Reparations365 is JACK's ongoing series of performances, workshops and discussions around the topic of distributive justice for Black Americans. Launched in February 2017, the series has so far consisted of over 50 public offerings featuring a convergence of scholars, artists and activists. 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.
UPCOMING EVENTS TO BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY
BACKGROUND
to make ready again photo by Ed Forti
The series is JACK’s effort to address head-on the challenge of racial discrimination – not only of the past, but for current injustices in housing, policing, hiring and incarceration.
The topic of reparations for Black Americans has gained renewed attention recently in America and abroad. Georgetown University recently announced plans to compensate descendants of enslaved persons that it sold to bolster its wealth nearly two hundreds years ago. A few years ago, the Movement for Black Lives included a call for reparations in its platform. Also, the United Nations expert group on People of African Descent recently called for the United States to address the legacy of slavery through reparations. Questions, debates and energy involving the issue seem resurgent, and momentum towards action is brewing.
The series has expansive implications that reflect JACK’s desire to contribute to the co-creation of a more just society, and to offer our space for conversation and imagination about how to get there. JACK is situated in a diverse neighborhood among other diverse neighborhoods – all of which are rich with Blackness and have varying degrees of trials, tensions and triumphs concerning black humanity, displacement, legacy and self-determination. This and many other factors affirm that the reparations series is well suited to our beloved Brooklyn.
Performances as part of the series have featured a host of artists in dance, theater and music exploring the topic of repairing racial injustice. Performances are programmed by JACK staff and several Co-Curators, including OBIE-winning writer, performer and playwright Carl Hancock Rux, scholar and performer Jadele McPherson, theater company Oye Group, choreographer/educator Jesse Phillips-Fein and scholar/writer Shanté Paradigm Smalls, among others.
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. Topics have included:
historical reparations efforts for Black Americans in the United States
intersectionality with reparations efforts by Indigenous peoples and others
past successes in achieving reparations for particular movements or peoples.
PAST EVENTS
Reparations & Mutual Aid
Wednesday, April 14, 2021 at 5 pm
Streamed live, with guests Sydnie L. Mosley and Brittany Williams
Moderated by DeeArah Wright
Full video here.
Black Revolutionary Theatre Workshop:
Melanated Mondays: Reparations
Monday, Feb. 3, 2020 at 7 pm
Suggested donation: $15 (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Each month, Black Revolutionary Theatre Workshop curates a selection of new works by the hottest up-and-coming Black writers around a new theme, and on February 3, they are bringing it to JACK with the topic of Reparations, as part of JACK's Reparations365 series. BRTW’s ensemble brings these pieces to life and facilitates a conversation with the audience about the underlying societal issues highlighted in the pieces and potential solutions to those challenges.
mayfield brooks:
Letters to Marsha with Viewing Hours (a diptych)
January 30 - February 1, 2020
In 1992, mayfield brooks had a missed connection with queer ancestor Marsha P. Johnson. Based on danced and written love notes, Letters to Marsha explores the weight of bodies and history, and the artist’s own evolution as a Black, non-binary queer connecting specters of Black queer death to memory, movement, sound, humor, and pathos. Also as part of the evening, brooks shares Viewing Hours, a piece that takes the form of a wake, with brooks examining perceptions of death and decay—specifically the spectacle of Black bodies dying, decomposing, and grieving in plain sight—and challenges the currency that makes Black death profitable.
Saturday, June 15, 2019 at 3 pm
at The Brooklyn Children's Museum (145 Brooklyn Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11213)
In this community conversation, we will gather ideas, affirmations, and solutions to actively decolonize and reclaim a concept of parenthood that ensures that all children and their caregivers have the agency, access, and community necessary to truly thrive. Join special guest speakers Sarita Covington, Megan Hester, Kate Malinowski, as well as moderator DeeArah Wright, as we discuss how we, as a village, can raise the next generation without repeating patterns of systemic racism, trauma, and toxic power dynamics.
Saturday, June 8, 2019 at 3 pm
At Weeksville Heritage Center
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.
Monday, January 28, 2019 at 7 pm
In this community conversation, we’ll look at the relation between philanthropic giving and radical social change. We’ll explore examples of new philanthropic initiatives that look to shift power instead of maintaining the status quo, also looking at examples of philanthropy around racial justice that have done little more than further existing hierarchies. With special guests Amadee Braxton of the Leeway Foundation and, by video hook-up, Karen Ferguson, author of the book "Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism." Moderated by former JACK Co-Director DeeArah Wright.
People's Think Tank: Reparations & The Arts working group session
Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019 at 7 pm
JACK hosts a working group session about what steps can be taken to address racial inequity in the field of the arts. We'll look at past historical examples of redress within the arts and beyond, and attempt to come up with a few proposals for the field.
Monday, January 7, 2019 at 7:00 pm
JACK offers a conversation around the theme of repair and the arts, inviting participants to share ideas around shifting power and transforming relationships in the field of the arts. With special guests Imani Uzuri and Candace Feldman, and moderated by former JACK Co-director DeeArah Wright. There will be food!
Nov. 28, 2018 at 7 pm
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 (Make the Road NY, and co-author of 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.
Ghetto Hors d'Oeuvres: Reparations
Presented by Oye Group
June 22 & 23, 2018 at 8 pm
Ghetto Hors d’Oeuvres sparks dialogue on complex issues of immigration, economics and survival through the richness of art, poetry and music. Enjoy free hors d’oeuvres and bear witness as an eclectic group of NYC artists, both native and immigrant, decipher the block and break down the rock that is the foundation and cornerstone of the NYC we call home.
A Day of Healing and Movement
With MINKA Brooklyn, RAKIA! and Marguerite Hemmings
June 24, 2018: 1 - 8 pm
JACK partners with healing practitioners from MINKA Brooklyn as well as dance artists RAKIA! and Marguerite Hemmings for a day of healing and movement as part of JACK’s newly-extended series, Reparations365, exploring distributive justice for Black Americans.
February 23, 2018 (7-9:30pm)
Building 92 @ Brooklyn Navy Yard
63 Flushing Ave Brooklyn, NY 11205
Currency | Current See is community and live art conversation curated by JACK, and an extension of our Reparations365 series in collaboration with Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership's Black Artstory Month 2018!
In Currency | Current See, artists, movers, neighbors, and activists gather to explore flow, value, and exchange.
This exploration is rooted in the understanding that our current monetary system in the United States was founded and resourced by the free labor of enslaved Africans, and this system continues to thrive at the expense of Black lives, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, and our collective humanity in the U.S. and beyond.
Participants will have the opportunity to make art and to illuminate more humane and sustainable ways to develop and
engage in currency systems. Special guest artists will set the tone for creative response and the amplification of Black voices.
SPECIAL GUEST ARTISTS:
OASA DUVERNEY
Brooklyn-Based Artist + Mother
https://oasaduverney.com/
THOMAS PIPER
Vocalist + Sound Sculptor + Visual Artist
http://www.thepeoplesrepublicofsound.com/
CYCLONE MUSINGS:
Blackness, Citizenship & Reparations in the Afro-Atlantic
Curated by Jadele McPherson
Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017 at 8 pm
With writer Venessa Marco, lyricist and poet Frantz Jerome and musician/educator Danielle Brown
A community conversation followed by performances.
RAKIA!: myeyesdontcrynomore
Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017 at 8 pm
The performance collective RAKIA!, led by choreographer and dancer Rakia Seaborn, inverts playground routines into the language with which a trio of dancers communicates with the black women who died too soon. This highly-stylized immortality ritual hearkens back to a care-free time of middle school talent shows, Blue Magic hair grease & "CrazySexyCool." myeyesdontcrynomore positions reparations as freedom from a never-ending fear of another black death. What if there was something else? Endless life, endless joy.
Charlottesville Equity Package info session
With Charlottesville Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy (via Skype)
Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017 at 7 pm
Martha Redbone and Ajamu Kojo
Black Street:
All of Which I Saw and Part of Which I Was
Curated by Carl Hancock Rux
Friday, Sept. 29, 2017 at 7:30 pm
OYE Group: OYE Avant Garde Night
September 21 - 24, 2017
Artists in theater, music, dance and film creating work around the topic of reparations.
Community Conversation:
Reparations for Whom?
A Community Conversation on Intersectionality
Part 1: U.S.A.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017 at 6:30 pm
We will explore the inherent intersectionality of a call for reparations, taking a closer look at domestic reparations efforts, including those for indigenous peoples and for Japanese families interned in the U.S. during WWII. Special guests will inform the conversation.
THE WORK OF IMAGINING:
Art in the Age of 'Apocalypse'
Sunday, May 28, 2017, 2 - 5 pm
Choreographer/educator Jesse Phillips-Fein and scholar/writer Shanté Paradigm Smalls join forces to co-curate a multi-genre performance event that asks us to wonder, witness, and explore what we do and make when the world we imagined we lived in goes away. The event will probe how we might imagine the end of the world as a possibility and an opening, and explores the ways art, performance, theory, discourse, argument, and community-building might shift and expand our political and social imaginations. FEATURED ARTISTS: Angela Arrocha, Avram Finkelstein, Robin Marquis and Waqia Abdul-Kareem, Ashley Marinaccio
Screening & Discussion: "Traces of the Trade"
Monday, April 17, 2017 at 7 pm
In the documentary Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, filmmaker Katrina Browne discovers that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine cousins retrace the Triangle Trade and gain powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide. For the post-screening discussion, one of these cousins, Elizabeth Sturges Llerena, will be moderating a discussion with the audience.
Marguerite Hemmings: to make ready again
February 2 - 3, 2017 at 8 pm
Choreographer Marguerite Hemmings presents the latest piece in her multimedia endeavor ‘we free,’ a series that focuses on what liberation means for the millennial generation.
COMMUNITY CONVERSATION: Why reparations?
Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017 at 7 pm
Co-sponsored by The Fire This Time Festival
COMMUNITY CONVERSATION: What would reparations look like?
Monday, March 20, 2017 at 7 pm
photo by Ed Forti
SUPPORTERS
This series is made possible by the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, 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.
