REPARATIONS AND EDUCATION
November 28, 2018
Part of JACK’s ongoing series, Reparations365
JACK offers a conversation around the theme of repair and education. We invite you to explore with us the challenges in our educational system, both local and beyond, and to learn about current efforts to infuse equity into that system.
Featured guests include:
Kesi Foster (Lead Organizer, Make the Road NY, and contributor to the Reparations platform for the Movement for Black Lives)
Megan Hester (Director of Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative at NYU's Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools)
Maurice Blackmon (public school teacher and team member of Integrate NYC)
The evening will be moderated by artist/educator nicHi douglas.
Kesi Foster (panelist) is an organizer with Make The Road New York, a member of the Urban Youth Collaborative and Dignity in Schools and Alliance for Educational Justice Coalitions. Make The Road New York builds the power of immigrant and working class communities of color to achieve dignity and justice. Foster contributed to the writing of the Reparations Platform for The Movement for Black Lives.
Maurice J. Blackmon (panelist) is a six-year educator with the NYC Department of Education, and Advocacy Coach with IntegrateNYC. He also works on the Steering Committee of Proud Teach Initiative, a teacher advocacy organization that promotes LGBTQ+ identities being normalized in school communities for the sake of affirming and informing all members of the school community. His activist work began when he collaborated with students of color in a predominantly white school to organize its first Black Student Union. Maurice also served as advisor on the American To Me docu-series advisory team and led the NYC campaign launch and workshops. Maurice sits on the NYU Metro Center's CRE Working Group and teaches social studies at Essex Street Academy in Manhattan's Lower East Side. He feels that education is the process of broadening a person’s vantage point beyond the scope of their limited perspective, and is therefore a liberating act.
Megan Hester (panelist) has worked in the education justice movement for two decades as an organizer, trainer and researcher. She is the Director of the Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative (EJ-ROC) at NYU's Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. EJ-ROC builds on a long tradition of movement-driven, participatory community research and uses in racial justice lens in providing research, policy, data and strategic support to parent and youth organizing groups across the country. Prior to coming to the NYU Metro Center, Megan worked with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, where she supported the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, the Urban Youth Collaborative, and other education organizing groups in New York City. Before that, she worked as a parent and youth organizer with neighborhood and faith-based organizations. She has two children in Brooklyn public schools.
nicHi douglas (Moderator) is a Brooklyn-based performer, choreographer, director, playwright and activist. She has performed all over New York and the country as an actor/dancer in the freelance capacity, in addition to performing nationally with The Dance Cartel and literacy-focused children’s theatre company The Story Pirates. She currently teaches Movement & Choreography and Performance Symposium in the NYU: Tisch Drama Department – Playwright’s Horizon Theater School studio. She was in residence in Fresh Ground Pepper's inaugural In-House Artists program and is currently an Ars Nova’s Maker’s Lab artist-in-residence for 2018. nicHi is the Director of Community Engagement at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. She has performed in and/or designed curriculum for the Brooklyn Museum, BAM, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pig Iron School, and San Francisco MoMA. Recent stage credits: A Time Like This: Music for Change (Carnegie Hall, Stage Director), Runaways (City Center/Encores! Off-Center and The Delacorte/Public Theater, Associate Director & Associate Choreographer), Primer for a Failed Superpower (Roulette, Choreographer), The Dance Cartel: ONTHEFLOOR (A.R.T./Oberon, Principal Dancer), NOW EVERYONE GO AROUND THE TABLE AND SAY WHAT THEY'RE THANKFUL FOR (NYU/Experimental Theater Wing, Director), Black Girl Magic Show! (Ars Nova ANT Fest and JACK, Director/Choreographer/Playwright), they told us not to pray (Playwrights Horizons Downtown, Director & Choreographer), and Girl From the North Country (The Public Theater, Associate Choreographer)
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.
This series is made possible by a Humanities New York Action Grant, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from many individual donors.