Each month Penn's Village Inclusiveness and Diversity Committee will recommend four resources to help our members and friends to be more informed and aware, and perhaps even inspired to action, concerning the racial biases in each of us and in our society and the resulting inequities, past and present. These resources created by Lori Dumas and Mike Pulsifer will represent different mediums, different perspectives and experiences, and diverse authors.
January, 2021
Book:The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. This non-fiction 1963 book contains two essays: "My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation" and "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind".
You Tube Video: The Tallahassee Symphony performs Thompson’s Seven Last Words of Unarmed. The Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, the Florida A&M Concert Choir, and the Morehouse College Glee Club perform this work by Joel Thompson. This video also includes with a conversation with the composer and TSO Board Members, led by Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil. To view click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15k2MoIAuyc&list=RD15k2MoIAuyc&start_radio=1&t=4
Webinar:Moving the Talk to the Walk with Black Children. Drs. Riana Elyse Anderson and Shawn C. T. Jones, both child psychologists who focus their work on Black families, discuss with families how to shift the focus from WHAT to tell our children to keep them safe to HOW, more broadly, we should be talking and "walking" as a family about the racial world around us, including police aggression. Our answers to the HOW can make all the difference in our efforts to raise healthy Black children prepared for, and resourceful in the face of, any encounters they have with people including state authorities that don’t see their full humanity. To access this webinar click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn5N4KJG9uc
Film:The Hate U Give. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping movie based upon a novel about one girl's struggle for justice. Starr Carter is constantly switching between two worlds -- the poor, mostly black neighborhood where she lives and the wealthy, mostly white prep school that she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is soon shattered when she witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer. Facing pressure from all sides of the community, Starr must find her voice and decide to stand up for what's right. This film is available on HBO.
Webinar:The Life of Japanese Americans at Seabrook Farms during the World War II on Saturday, January 30th, 2021 at 2:00PM~3:30PM
The Inclusiveness and Diversity Committee of Penn's Village and the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia are co-hosting a free lecture and discussion by Masaru Edmund Nakawatase, Alfred Hirotoshi Nishikawa and Rob Buscher.
The program is about a story of over 2,500 Japanese American families who were employed by Seabrook Farms, an American company located in Southern New Jersey, right after they were relocated from the American concentration camp in 1944.
After the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese Empire, Japanese Americans were forcibly evicted from their West Coast homes and businesses under the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The over 120,000 Japanese American were then mass incarcerated in the concentration camps located in the interior of the country. The Supreme Court ruled that the War Relocation Authority “has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure.” in 1944. It paved the way for the camps to close.
Thanks to our co-host, The Japan American Society, registration for this free webinar will occur on their website by clicking on this link: https://japanphilly.org/?event=the-life-of-japanese-americans-at-seabrook-farms-during-the-second-world-war-lecture-and-discussion-with-edmund-masaru-nakawatase-hiro-nishikawa-and-rob-buscher&event_date=2021-01-30