Renewable Launch

jill sigman/thinkdance

Join us for the live launch of Renewable, an artistic reflection on Renewable Rikers, co-sponsored by jill sigman/thinkdance, CUER, & WCJA.

Women Building Up

<h3>Join us for the live launch of Renewable, co-sponsored by<a href="http://www.thinkdance.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"> jill sigman/thinkdance</a>, the <a href="https://cuer.law.cuny.edu" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Center for Urban Environmental Reform</a>, and the <a href="https://www.womenscja.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Women&#x27;s Community Justice Association</a> at Women Building Up, a project of Tides Center. This event is also a supported project of <a href="https://www.bwayadvocacycoalition.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Broadway Advocacy Coalition</a>.</h3><h3>Renewable is an artistic reflection on the environmental justice project called <a href="https://www.renewablerikers.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Renewable Rikers</a> in New York City. It is both a call for advocacy for this restorative justice project that links decarceration and decarbonization and a set of video dances that metabolize complex themes around Rikers Island&#x27;s history as a notoriously violent jail complex. You can find more info <a href="https://www.renewabledance.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">here</a>.</h3><h3>This event celebrates both the launch of Renewable and the clear and unflagging efforts of Renewable Rikers advocates and prison abolition activists. The program will include a roundtable discussion about decarceration and decarbonization with guest speakers Sharon White-Harrigan (<a href="https://www.womenscja.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Women&#x27;s Community Justice Association</a>), Darren Mack (<a href="https://fa.urbanjustice.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Freedom Agenda</a>), and Judy Clark (<a href="https://hourchildren.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Hour Children</a> &amp; <a href="https://www.sjpny.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Survivor’s Justice Project</a>), moderated by Rebecca Bratspies (<a href="https://www.law.cuny.edu/faculty/directory/bratspies/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">CUNY Law &amp; Center for Environmental Reform</a>); a video screening; and a live/virtual dance improvisation. Come early to warm up with soup by <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jtes/for-women-looking-for-jobs-after-prison-it-doesnt-just-feel" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Keila Pulinario</a> of Chi-Chi&#x27;s Kitchen. </h3><h3>This event is FREE to the public. Suggested donation $20. ALL PROCEEDS from this event will be donated to Freedom Agenda&#x27;s <a href="https://www.campaigntocloserikers.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Campaign to Close Rikers</a>. Masks are requested to keep the speakers and performers safe. We will have extra masks available at the event.</h3><h3>Doors open at 1:15pm</h3><h3>Event runs 2-4pm</h3><h3>Women Building Up</h3><h3>401 State Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217 (between Nevins &amp; Bond)</h3>A recording of this Renewable Launch event will be shared on the <a href="https://renewabledance.com" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Renewable</a> webpage following the event. <a href="https://www.renewabledance.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">www.renewabledance.com</a>

About the Venue: The mission of Women Building Up (WBU) is to advance gender, racial, and social justice through supporting women, girls, and gender expansive people – especially people most directly impacted by incarceration, racism, gender oppression, and inequity – to claim their power to transform themselves and the world.Founded in 1998 by choreographer, educator, and activist Jill Sigman, jill sigman/thinkdance (Co-sponsor) addresses pressing social issues through the body. Through performance, installations, workshops, and interactive community-based projects, jill sigman/thinkdance addresses climate change, waste equity, environmental racism, immigration, and other social justice issues, seeking to reveal the interconnectedness of these collective challenges and move toward healing. The work of the company has been produced by such NYC venues as Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, GIBNEY, 92 St Y, Dancing in the Streets, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, and Dixon Place, and has been seen internationally in 13 countries. In 2016, jill sigman/thinkdance developed “Body Politic”, a program of workshops, trainings, and performance laboratories for artist-activists to ask salient political questions somatically. Body Politic events are based on the belief that somatic (body-based) experience and movement can aid us in understanding the complex political and social realities we are living in. Currently, we run a Social Justice Movement Lab that subverts the performance world’s emphasis on product, and Motion Practice, a pandemic series of free outdoor public events. jill sigman/thinkdance has been recognized by such notable cultural funders as the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the Jerome Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and the Bay and Paul Foundations. Sigman is also a Creative Campus Fellow at Wesleyan University. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, and believes in art as a form of deep connection to self, land, and other humans.The Center for Urban Environmental Reform, CUER, (Co-sponsor) is a Social Justice Initiative of the City University of New York School of Law. CUER was founded on the belief that environmental justice is a critical aspect of social justice and that communities are entitled to participate fully and meaningfully in environmental decisions that affect them. CUER will be a clearinghouse and focal point for the data, experts, and training needed to ensure a level playing field. The goal is to expand participation in public decision-making and to increase transparency and overall access to information in order to enhance both the legitimacy of environmental decision-making processes and the fairness of decisions reached. CUER provides resources for community groups wanting to obtain full and meaningful participation in environmental decision-making. The Center also produces scholarly research to influence an ongoing theoretical discourse about urban environmental justice and participatory democracy; and then converts that research into policy tools useful to planners, policymakers and advocates, including grassroots community-groups. The Center will publicize on-going environmental decision-making processes to ensure that communities know what is happening or is being considered, and will focus on developing training workshops, on-line tutorials, and sample documents to facilitate wider and more effective participation in those decision processes. CUNY Law Professor Rebecca Bratspies is the director of CUER.Women's Community Justice Association (Co-Sponsor) The Women’s Community Justice Association (WCJA) is a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of women and gender expansive New Yorkers affected by mass incarceration. Founded in 2018, WCJA is led by justice-impacted women and focuses on change through policy advocacy, community organizing and service. WCJA leads the #BEYONDrosies campaign and the Justice 4 Women Task Force. Our mission is to fight for a safe, dignified and fair system for justice-impacted women and gender expansive New Yorkers. Our vision is to disrupt and dismantle the unjust, racially charged systems that perpetuate trauma, violence, and harm to women and gender-expansive people, particularly in black and brown communities.Broadway Advocacy Coalition (Supporter) Founded in 2016 by members of the Broadway community as a direct response to the nation's pandemic of racism and police brutality, Broadway Advocacy Coalition (BAC) has since grown into a Tony Award-winning organization uniting artists with legal experts and community leaders to have a lasting impact on policy issues including criminal justice reform, education equity, and liberation within the theatrical industry. Anisah Sabur (Collaborator) is a directly impacted woman of color, who has held several leadership roles in coalitions and campaigns to dismantle the criminal legal system in New York City and State. She currently holds a position as a lead organizer for the People’s Campaign for Parole Justice, working under the Releasing Aging People in Prison Campaign. She is an Activist, Advocate, and an Abolitionist. In 2020 Anisah joined the Survivors Justice Project, a project which tracks and supports individuals with the opportunity to use the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act- a law enacted in 2019, in which she led the advocacy to change the policy that impacted survivors of domestic violence. She is the founder of AAS Empowerment LLC which is her own LLC where she engages individuals, organizations &amp; campaigns on power building and advises social justice reforms &amp; activism.Leia Squillace (Collaborator) was raised in Charlottesville, Virginia with nine siblings and four parents who instilled in her the values of community, responsibility, and caring for others. These are still the values that drive her personally and creatively today. Leia’s work as a director, producer, organizer, and artivist (arts + activist) focuses on building and strengthening community and fostering radical humanization. She takes on projects that challenge her and her audience to find commonality and humanity where it is least expected or thought possible. Artistically, Leia is attracted to the lyrical and fantastic, whether it is found in a classical text or a performance on the street. She delights in making the quotidian magical and the seemingly-unachievable a reality. Leia is the Associate Director of Curriculum and Industry Initiatives at the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, and a Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School. In her spare time, Leia delights in bringing people together over handmade pasta and baked treats and filling her spare moments reading as many books as the library will let her check out.Rebecca Bratspies (Moderator) is a Professor at CUNY School of Law. A scholar of environmental justice, and human rights, Professor Bratspies has written scores of law review articles, op-eds, four books, including Environmental Justice: Law Policy and Regulation, and three environmental justice comic books Mayah’s Lot, Bina’s Plant , and Troop’s Run (w/ Charlie LaGreca). She serves on NYC’s Environmental Justice Advisory Board, and EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, is a scholar with the Center for Progressive Reform and a member of the NYC Bar Environmental Committee. ABA-SEER honored her work with its Commitment to Diversity and Justice Award. Judy Clark (Speaker) spent 38 years in prison, primarily at Bedford Hills, New York’s maximum security prison for women, for her part in the 1981 Brinks armored car robbery, in which three people were killed. While reckoning with the damage she caused, she worked with others inside to create community based programs to address the problems they faced and their desires to grow. She was one of the founders of ACE (AIDS Counseling and Education) and part of the committee of women who built a college program after public funding was eliminated. She helped develop programs for mothers to sustain bonds with their children and mentored new mothers living in the prison nursery. She has written about that work, the experiences of mothers inside, the spiritual work of remorse and the efforts of women inside to build community. Released in 2019, she currently works with Hour Children, which provides housing and support for women emerging from prison. She is on the advisory committee for the Survivors Justice Project and is active in advocacy work for those she left behind the walls. Having worked with the Women &amp; Justice Project while inside, she is honored to contribute to its work from the outside.Sharon White-Harrigan (Speaker) <a href="https://www.womenscja.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"></a>has been the Executive Director of the Women’s Community Justice Association since 2018. Drawing on her experience as a licensed social worker, domestic violence survivor, and formerly incarcerated person, she has expertise in various direct services and policy advocacy campaigns that support justice-impacted women. Sharon was a leader in the successful effort to enact New York State’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act in 2019. She also serves as an advisory member of the Survivor’s Justice Project, the co-lead of the Bedford Hills project, a strategic consultant and senior advisor to the Women &amp; Justice Project, a member of the International Advisory Committee with the National Council of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, co-creator of the Justice 4 Women Task Force (#J4WTF), Policy Council Member, and co-founder &amp; executive member of Women Building UP. She holds a master’s degree in Social Work from Lehman College, a bachelor’s degree in Social Work and Criminal Justice from City University of New York where she was a Thomas W. Smith Fellow, and an associates degree in Liberal Arts from Marymount Manhattan College. Sharon is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Frank &amp; Lisina Hoch Award for Social Justice Advocacy and Activism, and the 2019 Leadership Award for her advocacy to pass the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act.Darren Mack (Speaker) is an activist, advocate, and organizer. Darren was directly impacted by the criminal legal system at the age of 17. He has been involved as a leader in the #CLOSErikers campaign since its launch in 2016. Darren is an alumnus of the Bard Prison Initiative where he earned his B.A. and graduated from Hunter College with a MSW in 2019. Darren is a Co-Director at Freedom Agenda, a member-led organization, dedicated to organizing people and communities directly impacted by incarceration, to achieve decarceration and system transformation.Movement improvisation by: Dani Cole, Irene Hsi, Stacy Lynn Smith, Paty Solórzano, Kayva Yang, and Rishauna Zumberg

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Renewable Launch

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