Albany, NY
Exhibition & Events
Past Events
Climates of Inequality opening event with speakers, food & drinks, and DJ Intell Hayesfield.
“A Celtic Church Uprising for the Future!” with vegan corned beef & cabbage & Saint Paddy refreshments (3:00 – 5:00 pm.)
Closing Event with Speakers, food & drinks, and DJ Poetik Selektions.
Dr. Kellogg, Dr. Pettigrew, and Willie White will be leading discussions for frontline community members, college students, Radix Eco-justice Youth Associates and their friends/siblings, and Aunties Dandelion/iD+Pi representatives (Ted Jojola and Paulette Moore: respondents for Radix tour and conversation), regarding the detailed history of injustices inflicted upon relocated Blacks in the late 60’s and 70’s due to the construction of the Empire State Capital – the center of decision-making and state buildings in NY State.
Residents were relocated to Ezra Prentice Homes, a poorly sited public housing complex adjacent to the Port of Albany, where minority residents have been disproportionately exposed to 50 years of toxins from high density diesel truck emissions (HDDT), railroad infrastructure, a scrap metal recycling plant, a wastewater treatment plant, and crude oil processing facilities. This initial Saturday discussion will be conducted at Ezra Prentice Homes at 10 am, and facilitated in conjunction with Dr. Stacy Pettigrew, working to center the voices of residents who are advocating (demanding) the eventual relocation of the housing facility, as well as a rerouting of the more than 1,600 HDDTs that enter the Port of Albany daily. Willie White is the founder of AVillage Inc., a community-based NGO representing the frontline residents of Ezra Prentice Residents Association and youth who are researching the effects of air pollution on human health.
The group discussion/tour/workshop will then move to a nearby site of community-based solutions facilitated via the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, located near Ezra Prentice Homes on a former brownfield site once occupied by scrap automotive repair and maintenance businesses. The key for this location is the necessity to highlight the repurposing/regeneration and a re-imagining of a polluted/abused/contaminated space (and
many other urban industrial spaces like this) in a diversity of urban settings. The reimagining and repurposing can result in a productive site of education, meaningful youth employment, organizing, food justice, and hope. The group discussion/tour/workshop will then move to a nearby site of community-based solutions facilitated via the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, located near Ezra Prentice Homes on a former brownfield site
once occupied by scrap automotive repair and maintenance businesses. The key for this location is the necessity to highlight the repurposing/regeneration and a re-imagining of a polluted/abused/contaminated space (and many other urban industrial spaces like this) in a diversity of urban settings. The reimagining and repurposing can result in a productive site of education, meaningful youth employment, organizing, food justice, and hope, coupled with actionable affordable methods for remediating/regenerating polluted soils, waters, and air, in an effort to bolster and support thriving urban ecosystems for future generations of all species. The group discussion/tour/workshop will then move to a nearby site of community-based solutions facilitated via the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, located near Ezra Prentice Homes on a former brownfield site once occupied by scrap automotive repair and maintenance businesses. The key for this location is the necessity to highlight the repurposing/regeneration and a re-imagining of a polluted/abused/contaminated space (and
many other urban industrial spaces like this) in a diversity of urban settings. The reimagining and repurposing can result in a productive site of education, meaningful youth employment, organizing, food justice, and hope.
This event will bring the decades of work in the Sanctuary campus and neighborhood into conversation with the iD+Pi placeknowing framework and the storytelling and media work of The Aunties Dandelion. What does it mean to love and care for toxic land/disturbed land/stolen land and all the biocultural diversity that thrives there.
Additionally, The Sanctuary for Independent Media has been collaborating with members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians whose ancestral homelands include what is now known as Troy, NY. This event will provide an opportunity to deepen and expand the reckoning with the Indigenous past, present, and future of these lands.
Evening event at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. This event is being facilitated as part of the “In It” series, a Skidmore College suite of diversity and inclusion programs designed to raise our cultural fluency and strengthen our community.
This “EJ Solutions Summit” will include representation and a broader future visioning talk circle/panel discussion and Q & A (presentation) on stage from the Albany EJ organizations engaged in the previous week’s HAL events, including Troy’s Sanctuary for Independent Media, iD+Pi and Aunties Dandelion, the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, and AVillage Inc.
In addition to the above mentioned participants, decision-makers from Albany and Troy will be invited to attend the Summit, as a postmortem wrap-up and chance for further exchange between organizations and attendees, connecting across geography and disciplines, and crystallizing lessons learned throughout the prior weekend’s events/tours/workshops at Ezra Prentice Homes, The Radix Center, and at the Sanctuary for Independent Media. Also invited will be all students from Skidmore College (including those from MDOCS and the Environmental Studies and Sciences Department who were present for the prior events in Troy and Albany), as well as members of the public, Skidmore College Sustainability Office, and civil society representatives. This event will include action components/avenues for public input to decision-makers and agencies, as well as be recorded.