History Revealed: Finding Moses Dickson with Karen Sieber
2024-06-20 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
June 20 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

History Revealed: Finding Moses Dickson
with Karen Sieber
Thursday, June 20, 2024, 7:00 pm
Watch for program details to come.

In partnership with the East Side Freedom Library & Roseville Library.
New documentation places Moses Dickson, one of the most well-known leaders of the Underground Railroad, living in Minnesota during the 1850s. Despite being one of the most influential Black figures of the nineteenth century, there has always been a gap in knowledge about the abolitionist’s whereabouts in the 1850s, a period in which he was known to have led countless individuals to freedom and organized a massive slave rebellion. In celebration of Juneteenth, historian Karen Sieber, Director of the Finding Moses Initiative, will give a talk on Dickson and his time in Minnesota and will provide insight into how Dickson’s story connects to both the local and the national Black freedom movements. She will also discuss a new initiative being launched around Dickson to examine the people, places, and moments of the nineteenth-century Black Midwest, a collaboration between scholars across state lines.

Karen Sieber is an award-winning scholar of riots and resistance, Black history, and labor history in the United States. She is best known as the creator of Visualizing the Red Summer, part of the AP African American Studies curriculum, and for her work in the Gayle King CBS documentary Tulsa 1921: An American Tragedy. Her work has appeared in Jacobin, Yahoo, MSN, Minnesota History, The Conversation, PBS, Smithsonian, American Historical Association, Labor, and in the book Where Are the Workers?: Labor’s Stories at Museums and Historic Sites. For more on her work visit www.ksieber.com.

Closing Reception: Meet the Artist, Archives in Motion with Leslie Grant and Jeffrey Skemp
2024-11-09 13:00 - 16:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Closing Reception: Archive in Motion: The ATU Workers of Metro Transit
Saturday, November 9, 2024
1:00 – 4:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Join Photographers Leslie Grant and Jeffrey Skemp, and project partners for the closing event for the exhibit, a series of photographs, “Actions and Archives: The ATU Workers of Metro Transit” depicting days in the life of Metro Transit workers who keep the city moving.
FROM THE ARTISTS
This project explores labor through a visual focus on members of the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 1005 and Metro Transit employees. Images of the moment of labor, of tools and objects used, connect us to laborers – bus operators, mechanics, union leaders, rank and file members – and the crucial work they perform. Photographs are a way to pay attention to and honor the labor of public transit workers all around us.
Our interest in public transit developed out of a larger project involving a loose collaboration of artists focused on the Shoreham Yards railyard in NE Minneapolis. Photographing trucking company employees at this site led us to consider other modes of transportation occurring nearby, and how public transit connects Shoreham to the greater life of the city through the lived experience of transit workers.
We started by attending ATU Local 1005 meetings to introduce ourselves and our project ideas to members. Once we met workers who wanted to participate, we spent time riding routes with bus operators such as Todd Eddy and M. Harris, taking pictures on the job and at the end of the line. We photographed Kira Ross, the first black female mechanic for Metro Transit, and we have also made portraits of David Stiggers, the current president of ATU Local 1005. Other images we have included are still lives of tools and objects used by bus operator Todd Eddy, documentation of the ATU Local 1005 archives, and historical images of public transit sites found at the Hennepin History Museum.
The erasure of labor runs through the history of photography. Our project (however), highlights workers and labor union members in order to insist on the importance of the visibility of labor in contemporary life. And, photographs of all kinds can be generative – they hold the possibility to open up identities, resist simplicity, counteract harmful narratives, and imagine new ways of being in the world.
Leslie Grant (she/her/hers) is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with photography and archival materials. She uses images to connect with and tell the stories of people at work. Her practice includes collaboration with other makers to bring in multiple perspectives and ideas.
Jeffrey Skemp (he/him/his) is a multimedia artist and poet based in Minneapolis whose work often combines photography, poetry and video. Several of his most recent projects have, in part, examined humanity’s complex relationship with our surrounding natural environment.
Hear the artists talk about this project in the “Still Lives of Workers in Motion” episode of Labor Heritage Power Hour.

History Day Help at East Side Freedom Library
2024-11-16 10:00 - 12:00, 2024-11-23 10:00 - 12:00, 2024-11-30 10:00 - 12:00, 2024-12-07 10:00 - 12:00, 2024-12-14 10:00 - 12:00, 2024-12-21 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-01-04 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-01-11 10:00 - 12:00 and 9 more dates | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN HISTORY
The 2025 National History Day theme asks students to think about how rights have been won and exercised and how they connect to responsibilities as members of society. Are students interested in racial justice, labor activism, women’s rights, immigrant history, GLBTQ+ movements, environmental activism, and more? Send them to the East Side Freedom Library to find rich resources (books, art, music, and more) for their research and experienced mentors eager to help them shape their project. We have worked effectively with local students for the past ten years.
EVERY SATURDAY MORNING, 10AM TO NOON
BEGINNING NOVEMBER 16
We encourage students to make an appointment by emailing Peter Rachleff at peter@eastsidefreedomlibrary.org. Students should be prepared to follow our safety protocols, including wearing a mask if asked (as we are unsure what our precautions will be as we get deeper into the fall). After their initial mentoring consultation, they will be welcome to come at other times to use our resources, and our mentors will be available for one-on-one conversations, in person or remotely. If you would like to speak with us, feel free to call us at 651-207-4926. We look forward to working with you and your students.

Make a Multilingual Art Shanty! Spill Paint, Not Oil!
2025-01-04 12:00 - 16:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Make a Multilingual Art Shanty! Spill Paint, Not Oil!
Saturday, January 4, 2025, noon – 4:00
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN
Registration is encouraged
Join the Spill Paint, Not Oil studio in creating a community poem. Add your words, in whatever language you know.
Last year a Saint Paul based artist collective called Spill Paint Not Oil made an installation for the Art Shanty Festival. They are going to install it again this year but they would like to include more languages than english in their piece.

They call their installation A Poem for Entangled Living. This project features movable words and images strung together to make poems about grief, abolition, and community. They are looking for help from their community on the East Side! If you speak a language other than English, please come to an art build to help brainstorm, paint signs, and collaborate! They want to reflect the diversity of the twin cities so they are especially looking for folks familiar with Hmong, Somali, Spanish, Karen, Dakota, Lakota, Ojibwe, Arabic, Swahili, and Amharic! All are welcome to join in creating this piece. Add your voice.

This activity is free and open to everyone in the cause of solidarity! Registration is encouraged.

MISSION POSSIBLE: MLK 2025 Celebration
2025-01-20 11:00 - 15:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
MISSION POSSIBLE: Protecting Freedom, Justice and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence!
Monday, January 20, 2025, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
ArT @ 967 Payne | 967 Payne Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55130
Inspired by this theme put forth by THE KING CENTER for MLK Day 2025, the East Side Freedom Library and ArT @ 967 Payne are thrilled to collaborate and invite our entire community to a celebration honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and recognizing his important legacy and irrevocable impact on our society and democracy.
“FORMAL PROGRAM” – January 20, 12 pm – 1 pm:
Join us for a series of poetry readings by a diverse group of local authors, followed by an inspiring community conversation inviting all to share their ideas and aspirations about freedom, justice, and democracy.
OPEN HOUSE – January 20, 11 am – 3 pm:
Watch a selection of videos highlighting excerpts from the moist poignant speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; meet the poets and authors in person and check out/purchase some of their books; see our our fabulous exhibition of textiles and works on paper by Nigerian artist Tunde Odunlade and, at the same time, check out a pop-up show of paintings and photographs by our own resident artists at ArT @ 967 Payne, assembled and curated for MLK Day 2025; and enjoy some light refreshments wile meeting your neighbors and making new friends.
Free event – all are welcome!
Location: ArT @ 967 Payne | 967 Payne Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55130

Bearing Witness: Pieces for Cello from Kirsten Whitson
2025-01-26 15:00 - 16:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Bearing Witness: Pieces for Cello from Kirsten Whitson
Sunday, January 26, 2025, 3:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN
The East Side Freedom Library is pleased to welcome back Kirsten Whitson as she performs Bearing Witness.
Bearing Witness is a program of music for cello that reflects global racial injustice, genocide and cultural loss. It is a musical experience designed to promote learning and awaken empathy, inspiring authentic connections and deeper community engagement. It is an enlightening concert, weaving together history lessons from a worldwide perspective with an artistic focus. Between pieces, video narration provides real-life stories from marginalized cultures. The storytellers are teenagers, representing the next generation; our future. The juxtaposition of children with these important issues is powerful. Following the performance, the community is invited to participate in Q and A with the artist.
The program:
Thirty-Eight Tears by Timothy C. Takach, which honors the Dakota men executed in Mankato, MN by the US Government in 1862, with poetry by the Dakota author Gwen Westerman, written for me
Khse Buon by Chinary Ung, a Cambodian who lost family members during the Khmer Rouge regime
Sonata No. 1 by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish Jew who fled Warsaw as a teen during World War Two
Three Pieces for Solo Cello: Rosewood, Pickin’ and The Long Way North by John Williams, about the racially motivated destruction of Rosewood, FL in 1923
Finding Refuge Together by Jocelyn Hagen, with a video essay by Kao Kalia Yang, about her childhood in a refugee community in St. Paul (written for me)
Kirsten Whitson is a cellist in Saint Paul and a 2020 McKnight Artist Fellow. Bearing Witness has been recognized with four awards. She was awarded the Artist Initiative Grant in 2018 from the Minnesota State Arts Board to create and develop the program. She was awarded a 2021 Creative Support grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to commission another piece for the program by Minnesota artists, to bring focus to our local community. The Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers awarded her a grant to work with mentor James Bowey to create the format for a post concert community conversation.
This event is free and open to everyone for the cause of solidarity!

Community Screening: "Nuestra Herencia"
2025-01-30 19:00 - 21:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Community Screening of “Nuestra Herencia”
Thursday, January 30, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
This event is free and open to everyone!
Brought to you by:
Urban Roots
Twin Cities Community Agricultural Land Trust
Trilingua Cinema
and the East Side Freedom Library
Join us at the East Side Freedom Library for a community screening of “Nuestra Herencia”, a series of short documentary films exploring immigration, personal histories, gardens, and legacy through the lives of 10 senior gardeners of El Paseo Community Garden in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Connect with community, fellow community gardeners and supportive organizations as we celebrate the role that garden spaces play in our own sense of community and wellness.
This is a film made by On The Real and Yaritza Guillen. Guillen is an urbanist, storyteller, and unapologetic optimist. Her focus lies in interdisciplinary practices, community-based design, and story mapping. As a cultural producer and community planner, she has engaged in various projects, including the Nuestra Herencia: Legacy Film Project where she documented the experiences of elders in her community during the pandemic and is one of the We Will Chicago artists whose project involved designing a weather adaptable pergola at South Merrill Community Garden. She also led an Ethical Storytelling Training for Environmental Justice Lawyers with the Environmental Defense Fund.
This event is free and open to everyone for the cause of solidarity.
This movie is in Spanish with English subtitles.

Mapping Our Housing Family Trees with East Side Freedom Library Art Lab
2025-02-15 13:00 - 14:00 | Arlington Hills Library, 1200 Payne Avenue, Saint Paul, MN, 55130, United States
Mapping Our Housing Family Trees with East Side Freedom Library Art Lab
Date and Time: Saturday, February 15, 1-2pm
Location: Arlington Hills Library, 1200 Payne Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55130
FREE!
Workshop Description: Join the East Side Freedom Library’s Art Lab Fellows for an interactive workshop where participants will explore their families’ housing histories and create family trees and maps together! Multigenerational families and children are welcome. All materials will be provided, but if you have photos of places your family has lived/currently lived, feel free to bring them as references.
The East Side Freedom Library (ESFL) works to mobilize community knowledge for solidarity, justice, and equity for all. The ESFL Art Lab is an eight month fellowship focused on creating public art around a shared theme. The inaugural cohort of four artists is focused around the theme of “Housing Justice.”
This year’s Art Lab cohort includes:
Lis Sundberg
Sterling Miller
Sophie Wang
Marcia Rowe
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Exhibit Opening: YOU BETCHA! FARMER-LABOR SOLIDARITY IS POSSIBLE, Art and History
2025-02-20 18:30 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
YOU BETCHA! FARMER-LABOR SOLIDARITY IS POSSIBLE
a moveable monument to history and hope
East Side Freedom Library
1105 Greenbrier Street
Saint Paul, MN 55106
Exhibit runs February 20– May 4, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 20th, 2025, 7pm, doors: 6:30pm
Join us Thursday, February 20th, 2025 for the Opening Reception of “You Betcha! Farmer-Labor Solidarity is Possible!”
Did you know that Minnesota is home to the most successful third-party movement in U.S. history? 2024 marked the 100th anniversary of the Farmer-Labor Party and the remarkable movement of solidarity that supported it. In honor of this centennial celebration and in partnership with Monument Lab’s Re-Generation initiative, the Farmer-Labor Education Committee (FLEC) commissioned Gita Ghei to create a permanent traveling sculpture, commemorating the Farmer-Labor movement in Minnesota. She and her team engaged with people throughout the state to inform permanent art that commemorates this important history in a whimsical artwork!
Experience this Moveable Monument, a tangible, touchable, playable monument!
Celebrate with us!
Gita Ghei is a metal sculptor, specializing in public art and teaching.

August Nimtz: Marx, Douglass and the Fight for Racial Equality: a Panel with Kyle Edwards
2025-02-26 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
August Nimtz: Marx, Douglass and the Fight for Racial Equality: a Panel with Kyle Edwards
Wednesday, February 26, 2025, 7 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Sign up here for this free virtual event
Join the East Side Freedom Library with noted University of Minnesota scholar August Nimtz and his coauthor Kyle Edwards as we explore the present-day themes illuminated in their book The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution: Comparing Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass in Real-Time.
What sort of politics leads to real emancipation? This question led Nimtz and Edwards back to the Civil War and Reconstruction. Their work engages a conversation with two competing political perspectives, liberalism and Marxism, examining the biggest breakthrough for the millennial-old democratic quest after the French Revolution occurred – the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States. But it does so with a purpose for today. As CLR James said, “You can study history and understand where we are today and why and where we are going tomorrow.”
August H. Nimtz, Ph.D., is a nationally renowned professor of political science and African American and African studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. He specializes in Marxism, political economy, politics of race, class & ethnicity, and African politics.
Kyle A. Edwards is a Curriculum Associate at the University of Minnesota. He is a member of AFSCME 3800 and author of “Those Deluded, Ill-Starred Men: Frederick Douglass, the New National Era, and the Paris Commune.”
They will be joined by Jack McKivigan and Sidney Carlson White.
Jack McKivigan received his Ph.D. in History from the Ohio State University. He began work at the Frederick Douglass Papers at Yale University under its founding editor John W. Blassingame in 1979 and took over as the project’s director in 1994. Under his direction the project has published seven volumes with Yale University Press and has only three more to go to finish the most complete scholarly edition of an African American in history. McKivigan is also the author of important books and articles on various elements of radical history including abolitionism, civil rights, and labor history.
Sidney Carlson White is a member of Marxist Unity Group, a caucus of Democratic Socialists of America. He is on the Organizing Committee of the Central Brooklyn Branch of the New York City DSA. He has worked on mayoral and state legislative campaigns in New York, fighting for candidates who will be accountable to the socialist movement that supports them. Outside of his organizing work, his scholarship is in the areas of twentieth and twenty-first century American culture and its intersections with race and empire.
THIS VIRTUAL EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY! SIGN UP FOR YOUR LINK HERE!

Chavonn Williams Shen: Readings and Conversations!
2025-02-27 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Chavonn Williams Shen: Readings and Conversations!
with Carolyn Holbrook and Gen Del Raye
East Side Freedom Library
1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Thursday, February 27, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
Join the East Side Freedom Library for a reading from Chavonn Williams Shen and her guests Carolyn Holbrook and Gen Del Raye.
Chavonn’s first collection of poetry, Still Life with Rope and River explores racism through a chorus of voices surrounding Emmett Till’s murder. Through research in combination with emotional truth, Williams Shen uses persona poems to dive deep into the psyche of both common and lesser known people and objects regarding Till’s lynching. Williams Shen also weaves in their own narrative and family history of how Blackness is dissected and dismissed, illustrating how the past is a ghost to the present.
Chavonn Williams Shen (she/they) is from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was a 2022 McKnight Writing fellow and a first runner-up for The Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction Contest. She was also a Best of the Net Award finalist, a Pushcart Prize nominee, a winner of the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series, a fellow with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature, and an instructor for the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. A Bread Loaf, Tin House, VONA, and Hurston/Wright workshop alum, her writing has appeared in: Diode, Anomaly, AGNI, and others. Her debut book, Still Life with Rope and River, is published by Finishing Line Press.
Carolyn Holbrook is founder and Artistic/Executive Director of More Than a Single Story. Her memoir, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify, won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. She is co-editor with David Mura of the anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (Minn 2021), and is co-author with Arleta Little of civil rights icon, Dr. Josie R. Johnson’s memoir, Hope In the Struggle (Minn 2019) and Ordinary People, Extraordinary Journeys: How the St. Paul Companies Leadership Initiatives in Neighborhoods Program Changed Lives and Communities (2015). Her essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (MNHS 2015) and A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota (MNHS 2016). Her TEDx talk, “The Life you Live is the Legacy You will Leave” was presented at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN (2022).
Gen Del Raye is half Japanese and was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. His writing has appeared in the Gettysburg Review and Poetry Northwest, among others, and has been anthologized in The Best Small Fictions 2017 and Best New Poets 2019. His debut collection of short stories, Boundless Deep, and Other Stories, won the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction and is available from the University of Nebraska Press.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!

Pulitzer Prize finalist Mai Der Vang with Chaun Webster
2025-03-06 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Pulitzer Prize finalist Mai Der Vang in conversation with Chaun Webster about Primordial
Thursday, March 6, 2024, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN
books for sale from SubText Bookstore
Registration is encouraged
Pulitzer Prize finalist Mai Der Vang will be joined by poet and scholar Chaun Webster for a reading and conversation of her new collection of poetry, Primordial. In this new collection, Vang addresses the plight of the saola, an extremely rare and critically endangered animal native to the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam, as a vehicle to investigate the collective trauma and resilience experienced by Hmong people and communities, the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of the war in Vietnam, the lives of refugees afterward, and the postmemory carried by their descendants.
Vang’s work is lyrically insistent and visually compelling as she examines the saola’s relationship to Hmong refugee identity and cosmology and a shared sense of exile, precarity, privacy, and survival. Can a war-torn landscape and memory provide sanctuary, and what are the consequences for our climate, our origins, our ability to belong to a homeland? Written during a difficult pregnancy and postpartum period, Vang’s poems are urgent stays against extinction.
She will be in conversation with Chaun Webster.
Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain, a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and Afterland, winner of the First Book Award of the Academy of American Poets. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, her poetry has appeared in Tin House, the American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.

Chaun Webster is a poet and graphic designer living in Minneapolis whose work is attempting to put pressure on the spatial and temporal limitations of writing, of the English language, as a way to demonstrate its incapacity for describing blackness outside of a regime of death and dying. Webster’s books include, Gentry!fication: or the scene of the crime published by Noemi Press in 2018, and Wail Song: wading in the water at the end of the world, published by Black Ocean in 2023. Both books were awarded the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry.

This event is free and open for the cause of solidarity.

ESEJ Community Party: A Connection and Mutual Aid Event!
2025-03-08 13:00 - 15:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
ESEJ Community Party: A Connection and Mutual Aid Event!
Saturday, March 8, 2025, 1:00-3:30 pm
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Join East Side neighbors and concerned community members from across the region for this environmental justice mutual aid action!
The East Side of Saint Paul has long been an area of mixed use with industry abutting neighborhoods. Now we know the impact of heavy industry on the air, water and soil on the people who live in the vicinity. The East Side Environmental Justice group (ESEJ) was started by East Side neighbors to collectively address problems such as lack of trees, heat island, air pollution. A big focus has been the Northern Iron Foundry and its resistance to complying with the MPCA (Minnesota Pollution Control) to regulate emissions. Northern Iron has taken the MPCA to court to avoid taking responsibility in our neighborhood! ESEJ has been connecting with our neighbors to assess impact and bring support.
Opportunities include:

DIY air filter construction to take home to improve you indoor air quality
Mobile Food shelf distribution by Mom’s Food Shelf
Box lunch provided
Free Blood lead testing from ESNDC
Learn how to submit a complaint to the MPCA
Engage in community artwork
Build connections, friendships and knowledge

This event is enthusiastically supported by our East Side Community Councils
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE

Ben Barson and Brassroots Democracy: A Panel Discussion on Music and the Movements
2025-03-14 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Ben Barson and Brassroots Democracy: A Panel Discussion on Music and the Movements
Friday, March 14, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
FREE!
Join Ben Barson in conversation with Davu Seru, Yolanda Williams, Shekela Wanyama and Brass Solidarity for a conversation about music, culture and movements. Much like how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction, the tuneful art has been woven into grassroots social movements throughout the twentieth century, with implications for American culture writ large.
Benjamin Barson is a composer, historian, and musicologist. He is an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His research thinks through jazz as an Afro-Atlantic art form deeply tied to the counter-plantation legacies of the Haitian Revolution and their echoes in Radical Reconstruction. He received his PhD in Music from the University of Pittsburgh and recently completed a Fulbright Garcia-Robles postdoctoral fellowship at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in Mexicali, Mexico.
His work Mirror Butterfly: The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite (2018) was hailed as “Fully orchestrated and magnificently realized” (The Vermont Standard) as well as “a call to action” (I Care if You Listen). His teaching encourages students to consider musical aesthetics and their associated production practices through a holistic, interdisciplinary approach rooted in methodologies developed by scholars in Africana studies, musicology, cultural studies, and Atlantic History from below.
Davu Seru is the Curator of the Givens Collection of African American Literature at University of Minnesota. He is an improvising musician, composer and scholar known primarily for his work on drums. For the past 20+ years he has worked with musicians such as Milo Fine, George Cartwright, Nirmala Rajasekar, Douglas R. Ewart, Michelle Kinney, Dean Magraw, Paul Metzger, Evan Parker, Didier Petit, Babatunde Lea, Nathan Hanson, Mankwe Ndosi, Rafael Toral, David Boykin, Donald Washington, Guillame Seguron, Tony Hymas, David Boykin, Chris Bates, Catherine Delaunay, and Nicole Mitchell Gantt. Davu is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
Rev. Yolanda Y. Williams, Ph.D., is a performer, educator, scholar, and pastor. Yolanda performed soprano and mezzo-soprano repertoire with Vocalessence, the Rochester Symphony, La Choeur Symphonique de Fribourg, Lundi Sept Heures, Ensemble de Cuivres Jurassien, the Montreux Symphony, and the Israel Philharmonic. Her worldwide performances have been of music from the Classical, Jazz, Blues, and Gospel genres. Dr. Williams teaches music as a cultural artifact through the African American/African Studies department at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Shekela Wanyama (she/her/hers) builds community through crafting innovative and meaningful choral experiences. She is passionate about building a 21st century practice of art music that is inclusive, engaging, honest, and brave. A freelance conductor-educator based in Minneapolis, Dr. Wanyama serves on the faculty of the University of Minnesota, Hamline University, and the music staff at Unity Church-Unitarian. Dr. Wanyama holds a DMA in conducting from the University of Minnesota, an MM in choral conducting from Temple University, a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Minnesota, and is a proud graduate of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

This event is generously sponsored by the African American and African Studies Department at the University of Minnesota.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!
