East Side Freedom Library

Exhibit Opening: YOU BETCHA! FARMER-LABOR SOLIDARITY IS POSSIBLE, Art and History
2025-02-20 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | 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.

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.

History Day Help at East Side Freedom Library
2025-02-15 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-02-08 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-02-01 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-01-25 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-01-18 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-01-11 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-01-04 10:00 - 12:00, 2024-12-21 10:00 - 12:00 and 5 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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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 Revealed: Finding Moses Dickson with Karen Sieber
2024-06-20 19:00 - 20:30 | 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.

History Revealed: Why We Left
2024-05-16 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Why We Left: Untold Stories and Songs of America’s First Immigrants
Joanna Brooks

History Revealed Special Event
Thursday, May 16, 2024, 7:00 pm

Live presentation on Zoom. Register Here.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. For questions, please email events@rchs.com
Free and open to all

In partnership with the East Side Freedom Library, Ramsey County Libraries and Norway House.
A grounded, tender, and mournful reckoning with the catastrophes that launched poor, white Anglos into their role as itinerant foot soldiers for modern imperialism—now in paperback (May 2024) with a new preface.
Why We Left reveals the dislocation, violence, and deforestation that propelled seventeenth- and eighteenth-century working-class English emigration, offering a powerful restorying of the journey to our present moment of precarity and rootlessness. Following American folk ballads back across the Atlantic, Joanna Brooks shares a scholarly and personal account of the intergenerational traumas that shape the history of white Anglos on Turtle Island.
Joanna Brooks’s ancestors were among the early waves of emigrants to leave England for North America. For generations, they lived hardscrabble lives, eking out subsistence in one place after another as they continually moved west in search of a better life. Why, Brooks wondered, did her people and countless other poor English subjects abandon their homeland for such unremitting hardship? The question leads her on a journey through an obscure dimension of American history.
She will share folk ballads such as “Edward,” which reveals the influence of deforestation on the dislocation of early Anglo-American peasant immigrants, and “The House Carpenter’s Wife,” which emphasizes the impact of economic instability and the colonial enterprise on women. From these ballads, tragic and heartrending, Brooks uncovers an archaeology of the worldviews of America’s earliest immigrants. This tenth-anniversary edition includes a new preface and develops a haunting historical perspective on the ancestors we thought we knew.
Joanna Brooks is an award-winning scholar and writer whose work tends to catastrophes of human belonging in American history. The author or editor of ten books on race, religion, colonialism, and social movements, her writing has been featured in global media, including the BBC, NPR, the Daily Show, CNN, MSNBC, and the Washington Post.
Why We Left is published by the University of Minnesota Press.
RCHS is committed to presenting the stories and histories of all in our community, and we are pleased to bring you tonight’s program. To that end, in 2022, we are working to bring you programs focused on our series, “Making Minnesota” which will explore the often untold stories, histories and experiences of the some of the world-wide immigrant, African American and Indigenous communities that make up our most diverse county.

May Book Geek Happy Hour
2024-04-07 16:00 - 18:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Book Geek Happy Hour
Join the conversation here on Zoom!
Are you thirsting for some time to read and a chance to talk about what you’re reading? Gather with others to share what you’re reading! Better than a book club!
Read on your own starting at 4pm and join the Zoom conversation at 5:30pm to share what you are reading.

2024 History Day Workshops and Mentoring Sessions
2024-03-30 10:00 - 12:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY
MAKE HISTORY DAY FUN! The East Side Freedom Library invites your students to benefit from our rich resources and our experienced mentors
The 2024 National History Day theme asks students to think about how change takes place and what its consequences have been. Are you interested in racial justice, labor activism, women’s rights, immigrant history, the impact of GLBTQ+ movements, environmental activism, and more? Come to to the East Side Freedom Library where they will 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 nine years.
EVERY SATURDAY MORNING, 10 AM TO NOON
We encourage students to make an appointment by emailing peter@eastsidefreedomlibrary.org, and that they 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.
