Taking Back Our Worlds: Conversations during times of Social Distancing

Published on October 13, 2024

Tricklebee pay-as-you-can Café offers healthy meals in a food desert. Courtesy of Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Please join our Milwaukee partners for webinars happening throughout August around housing and food justice that will bring together Humanities experts, local activists, community residents, and students from Milwaukee, WI and Newark, NJ in conversation with each other. Solidarities thrive with conversations and the goal of our project is to explore the power of conversations to unite communities and resist intractable forces of injustice.

Register for any of the following dates via Eventbrite: Taking Back our Worlds: Conversations during times of Social Distancing

Topics and dates
Week 1: Taking back our world. 
 What does Environmental and Climate injustice mean for our city?
Saturday August 8, 2020, 11 AM CDT/ Noon EST
Moderator:  Adam Carr
Local experts: Reggie Jackson, Camille Mays, Anthony Diaz, Neil Maher

Click here to watch video highlights from Week 1.

Week 2: Taking back our homes.
What do we mean when we say housing justice in our city? 
Saturday August 15, 2020, 11 AM CDT/ Noon EST
Moderator:  Adam Carr
Local experts: Robert Smith, Lamont Davis

Week 3: Talking back our bodies. 
What is food justice in the context of our city?
Saturday August 22, 2020, 11 AM CDT/ Noon EST
Moderator:  Adam Carr
Local experts: Michael Carriere, Angela Pruitt, Tobias Fox, Caroline Carter, Fidel Verdin

Week 4: Action!: Taking back our world.  
How can we plan intersectional solidarity around justice? 
Saturday August 29, 2020, 11 AM CDT/ Noon EST
Moderator:  Adam Carr
Local experts: Muneer Bahauddeen, Tremerell Robinson, Cheri Fuqua, Anthony Diaz, Gregory Powell

Taking Back our Worlds is a publicly engaged-Humanities project that explores the historical and contemporary conditions of social and environmental injustice in the city of Milwaukee.

This collaborative project engages residents from Milwaukee’s Washington Park and Sherman Park neighborhoods, students from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, scholars associated with the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures field school, and a group of community experts connected by HAL.

Focusing on a long history of community struggles around housing and food justice, this public history project highlights everyday human struggles and solidarities in search of a just society in Milwaukee. We highlight narratives of local resistance and everyday transformations and showcase the innovative and creative world that exists in Milwaukee’s most marginalized and forgotten neighborhoods. While our goal is to archive these stories and give voice to everyone involved, we also expect our stories to generate action – real, practical, engaged, solutions to everyday concerns.

Solidarities thrive with conversations. Together let's explore the power of conversations to unite communities and resist intractable forces of injustice.

Audio: June 2017: Christie Melby-Gibbon, reflecting on the transformative power of food.
Courtesy of Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

To learn more about environmental justice issues happening in Milwaukee: Urban Blight as Environmental Justice

Click to learn more about how UW-Milwaukee Students Reimagine the Built Environment During the Pandemic

Click to learn more about How Race Impacts the Pandemic in Milwaukee