East Side Freedom Library

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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