project’s first documentary miniseries. She also dedicates herself to her personal project of filming and photographing births.
Post film Q&A with the director and cinematographer
Meeting ID: 929 3910 6309
Passcode: 933071
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
