Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, “Someone’s Dead Already” was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffins Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. His forthcoming book “Blood On The Fog” is being released this fall in the City Lights Pocket Poets series. He is San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate.
“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” James Baldwin
Gilda Sheppard is currently a member of the faculty in Sociology, Cultural and Media Studies at Evergreen State College in Tacoma, Washington. From 1995-96 Sheppard was a visiting lecturer at University of Cape Coast in the Sociology, Anthropology and Demography Department, and in 2018 she was a visiting lecturer at Ashesi University in Ghana, West Africa.
Sheppard is an award-winning filmmaker who has screened her documentaries throughout the United States, and internationally in Ghana, West Africa, at the Festival Afrique 360 in Cannes, France, and in Berlin Germany at the International Black Film Festival. Sheppard is a 2017 Hedgebrook Fellow for documentary film and a 2019 recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship.
Her documentaries include stories of resilience of Liberian women and children refugees in Ghana; three generations of Black families in an urban neighborhood in Buffalo, New York; and a film ethnography of stories from folklore started by Zora Neale Hurston in Alabama’s AfricaTown.
She currently completed her documentary Since I Been Down on education, organizing and healing developed and led by incarcerated women and men in Washington State’s prisons. Since I Been Down has been accepted at over10 film festivals in USA and Canada and won the Gold Prize at the Social Justice Film Festival and recognized among “Best of the Fest” at DOC NYC the largest documentary film festival in USA. Since I Been Down has been praised by Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of CA, Santa Cruz Angela Davis, at a DOCNYC 2020 Facebook Live Event with Director Gilda Sheppard, King County (WA) Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, and Executive Director of Abolitionist Law Center Robert Saleem Holbrook. Seattle Met named Since I Been Down as “What to Watch” in 2020.
For over a decade Sheppard has taught sociology classes in Washington State prisons, Sheppard is a sponsor for the Black Prisoner’s Caucus in Washington State, and is a co-founder and faculty for FEPPS- Freedom Education for Puget Sound an organization offering college credited courses at Washington Correctional Center for Women.
Sheppard is the author of several publications including Culturally Relevant Arts Education for Social Justice: A Way Out of No Way (2013)
SINCE I BEEN DOWN streaming 2/5-2/10
You are invited one and all to a rare opportunity to watch our Evergreen-Tacoma colleague Dr. Gilda Sheppard’s long-awaited new documentary film SINCE I BEEN DOWN
This timely work of art has been accumulating an avalanche of accolades: DOCNYC 2020 Audience Favorite. Winner of the 2020 Social Justice Film Feature Documentary Gold Prize. One of Seattle Met’s top movies not to miss. Seattle Times feature by Evergreen alumn Naomi Ishisaka. Please see below for a poster with a lovely quote from Gilda.
Starting this Friday 2/5 at noon and ending Wednesday 2/10 at 5pm, the film will be exclusively available to the Evergreen community for asynchronous streaming in the “virtual screening room” that we have created for “Reimagining Community Safety.” (Please note: no recording of any type will be allowed.)
Rosa Clemente is an Afro-Puerto Rican journalist and scholar-activist researching national liberation struggles inside the United States, Afro-Latinx identity+politics, sexism within Hip-Hop culture, media justice, Hip-Hop activism, and African American and Latinx unity. More information about her can be found here: http://rosaclemente.net/biography-of-rosa-clemente/
Rosa’s schedule while she is on campus:
Wednesday, 2/27, 11:30-1pm Lecture Hall 1
Thursday, 2/28, 3-5pm Longhouse
Many thanks to the sponsors and programs contributing to Rosa’s days with us!
Sponsors include: Media Island International, the Women of Color in Leadership Movement, the Willi Unsoeld Seminar Series, the CCBLA, the Art Lecture Series, and the the Dean’s Match.
Programs include: “Who Gets What?: Political Economy of Income, Wealth, and Economic Justice,” – “Political Economy and Environmental and Social Movements: Race, Class, and Gender,” – “Mediaworks,” – “The Spanish-Speaking World,” – “Teaching ELLs: Culture, Theory, and Methods,” and “Unruly Bodies: Health, Media, Biology, and Power.”
Seattle-based choreographer Pat Graney‘s interest in working with incarcerated women began in 1992 after a conversation with Rebecca Terrell, then head of Florida Dance Festival. This conversation later morphed into what has become Keeping the Faith/The Prison Project. KTF is an arts-based residency program that features dance, expository writing and visual arts, and culminates in performances. This project has been conducted at FCI Lowell & FCI Broward in Florida, MCI Framingham in Massachusetts, Excelsior Girls School in Denver, Houston City Jail, Echo Glen Children’s Center & King County Juvenile Detention in Washington, Red Rock Juvenile Center in Maricopa County, AZ, Shakopee Women’s Prison in Minnesota, Estrella Jail in Phoenix, AZ, River City Correctional Center in Cincinnati, OH, Tokyo Girls Detention in Japan, Bahia Women’s Prison in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, Munich City Jail in Munich, Germany, the Dochas Centre/MountJoy Prison in Dublin, Ireland and Washington State Corrections Center for Women and Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women in Washington State.
Keeping the Faith/The Prison Project is one of the longest-running prison arts programs in the US.
Ms. Graney’s latest work, a peformance/installation project called girl gods, will premiere at On the Boards in Seattle in 2015. With National Dance Project Production and Touring support, the work will tour nationally and internationally through 2016.
LAURA SHERBO
Laura Sherbo received her MLS from Western Michigan University in 1978 and has dedicated her career to providing library services to the incarcerated by working with inmates and prison administrators to uphold the Library Bill of Rights. She is currently the Branch Library Services Manager for the Washington State Library, overseeing nine (minimum and maximum security) prison library branches and two mental state hospital branches throughout the state. Laura headed the McNeil Island Corrections Center library for 20 years, 13 of which she spent living on the island. In 2012, she was awarded the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA) Leadership and Professional Achievement Award from the American Library Association.
NEAL VANDERVOORN
Neal Vandervoorn taught high school for twelve years before he switched course to pursue librarianship. He received an MLS from Emporia State University in Kansas and was employed with the Washington State Library as Branch Manager/Senior Librarian at Eastern State Hospital, Lakeland Village in Medical Lake and Western State Hospital for a combined twenty-two years. He provided library services to the mentally ill, the developmentally delayed, hospital staff and extensive outreach services to locked wards at Western State Hospital. He retired as a medical librarian from MultiCare Health System in Tacoma in 2009.
Emily Abendroth is a poet, teacher and anti-prison activist. Much of her creative work attempts to investigate state regimes of force and power, as well as individual and collective resistance strategies to the same. Her poetry book, ]Exclosures[, was just released from AEmily AbendrothPress this May. Her works are often published in limited edition, handcrafted chapbooks by small and micropresses such as Belladonna (New York), Horse Less Press (Denver), Little Red Leaves (Texas), Albion Press (Philadelphia), and Zumbar Press (San Francisco). She is an active organizer with Decarcerate PA (a grassroots campaign working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania) and is co-founder of Address This! (an education and empowerment project that provides innovative, social justice correspondence courses to individuals incarcerated in Pennsylvania).
