Events
ConverZations That Matter: Navigating the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Gender Hosted by Belvie Rooks and featuring Dr. Cornel West
Sep 30 2010 - Nov 10 2010
ConverZations That Matter is a dialogue series beginning on September 30 that honors and acknowledges the historic wounds and suffering from the past while simultaneously holding a question of hope and possibility for the future. That question is, "What would healing look like?"
An Evening with Dr. Cornel West: Speaking Our Vision of Hope and Possibility Out Loud!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
The New York Times has called Princeton Professor Cornel West, "one of America's most provocative public intellectuals." Cornel West calls himself "a bluesman in the life of the mind." His book "Race Matters" is a contemporary classic. In his long-awaited memoir, "Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud," West offers a compelling exploration of faith, family, philosophy, love, and service. He is a mesmerizing speaker, a dynamic and insightful philosopher, and a committed social activist. With astute intellect and ferocious moral vision, he continuously challenges us to re-envision the possibilities of who we are.
The program includes a very special spoken word, hip-hop tribute to Dr. West by several Bay Area artists including, Drew Dellinger, Seasunz, and friends.
Photo of Cornel West by Brian Velenchencko.EVENT DETIALS
Thursday, September 30, 2010
7-9 pm
First Unitarian Universalist Church,
1187 Franklin Street, San Francisco
$20/$15 member price
$40 for full series/$30 member price
Slavery's Legacy: What Would Healing Look Like? With Belvie Rooks and Thomas Norman DeWolf
In 2001 Tom DeWolf was astounded to discover that he was descended from the most powerful slave-trading family in U.S. history and that one of his infamous ancestors, Senator James DeWolf of Rhode Island, curried favor with President Thomas Jefferson to continue in the slave trade after it was outlawed. When Senator DeWolf died in1837 he was reportedly the second-richest man in America. Thomas Norman DeWolf is the author of Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-trading Family in U.S. History.In 2007 Belvie Rooks stood in Elmina slave dungeon in Ghana, trying to imagine what reaching the "door of no return" must have felt like for some long-ago, enslaved African ancestor. Part of her family story is chronicled in The Seed of Sally Good'n: A Black Family of Arkansas, 1833-1953.
Tom and Belvie have come to understand that daring to acknowledge the depth of the historical wound they share allows for deeper dialogue and the possibility of healing and reconciliation.
Belvie Rooks's work weaves together spirituality, feminism, ecology, and social justice with a passion for engaged dialogue. She was senior editor of Paris Connections: African American Artists in Paris, an American Book Award winner. Her most recently published essays appear in 100 WORDS: Two Hundred Visionaries Share Their Hope for the Future and Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart. She cofounded Growing A Global Heart (www.growingaglobalheart.com), a project to plant a million trees along the transatlantic slave route to honor the millions of lives lost.
Thomas Norman DeWolf traveled in 2001 with nine distant relatives on a life-altering journey through New England, Ghana, and Cuba to film the Emmy-nominated documentary film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, in which he is featured. Selected for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, Traces of the Trade premiered on national television on the acclaimed PBS series P.O.V. (www.inheritingthetrade.com).
EVENT DETAILS
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
7:00PM-9:00PM
CIIS Main Building
1453 Mission Street, San Francisco
$15/$10 member price
Finding Common Ground: Stretching the Boundaries
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
An Intergenerational Spoken Word and Performance Dialogue
with original Watts Prophet poet Amde Hamilton and some of the Bay Area's most amazing female poets, rappers, and spoken word artists including:Scorpio Blues, who has appeared on Def Poetry--her upcoming album is entitled Scorpio Rising, and Danielle Drake-Burnett, 2003 Oakland Grand Slam Champion
Anthony Amde Hamilton is a founding member of the Watts Prophets and is affectionately known as "Father Amde." Hamilton discovered the unique power of spoken word amid the upheaval of the late 1960s when he joined the now famous Watts Writers Workshop and created the Watts Prophets along with two other visionaries. In 2003 Quincy Jones recounted the impact that the Watts Prophets made on him: "I was drawn to the notion of hip-hop back in the 1970s with the Last Poets and the Watts Prophets, who were seminal figures in our culture just as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were to bebop in the 1940s." With their signature style featuring jazz-inspired poems about poverty, violence, and racism, the Watts Prophets are widely recognized as fathers of rap and hip-hop.
For young women like Danielle Drake-Burnett and Scorpio Blues, the traditional divides of ethnicity, class, and gender provide the inspiration for new visions and models of cross-fertilization and creative possibility.
This will be an historic, cutting-edge collaboration!
EVENT DETAILS
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
7:00PM-9:00PM
CIIS Main Building
$15/$10 member price
