The combination of COVID-19 and police violence against Black people have torn away the veils shrouding the deep structures of inequality that have shaped our country. Black Lives Matter and other movements have made more and more of us aware that our country was built on stolen land by the exploitation of the labor of stolen people. The East Side Freedom Library seeks to “inspire solidarity, work for justice, and advocate for equity for all.”
But how do we embark on this path and how do we encourage our neighbors to join with us? For the past six years, we have curated and hosted programs which are informed by what the activist-scholar Kimberle Crenshaw termed, in 1989, “intersectionality.” We see our work as located at a series of intersections—race, gender, sexuality, and class; indigeneity and immigration; the past and the present; elders and youth; organized labor and the community; art and the production of knowledge; and more. It is out of these dynamic intersections that we can incubate movements, campaigns, and projects for positive social change.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic (or is because of the challenges?), ESFL has organized inspiring programs for us all to consider as we move from summer into fall. We can’t have a picnic this Labor Day, but we can convene an online conversation about workers’, small businesses’, and communities’ efforts to rein in the daunting power of Amazon, the world’s biggest employer and wealthiest corporation. Days later, we will convene another conversation, led by workers and union activists, about the challenges facing the U.S. Postal Service and all of us who depend on it. Our monthly Labor History film explores the experiences of the two million African Americans who left the South between 1910 and 1930, transforming themselves and the American working class. And our series on Afro-Asian solidarity features a conversation between Yuichiro Onishi and Alessandra Williams about the Ananya Dance Theater as a site of co-creation by women of color from diverse experiences.
These and other ESFL programs not only embrace the intersectionality that has shaped our lives, but they ask us what, armed with this deepened knowledge, we will do? We invite you to join us on this journey.