We are excited to invite everyone to our Black History Month public program: Rootead Youth Drum and Dance Ensemble (RYDDE)!
ACSJL Black History Month: Rootead Youth Drum & Dance Ensemble
Posts
Resisting Harm, Building the Future: A 2.5 Day Gathering for International Women’s Day
Join Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL) for a 2.5-day gathering as we unpack and strategize around the urgent threats posed by rising fascism and the rollbacks on hard-won rights […]
Dame Grant: A Small Town Black
The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership welcomes Comedian, Actor, and Director Dame Grant as he performs sketches of his narrative about growing up in a small midwestern town as a black person. He addresses common microaggressions and misconceptions often projected onto Black folks, and the resilience we must cultivate to maintain our identities and thrive in small towns.
This is US!
While for some this moment of uprising that has spread to over 700 cities and towns in the US and in cities in the Global North and South might be a surprise; for us who have been oppressed, murdered, exploited, and disproportionately affected by poverty, Covid 19, infant and maternal mortality, and more, it is not. As James Baldwin penned in 1966, writing on a 1964 Harlem police murder and uprising, it is simply the overflow of the “unimaginably bitter cup” of four hundred years of trauma and pain. To quote Toni Morrison, who was asked the question about “riots” in 1992 after the beating of Rodney King, “What struck me most about those who rioted was how long they waited. The restraint they showed. Not the spontaneity, the restraint. They waited and waited for justice and it didn’t come. No one talks about that.”