East Side Freedom Library
By East Side Freedom Library
The podcast episodes are audio versions of ESFL events which are also available on video at youtube.com/eastsidefreedomlibraryorg.
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East Side Freedom LibraryOct 30, 2021
Tibetans for Black Lives: Interview with Sanjay Taythi
For this month's episode, fellow ESFL intern Linda Lor spoke with Sanjay Taythi, a community organizer, about his work surrounding the intergenerational Tibetan community in Minnesota, Black and Asian solidarity, and more.
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Racial Housing Covenants with Just Deeds Founder Maria Cisneros
Racial housing covenants have played a key role in shaping the racial segregation and other discrimination alive today in the Twin Cities. This episode examines the history of covenants, the role of the public and the private sector in this segregation, and the present-day effects. Maria Cisneros, founder of Just Deeds, also shared what it was like to find out her home had a racial covenant and explained Just Deeds mission and role in disavowing racial covenants. Still curious about covenants? Check out Mapping the Prejudice and Just Deeds!
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Rent Stabilization with Tram Hoang
Curious about rent stabilization in St. Paul? Take a listen as we explain what rent stabilization is, how it started, and where it's going. We also spoke with Tram Hoang, former campaign manager for the Keep St. Paul Home campaign, to learn more about the behind the scenes of the rent stabilization campaign.
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History Revealed: Hazel Belvo
The Spirit Tree: Hazel Belvo and the Art of Nature Julie L’Enfant History Revealed Series Partnership with the Roseville Library, Ramsey County Historical Society, and the East Side Freedom Library
Hazel Belvo has been an influential artist, art educator, and feminist leader for more than fifty years. Her prodigious output ranges from delicate drawings to monumental paintings exploring nature, spirituality, and the feminine psyche. She is best known for over four hundred works on the legendary Spirit Little Cedar Tree on the North Shore of Lake Superior whose ancient, twisted form embodies the endurance and majesty of nature. In this talk Julie L’Enfant, author of the new book Hazel Belvo: A Matriarch of Art, will introduce Belvo’s eventful life and the many friendships and associations in the art world that fostered the evolution of her unique expressionist vision.
Julie L’Enfant, former professor of art history at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, is the author of seven books, including The Gag Family: German-Bohemian Arts in America (2002), Pioneer Modernists: Minnesota’s First Generation of Women Artists (2011), both winners of Minnesota Book Awards, and Nicholas R. Brewer: His Art and Family (2018). To purchase the book, see our partner, Subtext Books: Hazel Belvo: A Matriarch of Art by Julie L’Enfant (https://subtextbooks.com/item/oL2lSh-...)
View video here: https://youtu.be/3BhvPxrzXqc
Samora Machel: The Struggle Against Colonialism
The East Side Freedom Library invites you to Samora Machel: The Struggle Against Colonialism, featuring Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman authors of the new book, SAMORA MACHEL: A LIFE CUT SHORT, in conversation with Rose Brewer and August Nimtz, Jr.
Samora Machel (1933–1986), the son of small-town farmers, led his people through a war against their Portuguese colonists and became the first president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique. Machel’s military successes against a colonial regime backed by South Africa, Rhodesia, the United States, and its NATO allies enhanced his reputation as a revolutionary hero to the oppressed people of Southern Africa. In 1986, during the country’s civil war, Machel died in a plane crash under circumstances that remain uncertain.
Allen and Barbara Isaacman lived through many of these changes in Mozambique and bring personal recollections together with archival research and interviews with others who knew Machel or participated in events of the revolutionary or post-revolutionary years. Allen is the Regents Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He is the author of seven books exploring African history. Barbara Isaacman is a retired criminal defense attorney in Hennepin County. She worked with the Mozambican Women’s Movement and taught at the law faculty of the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane while living in Mozambique in the late 1970s.
Rose Brewer and August Nimtz, Jr., are models of scholar-activists. Dr. Brewer is Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota. She has won many teaching awards, has worked on curricular transformation, and has published widely in both academic and activist platforms. Dr. Nimtz is a Professor of Political Science and African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota. He has published widely in African American political thought, and he has been active in building bridges between local communities and Cuban activists.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/pp_6S5dV1fk
0 CommentsMinnesota Cuba Day - a Chat with the Cuban Ambassador and Minnesota Leaders
Sponsored by the Solidarity Committee of the Americas (SCOTA), a Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) committee in Minnesota, the Minnesota Cuba Committee, East Side Freedom Library,j Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) and others.
Links posted during the event: U of MN-Cuba medical collaborations: https://www.sph.umn.edu/events-calend...Belly of the Beast video series: https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/ACERE: https://www.acere.orgSolidarity Committee of the Americas (SCOTA) email: solidaritycommitteeofamericas@gmail.com SCOTA Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/solidarityco...Women Against Military Madness (WAAM): https://www.womenagainstmilitarymadne...
After 20 months of pandemic restrictions, Cuba is reopening and preparing to ease travel restrictions to the island on November 15. Ambassador Torres Rivera and panelists discuss how Cuba is functioning today and, despite the punishing 60-year blockade by the United States, is battling Covid and climate change and continuing to work toward the betterment of its people.
Minnesotans have long been interested in Cuba, with many having traveled there. They have also proposed and passed governmental resolutions, engaged in medical collaboration and assistance, traded agricultural goods and knowledge, and have reached out in many other ways. This meeting was an opportunity to build on those efforts.
Panelists include: -Nachito Herrera, Cuban-American and renowned musician who survived Covid with the help of Cuban and University of Minnesota doctors -Kevin Paap, President, Minnesota Farm Bureau -Senator Sandy Pappas, author of legislative resolutions opposing the blockade, has led several legislative delegations to Cuba -Dr. Teddie Potter, University of Minnesota School of Nursing -Dr. John Oswald, Adjunct Professor, University of Minnesota School of Public Health -Ofunshi Raudemar ACT DDHH, Cuban-American Babalawo from the Yoruba religious tradition
Video: https://youtu.be/IxKTEguxogk
Unsung Heroes of Justice
The East Side Freedom Library and Teamsters Local 320 invite you to a panel discussion, Unsung Heroes of Justice: Six Public Defenders and Staff Discuss Their Work.
Minnesota Public Defenders are court-appointed attorneys for indigent citizens who cannot afford access to justice. Public defense is a mandated service enshrined by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own.
Minnesota Public Defenders have been stretched to the max during the COVID-19 pandemic with significant backlogs, unmanageable caseloads, and unsafe working conditions. The Board of Public Defense is failing to retain and reward its employees and this failure will have severe and lasting repercussions for indigent clients. Please join a panel discussion by six public defense employees who are represented by Teamsters Local 320 and are in the midst of contract negotiations, negotiations which will impact not only their lives but also the lives of the women and men who depend on them for representation.
View the video at https://youtu.be/ftcFNKcQIm8
Queer Gatsby with AJ Odasso
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby is now in the public domain. This gives us the opportunity to dig deeper and fuller into the cultural image of our iconic literary figure.
Join the East Side Freedom Library and literary curator Danny Klecko at The University Club in welcoming AJ Odasso in conversation with Maryanne Grossmann! We will also be joined by special guests Doug Green, Kasey Payette, Klecko, Anthony Cebellos and emcee Clarence White. The queering of Gatsby takes form in the new novel, The Pursued and the Pursuing by AJ Odasso. In their tale, Odasso explores what might have been had it left Gatsby with another chance at happiness. Find it he does, although not in the arms of Daisy Buchanan. As Gatsby travels the world with Nick Carraway, his friend and narrator, he sheds wealth, performance, and glamor in favor of honesty, intimacy, and love.
A. J. Odasso’s poetry has appeared in a variety of publications, including Sybil’s Garage, Mythic Delirium, Midnight Echo, Not One of Us, Dreams & Nightmares, Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, Farrago’s Wainscot, Liminality, Battersea Review, Barking Sycamores, and New England Review of Books. A.J.’s debut collection, Lost Books (Flipped Eye Publishing), was nominated for the 2010 London New Poetry Award and was also a finalist for the 2010–11 People’s Book Prize. Her second collection with Flipped Eye, The Dishonesty of Dreams, was released in 2014; their third collection, Things Being What They Are, was shortlisted for the 2017 Sexton Prize. They hold an MFA in creative writing from Boston University, and works in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico. A.J. has served in the Poetry Department at Strange Horizons since 2012. They live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/PLBmwyW_jOk
Mai Der Vang for "Yellow Rain" with Kao Kalia Yang
SubText Books and East Side Freedom Library are pleased to present a virtual event to celebrate the release of "Yellow Rain" by Mai Der Vang (Graywolf Press) on Friday, October 1st at 7:00 PM. Mai Der Vang will be in conversation with Kao Kalia Yang.
About: In this staggering work of documentary, poetry, and collage, Mai Der Vang reopens a wrongdoing that deserves a new reckoning. As the United States abandoned them at the end of its war in Vietnam, many Hmong refugees recounted stories of a mysterious substance that fell from planes during their escape from Laos starting in the mid-1970s. This substance, known as “yellow rain,” caused severe illnesses and thousands of deaths. These reports prompted an investigation into allegations that a chemical biological weapon had been used against the Hmong in breach of international treaties. A Cold War scandal erupted, wrapped in partisan debate around chemical arms development versus control. And then, to the world’s astonishment, American scientists argued that yellow rain was the feces of honeybees defecating en masse—still held as the widely accepted explanation. The truth of what happened to the Hmong, to those who experienced and suffered yellow rain, has been ignored and discredited.
Integrating archival research and declassified documents, Yellow Rain calls out the erasure of a history, the silencing of a people who at the time lacked the capacity and resources to defend and represent themselves. In poems that sing and lament, that contend and question, Vang restores a vital narrative in danger of being lost, and brilliantly explores what it means to have access to the truth and how marginalized groups are often forbidden that access.
Mai Der Vang is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle. Her poetry has appeared in the New Republic, Poetry, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, and her essays have been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post. Her debut collection, Afterland, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. She lives in California.
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American writer, teacher and public speaker. Born in the refugee camps of Thailand to a family that escaped the genocide of the Secret War in Laos, she came to America at the age six. Yang holds degrees from Carleton College and Columbia University. Her works of creative nonfiction include The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, The Song Poet, What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Indigenous Women and Women of Color, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang has also written multiple children's books such as A Map Into the World, The Shared Room, and The Most Beautiful Thing, Yang Warriors, and the forthcoming From the Tops of the Trees. Her work has won numerous awards and recognition including multiple Minnesota Book Awards, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor, an ALA Notable Children's Book Award, Dayton's Literary Peace Prize, and a PEN USA Award in Nonfiction.
View the video: https://youtu.be/Wu2-CoXNeH0
History Revealed St. Paul, with Bill Lindeke
St. Paul: "An Urban Biography" by Bill Lindeke
Author Bill Lindeke will share stories and research from his new book, St. Paul: An Urban Biography, a concise history of St. Paul, featuring stories that are familiar, surprising, and sure to change the way you see Minnesota’s capital city.
How did the city of St. Paul come to be where and what it is, and what does that show us about the city today? Bill Lindeke provides intriguing insights and helpful answers. He tells the stories of the Dakota village forced to move across the Mississippi by a treaty—and why whiskey sellers took over the site; the new community’s close ties to Fort Snelling and Winnipeg; the steamboats and railroads that created a booming city; the German immigrants who outnumbered the Irish but kept a low profile when the United States went to war; the laborers who built the domes over the state capitol and the Cathedral of St. Paul; the gangsters and bootleggers who found refuge in the city; the strong neighborhoods, shaped by streets built on footpaths and wagon roads—until freeway construction changed so much; and the Hmong, Mexican, East African, and Karen immigrants who continue to build the city’s strong traditions of small businesses.
This thoughtful investigation of place helps readers to understand the city’s hidden stories, surrounding its residents in plain sight.
Bill Lindeke is an urban geographer and writer who focuses on how our environments shape our lives. He wrote MinnPost’s “Cityscapes” column from 2014 to 2017, has written articles on local food and drink history for City Pages and the Growler, and has taught urban geography at the University of Minnesota and Metro State University. He writes a local urban blog at Twin City Sidewalks and is a member of the Saint Paul Planning Commission. He is the author of Minneapolis–Saint Paul: Then and Now and the coauthor of Closing Time: Saloons, Taverns, Dives, and Watering Holes of the Twin Cities.
To purchase titles from the History Revealed series, or other books of interest, see our partner, Subtext Books at https://subtextbooks.com/
To view the video: https://youtu.be/z2DiKCvLWfQ
Black Rain: A Forty-Year Struggle Helps Connect the Dots from Trinity to Hiroshima to Fukushima and Points Between
On July 14 this year, the Hiroshima High Court delivered a stunning victory to aging sufferers of “black rain” fallout from the atomic bomb: it recognized them as “A-bomb affected people,” or hibakusha. Why should this be a matter of interest to residents of the Twin Cities? Minneapolis and Nagasaki have been sister cities since 1955. Minnesota’s two nuclear power plants, Monticello and Prairie Island, including a nuclear waste storage facility, are near the Twin Cities. The High Court decision provides a key to connecting the dots of the nuclear age, from Trinity to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Marshall Islands, test sites and nuclear facilities the world over, as well as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. In other words, the Hiroshima decision challenges the firewall erected to keep apart atomic weapons and “atoms for peace.”
With this court case as a starting point, Norma Field and Yuki Miyamoto will explore the political, economic, environmental, and gendered aspects of the nuclear age, including its colonial legacy.
Norma Field is Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Professor Emerita of the Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations at the University of Chicago. For a number of years, she taught a course titled “From Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Beyond.” Her most recent book, with Heather Bowen-Stryk, is For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature. She has pursued the Fukushima nuclear disaster since its inception and, together with Yuki Miyamoto, maintains the Atomic Age blog. Her most recent Fukushima-related publication is This Will Still Be True Tomorrow: “Fukushima Ain’t Got the Time for Olympic Games”: Two Texts on Nuclear Disaster and Pandemic. She is currently working on a book on Fukushima.
Yuki Miyamoto is a Professor of ethics in the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University where she teaches nuclear ethics, environmental ethics, nuclear discourses in the US and Japan. She has published monographs, Beyond the Mushroom Cloud (2011), Naze genbaku ga aku dewa nainoka (The narrative divergence in nuclear discourse) (2020), and A World Otherwise: Environmental Praxis in Minamata (2021), and several articles, focusing on gender (ex. “In the Light of Hiroshima” and “Gendered Bodies in Tokusatsu”). Her current work is to examine the construction of postwar nuclear discourse in Japan and discrimination against the atomic bomb sufferers in Japan. She has taken DePaul students to Hiroshima and Nagasaki since 2005 on the biannual study abroad program.
For more information and to see the video: https://youtu.be/hP09jlpnqeI
1 CommentBook Talk—The Great Evil: Christianity, The Bible, and the Native American Genocide
The East Side Freedom Library invites you to a presentation by Dr. Chris Mato Nunpa, The Great Evil: Christianity, The Bible, and the Native American Genocide.
In this account of the history between Indigenous Peoples and the United States government, readers learn the role the bible played in the perpetration of genocide, massive land theft, and the religious suppression and criminalization of Native ceremonies and spirituality. Chris Mato Nunpa, a Dakota man, discusses this dishonorable and darker side of American history that is rarely studied, if at all. Out of a number of rationales used to justify the killing of Native Peoples and theft of their lands, the author emphasizes the role of a biblical rationale, including the “chosen people” idea, the “promised land” notion, and the genocidal commands of the Old Testament God. Mato Nunpa’s experience with fundamentalist and evangelical missionaries when he was growing up, his studies in Indigenous Nations history at the University of Minnesota, and his affiliation with the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) were three important factors in his motivation for writing this book.
Chris Mato Nunpa, Ph.D is a former Associate Professor of Indigenous Nations & Dakota Studies at Southwest Minnesota State University. Professor Mato Nunpa holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus, with the Collateral Field for the Ph.D. in American Indian Studies. He also studied theology at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois.
Dr. Chris Mato Nunpa is a Wahpetunwan (“Dwellers In The Leaves,” or Wahpeton) Dakota from the Pezihuta Zizi Otunwe, “Yellow Medicine Community” (BIA name, Upper Sioux Community), in southwestern Minnesota.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/_KV8F5azq64
Book Talk: "Watershed"
The East Side Freedom Library invites you to a discussion of the new book, Watershed: Attending to Body and Earth in Distress, featuring author Ranae Hanson and discussants Sarah Degner-Riveros, Chelsea DeArmond, and Sam Grant.
Watershed explores the lands of northeastern Minnesota where Hanson's parents cleared land and built a house by a lake. As a young person in those woods, Hanson learned an abbreviated history of the land—one that largely left out Indigenous neighbors. “The fur trappers left cabins; the lumbermen, tree stumps; the Finns, grandmothers on swamp farms; the Englishmen, mine shafts; the miners, company towns. All of us came from somewhere else. None of us belonged.”
As an exchange student in Europe, during the Vietnam War, Hanson explains: “I discovered, to my surprise, that some people found my life interesting. My new friends had never been in a canoe, did not know how to knead bread, had not built a fire or slept in a tent.” As a graduate student in Ohio, Hanson “began to see the woods where I had grown up as an outsider would. I had thought we were living a real-time regular life, that eating from the woods was what people did. […] We had been part of nature.” Hanson raised two children on her own, taught at three colleges while pursuing a doctorate, and began to notice how quickly the earth was shifting. “In the summer of 1989, the rains did not come. When I drove north, I noticed that the pines on the southern edge of the boreal forest were dying.” She noted that tent caterpillars ate the early birch and poplar leaves four years in a row. Drinking water from the lakes was no longer safe.
In Watershed, Hanson asks: What if we tended to an ailing ecosystem just as we care for ourselves in the throes of a medical condition? She offers a work that is at once a memoir of illness and health, a contemplation of the surrounding natural world in distress, and a reflection on how these come together in opportunities for health.
Join Ranae Hanson for a conversation with three people who have read her book—Augsburg University Spanish-language professor Sarah Degner-Riveros, SP350 East Side activist Chelsea DeArmond, and MN350 Executive Director Sam Grant. There will be time for you to ask questions as well, via Zoom or Facebook.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/UcCEs_4j6uQ
Sports, Activism, and Equity: A conversation with Dave Zirin and Mi’Chael Wright
Join us for a special event about the intersection of sports, activism, and equity with special guests Dave Zirin and Mi’Chael Wright. This event is a fundraiser for the East Side Freedom Library to support our equity work in community.
About Dave: Named one of UTNE Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Dave Zirin writes about the politics of sports for the Nation Magazine as their first sportswriter in 150 years. Winner of Sport In Society and Northeastern University School of Journalism’s ‘Excellence in Sports Journalism’ award, Zirin is also the host of the Edge of Sports podcast. He has been called “the best sportswriter in the United States,” by Robert Lipsyte. Dave Zirin is, in addition, a columnist for SLAM Magazine and the Progressive. Dave is a graduate of Macalester College in Saint Paul.
About Mi’Chael: Mi’Chael N. Wright is a PhD student in the Dept. of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her primary research focuses on sociology of media, sociology of mental health, collective memory and trauma, and identity. She is specifically interested in how digital communities, which can be simultaneously encouraging and hostile, constitute the identity development of Black and Brown adolescent girls. Mi’Chael is also interested in digital sociology, a sub-discipline of sociology that highlights the role of digital media in everyday life and its contribution to social relationships. Mi’Chael is a former Division I athlete who organized taking a knee in 2016 and has much to share from that experience.
About the new book, The Kaepernick Effect Riveting and inspiring first-person stories of how “taking a knee” triggered an awakening in sports, from the celebrated sportswriter. “The Kaepernick Effect reveals that Colin Kaepernick’s story is bigger than one athlete. With profiles of courage that leap off the page, Zirin uncovers a whole national movement of citizen-athletes fighting for racial justice.” —Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist.
In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during the U.S. national anthem. By “taking a knee,” Kaepernick bravely joined a long tradition of American athletes making powerful political statements. This time, however, Kaepernick’s simple act spread like wildfire throughout American society, becoming the preeminent symbol of resistance to America’s persistent racial inequality.
View the video: https://youtu.be/OYt8aLPnebk
Brains Explained
The East Side Freedom Library invites you to a presentation of Brains Explained, a new book by Alie and Micah Caldwell!
Curious about how billions of neurons make up your consciousness? How anxiety hijacks your body? Whether AI will replace your therapist? Learn about this witty, enlightening book, presented live by the brilliant neuroscientist and clinical therapist duo, neuroscientist Alie Caldwell and clinical therapist Micah Caldwell. In 2015 they created the YouTube channel "Neuro Transmissions" with a singular mission in mind: explain the brain . . . simply!
This book scrutinizes the sometimes-dubious history of brain science from a modern perspective, wanders through explanations about how your senses trick you into believing some wild things, speculates about whether we'll be able to upload our consciousness to the Matrix, and so much more. Brains Explained is sure to be one of the most cherished popular science titles on your bookshelf for years to come bookshelf, and this evening 's conversation is sure to be unforgettable.
View the video: https://youtu.be/0PFyE36a5hQ
History Revealed: Turning Points
The East Side Freedom Library and the Ramsey County Historical Society invite you to our monthly “History Revealed” program featuring Greg Poferl and his memoir, Turning Points: Never Give Up On Anyone, Especially Yourself.
We are especially excited about this opportunity to provide our communities with a unique vantage point into our shared history, while also providing an example about the value of self-reflection. Greg Poferl has been a committed and generous individual, dedicated to fostering social justice from the workrooms of the U.S. Postal Service and the classrooms of Cretin-Derham Hall High School to protests at the School of the Americas and support for the struggles of workers and farmers in Central America. Greg has been integral to the development of the East Side Freedom Library, from cleaning our bathrooms and thwarting squirrels and raccoons on our roof to mentoring middle and high school students in National History Day projects.
We are thrilled that he has written a memoir which provides insight into the history of St. Paul from the 1950s to the present while also providing us with a model of living a life rich with commitment, from his family, union, and community, to the world. The ESFL family has been fortunate to rely on Greg, and now we are delighted to celebrate his memoir and share it with our wider communities. ESFL published Turning Points, and we are happy to provide copies to you at $15 each.
Turning Points reflects on kids at play and growing up in St. Paul in the 1950s and 1960s, and it moves on to stories about military service, labor struggles and strikes, directing youth in social justice theater projects, peace and justice actions, a sentence in federal prison, teaching social studies, and experiencing the overwhelming love of family. Please join Greg as he shares this book and his journey with us.
For more Information and to view the video: https://youtu.be/gZhVqWH_OEY
A Book Launch Virtual Event with Christine Stark and Mona Susan Power
The East Side Freedom Library invites you to A Book Launch Virtual Event with Christine Stark and her new book, Carnival Lights, and Mona Susan Power and her new book, A Council of Dolls.
Chris Stark is an award-winning writer, organizer, and researcher with Ojibwe, Cherokee, and European ancestry. Her first novel, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation, was a Lambda Literary Finalist. Blending fiction and fact, Carnival Lights ranges from reverie to nightmare and back again in a lyrical yet unflinching story of an Ojibwe family’s struggle to hold onto their land, their culture, and each other. Carnival Lights is a timely book for a country in need of deep healing.
Mona Susan Power is a Yanktonai Dakota author of four books of fiction, The Grass Dancer (awarded the PEN/Hemingway Prize), Sacred Wilderness, Roofwalker, and the recently completed novel, A Council of Dolls. A Council of Dolls tells the story of three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women and their dolls–allies manifested during times of great challenge, highlighting how generational trauma develops and persists, especially as a result of the horrors of the Indian Boarding School system.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/mfvB2SR8Hl4
History Revealed—Welcoming the Dear Neighbor? Housing Inequality and Race in Ramsey County
An interdisciplinary group of St. Catherine University faculty, staff, and students have partnered with the Mapping Prejudice project to learn more about the history of housing inequality and race in Ramsey County during the twentieth century.
Dr. Rachel Neiwert, associate professor of history, and Dr. Kristine West, associate professor of economics will share what they have been learning about this history in our community.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/Cni3zlxU_7E
History Revealed: The Tulsa Race Massacre, 6/22/21
The East Side Freedom Library and the Ramsey County Historical Society invite invite you to join us for this very special History Revealed program with Karlos K. Hill, author of the new book, The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History, on the centennial of the event in Tulsa, OK. On the evening of May 31, 1921, and in the early morning hours of June 1, several thousand white citizens and authorities violently attacked the African American Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In the course of some twelve hours of mob violence, white Tulsans reduced one of the nation’s most prosperous black communities to rubble and killed an estimated 300 people, mostly African Americans. This richly illustrated volume, featuring more than 175 photographs, along with oral testimonies, shines a new spotlight on the race massacre from the vantage point of its victims and survivors.
Historian and Black Studies professor Karlos K. Hill presents a range of photographs taken before, during, and after the massacre, mostly by white photographers. Some of the images are published here for the first time. Comparing these photographs to those taken elsewhere in the United States of lynchings, the author makes a powerful case for terming the 1921 outbreak not a riot but a massacre. White civilians, in many cases assisted or condoned by local and state law enforcement, perpetuated a systematic and coordinated attack on Black Tulsans and their property.
Despite all the violence and devastation, black Tulsans rebuilt the Greenwood District brick by brick. By the mid-twentieth century, Greenwood had reached a new zenith, with nearly 250 Black-owned and Black-operated businesses. Today the citizens of Greenwood, with support from the broader community, continue to work diligently to revive the neighborhood once known as “Black Wall Street.” As a result, Hill asserts, the most important legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre is the grit and resilience of the Black survivors of racist violence. T
he 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History offers a perspective largely missing from other accounts. At once captivating and disturbing, it will embolden readers to confront the uncomfortable legacy of racial violence in U.S. history.
Karlos K. Hill is Associate Professor and Chair of the Clara Luper Department of African and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the author of Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/SFanvpd_eYw
Julian Assange: Free Speech, Freedom of the Press, and the Fight for Economic and Racial Justice, 6/21/21
A panel of local independent journalists in conversation with Julian Assange’s father and brother.
John and Gabriel Shipton, the father and brother of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, are on a nationwide tour to advocate for the release of the journalist, who has been detained in Britain since 2012, and for the Biden administration to drop the U.S. Government’s extradition efforts. The U.S. tour is sponsored by the Courage Foundation (couragefound.org) which supports whistleblowers and other truth-tellers “who risk life or liberty to make significant contributions to the historical record.”
We will convene a panel of independent journalists who have been engaged in telling the stories of struggles for racial and economic justice. The panel will include Petros Haile, Sheila Reagan, and Cirien Saadeh.
View the video on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/5TNUoLpGD40
History Revealed: The Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association of Minnesota, 6/10/21
During the fight for women's suffrage, Minnesota was home to one of the only ethnic suffrage organizations in the country. The Scandianvian Woman Suffrage Association (SWSA) operated from 1907 to 1919 and used cultural connections to its ethnic communities to garner support for women's suffrage at the state and national levels. Its leaders played on ethnic affiliation and identity to lobby Scandinavian-American legislators and members of the general public to vote for women's enfranchisement.
The SWSA had members from all walks of life, serving to counter anti-suffragist claims that suffragists were only elite, society women who did not represent the typical American woman. This talk will detail the history of the SWSA and the ways in which its membership's varied ethnic and class backgrounds "spiced up" the women's suffrage movement.
Bio: Anna M. Peterson is associate professor of history at Luther College in Decorah, IA. She also serves as editor for the Norwegian-American Historical Association. Her many publications include two articles on the Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association published in Minnesota History and The Journal of American Ethnic History.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/y8WQnhlAtAs
Book Talk: Union Made, 6/1/21
The East Side Freedom Library invites you to a conversation with author Eric Lotke about his newly published novel, Union Made.
Recent events have raised our awareness about the challenges faced by service and retail workers and by their efforts to organize. From Twin Cities brew pubs and coffee shops to Amazon warehouses in Alabama, Staten Island, and Shakopee, diverse workers are organizing to have a say about their working conditions and wages. Our friends at Hard Ball Press have just published a novel, Union Made, which takes readers inside this world.
This novel is a fast-paced romance with a political edge, revealing the tactics, strains, and risks of mobilizing a multiracial group of workers to stand together against a merciless management holding them down. With a strong female lead and a gripping labor campaign that explores union organizing from the inside, Eric Lotke puts the reader in the shoes of Catherine Campbell, a labor organizer, and Nate Hawley, an accountant whose company is planning a hostile takeover of Pac-Shoppe, the company she’s trying to organize. There are sparks between the union activists and the company’s dirty tricksters, and sparks between Catherine and Nate. As Catherine’s campaign falters in the face of Pac-Shoppe’s illegal hardball tactics, Nate’s sympathy for the workers and his fascination with Catherine grow. Can the lonely accountant interest the determined labor organizer by sharing evidence of Pac-Shoppe’s dirty tricks? How much trouble will he be in if he reveals corporate secrets to the union? Find out in this touching love story wrapped in a contemporary labor battle.
Eric Lotke is an author, activist and scholar. His early work, The Real War on Crime, was groundbreaking on criminal justice policy. His original research on Prisoners of the Census has led to new law in ten states so far. His lawsuit over the exploitative price of phone calls from prison led to new rules by the FCC.
Joining Eric for this conversation will be Cathy Hanson, editor of the Minneapolis American Postal Workers Union’s newspaper, KaeJae Johnson, staff director of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, and Luke Mielke, who has been an organizer for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees in Chicago. They have read Union Made, and they will help draw out its implications for organizers, activists, and readers.
To view the video: https://youtu.be/iHZVdldiauE
Book Talk: The Southern Key with Mike Goldfield, 5/24/21
THE SOUTHERN KEY is a significant contribution to our analysis of the role of race, racism, and region in both the upheaval of the American labor movement in the years of the Great Depression and New Deal, and the containment and limitation of that upheaval in the post-World War II period. The recent failed effort to unionize the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, has concentrated attention on the legacy of the complex history of the labor movement in the South.
Michael Goldfield is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and currently Research Fellow at the Fraser Center for Workplace Issues at Wayne State University. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States, and The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics.
Our format will include a conversation between Mike Goldfield and Mike Hanson, a leader in the Airline Pilots Association based in Atlanta; Cornelia Weiss, a labor attorney based in Washington, DC; and Sid Carlson White, scholar-activist, Yale University. We expect that their conversation will raise some key issues for all of us to engage.
We encourage you to purchase a copy of THE SOUTHERN KEY via Oxford University Press or from your local independent bookstore. For those of you unable to get a copy of the book, here an article Mike wrote just this month which appeared in the Labor and Working Class History Association newsletter.
View the video: https://youtu.be/sYpgiFYLAo8
Writing Social Justice Stories for Little People, 5/4/21
The East Side Freedom Library invites you to a conversation with children’s book authors Nicole McCandless and Alejandra Domenzain.
Educators say, “If they can see it, they can be it.” When parents, teachers and librarians offer stories of children and their working parents fighting for their rights, they inspire children to imagine a better, more just world. The role models in their literature can teach them to fight bullying, gender inequality, racism and rigid conformity to class-based cultural norms. Stories about social justice issues encourage children to join the resistance when they come of age, and to question the grownups about who rules the world…and why. This is how our friends at Hardball Press describe their work.
ESFL is proud to be featuring two newly published children’s books from Hardball Press. Tune in to our Facebook page or YouTube channel to catch a conversation between Peter Rachleff and authors Nicole McCandless and Alejandra Domenzain, and stay tuned to hear them read their books.
On Saturday morning, May 8, at 10am, they will be reading these books to our “Stories for (Little) People” audience. Please encourage the little people in your lives to tune in then.
DOWN ON JAMES STREET takes readers into 1930s Pittsburgh, where two young teens, one White and one Black, are caught up in a police raid on an interracial dance hall. It puts young readers (aged 6-10) in the shoes of two courageous teens, in a story inspired by real historical events from the 1930s. The vivid illustrations evoke the cool vibe of that jazz era, while the story inspires young people today to stand up for justice.
The bilingual PARA TODOS/FOR ALL follows Flor and her father as they leave their beloved country for the promise of a land called For All. Dad works long hours for little pay, while Flor struggles to find her place in school. In time, Flor realizes that not having the proper immigration papers means her father must work in unfair & unsafe conditions, and that doors of opportunity will be closed to her. Flor picks up her green pen and writes from the heart about immigrants excluded from “justice for all.” She inspires others to take action in the hope their new country will live up to its ideals.
Join us for a conversation with the writers of these great new books. Order the books at www.hardballpress.com
View the video: https://youtu.be/fkFohDIfA5w
Book Talk: "A Pandemic Nurse's Diary," 4/29/21
With author Nurse T, Publisher Tim Sheard, and local reader/discussants from the frontlines of healthcare work. Order the book from Hard Ball Press: https://www.hardballpress.com/pandemi...
Panelists include Sarah Lake, a retired nurse; Renee Vaughan, a worker in a long-term care facility; Najaha Musse, a resident physician and Mary Turner, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association and a COVID ICU nurse.
“An exhilarating read that takes you right to the front lines of the pandemic and the heroes risking and putting their own lives in harm’s way to save others! A story that will have you reaching out to the brave nurses and hospital workers and thanking them for what they do on a daily basis…Highly Recommended!” —Joe Dougherty, PhillyLabor.com
“…a gut punch — a raw, hard look at the day-to-day lives of healthcare workers who almost everyone expects to be super-heroic as a matter of course.” —Labor Press
“…a book written by a nurse in the center of the pandemic. Accompanied by beautiful drawings of hospital workers caring for patients…a narrative which helps us understand both COVID19 and the workers who faced it…[and] the deep solidarity health workers experience from each other.” —Marilyn Albert, Portside
“It is important for all of us to know about the truth of what COVID-19 has brought to healthcare facilities and the impact it has had on healthcare workers. It is important to know this as citizens, but also as members of the labor movement and the working class….A Pandemic Nurse’s Diary…is an essential tool in the struggle. …a very powerful read.” —APWU Union Mail
“…a vivid and powerful personal account of how Covid-19 has impacted her co-workers and patients and how the local, state, and national health care ‘system’ failed to provide the support and supplies they needed.” —Matt Witt, World Wide Work
Saint Paul Public Schools School Board Candidate Forum
St. Paul 350 and the East Side Freedom Library host an SPPS School Board candidate forum on climate action. SPPS has a fantastic opportunity to make a major impact on Saint Paul's energy generation, as well as a major impact on our students.
To view the video: https://youtu.be/iRwSn6zX_lU
"From Hurt to Healing:" An Intergenerational Activity Book, 4/23/21
How do we move from hurt to healing? The murder of George Floyd and the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic brought together young people and elders in a three-month Zoom conversation focused on healing from trauma. Elders shared stories of how they persevered in their racial justice struggles when they were young, and young people asked questions, listened, and led mind-body medicine breathing tools they were practicing to heal from their stress and burn-out in the aftermath of intensive activism responding to the traumatic events of 2020.
In "From Hurt to Healing: An Intergenerational Activity Book," there are coloring pages of community elders including blocks of texts and inspirational quotations where they share their wisdom and experiences for moving from hurt to healing as well as beautifully hand drawn coloring pages of breathing tools with directions and other healing practices such as humming, hair braiding, and dancing. There are word searches and writing prompts to encourage intergenerational dialogue and includes the wisdom of the St. Paul Rondo community with coloring pages of the Selby Avenue Jazz Fest, Rondo Days, and other local festivals.
Join some of the creators of "From Hurt to Healing" and members of the ESFL community in an exploration of how this coloring activity book can promote cross-generational connection and healing from trauma. From "Hurt to Healing: An Intergenerational Activity Book," a collaboration between Every Body’s In and Irreducible Grace Foundation (IGF), two black-led non-profits in the Rondo Community of St. Paul, MN, is available now! Books can be ordered on the Irreducible Grace website: https://www.irgrace.org/store.
"Do the Right Thing" Virtual Screening with Roger Guenveur Smith, 4/17/21
On April 17, 2021, Trilingua Cinema and East Side Freedom Library presented an online screening of the film "Do The Right Thing," followed by a public discussion featuring acclaimed actor, director, writer, and frequent Spike Lee collaborator Roger Guenveur Smith. The film is not featured in this video but can be viewed on several streaming services.
About the Film: Perhaps no other film speaks more directly to our current cultural moment than Spike Lee's seminal work, released more than 30 years ago. Exploring the lives and communities that comprise the diverse, vibrant neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, Lee's picture clamours with color and creative vision. When Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) demands Sal of Sal's Famous Pizzeria (Danny Aiello) begin putting pictures of Black people on his "Wall of Fame," the entire community is inexorably drawn into an outburst of rage on the hottest night of the year. Register to watch the film and help us discuss what Lee's 1980's New York might say about our own neighborhoods and city. We hope to see you there ...and that's the truth, Ruth!
About Roger Guenveur Smith: Beyond his appearances in many of Spike Lee’s best known films, such as "Do the Right Thing," "Malcolm X," and "He Got Game," Roger Guenveur Smith is a talented writer and dramatist. Exploring the intersection of performance and history, his award winning works center on real people, including Huey P. Newton, Frederick Douglass, and Christopher Colombus. His one man show, "Rodney King", is currently streaming on Netflix. Smith has had recurring roles in the HBO series "K Street," "Oz," and "American Gangster," for which he was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award. He studied at Yale University and Occidental College and has taught at both institutions as well as CalArts, where he directs his Performing History Workshop.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/vc0GMaZz5g0
"Driving While Brown," Labor History Reading Group, 4/20/21
Tom O’Connell interviews this new book’s authors, Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block.
"Driving While Brown" documents Arizona’s relentless immigration crackdowns, which were championed by Arpaio who became the nation’s most notorious immigration enforcer. The authors interviewed the sheriff, victims of his policies, his loyal supporters, and his tenacious opponents who stood up for their community and immigrants. The tense narrative follows Latino activists who launched a landmark racial-profiling lawsuit against the sheriff. With a white majority losing demographic and political ground as the backdrop, this is the story of the struggle over immigration in America.
Tom O’Connell is a retired Metro State University Professor, former ESFL Board member, and a long time radio talk show host.
Terry Greene Sterling is affiliated faculty and writer-in-residence at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Slate, The Daily Beast, The Village Voice, High Country News, and The Guardian. The Arizona Press Club has named her the state’s top journalist three times.
Jude Joffe-Block is a reporter and editor at the Associated Press, working in both English and Spanish on the news verification team. Before that, she reported on immigration for more than a decade for outlets that include NPR and the Guardian.
"Yang Warriors" with Kao Kalia Yang and Billy Thao, 4/16/21
Kao Kalia Yang and Billy Thao host a virtual event with the East Side Freedom Library on Friday, April 16, for a discussion of their new book, "Yang Warriors."
In this inspiring picture book, fierce and determined children confront the hardships of Ban Vinai refugee camp, where Kao Kalia Yang lived as a child.
For more information and to view the video: https://youtu.be/ay7CSG-NZVQ
History Revealed: "Booth Girls," 4/8/21
"Booth Girls: Pregnancy, Adoption, and the Secrets We Kept:by Kim Heikkila, PhD
"Booth Girls" is a thoughtful, multigenerational story of contested motherhood, equal parts biography, oral history, history, and memoir.
Kim Heikkila’s mother had a secret: in 1961, two years before her marriage, she became pregnant. After several months hidden in her parents’ attic bedroom, she gave birth to a daughter at the Salvation Army’s Booth Memorial Hospital, a home for unwed mothers in St. Paul, and surrendered her for adoption. Kim’s older sister reunited with her birth family in the 1990s.
Kim’s mother wrote about these experiences, but after she died, Heikkila still had questions. Using careful research and sensitive interviews with other “Booth girls,” she tells the stories of the Booth hospital and the women who passed through it—and she learned more about her own experience as an adoptive mother.
Kim Heikkila, PhD, is an independent scholar and president of Spotlight Oral History. She has also taught courses on US history, US women’s history, the Vietnam War, and the 1960s at colleges and universities in the Twin Cities area. She is the author of "Sisterhood of War: Minnesota Women in Vietnam." To purchase titles from the History Revealed series, or other books of interest, see our partner, Subtext Books at https://subtextbooks.com/.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/0ixCE5DqqlI
"Free Papers" with Mary Moore Easter, 4/7/21
The East Side Freedom Library invites you to a special evening with Mary Moore Easter and her new poetry collection Free Papers: Inspired by the Testimony of Eliza Winston, A Mississippi Slave Escaped to Freedom in Minnesota in 1860.
Mary Moore Easter is the author of The Body of the World (Minnesota Book Award in Poetry Finalist, 2019); Walking from Origins; From the Flutes of Our Bones (Nodin Press 2020), and Free Papers: poems inspired by the testimony of Eliza Winston, a Mississippi slave, escaped to freedom in Minnesota in 1860. (Finishing Line Press 2021) A Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, Cave Canem Fellow, veteran dancer /choreographer, and emerita professor of dance at Carleton College, Easter is the mother of two daughters and four grandchildren.
Poet Danez Smith writes: “Mary Moore Easter’s Free Papers is dreaming in the archives. Through poems that document and redocument the life of Eliza Winston paired beside poems that reach across time to unite Black women in their quest to rapture the self from the prisons of nation and whiteness, Easter has built a hall of mirrors where one can come out of the other side free, transformed. Here, documents morph like a mind suddenly free from its last shackle. The poetry, freedom’s promise, knows no bounds.”
As a special treat, for “Winslow House: A Script for Three Voices,” Mary will be joined by her daughter Allison Easter (Based in NY, Allison Easter was the first American woman in Stomp and has performed with MacArthur awardees Susan Marshall and Meredith Monk, in Law & Order and in Will Pomerantz’s adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities.) and Siddeqah Shabazz (Originally from Oakland, CA, with degrees in theater from the University of La Verne in Southern California and the Guildford School of Acting in England, she has worked in the Twin Cities with Climb, Shadow Horse, Gadfly, Chain Reaction, Freshwater, and 20% Theaters, Exposed Brick Theatre, Savage Umbrella, Aniccha Arts, Intermedia Arts, Artistry, Underdog Theatre, Transatlantic Love Affair, and Full Circle Theatre.)
View the video here: https://youtu.be/6OxPEAWlDG0
The Kaleidoscope Project MN: Poetic Reflections on Solidarity, 4/1/21
Join the East Side Freedom Library April 1 for the second iteration of The Kaleidoscope Project (MN), which includes public readings of poetry inspired by deep reflection on empathy, solidarity, and intercommunity healing.
TKP, developed by creative writer/interdisciplinary artist Rebecca Nichloson, engages creative writers from historically marginalized communities in immersive virtual experiences centered on building solidarity and empathy between different communities across Minnesota. The methodology utilizes a human-centered design approach to foster a deeper understanding of the challenges each community faces and generates social justice/social equity-informed poetry that supports community-engagement and social change. This cohort includes readings by: Rebecca Nichloson, Anthony Ceballos, Wilt Hodges, and Duaba Unenra.
Anthony Ceballos received his BFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2016 he was selected to be a Loft Literary Center Mentor Series mentee. His poetry has been featured in Yellow Medicine Review, Midway Journal, Sleet, Writers Resist and upcoming from Great River Review. He lives, breathes and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He can be found penning staff recommendations at Birchbark Books and Native Arts.
Duaba Unenra is a survivor of the reconstruction process in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. He is an artist, community organizer, and scholar who looks at how forces of neoliberalism took advantage of openings created by environmental disasters in Haiti and New Orleans to reinforce anti-Black, anti-poor, anti-woman, and anti-queer living and ways of being. Unenra engages in mutual aid and building counter-sites as social tools for self-determination and healing in Black, Indigenous, Brown, and other communities, including in institutions of higher education.
Wilt Hodges is a poet, essayist, and community reporter. He received his degree from Columbia University. A past Minnesota State Artist Grant recipient and Givens Fellow, he resides in Saint Paul.
Rebecca Nichloson (She/Her) is a creative writer, singer/songwriter, playwright and theatre maker. She is the author of numerous creative works, including Mara, Queen of the World (an acapella musical), The Wild, Bold Enlightenment of Velvet the Mistress, Cooking With Keisha (or Anatomy of Pie), and Jill, Jack & the Martian Lady, among others. She holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Columbia University, an M.A. in English Literature, and a B.A. in Business Administration. She was also the recipient of a 2020 Commission from the Cedar Cultural Center for which she created Multicolored Musings: Jewels of Love, Loss, & Triumph and received a 2020 honorable mention from the McKnight Foundation (Spoken Word). www.RebeccaNichloson.com.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/uMotuxjgCBM
Book Talk: "Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify" by Carolyn Holbrook, 3/28/21
Join us for a celebration and exploration of Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify, Carolyn Holbrook’s long-awaited collection of essays. She will be in conversation with three women who have read her book.
Carolyn Holbrook is the founder and director of More Than a Single Story. She is a writer, educator, and a long time advocate for the healing power of the arts. Her essay collection, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (U of M Press) is a finalist for a 2021 MN Book Award in the Memoir and Creative Nonfiction category. She is also a co-author of Dr. Josie Johnson’s memoir, Hope In the Struggle. Her essays have been published widely, most recently in A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota (MNHS 2016) and Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (MNHS 2015). She was the first person of color to win the Kay Sexton Award for contributions to Minnesota Literature from the MN Book Awards and the Friends of the St. Paul Public Libraries (2010).
Najah Davis is a senior at DeLaSalle High School. She enjoys making fun memories with her friends and her loving family. She also finds time to discuss social issues that affect certain groups in America. She believes that any change begins with conversation.
Zenzele Isoke is a Black feminist theorist, urban ethnographer, and political storyteller. A mother of two Black women, Zenzele designs and teaches university courses that integrate mindfulness of body and breath techniques with Black feminist thought to teach about race, gender, and empire for undergraduate students. She is the author of Urban Black Women and the Politics of Resistance (Palgrave 2013). Zenzele also leads the BIPOC meditation at the Yoga Room in North Minneapolis.
Marquita Stephens is the Director of Education Programming and Policy for the Urban League Twin Cities and the principal of Marqui Coaching and Consulting. She is an active member of the community, most notably Black Women Rising, executive leadership, and League of Women Voters – Roseville. Marquita enjoys swimming and is an avid movie goer.
View the video: https://youtu.be/Zro7MjvM6XY
What's Going On At Hillcrest? Part 2
The Hillcrest Golf Course is a major redevelopment project that will begin in the near future on the East Side. What is going to happen at the site? Join us for a follow up community conversation to our presentation on the development.
To view video: https://youtu.be/svgR8DQOjqk
Co-Conspirator of Justice: The Revolutionary Life of Dr. Alan Berkman, with author Susan Reverby, 3/22/21
Alan Berkman (1945–2009) was a medical student and doctor who became radicalized by his experiences at the Wounded Knee takeover, at the Attica prison uprising, and at health clinics for the poor. He provided covert care to members of revolutionary groups, participated in bombings of government buildings and was eventually captured and served eight years in some of America’s worst penitentiaries. After his release in 1992, he returned to medical practice and became an HIV/AIDS physician, teacher, and global health activist. He worked to change U.S. policy, making AIDS treatment more widely available in the global south and saving millions of lives around the world.
Using Berkman’s unfinished prison memoir, FBI records, letters, and hundreds of interviews, Susan Reverby sheds fascinating light on questions of political violence and revolutionary zeal in her account of Berkman’s extraordinary transformation from doctor to co-conspirator for justice. Reverby has had a long and productive career in the Women’s & Gender Studies department at Wellesley College. Her 1987 book, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, brought the perspectives of the “new” labor history to nursing. She continued to explore the American medical system, editing Tuskegee’s Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (2000) and writing Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy (2009).
She will be engaged in conversation with three members of the ESFL community who have read Co-Conspirator for Justice:
Colette Hyman teaches US History at Winona State University and is the author of Staging Strikes: Workers’ Theatre and the American Labor Movement in the 1930s (1997) and Dakota Women’s Work: Creativity, Culture & Exile (2012).
Art Serotoff is a long-time anti-racist activist based in south Minneapolis.
Sara Olson spent seven years in a California prison for charges related to her involvement with the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s. She is an activist with the Women’s Prison Book Project.
Fred Peterson worked as a bush doctor with Oxfam UK in Zimbabwe in 1981-82. He was a participant in the Twin Cities Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa, and worked as an ER doc in St. Paul for many years.
Redefining Citizenship: The Fight for the Right to Vote in Minnesota and the Midwest, with Sara Egge, 3/18/21
History Revealed Series, in partnership with the Ramsey County Historical Society and the Roseville Library.
Examining how women won the right to vote in Minnesota and the Midwest reveals how Midwesterners changed their conceptions of citizenship in the early twentieth century. Women earned the ballot during World War I, when demonstrating patriotism became an expected part of the war effort. Mobilizing for the war, which so many midwestern suffragists did quite willingly, served as a testament to their loyalty to both community and country. They also leveraged that mobilization against the alleged disloyalty of immigrants in the region whom they attacked as slackers. Suffragists claimed that exercising the right to vote was an expression of duty, rather than just a natural right.
"The Uprising of '34," Labor History Reading Group, 3/16/21
The East Side Freedom Library invites you a special version of our Labor History Film and Reading Group for March 2021.
The Uprising of ‘34, the award-winning documentary by George Stoney, is the subject of a conversation on March 16, via Zoom, with the film’s editor Susanne Rostock and labor historian Mary Wingerd, author of the essay Rethinking Paternalism: Power and Parochialism in a Southern Mill Village (Journal of American History, 1996). The film is available for rental on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/uprisingof34.
For Women’s History Month, join ESFL in an exploration of the lives, work, and struggles of southern textile mill workers. The Uprising of ’34 is a startling documentary which tells the story of the General Strike of 1934, a massive but little-known strike by hundreds of thousands of Southern cotton mill workers during the Great Depression. The mill workers’ defiant stance — and the remarkable grassroots organizing that led up to it — challenged a system of mill owner control that had shaped life in cotton mill communities for decades. Mary Wingerd’s essay not only explores this system of control, but also unearths the under-the-radar forms of resistance which made this strike possible. And she encourages us to consider other times and places where such control and resistance informed working class life.
The Uprising of ’34 offers a penetrating look at class, race, and power in working communities throughout America and raises critical questions about the role of history in making democracy work today. More than a social document, the film is intended to spark discussion on class, race, economics, and power — issues as vital today as they were decades ago. “The thrust of this film is to give the workers their chance to speak,” said editor Rostock. “We’re very proud of the fact that here’s a film in which they speak for themselves [with no narrator].” Our conversation will feature Susanne Rostock the film’s editor and Minnesota historian Mary Wingerd. Rostock is a director as well as an editor, perhaps best known for her presentation of Harry Belafonte’s life in Sing Your Song (2011). In an HBO project, she is currently directing Another Night in the Free World which documents the lives of three young women activists from 2012 to the present. Wingerd is the author of Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul (2001) and North Country: The Making of Minnesota (2010). Please join us.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/1Qg3FmtSX-w
What's Going on at Hillcrest? Part 1, 3/9/21
The Hillcrest Golf Course is a major redevelopment project that will begin in the near future on the East Side of Saint Paul. What is going to happen at the site? How has the community been engaged? How might this connect to reparations work? J
Join us for a presentation between our housing justice program and our reparations reading group followed by a community discussion led by Ben Werner and Trahern Crews. East Side Housing Justice Working Group is a coalition of organizations who share a commitment to democracy and equity as central to resolving East Siders’ long historical challenges when it comes to housing security. The Reparations Reading Group has been meeting monthly to explore the historical development of institutional racism in the United States and, particularly, in St. Paul.
View the video here: https://youtu.be/mcd0h7-hiZQ
History Revealed: the Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson, 3/4/21
The East Side Freedom Library and the Ramsey County Historical Society invite you to our March 2021 “History Revealed” program: "The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson" A Conversation Between Author Donna T. Haverty-Stacke and Reader/Discussants Greg Poferl, Linda Leighton, and Mary Wingerd
On December 8, 1941, Grace Holmes Carlson, the only female defendant among eighteen Trotskyists convicted under the Smith Act, was sentenced to sixteen months in federal prison for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. After serving a year in Alderson prison, Carlson returned to her work as an organizer for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and ran for vice president of the United States under its banner in 1948. Then, in 1952, she abruptly left the SWP and returned to the Catholic Church. With the support of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had educated her as a child, Carlson began a new life as a professor of psychology at St. Mary’s Junior College in Minneapolis where she advocated for social justice, now as a Catholic Marxist. "The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist" is a historical biography that examines the story of this complicated woman in the context of her times with a specific focus on her experiences as a member of the working class, as a Catholic, and as a woman. Her story illuminates the workings of class identity within the context of various influences over the course of a lifespan. The long arc of Carlson’s life (1906–1992) ultimately reveals significant continuities in her political consciousness that transcended the shifts in her particular partisan commitments, most notably her life-long dedication to challenging the root causes of social and economic inequality. In that struggle, Carlson ultimately proved herself to be a truly fierce woman.
Donna T. Haverty-Stacke, Professor of History at Hunter College of the City University of New York, is a historian of working-class and radical politics. She is interested in the intersection of that history with nationalism and collective memory, national security and free speech, gender identity, and Catholic activism. Her first book was "America’s Forgotten Holiday: May Day and Nationalism, 1867-1960" (NYU Press, 2009) and her second, which she discussed four years ago at ESFL, was "Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Political Persecution since the Age of FDR" (NYU Press, 2015).
Greg Poferl is a lifelong labor and Catholic social activist and a generous collaborator at ESFL. Last year, Greg wrote his memoir, "Turning Points: Never Give Up on Anyone, Especially Yourself" (East Side Freedom Library, 2020).
Linda Leighton is a lifelong labor activist who has played a major role in maintaining local memory of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters’ strikes.
Mary Wingerd is Emerita Professor of History at St. Cloud State University and the author of "Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul" (Cornell University Press, 2001) and "North Country: The Making of Minnesota" (University of Minnesota Press, 2010).
To view the video: https://youtu.be/Q0-pA3w88dE
History Revealed: "Hope in the Struggle" with Josie Johnson and Tish Jones, 2/23/21
How did a Black woman from Texas become one of the most well-known civil right activists in Minnesota? After seven decades of speaking up and standing up, of fighting for fairness in voting, housing, education, and employment, Dr. Josie Johnson has finally written her memoir. "Hope in the Struggle" gives us an opportunity to not only learn about her, but to learn from her.
Dr. Johnson’s story began in segregated Texas, where her father organized against the Poll Tax, launching her on a lifetime of activism which brought her to the 2008 Democratic National Convention, where she cast her vote for Barack Obama for president. Her memoir offers a close-up picture of what that struggle has entailed, whether working as a community organizer for the Minneapolis Urban League or lobbying for fair housing and employment laws, investigating civil rights abuses or co-chairing the Minnesota delegation to the March on Washington, becoming the first African American to serve on the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents or creating the university’s Office of the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs with a focus on minority affairs and diversity. An intimate view of civil rights history in the making, "Hope in the Struggle" is a uniquely inspiring life story for these current dark and divisive times, a testament to how one determined soul can make the world a better place.
ESFL and RCHS are pleased to present Dr. Johnson in conversation with an activist from a younger generation, Tish Jones. A poet, organizer, and educator from St. Paul, Ms. Jones is Founder & Executive Director of TruArtSpeaks, and she has had an impact on artist-activists from coast to coast. She has performed at The Walker Art Center, Intermedia Arts, The Cedar Cultural Center and more. Ms. Jones’ work can be found in the Minnesota Humanities Center’ anthology, Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2015), the 2011 and 2013 Saint Paul Almanac, the Loft Literary Center’s Nation of Immigrants audio CD highlighting the voices of their longstanding Equilibrium Spoken Word Series, and many more spaces.
To view the video: https://youtu.be/RIqfdd_0aBI
Twin Cities JACL Day of Remembrance, 2/21/21
The Twin Cities JACL commemorates the 79th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 with a "Day of Remembrance" program that includes a screening of "Conscience and the Constitution."
This is the audio of the video presentation on February 21, 2021 (viewable here: https://youtu.be/M6q6tM6gfgg). Due to copyright limitations, it includes the introduction of the panelists and the post-film discussion but does not include the film itself. You may order your own copy of the film from: https://resisters.com/conscience-and-the-constituion/orders/. It can also be viewed on Amazon with a Prime subscription.
"Conscience and the Constitution" is an hour-long, award-winning PBS documentary that tells the story of the draft resistance movement at Heart Mountain during World War II. A conversation following the film focuses on the contemporary significance of this story. Participants include Frank Abe, the film's writer, producer, and director, Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Japanese American and Muslim students from the University of Minnesota.
Our speakers:
Frank Abe (he/him) is a journalist, reporter, writer, producer, director, actor, and a founding member of the Asian American Theater Workshop in San Francisco and of the Asian American Journalists Association in Seattle. His involvement with producing the two original "Day of Remembrance" events in Seattle and Portland gave media attention to the campaign for redress. He received the 2019 American Book Award for "John Okada: The Life and Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy," and has written a new graphic novel, "We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration," coming in March.
Jaylani Hussein (he/him) is the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). His family emigrated from Somalia to Minnesota in 1993. Hussein holds degrees in community development and city planning from St. Cloud State University and political science from North Dakota State University. He has collaborated with the Twin Cities JACL on various programs to discuss the relevance of the Japanese American incarceration in the present day and to foster understanding within the broader community.
Haruka Yukioka (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary, shin-nisei Japanese American. They are a student at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities studying Music Education, Asian American Studies, and Racial Justice in Urban Schooling. Haruka also serves as the 2020-2021 External Vice-President of the Asian American Student Union. Haruka is passionate about racial and queer/trans justice, and is constantly looking to learn more about Asian American activism and cross-racial solidarity.
Ismahan Ali (she/her) is a Muslim, Somali American First-Generation student at the University of Minnesota-TC. She's receiving her B.S in Developmental Psychology and minor in Communications. She's also serving as the Events Coordinator for the Al-Madinah Cultural Center at the U for the 2020-21 Academic Year. Some areas of passion for her are pursuing Muslim, Immigrant, and Racial Justice as well as ensuring Children's Welfare.
This program is funded by the Karen and Les Suzukamo Fund, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation.
“Jim Crow of the North” Panel Discussion, 2/17/21
A virtual panel discussion on the film “Jim Crow of the North” centered on housing inequities and food access in the Twin Cities.
The event series “Co-op Community Conversations: Exploring the intersection of racial, social, and food justice” is presented by Eastside Food Co-op, Mississippi Market Food Co-op, Seward Community Co-op, and Twin Cities Co-op Partners as a way to examine and connect our cooperative values with social justice movements. Stay tuned for future events in this series taking place throughout the year.
Why do Minnesotans experience some of the worst racial disparities in home ownership in this country?
Join Twin Cities Food Co-ops, The East Side Freedom Library and TPT-2 to explore this question through the film “Jim Crow of the North,” which delves into the complex history of racial covenants in the Twin Cities and systematic racism that has lasting repercussions on housing inequities today.
To view the video: https://youtu.be/Wnz7EJWcZaQ
Workers on Arrival, Black Labor in the Making of America, by Joe Trotter, 2/10/21
Please join us for a History Book Club virtual event from the University of Minnesota’s Department of History, the Ramsey County Historical Society, the University of Minnesota's African American and African Studies Department and the Labor and Working History Association. This event features a discussion of "Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America" by Joe Trotter.
Joe Trotter (PhD ‘80), Giant Eagle Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, will discuss his book with moderator William Jones, Professor of History at the University of Minnesota.
About the book: Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America, University of California Press (January 2019) From the ongoing issues of poverty, health, housing and employment to the recent upsurge of lethal police-community relations, the black working class stands at the center of perceptions of social and racial conflict today. Journalists and public policy analysts often discuss the black poor as “consumers” rather than “producers,” as “takers” rather than “givers,” and as “liabilities” instead of “assets.”
In his engrossing new history, Workers on Arrival, Joe William Trotter, Jr. refutes these perceptions by charting the black working class’s vast contributions to the making of America. Covering the last four hundred years since Africans were first brought to Virginia in 1619, Trotter traces black workers’ complicated journey from the transatlantic slave trade through the American Century to the demise of the industrial order in the 21st century. At the center of this compelling, fast-paced narrative are the actual experiences of these African American men and women. A dynamic and vital history of remarkable contributions despite repeated setbacks, Workers on Arrival expands our understanding of America’s economic and industrial growth, its cities, ideas, and institutions, and the real challenges confronting black urban communities today.
About the author: Joe William Trotter, Jr. is the Giant Eagle Professor of History and Social Justice and past History Department Chair at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is also the Director and Founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy, President Elect of the Urban History Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Trotter received his BA degree from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota. He is currently working on a study of African American urban life since the Atlantic slave trade.
About the moderator William P. Jones is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota and president of the Labor and Working Class History Association. He currently serves as the director of graduate studies for the History Department. An expert on race and labor in the twentieth-century United States, he is author of two award-winning books, The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South (2005) and The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights (2013). Jones has been a guest on the PBS Newshour, NPR’s “The Takeaway,” and Democracy Now! He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, and other publications. He is currently writing a book on public employees and the transformation of the U.S. economy after World War II. Before coming to the University of Minnesota in 2016, Dr. Jones taught at the University of Wisconsin and Rutgers University.
Solidarity not Charity, Twin Cities Mutual Aid Organizers Community Panel and Q&A, 2/14/21
The uprising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd included an inspiring blossoming of mutual aid practices, networks, and visions across the Twin Cities. This live panel discussion features community members active in mutual aid organizing in the Twin Cities. Roxxanne, Sheff, Carmen, Rachel and Jae, organizers for mutual aid networks including Twin Cities Relief and Community Aid Network MN, talk about their experiences, challenges, and goals for long-term movement building. At the end of the discussion, panelists will address audience questions typed into the chat. (Roxxanne's video is turned off, so her name does not appear on the screen when she talks.)
The panel discussion has been organized by History for the Future and is being hosted by East Side Freedom Library. History for the Future is a community-curated public history initiative asking how historical and present day mutual aid work in the Twin Cities can help us imagine radical futures of community care.
View the video: www.youtube.com/eastsidefreedomlibraryorg
Labor History Film: Finally Got the News, 2/12/21
On the second Friday evening of each month, ESFL screens a labor history film.
In this video ESFL's Peter Rachleff discusses the historical context for "Finally Got the News" with David Colman, Associate Professor of African American History, Ramapo College of New Jersey, and James Robinson, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies, Metropolitan State University.
This film traces the activities of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers inside and outside the auto factories of Detroit. Through interviews with the members of the movement, footage shot in the auto plants, and footage of leafleting and picketing actions, the film documents their efforts to build an independent black labor organization that, unlike the UAW, will respond to worker’s problems, such as the assembly line speed-up and inadequate wages faced by both black and white workers in the industry. It provides a rare opportunity for African American industrial workers to represent themselves on film and for a self-identified revolutionary organization to provide their own perspective on the past, the present, and the future.
The late historian Manning Marable wrote: “The League [of Revolutionary Black Workers] was in many respects the most significant expression of black radical thought and activism in the 1960s. The League took the impetus for Black Power and translated it into a fighting program focusing on industrial workers.”
Oral historian and filmmaker Dan Georgakas (author of Detroit: I Do Mind Dying) wrote: “Ideological in the best sense: it is a film about ideas [and] presents a serious strategy for mass working class action… It speaks of a specific time and specific experiences in terms that will remain relevant as long as working people are not able to control their own lives.”
To view the video with closed captioning: YouTube.com/eastsidefreedomlibraryorg
History Revealed: The Sinking Middle Class, with David Roediger, 2/11/21
The East Side Freedom Library and the Ramsey County Historical Society invite you to a special session of our “History Revealed” series.
This event will be archived on on the library's Facebook page and on our YouTube channel with closed captioning enabled: https://www.youtube.com/eastsidefreedomlibraryorg.
“Middle class” is an ideologically shaped and deployed term in American culture and politics. Activist-scholar David Roediger makes clear in his pointed and persuasive polemic, this obsession with the middle-class is relatively new in US politics. It began with the attempt to win back so-called “Reagan Democrats” by Bill Clinton and it was accompanied by a pandering to racism and a shying away from meaningful wealth redistribution that continues to this day.
Drawing on rich traditions of radical social thought, Roediger disavows the thinly sourced idea that the United States was, for much of its history, a “middle-class” nation and the still more indefensible position that it is one now. The increasing immiseration of large swathes of middle-income America, only accelerated by the current pandemic, nails a fallacy that is a major obstacle to progressives.
David Roediger taught in the 1990s at the University of Minnesota and now teaches American Studies at the University of Kansas. His books include Seizing Freedom, The Wages of Whiteness, How Race Survived U.S. History, and Towards the Abolition of Whiteness and Working toward Whiteness. His book The Production of Difference (with Elizabeth Esch) recently won the International Labor History Association Book Prize. He is past president of the American Studies Association and of the Working-Class Studies Association.
Professor Roediger will be joined in conversation by:
August Nimtz, Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at the University of Minnesota. August has been an activist in progressive movements in the Twin Cities (and beyond) since the 1970s with a particular emphasis on solidarity with the people of Cuba.
Kieran Knutson, President of Communications Workers of America Local 7250 (Minnesota AT&T). Kieran has been a long time activist at the intersection of the racial justice and labor movements.
Megan Brown, Assistant Professor in the Masters in Advocacy and Political Leadership (MAPL) program at Metropolitan State University. A geographer by training and trade, Megan has recently found her way to St. Paul.
Gaza, BDS and Justice for Palestine, 1/30/21
Dr. Haidar Eid will give an introductory background on the situation in Gaza, focusing on the horror of the blockade and the three wars of aggression 2009, 2012, and 2014. He will then discuss the necessity of international intervention in the form of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions as the most effective tool of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Dr. Haidar will also discuss how to avoid normalization with apartheid Israel by heeding the BDS call made by Palestinian civil society.
Please direct questions about this event to mepn@mepn.org. This event is co-hosted by our friends at the East Side Freedom Library, & American Muslims for Palestine-Minnesota.
Co-sponsors include; Jewish Voice for Peace- Twin Cities Chapter, and Women Against Military Madness.
About the Speaker"
Dr. Eid holds a Ph.D from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa and is a member of the Palestinian Campaign for Academic Boycott of Israel, Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor, founding member of the One Democratic State Campaign, and Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza's al-Aqsa University. He has written widely on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including books Worlding Postmodernism: Interpretive Possibilities of Critical Theory and Countering The Palestinian Nakba: One State For All.
Tom O'Connell and Barbara Freese discuss her book "Industrial Strength Denial," 11/30/20
The East Side Freedom Library invites you to the next conversation in our series “Learning From the Past, Fighting for the Future”: A Conversation between Tom O’Connell and Barbara Freese.
Join host Tom O’Connell as he interviews environmental attorney Barbara Freese about her new book, "Industrial-Strength Denial: Eight Stories of Corporations Defending the Indefensible." This new and timely book takes the reader through eight campaigns of corporate denial from the slave trade to radium consumption; financial manipulation to climate change. In a general election campaign in which corporate abuses too often go unchallenged, Freese’s powerful stories equip citizens with the understanding we need to hold corporations accountable in the future.
Barbara is also the author of "Coal: A Human History," selected as a New York Times Notable Book and recently released in an updated edition. This critically-acclaimed book tells the story of how coal has transformed the world over the centuries, describes the drama swirling around coal use today, and explains why coal represents such a profound threat to the global climate. Barbara is an environmental attorney, policy analyst and speaker who has for several years been deeply involved in energy and climate issues, with a particular focus on coal. She has fought to block the construction of new coal plants and to enact climate protection laws at the state and federal level, and she co-authored multiple reports on coal use when she was a senior policy advocate on the staff of the Union of Concerned Scientists. In the mid-1990s, when she was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota, Barbara litigated the science of climate change against the coal industry, confronting first-hand the science denial that would later become so prominent in the U.S.
View the video: https://youtu.be/pbbHou0I3_U
"Turnout: Making Minnesota the State That Votes" with Joan Growe and Lori Sturdevant, 12/3/20
In "Turnout," the architect and chief promoter of Minnesota’s high voter turnout tells her story, showing how hard work and cooperation made the state a leader in clean, open elections. High voter turnout in Minnesota is no accident. I
t arose from the traditions of this state’s early Yankee and northern European immigrants, and it has been sustained by wisely chosen election policies. Many of these policies were designed and implemented during the twenty-four-year tenure of Minnesota secretary of state Joan Anderson Growe.
In inspiring and often funny prose, Growe recounts the events that framed her life and changed the state’s voting practices. She grew up in a household that never missed an election. After an astounding grassroots feminist campaign, she was elected to the state legislature in 1972; two years later, she was elected secretary of state, the state’s chief elections administrator. As one of the nation’s leading advocates for reliable elections and convenient voting, Growe worked with county officials to secure Election Day registration (used for the first time in 1974) as a Minnesota norm. She brought new technology into elections administration and promoted motor voter registration. And as an ardent feminist, she has encouraged and inspired scores of other women to run for office.
Joan Growe and co-author Lori Sturdevant will discuss the book and Ms. Growe’s time in office with a talk that is part political history and part memoir, and a reminder to Minnesotans to cherish and protect their tradition of clean, open elections.
View the video: https://youtu.be/Cz2bM2ugc3I