CONVERSATION NO. 2 (Part One): Self-Care and Community Care
Sunday, September 13th, 2020
In this conversation, we explored a 2019 Dharma talk by Lama Rod Owens (LRO), a Dharma Teacher, activist, and Black, Queer, cisgender humanitarian. Before the conversation, we asked attendees to watch LRO’s talk. And to consider the following questions, “What is required of you to liberate yourself from your suffering? How do I restore myself so I can do liberation work and engage with the community? How will the principles of resiliency guide you toward a new awareness about what it means to experience anger, anxiety, fear, rage, and exhaustion? How might the practice of meditation help you gain a place of belonging in the world?”
2019 Dharma talk by Lama Rod Owens
“Lama Rod Owens asks the question, "What is required of you to liberate yourself from your suffering? How do I restore myself so I can do liberation work and engage with the community?" Authentic liberation looks different for everyone. Here, Lama Rod examines the varied forms of spiritual medicine we need to create rituals around self-care. This call-to-action reflects the ideals of Audre Lorde who believed being self-indulgent was an act of self-preservation; its own form of political warfare.”
- InsightLA Meditation
CONVERSATION NO. 2 (Part Two): Organizing Direct Action - How Can You Change Your Institution
Sunday, September 20th, 2020
In collaboration with Artist and Activist Artemisio Romero y Carver and artist, designer, and School of Now member and designer Kailyn Bryant, we discussed and began to understand the networks of change and how we can change our institutions through sustainable actions done within the community. Starting with the question “How can you change your institution?,” Arte and Kailyn engaged in conversation over structural violence, the role (and reimagined role) of the institution, and their own experiences as change leaders alongside some nuts and bolts of direct organizing. We collected questions ahead of time through our Instagram, and attendees posed more during the IG Live via the comment feature.
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Like a Wrecking Ball: Using Art and Humour to Confront Racist Statues in Australia and the U.S.A
“Aboriginal Australian artist Tony Albert (Girramay) and Native American artist Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit-Unangax) discuss the power of art and humor to address problematic statues honoring colonial legacies. How do public monuments, in both the USA and Australia, contribute to the erasure of Indigenous peoples and how do they normalize violence and racism? How can contemporary art about statues be a force for social change? These questions and more will be explored and discussed, moderated by UVA scholar-activist Jalane Schmidt. Co-presented by the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA and the Fralin Museum of Art and sponsored by the Mellon Indigenous Arts Initiative.” - Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA
Public Trust Feature Film | The Fight For America’s Public Lands
“Despite support from voters across the political spectrum, our public lands face unprecedented threats from extractive industries and the politicians in their pockets. Part love letter, part political exposé, Public Trust investigates how we arrived at this precarious moment through three heated conflicts—a national monument in the Utah desert, a mine in the Boundary Waters, and oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—and makes a case for their continued protection.” -Patagonia