“Speak to Me”
In the early summer of 2020, I began as host, producer, and sometimes video editor for the ongoing virtual series of events by the Yale School of Art, Speak to Me, inaugurated on June 9, 2020 “in an effort to address the NOW.”
Summer 2020 guests included writer Hilton Als, novelist, nonfiction writer, AIDS historian and journalist Sarah Schulman, writer and musician Greg Tate, and Yale Professor of Law Muneer Ahmad in conversation with activist Lorella Praeli.
The series continued in the fall of 2020 with guests performer and poet JJJJJerome Ellis, and artist and 2020 Presidential Visiting Fellow in Fine Arts, Mickalene Thomas in conversation with curator and activist Jasmine Wahi.
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Speak to Me is an online forum with invited speakers, activists, writers, and artists inaugurated during the summer of 2020 in an effort to address the NOW. Conceptualized in the late spring with the first events hosted throughout June 2020, Speak to Me was originally organized with poet, playwright, author, and Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale Claudia Rankine, Leah Mirakhor, Lecturer in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, alongside Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean and Professor Marta Kuzma.
Envisioned as a series of virtual events through which the work of activists and organizers engaging in the continued fight for justice can be lifted up, the program will feature a series of individuals from different cities across the United States, in order to facilitate a nationwide conversation on what is going on across the country geographically at the moment. With the aim of spreading awareness as to how ongoing conditions of state violence, racial capitalism, and COVID-19 concerns manifest in the protests and calls for justice we ask: What is to be done?
