When We Fight, We Win!: The Role of Art and Culture in Movement Building
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Friday, Jul. 15 2:00 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Friday, Jul. 15 3:15 PM (Eastern)
What is the role of art and culture in movement building? How are we developing artist leadership in cultural organizing? How do we create structures which support cultural work in our organizations? Based on their new book “When We Fight, We Win! 21st Century Social Movements and the Activists that are Transforming our World,” Greg Jobin-Leeds joins forces with AgitArte, Paulina Helm-Hernandez of SONG and other organizers and artists to further the discussion on the role of cultural work within our organizations, communities and movements. This panel will consider the mutual impact that arts and social movements have on each other and explore how the arts as cultural forms contribute to social transformation.
Moderator
Panelists
Sasha Costanza-Chock
I’m a scholar, activist, and media-maker, and currently Associate Professor of Civic Media at MIT. I created the MIT Codesign Studio (codesign.mit.edu), and am a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. My book Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets: Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement was published by the MIT Press in 2014. I’m a board member of Allied Media Projects (alliedmedia.org), and a worker/owner at Research Action Design (RAD.cat), a worker-owned cooperative that uses community-led research, transformative media organizing, technology development, and collaborative design to build the power of grassroots social movements.
Paulina Helm-Hernández
Paulina Helm-Hernandez is a queer artist, trainer, political organizer, strategist & trouble-maker-at-large from Veracrúz, Mexico. She grew up in rural North Carolina, and is currently growing roots in Atlanta, GA. She has been the Co-Director of Southerners on New Ground (SONG) for 10 years, and has a background in farm worker and immigrant / refugee rights organizing, cultural work, youth organizing, anti-violence work, and liberation work that centers people most affected by violence, poverty, war and racism. Paulina currently sits on the board of www.politicalresearch.org and the Vision and Strategies Council of www.kindredhealingjustice.org and is always exploring ways to deepen political unity with people willing to fight and organize for collective liberation.
Dey Hernández
Deymirie (Dey) Hernández is an architect by training, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Issues of race, identity, language, and community are fundamental to her work. She experiences first-hand the power of the creative process in the lives of youth, as a teaching artist throughout the city of Boston. She designs and directs art workshops with AgitArte, a non-profit organization dedicated to artistic and popular education projects in marginalized communities, where she is also a board member. Dey is also a puppeteer of the radical workers’ theater collective, Papel Machete, which is based in Puerto Rico. Her work and performances most recently have been exhibited at the Mills Gallery of the Boston Center for the Arts, and Loisaida Center, Lower East Side, New York City. She is the art director and curator of “WHEN WE FIGHT, WE WIN!: Twenty-First-Century Social Movements and the Activists That Are Transforming Our World”.
Greg Jobin-Leeds
Greg Jobin-Leeds is co-author of WHEN WE FIGHT, WE WIN! 21st Century Social Movements and the Activists Who are Transforming Our World (New Press, 2016). For the past half year, Greg has been touring the country with co-authors, Deymirie Herandez and Jorge Diaz of AgitArte, and local activists and artists to share stories, theatre and stunning art.
Greg is co-founder and board co-chair of the award-winning Schott Foundation for Public Education, whose mission is to develop and strengthen a broad-based and representative movement to achieve fully resourced, quality PreK-12 public education.
A son of refugees fleeing war and genocide, Greg’s been committed to uplifting the voices of those most under-represented in our society.