It’s On Us: A Day of Art and Action

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It’s On Us is a day of art and action on Saturday, June 13th. Mark your calendars for the day's free activities, which include workshops, resources for resistance, soapbox speeches, and an evening performance featuring Jamila Woods, Taína Asili, and Damon Williams, with art programming by Maria Gaspar, Kristiana Rae Colón, and the Social Justice Initiative. Program details to be announced soon.

It’s On Us invites us to imagine: what blooms when ICE melts? The answer is on us to manifest together. Under authoritarian conditions and in times of repression, we are encouraged to desensitize ourselves, to ignore what we see, hear, smell, taste and feel. On this day, we call our neighbors to awaken their senses and one another: to see clearly, to listen deeply, to touch the ground and each other in solidarity, to taste the sweetness of shared life, to smell the earth that sustains us. By engaging our senses together, we embody liberation and practice radical imagination, building community through mutual aid, mobilization, and solidarity. When ICE melts, what blooms next is not inevitable, it is something we grow and cultivate together. Freedom begins when we remember that it’s on us.

Click here to RSVP for the festival!

SCHEDULE

9:00 AM - 2:00 PM: Neighborhood Activations
Blocks Together (West Garfield Park and East Lawndale), Free Street Theater (Back of the Yards), HANA Center (Horner Park, Irving Park), Kuumba Lynx (Kennicott Park, Kenwood), Sistas in the Village (Englewood), and 18th Street Casa de Cultura (Pilsen).
Details to be announced soon

4:00 - 6:00 PM: Arts Activities, Workshops, and Resource Fair
Including the Mobile Street Art Cart with William Estrada, Banners of Resistance with Yehimi Cambrón Álvarez, art programming by Maria Gaspar, paper flower making, workshops, tabling by community organizations (including Chicago Torture Justice Center, Walls Turned Sideways, and Illinois Humanities), and more.

6:00 - 8:00 PM: Performances and Soapbox Speeches
Featuring a second line procession with music and dance, leading in to performances by Jamila Woods, Taína Asili, Kristiana Rae Colón, and Damon Williams, and short speeches by Richard Wallace (Equity and Transformation), Rey Wences (Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights), Palestine Feminist Collective, and more.

RSVP for the festival today!

We are grateful for the support of Illinois Humanities, Woods Fund Chicago, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Crossroads Fund, and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago.