JACK and Weeksville Heritage Center present:
Reparations & Housing: A Community Conversation

June 8, 2019

Part of JACK’s ongoing series, Reparations365

Join us for this community conversation envisioning what role housing has in the repair of hundreds of years of racial trauma. We’ll explore the role housing has played in the past, both in black self-determination efforts as with Weeksville, and with suppression and oppression of Black Americans by the government, banks, and corporations with red-lining in the 1960s and presently with gentrification. Help co-create proposals for change with people of varied experience, including special guest speakers, including inaugural Nomura Emerging Artist winner Cameron Rowland, Lead Organizer of Equality for Flatbush Imani Keith Henry, and Weeksville’s Oral History Project Manager Obden Mondésir. Moderated by former JACK Co-Director DeeArah Wright. A reception will follow the collective discussion.

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Imani Keith Henry is the Founder and Lead Organizer for Equality for Flatbush (E4F), a people of color-led, multi-national grassroots organization that does anti-police repression, affordable housing and anti-gentrification organizing in the Flatbush, East Flatbush and Brooklyn-wide. E4F is also the convening organization of The Brooklyn Anti-gentrification Network (B.A.N).

Obden Mondesir is the Oral History Manager at Weeksville Heritage Center. He conducts public training, oral history collections educational outreach, and public programming. He is currently working on an oral history project around Black Owned Restaurants in Central Brooklyn. He is also an adjunct lecturer of archival studies at Queens College.

Cameron Rowland is a visual artist who recently was awarded the inaugural Nomura Emerging Artist award in Kyoto, Japan, which includes a grant of $100,000. Rowland’s work, which focuses on economic and social issues, stimulates a critical debate about the relationship between exhibition spaces and public spaces. His recent work focuses on the power held by private companies that manage resources essential for humanity – like water, electricity, copper, and examines the questions of ownership and access that derive from this. He has worked for Wilfred Lang (Los Angeles), Appendix Space (Portland), and Wave Hill, (New York). His work has been shown in group exhibitions at Essex Street gallery in New York, at the Daniel Buchholz gallery in Berlin and Cologne, at the Galerie der HFBK in Hamburg, at Deuxpiece in Basel and at Artist's space in New York (2016).

DeeArah Wright (Moderator) is a Brooklyn-based mama, artist, mover, and collaborative leader. DeeArah is a former Co-Director of JACK, and her approach to activism, facilitation, leadership, and partnerships are informed by over 20 years of experiences and experiments in diverse fields, such as: education, dance and performance, social entrepreneurship, and community engagement. She is currently Director of Education at Brooklyn Children’s Museum and guides the strategy for innovative programming, collaborating with the BCM team and community to power a vision for inclusive and interactive learning experiences rooted in exploration, inquiry, and play. DeeArah's current adventures also include writing, cooperative initiatives, and development of revolutionary educational framework and philosophy.

Reparations365 is JACK's series of performances, workshops and discussions around the topic of distributive justice for Black Americans. Launched in February 2017, the series consists of public offerings featuring a convergence of scholars, artists and activists. The series includes several community conversations, panel discussions and interactive workshops curated with the participation of our neighbors and members of the artistic and activist community in New York. Through the series, participants discover multiple ways to engage with the topic, all with an intention of offering tangible take-ways for participants and a concrete movement forward. The People's Think Tank emerged out of the series in order to offer a way for participants to brainstorm together next steps for real change.

Reparations365 is made possible in part by the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.