Black Monologues

Tonight, April 12 & Saturday, April 13 | 7pm | Helms Theatre | Tickets>

Witness the performance of powerfully produced original works. The theme for the 2019 production is an exploration of Power; a journey through experiences of “Powerful Consciousness,” “Loss of Power,” and “Empowerment.” All showings are free admission, but you can reserve tickets through the U.Va. Arts Box Office. You must arrive and claim your ticket by 6:45, or they will be forfeited to the standby line. Seating is first come first served. Black Monologues 2019. Our Black Is Power.

Saturday, April 13 | 2-4pm | Trinity Episcopal Church 

Please join us for the monthly gathering of the Charlottesville CTTT group scheduled for Saturday, April 13, 2016.  We will begin by introducing a dialogue process that promotes honest and constructive conversation for each participant. Then we will use this process to share our experiences and practice listening deeply to each other.  If you are ready to have the clumsy, courageous conversations on race, we hope you will join us!

Members of CTTT are committed to addressing the Legacies and Aftermaths of Slavery through:

• Facing History through acknowledging, and sharing personal, family and community histories of race with openness and honesty
• Making Connections to others within and across racial lines in order to develop and deepen relationships
• Healing Wounds by exploring how we can heal together through dialogue, reunion, apology, and other methods
• Taking Action by actively seeking to heal the wounds of racial inequality and injustice and to support racial reconciliation between individuals, within families, and in communities

Adult Faith Development: Exploring WhitePrivilege

Landscape Perspectives: Equity in + by Design

Monday, April 15 | 3.30-6.30pm | Campbell Hall 153

Landscape Perspectives: Equity in + by Design aims to continue the conversation started in the 2018 panel, Landscape Perspectives for Future Publics. The discussion will focus on inclusivity and action in landscape architecture, academia, and the built environment. As designers, we seek to create better social spaces, despite the fact that institutionalized forms of discrimination are often present in the places where we learn and work. This panel brings this schism to the forefront by providing a platform for those who are actively addressing socioeconomic inequality both in the profession and on the ground. Presenters will share work they are doing on these fronts, followed by a panel discussion joined by UVA faculty. We hope the conversation will challenge and broaden ideas at the intersection of advocacy and design in practice and academia.

Hard Conversations: Introduction to Racism

March 26-April 26
Live Seminars on April 16, and 23

This is a month-long online seminar program hosted by authors, speakers, and social justice activists Patti Digh and Victor Lee Lewis, who was featured in the documentary film, The Color of Fear, with help from a community of people who want and are willing to help us understand the reality of racism by telling their stories and sharing their resources.

There are two learning spaces for this course: An online classroom and our weekly live seminars. Content and course details will be delivered to your email daily. The live seminars that take place from 8-9:15pm Eastern via telephone conference begin one week after the course begins. The calls will be recorded, should you not be able to participate live.

The University of Virginia Library seeks to work with the community to build the foundation of a collaborative Regional Equity Atlas for the Charlottesville region. Equity Atlases visualize data related to disparities in education, transportation, health, and other areas of social well-being to “illuminate a community’s geography of opportunity” – one example is the Durham Neighborhood Compass (https://compass.durhamnc.gov/).  This Request for Proposals is part of the effort to support the community’s capacity to gather, use, and share data related to regional inequities.

What: Grants of $5000 to support work that will lead to open, shared information and data related to equity in our communities. Information and data may be qualitative or quantitative, current or historic. Spatial data (data that can be mapped) is of particular interest to the project, but not a requirement for this grant.

Purpose: Grants are intended to collect, contribute, document, and use community- (or organizationally-) generated data and information resources that will help citizens, organizations, activists, and decision makers promote greater equity in the greater Charlottesville region: the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle, Greene, Orange, Louisa, Fluvanna, Buckingham, Nelson, Augusta and Rockingham Counties.

Data and information might speak to racial, social, economic or environmental inequities, or any dimension that generates unfair differences in the ability of some groups of people to thrive in our communities. Community-based and non-profit organizations or independent researchers in Charlottesville and the surrounding counties are eligible to apply.

Questions and Submission: Submit proposals to cvilleequityatlas@virginia.edu by May 3rd at 5pm

More information about the Equity Atlas Project is available at https://equityatlas.lib.virginia.edu/. Applicants should send questions about potential proposals or the broader project to cvilleeqiutyatlas@virginia.edu.

Image Source: www.policymap.com

The Utter Inadequacy of America’s Efforts to Desegregate Schools

Every morning, Eddie would get up at 6 a.m. and get on a yellow school bus that took him and dozens of other black kids from Boston to Belmont. He’d spend his school day in Belmont, surrounded by kids who did live in those spacious mansions, and then, at the end of the day, he’d get on the bus and go home. “It was a long day, but my parents wanted me to have exposure to a better education system,” he told me recently. While he was gazing out the bus window, watching the scenery change from suburban to urban, wealthy to middle- and low-income, thousands of other black kids across Boston were sitting on similar buses that took them to and from schools in other predominantly white suburbs, such as Newton, Sharon, and Wellesley, areas that white families had embraced to escape the city in the 1960s and 1970s..."

Go-Go Lives to Fight Another Day

By NATALIE HOPKINSON | Original Publication: Slate | Published April 2019 | Photo: Michael A. McCoy for the Washington Post via Getty Images

"When the late, great sage of urban planning Jane Jacobs wrote evocatively about a city’s “sidewalk ballet” in 1961, she could not have imagined the viral scene currently making its rounds on social media: In the video clip, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, a dozen black schoolchildren surround a D.C. corner store. The voice of Chuck Brown, the “Godfather of Go-Go”—D.C. ’s indigenous brand of funk music—blasts through loudspeakers installed above the door of the store. A postal worker has paused his deliveries to get down to the serious business of orchestrating the group. His hands rise and fall with the majesty of Carlos Kleiber, but to a hopped-up beat commanded by conga drums. “Shake it now, shake it now,” Chuck croons. Kids rise and fall all around him like popping kernels of corn.

It’s a scene of pure, unscripted joy, the kind of scene I have been privileged to witness on a daily basis for the past two decades I have been living near Shaw, the neighborhood where Central Communications sells go-go music and prepaid MetroPCS mobile phones on that corner. The tweet went viral, though, because gentrifiers in a nearby luxury apartment building looked at scenes like this and saw not joy but noise, not neighbors but blight. Noting that T-Mobile acquired MetroPCS in October, they initiated a campaign to corporate headquarters. T-Mobile ordered the store to silence the music. The muting of the music led to a ferocious response led by the local community that is guaranteed to resonate in the weeks and months to come..."

Each weekday in February we are releasing a new episode of "Race and Place in Charlottesville," which follows UVA Professor Louis Nelson as he gives a tour of the history of race and racism in Charlottesville, starting with Jefferson's era on Grounds and leading toward the Downtown Mall, site of the August 11-12 rallies. The research-based tour is motivated by Jesus' command to love our neighbors.

Please feel free to share the tour with your community! You can use this link: https://www.studycenter.net/race-place-cville