Presenters: Lizania Cruz, Kimi Hanauer, Lynnette Miranda
Organized by Kimi Hauner, Press Press
Selected via Open Call
In response to a history of assimilation in the United States and its contemporary ramifications, artists and cultural organizers produce experiences and platforms that are engaged in a politics of difference and emergent visions of liberation. In this conversation, speakers and participants will explore cultural organizing practices that rely on embracing and accommodating individual and group differences as a means of solidarity, rather than traditional assimilationist approaches, when addressing urgent issues around immigration and structural injustice in the United States. Through discussion around speakers’ projects, including Press Press, Present Futures, and We The News, the group will unpack the various ways in which the assimilationist conception of liberation, or a vision of liberation that depends on the transcendence of group difference, may be dangerous to communities that exist outside of dominant culture. Speakers will share resources for understanding the history of assimilation in the United States and its relationship to white supremacy.
Read the Session Notes here.