Collective Impact Series 2024

Ida B Wells: More Than A Street, A Force For Activism
Discussion
Vimeo Link: A recording of this discussion is available on request for class presentations.
Please contact: community@colum.edu

For the Collective Impact series Michelle Duster, writer, speaker, professor, and champion of racial and gender equity, will share her thoughts on the important work of her great-grandmother Ida B. Wells and how her legacy lives on through current activism. Michelle will also discuss her forthcoming book Ida B The Queen - (Atria/One Signal Publishers - division of Simon & Schuster) - January 2021

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South. (1)

Adjunct Professor Michelle teaches Business Writing in the Business and Entrepreneurship Department at Columbia College Chicago. She co-wrote the popular children’s history book, Tate and His Historic Dream; co-edited Impact: Personal Portraits of Activism; Shifts: An Anthology of Women's Growth Through Change; Michelle Obama’s Impact on African American Women and Girls; and edited two books that include the writings of her great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells. She has written articles for TIME, Essence, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Refinery29, and The North Star. She has appeared on television programs on MSNBC, CNN, WTTW, CBS & CW as well as numerous radio shows. Her advocacy has led to street names, monuments, historical markers, and other public history projects that highlight women and African Americans, including Wells.

Her many awards include the 2019 Multi-Generational Activist Award from the Illinois Human Rights Commission and the 2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award from Dartmouth College. She is a native Chicagoan who earned her B.A. in Psychology from Dartmouth College, and M.A. in Media Studies from The New School in New York City. She also completed MFA coursework in film and video production at Columbia College Chicago. (2)

Article by Michelle Duster:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/11/gap-education-equality-is-holding-america-back/

Resources:
https://columbiachronicle.com/her-name-was-starting-to-fade-from-public-memory-michelle-duster-shares-her-fight-to-honor-ida-b-wells
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/03/opinions/what-ida-b-wells-would-say-about-capitol-riot-duster/index.html
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ida-B-the-Queen/Michelle-Duster/9781982129811
https://library.colum.edu/archives/search/?q=Ida+B+Wells
https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.IBWELLS

Sources:
(1) https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett

By Arlisha R. Norwood, NWHM Fellow | 2017
(2) https://mldwrites.com/about-michelle

Dr Vickie Casanova-Willis - Tuesday 8th Dec 6.30pm 2020
Discussion
Vimeo Link: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/489145865

Dr Vickie Casanova-Willis, MBA, MAT, and PhD in Global and Comparative Education, is a non profit administrator and educator, splitting her time between direct service and writing to advance the growing human rights movement in the US. She is a teaching artist and cultural worker with decades of activism, working with children and families in the Black and Latino communities on Chicago’s South and West Sides. She is affiliated with US Human Rights Network. Her focus is on building capacity for historically marginalized individuals and communities to participate in the decisions that impact their lives and futures.

Dr. Casanova-Willis is a founding member of Black People Against Police Torture, the grassroots organization that helped lead a broad based coalition to internationalize Chicago’s police torture issue, while creating the Torture Inquiry Relief Commission - a state legislative remedy for Torture victims. She has performed, published articles, and presented papers at national and international conferences, speaking on race and ethnicity from an arts, education, and media perspective.

A question from the event: You mentioned how the issues we hear about in the public discourse are intersectional. Do you find it overwhelming to choose which topic you want to tackle, and how do you address the “sub-issues” within one topic?

Links to resources mentioned in talk by Dr Vickie Casanova-Willis are below:

Article: Black People Against Police Torture: The Importance of Building a People-Centered Human Rights Movement - 2016 Vickie Casanova and Willis Standish E. Willis
21 Pub. Interest L. Rptr. 235 (2016). Available at: https://lawecommons.luc.edu/pilr/vol21/iss3/7

https://ushrnetwork.org/index.php

https://www.first-defense.org/

https://ijrcenter.org/ihr-reading-room/overview-of-the-human-rights-framework/

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Migration/Pages/HumanRightsFramework.aspx

https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx

Azizi Marshall and Eduardo Bocanegra
Discussion
Vimeo Link: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/481914121

The Collective Impact Series presented a discussion between Columbia College Chicago alum and founding director of the Center for Creative Arts Therapy Azizi Marshall '01 and Eduardo Bocanegra Senior Director for Heartland Alliance READI Chicago. They discussed their experiences with nonviolence initiatives in Chicago. Pathways for creatives to get involved in this area of social practice were explored along with the current issues facing violence prevention activities in Chicago.

The philosophy of nonviolence is based on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. civil rights action to fight for justice by humanizing the process. The six principles of the philosophy are, nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people, seeks to win friendship and understanding, seeks to defeat injustice not people, holds that suffering can educate and transform, chooses to love instead of hate and believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

Questions Asked by the Audience to the Panel

Q1. Hi Azizi. Great to be here. I’m curious if you’ve reflected on connections that might exist between the distance you are experiencing with ‘remote’ arts work and the experience of ‘remote’ that may be felt by our incarcerated fellow citizens?

Q2. For Aziz, what do you think was the hardest part for you in using the arts to break down those barriers you just talked about?

Q3. The two speakers are amazing. Thank you for sharing with us! This isn’t really a question to put you on the spot—I just want you to talk more about what it means to you to “play”, to “collaborate”, to “practice art” to shift us toward a more equitable future.

Q4. In the civic media practicum class, I’m researching sexual harassment in workplaces. I would love to learn a little bit about how you would use creative art to help implement changes in policies for employees to have a safe place to report these issues.

Q5. Azizi- Have you run into any challenges helping people working through trauma with art? Are some people resistant to expressing themselves initially?

Q6. How did you both find your way from art to more of a community impact / engagement focus within the arts.

Q7. Do you have any simple suggestions for how to bring an arts-based approach to increasing engagement for K-12 students in their video classes? We're looking at offering some improv sessions....

Q8. Eduardo: In an Upswell interview you addressed the issues of the funding of nonprofits and existing systemic challenges. What kind of policy changes is READI Chicago pushing for?

Q9. Thank you for this powerful discussion. How do you both approach the non-verbal aspects of trauma? Are the narrative therapy techniques effective or do you use other methods?

Q10. Do you have any simple suggestions for how to bring an arts-based approach to increasing engagement for K-12 students in their video classes? We're looking at offering some improv sessions....

Event Data

Registered to attend - 51

Attendance - 26 (not including Collective Impact team)

22 Students - 2 Staff - 2 Faculty

madison moore
Discussion
Link: https://chicagofashionlyceum.com

Chicago Fashion Lyceum: Fashion at the Periphery 2020

Keynote: madison moore
“A Field Guide to Fabulousness”

This keynote explored the queerness of sequins, glitter and other accoutrements of “fabulousness” and how these pave the way for alternative, peripheral methods of being in the world. We explored fabulousness as a survival tactic, a worldmaking strategy that queer and trans people of color use to create vibrant elsewhere. We explored recent developments in social media and popular culture to think through how fabulousness offers an escape hatch from the anxieties of a culture that works tirelessly to keep multiply marginalized people at the periphery.

This event was moderated by Rikki Byrd. Following the keynote and discussion, the Chicago Fashion Lyceum screened a fashion film by Byron Edge that explores the idea of fashion at the periphery set to a soundtrack by Chicago-based DJ Shaun Wright.

This project is partially supported by the Fashion Studies Department and a generous grant from the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Columbia College Chicago.

To find out more about Fashion at the Periphery 2020 and the Chicago Fashion Lyceum visit: https://chicagofashionlyceum.com

To find out more about madison moore visit: https://www.madisonmooreonline.com/

Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric by madison moore

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300204704/fabulous

An exploration of what it means to be fabulous—and why eccentric style, fashion, and creativity are more political than ever

Prince once told us not to hate him ’cause he’s fabulous. But what does it mean to be fabulous? Is fabulous style only about labels, narcissism, and selfies—looking good and feeling gorgeous? Or can acts of fabulousness be political gestures, too? What are the risks of fabulousness? And in what ways is fabulous style a defiant response to the struggles of living while marginalized? madison moore answers these questions in a timely and fascinating book that explores how queer, brown, and other marginalized outsiders use ideas, style, and creativity in everyday life. Moving from catwalks and nightclubs to the street, moore dialogues with a range of fabulous and creative powerhouses, including DJ Vjuan Allure, voguing superstar Lasseindra Ninja, fashion designer Patricia Field, performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon, and a wide range of other aesthetic rebels from the worlds of art, fashion, and nightlife. In a riveting synthesis of autobiography, cultural analysis, and ethnography, moore positions fabulousness as a form of cultural criticism that allows those who perform it to thrive in a world where they are not supposed to exist.

madison moore, PhD, is a cultural critic and DJ whose writing has appeared in Theater, The Paris Review, Crack Magazine, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Aperture, Thought Catalog, Out, Splice Today, and Interview. Born in Ferguson, Missouri, madison currently lives in Richmond, Virginia, where he is an Assistant Professor of Queer Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

ISBN: 9780300204704
Publication Date: April 17, 2018

280 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/4
21 color (insert) + 7 b/w illus. in text