2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebrations

The Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE) is a poverty simulation that immerses participants into the experiences of individuals and families living in poverty. Through role play you will be challenged with real life scenarios that people living in poverty must navigate everyday. COPE will challenge, inform and focus your understanding of poverty and inspire you to act in new ways to help end poverty in our community.

Reflective practice through ways the work and legacy of MLK apply to every day life: personal, social, professional, and how to come in terms with yourself by recognizing and paying attention to interactions with yourself, environment, and surrounding.

In light of recent events concerning the Central American Caravan and issues around immigration with the current presidency, Sustained Dialogue would like to hold a dialogue that explores these events. We would hold a dialogue that would investigate issues of identity, immigration, and race. These would fit into the larger theme of this year’s MLK day because it would address similar concepts as Mary Francis Berry – race and protest, and the movement of bodies as political and identity expressions. This event would follow our standard Sustained Dialogue model and we have a roadmap already developed for this dialogue.

“Phoenix Rising” (a partnership of Denison University and the Robbins Hunter Museum) is a three-year series of discussions about social justice issues initiated by Victoria Woodhull in the late 19th century. Mary Frances Berry is the second speaker in the second year of this series. The Phoenix Rising partnership invites those interested to meet in Burton Morgan 218 for a post-keynote conversation about ways to develop ideas into action.

Many have advanced the notion that historically oppressed groups should be given reparations for past injustices. What groups are deserving of reparations? What form should those reparations take and who is responsible for them? How far back in history should we look for instances of injustice that deserve reparations? Consider chattel slavery, war/genocide, and current forms of oppression that garner a necessity for reparations. A student-led interdisciplinary conversation sponsored jointly by the departments of Philosophy, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Black Studies.

As Augusto Boal, found of Theatre of the Oppressed, describes, forum theatre is “an artistic and intellectual game played between actor and spect-actor.” The “game” presents a social or political error for which solutions must be proposed by spect-actors, Boal’s term for an engaged audience. In this workshop, participants will be the “spect-actors,” led by a team of actors including Cheryl McFarren, Cierra King, Isaac Andrews, and Megan Lovely. The workshop will be divided into four sections: a scripted performance, an interview of the actors in character, the opportunity for spect-actors to change the outcome of the performance, and a final debriefing amongst all participants as a Denison community. The purpose of this workshop is to, as Boal says, propose a “model of action” for future communal interactions.

“The function of education,” Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “is to teach one to think intensively and creatively. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” In an era where education is often valued merely as a tool for landing a job, King reminds us of its deeper roots and its broader reach into our personal and political lives. This panel will critically unpack this quotation and others from King’s vast storehouse of writings and speeches in an effort to answer: Why read King? Careful reflection will highlight the urgent relationship between rhetoric and democracy, between moral identity and our shared civic lives. Why is reading King today so important, even urgent? Panelists will open with brief remarks, and then engage in an open-ended conversation with each other and attendees in the audience.

• Lauren Araiza (History) 
• Spencer Dew (Queer Studies)
• Joseph Lewis (English)
• Heather Pool (Political Science)

Much of the research and scholarship on black male college athletes primarily focuses on the experiences of those participants at the Division I level. As a result, the experiences of DII and DIII athletes are often neglected and not given the same attention as their DI counterparts. In an effort to help the Denison community understand the experiences of black collegians, this proposed panel of Black male students from Denison University will provide insight on the realities they face. In particular, panelists will discuss their experiences as students at Denison and how it fits in a global context. They will also share insight on how students, faculty, and staff can best serve Black student-athletes (and students in general) on our campus. *This session is an effort of four black male student-athletes at Denison who look to continue the conversation they are initiating at the Black Student Athlete Summit at the University of Texas at Austin (January 9-11, 2019)

Using the deeply intersectional works and life of the black, queer, feminist scholar, theologian, and activist Pauli Murray, this workshop leads students in an exploration of the origins of identity politics and how the Civil RIghts movement origins of identity politics helped give rise to many successive social justice movements: feminism, the LGBTQIA+ liberation movement, disability rights, and more.

Within Judaism, the concept of “Tikkun Olam” is critical. Literally translating to “repairing of the world,” the concept suggests that we as people have a responsibility to activity make the world around us a better place. We must not be passive, but active in the betterment of our lives and the lives of those around us. As Judaism is very much a “religion of the book” in that it is rooted deeply in text, we would like to begin by delving into some text study, pulling passages from the Torah or various Jewish sages who teach of this concept. We will then move to a larger conversation about what ‘repairing the world’ actually means to us—and is it even feasible? As there is much to say about Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights movement, we may transition to this discussion by first providing a general overview of that involvement, as a way to point out one instance of “Tikkun Olam” in action. There are also many other instances of social justice work within the Jewish community, especially in the Reform movement, that we might discuss. Ultimately, we hope to provide a introductory look at how Judaism approaches the ideas of activism, volunteerism, and social progress.

We will reflect on the day’s talks and focus on designing action we might take on campus to honor these values.