Program

This workshop explores people’s art in the Filipino movement resisting U.S. militarism and imperialism, including examples in both Chicago and the Philippines. We’ll highlight the vital role of art and cultural work in organizing and political education, and how groups like CCHRP use collective art practices to build solidarity with the Philippines and inspire others to join the fight for social change.

Join Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago and Educators for Palestine for a workshop about the local Drop The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) From Schools campaign. In our workshop we will discuss the false conflation of antisemitism and the work of the Palestinian liberation movement, and outline the danger that the ADL poses to CPS students, educators, and families of all backgrounds. Attendees will have an opportunity to strategize about taking action in their school communities.

BLK Girls Build: Resistance is a short film and workshop that explores a collaborative process among youth, artists, and community members to discuss building sustainable communities & resisting systemic racism and stereotypes. BLK Girls Build uses film to engage viewers in an interactive lesson that includes discussion and written responses. Johnetta Anderson designed BLK Girls Build as a digital, collage poem of communal voices from a self-defined perspective.

This interactive workshop explores abolitionist approaches to mental health that center care, choice, and community rather than control or punishment. Through reflection, small group dialogue, and visioning activities, participants will explore how systems often criminalize crisis and imagine what it would look like for schools and communities to lead with healing, agency, and collective care.

The presentation will review key years in US immigration system history and how that structure developed systems for criminalizing immigrants. We will emphasize the dichotomy of the narrative of US immigration reform and how reforms replicate “bad/undeserving immigrant” narratives, leading to the rise of ICE and DHS. We connect the Black US experience and show that the same system criminalizing Black communities does so with immigrant communities.

Through the story of Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez (a YLO leader/member), participants will build contextual knowledge of the YLO through an analysis of 1) migration 2) sociopolitical and economic contexts that drove the creation of street gangs and 3) what it means to tell our own stories and explore big ideas of Belonging & Radicalization – and essential questions – Who am I? What do I stand for? Who do I stand with?

As calls to abolish ICE reenter the mainstream, from where do demands to dismantle entire branches of law enforcement originate, and what does that mean in practice? In this workshop, participants will engage in interactive activities to better understand abolition as both a philosophy and organizing strategy, rooted in a long history of struggle dating back to chattel slavery. Many of the activities in this workshop come from the local youth-led #NoCopAcademy campaign.