Join Dissenters, Stand with Kashmir and Haymarket Books for a collaborative event series uplifting the work of artists and activists fighting for self-determination and abolition in the face of police brutality, militarism, and settler-colonialism.

We celebrate transnational and inter-movement resistance, exploring both the similarities between the different movements and the aspects that make each unique in its way. Featuring activists, artists and scholars from each movement to tell their story of resistance and resilience, and to strengthen solidarity across borders.

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Participants:

Ahmer is a prolific rapper and producer from Srinagar, Kashmir. Since a young age, Ahmer has been acutely aware of the violence that plagues that valley, and his lyrics reflect a self-critical and self-aware artist that is trying to make sense of one of the most complex issues of our time. By diving deep into his and his family’s history in the valley. https://azadirecords.com/artist/ahmer/

Destiny Harris is a Black, queer abolitionist and organizer from the west side of Chicago. She is a sophomore, sociology major at Howard University. She believes in the power of grassroots organizing as a vehicle to building collective power and achieving liberation throughout the diaspora. Her work is at the intersection of abolition, anti-war, anti-militarism and environmental liberation. Destiny believes in the power of storytelling, poetry and culture as means of mobilization that should always be driving our movements. Culture is a shared language, it is how we live and it is powerful, storytelling is a vehicle through which we share that culture. She has organized all throughout the city on campaigns like #DefundCPD, #CopsOutCPS and the #NoCopAcademy campaign which aimed to combat the narrative that our communities need police. She is currently a member of Dissenters, a POC youth led anti-war, anti-militarist organization working to combat US imperialism. Destiny is now working around environmental liberation with Generation Green as abolitionism, anti-imperialism, anti-militarism and environmental liberation are all movements and fights that are connected throughout the diaspora and are working to combat the same systems of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism and death. Destiny is an organizer, poet, arrogant expert on Chicago, current DC resident, the Anderson Paak listening oldest of 7, and lover of Black 90’s sitcoms.

Uzma Falak is a DAAD doctoral fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University of Heidelberg. Her work has appeared in The Economic and Political Weekly, Al Jazeera, Warscapes, The Caravan, Himal Southasian, Anthropology and Humanism, The Electronic Intifada, and anthologies like Of Occupation and Resistance, Gossamer: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry, among others. Her film ‘Till then the Roads Carry Her’ has been screened at the 2nd Memory Studies Association Conference (University of Copenhagen), The 24th European Conference on South Asian Studies (University of Warsaw), Cine Diaspora (New York), University of Heidelberg, Karlstorkino, Tate Modern, IAWRT Asian Women’s Film Festival among others. She was an invited artist-scholar at Warwick’s Tate Exchange, 2018 (Tate Modern, London). Her ethnographic poem ‘Point of Departure’ won an Honourable Mention in the Society for Humanistic Anthropology’s 2017 Ethnographic Poetry Award.

aja monet is a surrealist blues poet, storyteller, and organizer born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She won the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007 and aja monet follows in the long legacy and tradition of poets participating and assembling in social movements. Her first full collection of poems is titled, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter on Haymarket Books. Her poems explore gender, race, migration, and spirituality. In 2018, she was nominated for a NAACP Literary Award for Poetry and in 2019 was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry for her cultural organizing work in South Florida. aja monet cofounded a political home for artists and organizers called, Smoke Signals Studio. She facilitates “Voices: Poetry for the People,” a workshop and collective in collaboration with Community Justice Project and Dream Defenders. She is currently working on her next full collection of poems entitled, Florida Water. aja Monet also serves as the new Artistic Creative Director for V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women and girls. https://ajamonet.com/

Tommy “Teebs” Pico is a poet, podcaster, and tv writer. He is author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, Junk, Feed, and myriad keen tweets including “sittin on the cock of the gay.” Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now splits his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn. He co-curates the reading series Poets with Attitude, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot and Scream, Queen! is poetry editor at Catapult Magazine, writes on the FX show Reservation Dogs, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub. https://tommy-pico.com/

Jamila Woods is an activist, award-winning poet, and singer/songwriter whose inspirations include Gwendolyn Brooks and Toni Morrison, as well as Erykah Badu and Kendrick Lamar. As a solo artist, she specializes in an accessible yet non-commercial form of R&B that is rooted in soul and wholly modern, which can be heard on her albums HEAVN (2016) and LEGACY! LEGACY! (2019). She is also the co-editor of The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. https://www.jamila-woods.com/