Confronting the challenges of the past year has taught us to use new tools to connect with our history and with each other. Our collaborator Carla Riehle has helped us learn the ins and outs of Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube, so that we can include participants from outside the Twin Cities, livestream conversations, and archive them for later viewing. These have been significant developments in enriching our work and in making it available to wider audiences. Carla has also been converting some of our recorded conversations into podcasts, so that you can listen while driving or exercising.
If you missed any of our outstanding programs in February, you can still watch them, and if you found them worthwhile, you can recommend them to your friends, families, co-workers, and neighbors. On February 14, a panel of community activists came together to discuss their experiences with mutual aid in the Twin Cities since the uprising occasioned by the murder of George Floyd. Entitling their conversation “Solidarity Not Charity,” they asked each other—and the audience—challenging questions about overcoming institutional racism and creating a better world. Watch the conversation here.
Three days later, in partnership with Mississippi Market Food Co-op, we convened more than 200 people, who, having watched the TPT documentary “Jim Crow of the North,” were exploring the relationships between inequities in housing and inequities in access to healthy food. Audience members engaged with the filmmaker, Daniel Bergin, and staff from the food co-ops. Watch the conversation here.
On February 22, in partnership with the Twin Cities Japanese American Citizens League, we screened and discussed the new documentary film, “Conscience and the Constitution,” which told the story of the resistance to the military draft mounted by young Japanese American men who were incarcerated in the internment camps created by President Roosevelt’s 1942 Executive Order. The lively post-film discussion included Frank Abe, the filmmaker, Jaylani Hussein, the Executive Director of CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations, and two University of Minnesota students. You can watch the conversation here.
Perhaps the piece-de-resistance was the intergenerational dialog on February 23, co-sponsored by the Ramsey County Historical Society, in which Dr. Josie Johnson, author of the wonderful new memoir Hope in the Struggle, and Tish Jones, poet and founder of TruArt Speaks, explored the conversation between past and present which has informed the freedom movement over its many, many decides. Watch here.
This is not to discourage you from attending ESFL programs in real time, so that you can ask questions and participate in the conversations. We have great programs coming up in March. Here are a few featured ones: