East Side Freedom Library

Make a Multilingual Art Shanty! Spill Paint, Not Oil!
2025-01-04 12:00 - 16:00 (America/Chicago) | 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.

History Day Help at East Side Freedom Library
2025-01-11 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-01-18 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-01-25 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-02-01 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-02-08 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-02-15 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-02-22 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-03-01 10:00 - 12:00 and 7 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.

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!

Histories on the Run: State Memory & Hmong Refugee Ways of Knowing
2025-03-28 18:30 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Histories on the Run: State Memory & Hmong Refugee Ways of Knowing
A Conversation with Ma Vang & Kong Pha
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Friday, March 28, 2025, 7:00 p.m.; doors, social and refreshments at 6:30
What does refugee history look like when government records try to keep state complicity in producing displacement a secret? How might Critical Hmong Studies help us to understand the forces of empire, war, place, and peoplehood more deeply? How are archives embodied and lived?
Join Professors Ma Vang (UC Merced, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies) and Kong Pha (UW-Madison, Gender, Women, Sexuality Studies and Asian American Studies) for a community discussion on Vang’s History on the Run: Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Hmong Refugee Epistemologies (Duke, 2021) and Pha’s forthcoming Hyperheterosexual Subjects: Racialized Cultures of Gender and Sexuality in Hmong America (University of Washington Press, 2025).
Dr. Ma Vang is an Associate Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. Her most recent book is History on the Run: Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Hmong Refugee Epistemologies (Duke University Press, 2021). She is co-author of Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies (UC Press, 2022) and co-editor of Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). She teaches courses in critical race theory, critical refugee and immigration studies, and interdisciplinary humanities. She is actively involved in Merced community organizations in an advisory role on youth and education projects.

Dr. Kong Pheng Pha is Assistant Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He teaches courses on Hmong American experiences in the diaspora, Asian American feminism, and social justice organizing in the U.S. His book Queering the Hmong Diaspora: Racial Subjectivity and the Myth of Hyperheterosexuality (University of Washington Press, 2025) examines Hmong racial subject formation and cultural transformations against the backdrop of U.S. sexual and queer liberalism. Additionally, his creative public humanities and community-based participatory research projects have been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.

This event is free and open to the public. Complimentary snacks & refreshments will be available beforehand at 6:30.
Sponsored by Sociology and American Studies, Macalester College

Save Our Post Office!
2025-03-29 13:00 - 15:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
SAVE OUR POST OFFICE! 💪 💌

Join us for a panel with postal workers’ union leaders and their insights into how we can work together to save our post office.

⏲️ WHEN: Saturday, March 29, 1 – 3 PM

WHERE:

📍 In-person: East Side Freedom Library at 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55016
(Register here to let us know you’re coming and/or get the link to the recording of this event!)

👋 WHO: Joe Rian, President of National Association of Letters Carriers Local 9 (Minneapolis); Jeff Larson, President of National Postal Mailhandlers Local 323 (Twin Cities); American Postal Workers’ Union’s Greg Tegland (President of the Minneapolis local); Dave Cook (President of the St. Paul local); Kim Maurer (President of the Postal Data Center local); Richard Haefner, President, Minnesota State APWU; and Tom Sharpe, President, Minnesota Rural Letter Carriers Association..

💡 WHY: The administration’s desire to seize control of the United States Postal Service and privatize it is a threat not only to postal workers, but to all of us.

From big cities to rural communities, we depend on the security and reliability of the postal service to handle our financial and personal communications. Our postal worker unions are standing in the gap to preserve the post office–not only protecting their jobs but also protecting the service we all value.

The unions are setting an example for public employees, from the federal government to the state, country, and city levels, as they face the threats of the oligarchs and their political minions! Stand with us!
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY! (Registration here.)

Trilingua Cinema Presents: Soundtrack to a Coup-d'Etat
2025-04-10 19:00 - 21:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Soundtrack to a Coup-d’Etat
Thursday, April 10th, 7:00pm
East Side Freedom Library
1105 Greenbrier St, St Paul, MN 55106
“A movie that should be watched by everyone, whether to understand art or the backbone of our political and economic system.“
-Elisa Guimarães, Collider
Join us for a FREE SCREENING of Johan Grimonprez’s masterful documentary Soundtrack to a Coup-d’Etat.
Synopsis
United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S. State Department swings into action, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez captures the moment when African politics and American jazz collided in this magnificent essay film, a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba. Richly illustrated by eyewitness accounts, official government memos, testimonies from mercenaries and CIA operatives, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a veritable canon of jazz icons, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story of precedent that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate.
This film is not yet rated. Parents are encouraged to use their own discretion.
This film will be screened in English with English subtitles.
REGISTRATION REQUESTED
Trailer:

MN Book Award Series: Christopher Lehman's "It Took Courage: Eliza Winston's Quest For Freedom"
2025-04-23 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Christopher Lehman’s “It Took Courage: Eliza Winston’s Quest For Freedom”
Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
LET US KNOW YOU’RE COMING
Join the East Side Freedom Library the day after the awards ceremony in welcoming Minnesota Book Award finalist Christopher Lehman as he returns to ESFL for his award-nominated book It Took Courage: Eliza Winston’s Quest for Freedom.
In 1860, Eliza Winston escaped enslavement while traveling in Minnesota, where she secured her freedom through legal appeal. Her story adds powerful testimony to African American experiences and perseverance in antebellum America.
Winston petitioned for her freedom before a judge in Minnesota—and she won. After she left the state for Canada, the abolitionists who had helped her told and retold the story, emphasizing their own actions; their detractors claimed they had used Winston as a pawn. For more than 150 years, historians’ accounts have emphasized the mobs who battled in the streets after the ruling, focusing on the implications of the events for Minnesota politics rather than Winston’s own story. With It Took Courage, Christopher P. Lehman helps set the record straight.
Christopher P. Lehman is a professor of ethnic studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. He researches, writes, and teaches about the struggle for African American equality, using the tools of genealogy to trace the lives of people who have left very few traces. He has written six other books, including Slavery’s Reach: Southern Slaveholders in the North Star State, which won the Minnesota Book Award for Minnesota Nonfiction in 2020.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!
(REGISTER HERE)
Books for sale from
