The moment calls for radical imagination to meet the urgency of the political uprisings towards ending white supremacy and police brutality in 2020. The U.S. COVID-19 response has seen leadership prioritize economic growth over human health and lives, and vulnerable populations – largely poor, disabled, and Black, Indigenous & People of Color communities – have been designated dispensable. At the same time, we’re witnessing powerful accountability of institutions that have caused incessant violence and abuse rooted in racial capitalism.
As we stand on the cusp of a possible future, we must not only address these wounds, but imagine new structures. What if we don’t just heal from COVID, but uplift and nurture all people? When we conceived the Apotheke event series in 2019, we felt it was important to not only highlight the ways in which German culture frames care as a holistic practice, but to acknowledge the role that health, healing, power and beauty play in fascist ideology. What if we eliminate institutions that pathologize, punish, and brutalize, and instead develop methods of accountability that allow for change and healing? In a co-curated and co-moderated conversation,
Cara Page,
Mariame Kaba, and
Adaku Utah ask these questions and discuss the current moment through the lenses of Healing Justice and Transformative Justice, imagining a Black feminist future free from state violence, policing, and exploitation.
This event will take place online on Zoom.
Registration is required - please use this link to register.
Cara Page is a Black Feminist Queer cultural/memory worker & organizer. She comes from a long ancestral legacy of organizers and cultural workers from Southeast to the Northeast. For the past 20+ years, she has fought for LGBTQGNC POC liberation, and organized in racial, reproductive, and economic justice movements. In particular, she has organized to build community led strategies to interrupt and intervene on policing and surveillance of state and communal violence. She is a current member of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), Project South, the Audre Lorde Project (ALP), and INCITE! Cara is the former Executive Director of the Audre Lorde Project; an organizing center for, by and about Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Two Spirit, Transgender & Gender Non Conforming People of Color in New York City. She is also the co-founder of the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective; a southeastern network of healers, health practitioners and organizers responding to and intervening on incidences of state violence & generational trauma. She is a current Barnard Center for Research on Women Activist-in-Residence, where she focuses on transformative justice strategies to confront and shift the practices of the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) and reshape traditions of collective safety and wellness as integral to our political liberation.
Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator and curator whose work focuses on racial justice, gender justice, transformative/restorative justice, ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial complex, and supporting youth leadership development. She is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. She has co-founded multiple organizations and projects over the years including We Charge Genocide, the Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, the Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander (now Love 12 & Protect) and Survived & Punished among others. Mariame is also a member of the Just Practice Collaborative, a training and mentoring group focused on sustaining a community of practitioners that provide community-based accountability and support structures for all parties involved with incidents and patterns of sexual, domestic, relationship, and intimate community violence. She is on the advisory boards of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, Critical Resistance and the Chicago Community Bond Fund. Mariame is a 2016- 2017 Soros Justice Fellow. Her writing has appeared in
the Nation Magazine,
the Guardian,
The Washington Post,
In These Times,
Jacobin,
The New Inquiry,
Teen Vogue and more. She runs the Prison Culture blog (www.usprisonculture.com/blog).
Hailing from Nigeria,
Adaku Utah is a teacher, organizer, healer and ritual artist committed to cultivating movements that are strategic, sustainable and mutually nourishing. For over twenty years, her work has centered in movements for radical social change, with a focus on gender, reproductive, race, youth and healing justice. She is the co-founder and co-director of Harriet's Apothecary, a healing village led by Black Cis Women, Queer and Trans healer, artists, and organizers committed to living out Harriet Tubman's legacy of centering healing, wellness, and safety as movement building strategies to deconstruct legacies of trauma and galvanize communities to shape generative transformation. She is also the Interim Organizing Director at the National Network of Abortion Funds. She teaches with BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity) and the Generative Somatics teaching team and proudly serves on the board of Soul Fire Farm as a commitment to ending the racism and injustice in the food system. In her spare time, she loves nerding out about astrology, herbs, erotica, and sci-fi.
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