IOU Schedule

Seed Songs with Maria Gaspar

You are invited to create a collective anthem of repair, hope, and solidarity through the act of mending words and phrases, using selected text from freedom songs, protest music, and news headlines. The collective passages will be publicly performed by musicians throughout the event. Led by artist Maria Gaspar.

Disappearance Jail (Hole Punch Collage) with Maria Gaspar

Join us in contributing to Disappearance Jail, an ongoing participatory artwork that transforms images of carceral spaces through acts of perforation, removal, and shared labor. Together, we will imagine disappearance as a gesture of refusal, repair, and liberation. Led by artist Maria Gaspar.

Mobile Street Art Cart Project with William Estrada

The Mobile Street Art Cart Project is a socially engaged public arts initiative launched in 2015 with support from 3Arts. The cart acts as a resource hub, providing free arts programming to community members in public spaces to promote organizing and mobilizing people to use art as a tool to address the most pressing issues affecting them, in open-air spaces that are traditionally isolated from institutional art or educational platforms.

Banners of Resistance with Yehimi Cambrón Álvarez

Banners of Resistance is a textile-based, community-responsive banner project that centers a collective-making process through art builds and stitching circles. The banners serve as public visual markers of solidarity, resistance, and memorial.

Black Outside Survival Kits with Jenna Anast

The first 50 guests at the DuSable will receive a survival kit from Jenna Anast, including pro-tips and practical items you can use in the great outdoors and your everyday life. Doors open at 4:00 PM.

¡anímate! studio with Andrés Lemus-Spont and Marya Spont-Lemus

Pick up a pool noodle, find a connector, and start creating alongside your friends, families, and complete strangers! Play, dream, and collaborate to transform familiar materials into imaginative landscapes. Throughout the event, help create (and re-create!) a one-of-a-kind experimental creation! Together we can build new spaces and imagine new possibilities.

¡Elige un fideo de piscina, toma un conector, y empieza crear con tus amigxs, familias, y completxs desconocidxs! Juega, sueña, y colabora para transformar materiales familiares en escenarios imaginativos. ¡Durante el evento, ayuda a crear (¡y re-crear!) una creación experimental y única! Juntxs podemos construir nuevos espacios e imaginar nuevas posibilidades.

Solidarity Is… Portraits and Frames with Kush Thompson and Silvia Inés Gonzalez

What’s blooming…? Come by and get a portrait by multidisciplinary artist Silvia Inés Gonzalez, in flower frame photo booths designed by Kush Thompson. Archive this moment of beauty as we imagine blooming possibilities together through gestures of solidarity.

Freedom Dreams Garden with Kush Thompson

Plant your visions for a liberated future in our freedom dream garden. Artist Kush Thompson invites you to create paper flowers with poems, phrases, or spells that cast the world we call forth. Together we’ll build a 3D flower mural of our freedom dreams.

Ear Seeds & Wellness Corner with Toni Asante Lightfoot

Ear Seeds allows participants to engage with non-invasive acupressure points that reach most of the body to support wellness. This activity will involve small medical adhesive squares with plantain seeds to stimulate the points in the ear. T. Asante Lightfoot has a Master of Oriental Medicine, Associate of Asian Body Work and has a certificate in Massage Therapy, and believes truly healthy people activate peace in our communities.

Richard Wallace (Equity and Transformation)

Richard Wallace is an author, artist, and founding Executive Director of Equity and Transformation (EAT), an initiative to radically advance economic access for formerly incarcerated Black informal workers in Chicago. As an author, he has over a dozen published writings on local and national outlets, including The Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post. As an artist, he earned independent album of the year and performed before thousands of listeners worldwide.

Wallace graduated from Roosevelt University and won several fellowships and awards including the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity, Soros Justice Fellowship, Voqal Fellows, and Margaret Burroughs Fellowship of the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois Chicago. As a formerly incarcerated person living in the U.S., Wallace has fought immense odds to be recognized as an innovator and a thought leader in his field.

Rey Wences (Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights)

Rey Wences was born in Mexico City and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Rey grew up undocumented and became involved in community organizing after graduating high school. In 2009, they co-founded the Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL), an undocumented-led organization in Chicago that spearheaded the “Come Out of the Shadows” campaign the following year. By 2013, Rey and other local organizers created Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), a community organization focused on campaigns against deportations, immigrant detention, and the criminalization of immigrant communities in Illinois.

In 2020, Rey served as Director of Communications at Organized Power in Numbers (formerly Unemployed Workers United), a national organization focused on economic justice. By 2023, Rey returned to serve as Chicago’s First Deputy Mayor of Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights under Mayor Brandon Johnson. Today, they lead the Deportation Defense efforts at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, where they support the expansion of the Illinois Rapid Response Network and the Family Support Network Hotline, which was instrumental in fighting back against federal immigration enforcement in 2025.

Rev. Jaime L. Fluker (Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation)

Rev. Jaime L. Fluker (she/her/hers) serves as the Executive Director for Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation (SOUL), a multi-issue, faith-based, social justice organization that assists residents in building power. Her work involves creating and maintaining partnerships with congregations, faith leaders, community-based organizations and groups to address community issues on Chicago’s South Side and South Suburbs. Rev. Fluker also serves on the board of directors for the Black Roots Alliance and currently serves as an associate minister at the historic Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on the southside of Chicago.

Rev. Fluker is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in womanist theology, ethics, and culture at Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS). Her research focuses on womanist ethics, identity, and the activism of Black women as preachers, prophets, and community organizers. Her dedication and scholarly excellence has been recognized through presentations at the 2022-23 Obehnaus Lecture series and awards such as the 2023 Sanderson Women in Leadership Award, the 2023-24 C. Shelby Rooks Award, and the Reverend William “Bill” Duffy Theology Prize.