“If now isn’t a good time for the truth I don’t see when we’ll get to it.” – Nikki Giovanni
What if we could…
🤲🏾 Gather together in a room with beautiful food and music?
🤲🏽 Share our stories without any pressure, fear or judgment?
🤲🏻 Connect authentically, making space for strangers to become allies?
How healing would that be?
For the second year in a row, High Desert Playback and Explora Science Center’s X Studio come together in celebration of the National Day of Racial Healing. This initiative, launched in 2017 by the W.K.Kellogg Foundation, is a time to contemplate our shared values and create the blueprint together for #HowWeHeal from the effects of racism.
Our Freedom Can’t Wait is a community gathering designed by theater artists, facilitators and cultural strategists to help us speak plain and tell the truth about how individual and systemic racism has impacted us. It is our chance as New Mexicans to share openly, listen generously and practice radical empathy.
Agenda:
5PM DINNER
Enjoy a beautiful meal catered by Three Sisters Kitchen, a non-profit community food space in the heart of downtown Albuquerque. A place where delicious, affordable and locally produced foods come together to nourish our community from the ground up.
6PM PLAYBACK THEATRE PERFORMANCE
High Desert Playback’s multiracial, queer + trans-centered company performs your stories of harm and healing. Share times in your life when you:
Were made aware of racism in a way that you weren’t before
Stood up to racist acts or systems
Felt held and supported in the wake of experiencing racism
Although this event is for everyone in our community, we will make a particular effort to center and honor the stories of folx from historically marginalized communities.
7:30PM COMMUNITY CONVERSATION
Following the show, Lynn Johnson (Co-Founder + Executive Director of High Desert Playback) will facilitate an interactive Community Conversation allowing you to:
Reflect on the stories and themes shared in the performance
Meet and talk with other folks in the room about your experiences
Co-create our own “blueprint” for how we can continue to heal together as New Mexicans
About High Desert Playback:
High Desert Playback makes theater for social change in New Mexico and beyond. We use the art of playback theatre to mobilize and amplify social issues through community outreach, engagement, dialogue, and celebration.
Playback theatre is an interactive form of improvisational theater in which audience members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. Created in 1975, playback theatre is now used in over 70 countries around the world to help build bridges across differences and to honor the human condition.
Founded in Albuquerque by Lynn Johnson and Allison Kenny in 2023, High Desert Playback—a Black/queer/women-led social enterprise—is the first professional playback theatre company in New Mexico. The HDP 2025 Performance Company includes: Dalilah Naranjo, Danielle Simone, Lasha Kirker, Jessie Lane, Johnny Olesen, Noe Field-Perkins, and Tatiana Gil.
About X Studio:
X Studio is the teen center of Explora!, an innovative experiential learning center located in the heart of Old Town Albuquerque. At X Studio, teens experiment, create, hang out and learn.
Join Us for a Delicious Celebration of Diversity!
On this special National Day of Racial Healing, Igniting Minds invites you to the Cultural Food Exchange—a one-of-a-kind culinary experience celebrating unity and inclusion through the universal language of food.
Explore a variety of cuisines from different cultures, savor the flavors of diversity, and connect with others in a meaningful way. Together, we’ll honor our differences, reflect on the power of community, and celebrate what brings us together.
Bring your appetite, your curiosity and your love for community.
East Biloxi Community Collaborative (EBCC) was founded in 2012 as an organization that offers residents and community-based groups a platform to develop and implement change strategies to improve the lives of children and families in East Biloxi. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) identified East Biloxi as one of three Mississippi communities implementing place-based strategies that meaningfully address economic security, health and well-being, and education.
As EBCC matured, it developed strategies and corresponding activities to address the immediate needs of East Biloxi residents, including working as a convener of stakeholders and advocates to better leverage resources that foster more equitable solutions.
EBCC will host a Racial Healing Circle luncheon on January 21, 2025 to explore and appreciate racial equity.
This January 18th, 2025, 1pm -6pm, the YWCA of Southern Arizona and the League of Women Voters will host our Annual National Day of Racial Healing program at the 525 N. Bonita Campus. This year’s theme is "How We Heal from The Effects of Racism". The day’s events will include speakers, a youth panel, cultural performers, youth art contest recognition, and food. NAACP-Tucson Branch President Dr. Cheree Meeks will serve as the programs emcee.
On view July 19, 2024–February 16, 2025
Tuesday–Saturday, 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.; Sunday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
520 Royal Street, Tricentennial Wing, 2nd and 3rd Floors
Free admission
Louisiana’s present-day distinction as the world’s incarceration capital is rooted in three centuries of history. Throughout this history, people in power have used systems of enslavement and incarceration to hold others captive for punishment, control, and exploitation. Black Louisianians have suffered disproportionately under these systems. Through historical objects, textual interpretation, multimedia, and data visualization, Captive State investigates these throughlines and arrives at an irrefutable truth: that the institutions of slavery and mass incarceration are historically linked.
Captive State tells this story in two parts. The first part outlines how Louisiana’s colonial and early American governments created race-based systems of oppression through legislation, policing, imprisonment, and violence that matured as New Orleans became the hub of the domestic slave trade. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime, permitted Louisiana to evolve its methods of racial control and embrace convict leasing and forced prison labor, particularly at a plantation known as Angola.
The second part of the exhibition traces how the Louisiana Constitution of 1898, written to maintain white supremacy, enabled an era of mass incarceration in the 20th and 21st centuries. Through nonunanimous jury verdicts and “tough on crime” legislation, incarceration rates skyrocketed, with far-reaching impacts. Among them are the growing number of people serving life sentences without parole. This has resulted in an aging state prison population, making the work of incarcerated volunteers in the hospice program at the Louisiana State Penitentiary essential. Lori Waselchuk photographed this program in Grace Before Dying, displayed in the mezzanine of the Tricentennial Wing. The exhibition concludes with a reflection question, reading recommendations, and information on ways to get involved on issues related to mass incarceration.
East Biloxi Community Collaborative (EBCC) was founded in 2012 as an organization that offers residents and community-based groups a platform to develop and implement change strategies to improve the lives of children and families in East Biloxi. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) identified East Biloxi as one of three Mississippi communities implementing place-based strategies that meaningfully address economic security, health and well-being, and education.
As EBCC matured, it developed strategies and corresponding activities to address the immediate needs of East Biloxi residents, including working as a convener of stakeholders and advocates to better leverage resources that foster more equitable solutions.
EBCC will host a Racial Healing Circle luncheon on January 21, 2025 to explore and appreciate racial equity.
Hawai’i Ku’u Home Aloha means Hawai’i Our Beloved Home and is an invitation to reflect on our past and present in order to create the future we want for our children and grandchildren
here in Hawai’i. Our events span from Jan 17 through Jan 22. We will engage in ceremony, circles, and artistic expression. We will also have a keynote with Norma Wong focusing on her new book “When No Thing Works.” Join us!
Racism is a heart issue. Only a Master Healer can offer real solutions. So we invite you to pause with us as we offer our hearts to be viewed through the lens of God's Word in hopes of fostering authentic conversations that lead to a heart-healthy community.
Florence Crittenton Services of Colorado (FloCrit) was inspired by W.K. Kellogg’s emails about the National Day of Healing, so we have incorporated the idea into our all day staff meeting where we will discuss Unconscious Bias – Moving from Awareness to Action organization wide. In addition, staff will bring a dish that represents their culture to share at our potluck and also share stories about their own experiences. FloCrit educates, prepares and empowers teen mothers and their children by providing two-generation wraparound services for teen families, which includes an Early Childhood Education Center. Because of our commitment to teen parents and children, scheduling can be challenging for staff and we have to work around their schedules.
The #HowWeHeal Book Club's selection is "My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies" by Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, SEP. His book offers a path "forward for individual and collective healing." He takes readers "through a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods" called "body practices." "A must-read (and a must-do) for everyone who cares about our country." Talking points for each chapter and selected settling body and breathing practices will be shared at each meeting.
It will be held at the Arizona State University Community Collaborative, a student-run clinic and community center for 300 low-income, older adults and mobility-impaired individuals, on the first floor of the Westward Ho Hotel, an historic16-floor subsidized housing complex in downtown Phoenix. The Community Collaborative is a service of the School of Social Work, part of the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. Students and seniors alike be participating in this grant-supported event.