“Wokeshops” for Informed Participation

March 31–April 2

Learn from thought leaders how to become a more informed and engaged participant in America’s democracy.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is compelled to present United, States, America: Three Problematic Concepts, “Wokeshops” for Informed Participation, a weekend-long series of conversations and wake-up calls.

These “wokeshops” offer a toolkit for the citizen, immigrant, parent, student, artist, refugee, teacher, and activist. They provide information needed right now to engage our challenging times. Experts in politics, economics, law, and journalism will share the depth and breadth of what they know, what they have seen, and what they do. Learn concrete examples and fanciful imaginings of how one might behave in this uncanny America. Exchange plans and promises, and devise pertinent, actionable strategies to address the current state of America’s democracy.

Attend one or all of the events. Free and open to the public. Seating is limited.

REGISTER

Check back for more information.
 

Schedule

Friday, March 31

6:00–7:30 p.m.
Keynote: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Ave.

Saturday, April 1

10:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Checks and Balancing Acts: Consensus, Constitutionality, Rule of Law
Chair: 
Mary Patten, Professor of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation and Visual and Critical Studies

Panelists: 
Craig Futterman, Founder of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project at the University of Chicago Law School
K-Sue Park, Attorney and Research Scholar affiliated with the University of New Mexico
Ameya Pawar, Alderman of Chicago’s 47th ward
Ed Yohnka, Director of Communications and Public Policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois
SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Ave.

1:30–3:20 p.m.
Screening: I Am Not Your Negro, Director Raoul Peck (2016)
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.

Students, faculty, and staff can present a valid SAIC ID at the Gene Siskel Film Center box office to receive one $5 ticket at the SAIC rate. On a first come first served basis, attendees to USA Wokeshops on Saturday, April 1 will receive a discount voucher for one $6 ticket to be purchased day-of at the box office. Limited tickets are available.

4:00–6:30 p.m.
Origins of the Present Crisis: Race, Gender, Religion
Chair:
Rashayla Marie Brown (BFA 2015), Director of Student Affairs for Diversity and Inclusion

Panelists: 
Michael Dawson, Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago
Katherine Franke, Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School
Ronak Kapadia, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Keren Zwick, Managing Attorney in the National Immigration Justice Center’s litigation practice 
SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Ave.

Sunday, April 2

10:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
It’s the Stupid Economy, Stupid
Chair:
Oliver Sann, Assistant Professor of Photography

Panelists:
Phil Ashton, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Policy at University of Illinois at Chicago
Leigh Claire La Berge, Assistant Professor of English at the City University of New York, Borough of Manhattan Community College
June Lapidus, Associate Professor of Economics at Roosevelt University
Caroline Woolard, New York-based artist
SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Ave.

1:30–4:00 p.m.
I Tweeted the News Today. Sad.
Chair: 
Dushko Petrovich, Assistant Professor of New Arts Journalism

Panelists:
Jack Doppelt, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Journalism at Medill
Margaret Holt, Standards Editor of the Chicago Tribune
Aric Toler, Lead Contributor on Eastern Europe/Eurasia for Bellingcat
SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Ave.

Keynote Speaker: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, published by Haymarket Books in January 2016. The book surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and persistent structural inequality, including mass incarceration, housing discrimination, police violence, and unemployment. Taylor is the recipient of the 2016 Cultural Freedom Especially Notable Book Award from the Lannan Foundation.

Taylor is broadly interested in the fields of race and public policy, Black politics, and racial inequality in the United States. Taylor’s writing has been published in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics Culture and Society, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Boston Review, New Republic, AlJazeera America, Jacobin, In These Times, New Politics, International Socialist Review, and other publications. She is currently writing a book titled Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis in the 1970s, under contract with the University of North Carolina Press in their Justice, Power and Politics series. Taylor received her PhD in African American Studies at Northwestern University in 2013 and is currently an Assistant Professor in African American Studies at Princeton University.

Checks and Balancing Acts: Consensus, Constitutionality, Rule of Law

Craig Futterman

Craig B. Futterman is a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He founded and has served as the Director of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic since 2000. Before his appointment as a law professor, Futterman was a lecturer in Law and Director of Public Interest Programs at Stanford Law School. He previously joined Futterman & Howard, Chtd., a boutique law firm concentrating in complex federal litigation. There, Futterman specialized in civil rights and constitutional matters, with a special focus on racial discrimination, education, and police brutality. Before that, he served as a trial attorney in the Juvenile Division of the Cook County Public Defender’s Office.

Futterman received his JD from Stanford Law School and graduated with the highest distinction from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Economics.

K-Sue Park

K-Sue Park is an attorney and Research Scholar affiliated with the University of New Mexico. She has worked in several different contexts to provide foreclosure and eviction defense to low-income clients, fight gentrification, and combat the effects and the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis. In particular, she challenges “subprime workaround” schemes, which have arisen in the wake of the foreclosure crisis to target the same population that fell victim to subprime lending—people without access to credit. She holds a PhD from University of California Berkeley’s Rhetoric Department and writes on the history of dispossession, displacement, and real estate creation in North America. Her article “Money, Mortgages, and the Conquest of America” appeared in Law and Social Inquiry last fall. She currently lives on the Texas-Mexico border.

Ameya Pawar

Ameya Pawar is Alderman of Chicago’s 47th ward. He was first elected in 2011, becoming the first Asian American to serve on City Council. In 2015, he was re-elected with 82 percent of the vote. Since taking office, Pawar has secured millions of dollars for schools in his community. He was actively involved in the preservation of affordable housing, helping families stay in one neighborhood from kindergarten through 12th grade. His work in funding neighborhood schools is seen by many as a model for the city.

Pawar has led efforts to pass several pieces of progressive legislation focusing on social justice, worker rights, and government reforms. Highlights include the implementation Chicago paid sick leave ordinance, the creation of an independent budget office, and the passage of one the nation’s strongest anti-wage theft ordinances. Pawar holds a MPA from the Illinois Institute of Technology, a MS in Threat and Response Management and a MA in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago.

Edwin Yohnka

Edwin C. Yohnka is the Director of Communications and Public Policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. Appointed to the post of Director of Communications in June 1999, Yohnka is the primary spokesperson for the most prominent civil rights and civil liberties advocacy organization in the state, an organization with more than 35,000 members and supporters. In 2013, Yohnka served as Vice-Chair for Illinois Unites for Marriage, a diverse, multifaceted coalition of organizations that helped win the fight to ensure the freedom to marry for all couples in Illinois. From 1987 until 1999, Yohnka served on the staff of the American Bar Association (ABA), spending most of that time as a Special Presidential Assistant in the ABA’s Office of the President.

Origins of the Present Crisis: Race, Gender, Religion

Michael Dawson

Michael C. Dawson is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Dawson received his doctorate from Harvard. He has directed numerous public opinion studies that focus on race and public opinion. His research interests include Black political behavior and public opinion, political economy, Black political ideology, and political theory. Recent books include Not In Our Lifetimes and Blacks In and Out of the Left. Recently Dawson launched the National Race and Capitalism. He is the founding and current director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago. Dawson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006.

Katherine Franke

Katherine Franke is the Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she also directs the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law and is the faculty Director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project. She is among the nation's leading scholars writing on law, religion, and rights, drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory. Her most recent book, Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality (NYU Press 2015), considers the costs of winning marriage rights for same-sex couples today and for African Americans at the end of the Civil War. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 to undertake research for Wedlocked. In addition to her work at Columbia, she works regularly in Palestine, most recently serving as an academic mentor for the human rights faculty at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem and co-convener of Nakba and Law Project. She sits on the steering committee of the Academic Advisory Council of Jewish Voice for Peace, and chairs the Board of Directors of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City.

Ronak Kapadia

Ronak K. Kapadia is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and affiliated faculty in Global Asian Studies and Museum & Exhibition Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A cultural theorist of race, sex, security, and empire in the late 20th and early 21st century United States, Kapadia is completing a book about the interface between contemporary visual art and aesthetics and US global counterinsurgency warfare in South Asia and the Middle East titled Insurgent Aesthetics: Race, Security, and the Sensorial Life of Empire (Duke University Press, forthcoming).

Keren Zwick

Keren Zwick is a managing attorney in the National Immigration Justice Center’s litigation practice and oversees the LGBT Immigrant Rights Initiative. Zwick co-chairs the committee of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association (AILA) that acts as the liaison between government enforcement officials and private attorneys. She is also a key contributor to the Chicago LGBTQ Immigrant Rights Coalition. Zwick has led or participated in federal litigation in seven different Circuit Courts and before the United States Supreme Court. Zwick joined NIJC following two years of clerking for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. While Zwick was a law student at Columbia Law School, she successfully represented clients in the Sexuality & Gender Law Clinic in both immigration and civil rights matters. Before law school, Zwick attended the University of Chicago and worked as NIJC’s asylum project coordinator. She is licensed to practice law in Illinois.

It’s the Stupid Economy, Stupid

Phil Ashton

Phil Ashton is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Policy at University of Illinois at Chicago. His research and practice focus on the restructuring of US retail finance, with an interest in how minority borrowers and neighborhoods have fared in the “new financial marketplace.” His research projects include subprime mortgage lending, the foreclosure crisis, the remittance market, financial regulation, and the role of investment banks and infrastructure funds in producing the growing market for urban infrastructure assets, including Chicago’s Skyway and parking meters. He is writing a book about fraud and discrimination litigation against large subprime mortgage lenders.

Leigh Claire La Berge

Leigh Claire La Berge is working on a book titled Wages Against Artwork: The Social Practice of Decommodification. Concerned with the economic trend of uncompensated work and the aesthetic trend of artwork that seeks to ameliorate social inequality, Wages Against Artwork asks what kind of claims the aesthetic can make in an expiring welfare state. Her book, Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s (Oxford, 2015) tracked the contest between postmodern and realist fictions about finance in a nascent era of financialization, and her articles have appeared in Radical Philosophy, Studies in American Fiction, Criticism, Journal of Cultural Economy, and the Radical History Review. She is the co-editor, along with Alison Shonkwiler, of Reading Capitalist Realism (Iowa, 2014). She is Assistant Professor of English at the City University of New York, Borough of Manhattan Community College.

June Lapidus

June Lapidus is Associate Professor of Economics at Roosevelt University and coordinates the university’s major in Social Justice Studies. She earned her PhD in Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she continues to serve as a member of the Center for Popular Economics. Her areas of interest are labor economics, feminist economics, and political economy. She has taught economics to college students, union members and activists for 30 years.

Caroline Woolard

Caroline Woolard (b. 1984) is a New York-based artist who creates discrete objects as well as institutions for the solidarity economy. She cofounded multiyear institutions, including the barter networks OurGoods.org (2008–16), TradeSchool.coop (2009–17), cross-sector organizing network SolidarityNYC (2009–13); cultural equity advocacy group BFAMFAPhD.com (2014–17), and the NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative (2015–17). Recent commissions include WOUND, Cooper Union (2016); Capitoline Wolves, Cornell University (2016); and MoMA Studio: Exchange Café (2014). Group exhibitions include Crossing Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum (2014) and Living as Form, Creative Time (2011). Woolard’s work has been supported by residencies at LMCC (2017), NewInc (2016), MoMA (2014), Queens Museum (2014), and Watermill (2011) and through fellowships at Eyebeam (2013) and the MacDowell Colony (2009).

I Tweeted the News Today. Sad.

Jack Doppelt

Jack Doppelt is the Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Journalism at Medill and principal investigator of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation-funded Social Justice News Nexus. He is also publisher of Immigrant Connect, an online storytelling network for immigrants, their families and communities in and around Chicago, and a faculty associate at Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research. He has served as a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern and as an Open Society Fellow, working with Al-Quds University in the West Bank to develop its journalism program. Doppelt has also served as both Acting Dean and Associate Dean and Director of the Medill global journalism program for 11 years from its inception in 1996 until 2007.

Margaret Holt

Margaret Holt is the Standards Editor of the Chicago Tribune. She has a particular interest in urban issues and diversity of coverage and regularly meets with community leaders and groups. A member of the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), Holt is a Tuscarora Nation member and has represented NAJA on the board of UNITY, which seeks to advance diversity and inclusion in media coverage and staffing. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri and has held a variety of reporting and editing positions in several newsrooms. She joined the Chicago Tribune in 1993 as Sports Editor.

Aric Toler

Aric Toler lead on Eastern Europe/Eurasia for Bellingcat, a website for investigative journalism. Toler coordinates research, editing, and translations of Bellingcat's work on the regions. For the past two years, Toler has led more than a dozen training workshops teaching open-source research and verification techniques for Russian-speaking journalists and activists in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and the Czech Republic. Before joining Bellingcat full time, Toler received an MA in Slavic Languages and Literatures and worked in the private sector in the United States as an intelligence specialist.

The views and opinions expressed in this event are the presenters' own and do not necessarily reflect those of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.