2023 Teach-In Series
“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”
– bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
What are Teach-Ins?
The Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements & Population Health Equity aims to achieve a just future, free from systems of oppression, full of new possibilities through bold, collective action, and an equitable world in which all individuals and communities are healthy and thrive.
We believe that teach-ins provide the opportunity to foster relationships between organizers, community groups, and researchers to discuss and explore how to fulfill a shared mission.
The overall goal of the Ubuntu Center teach-ins are to create a co-learning space for scholars, organizers, activists, and community residents to build critical consciousness about entrenched inequities created by racism and other systems of oppression and find ways to collaborate on community-led and community-centered research and solutions.
The sessions will help to:
- Socialize ‘Ubuntu’ and the importance of collective action
- Build relationships, trust, and a sense of community both within the Ubuntu Center and with our external partners
- Provide an introduction about historical social movements across Philadelphia during the 20th and 21st century
Each teach-in will focus on a theme related to racism and population health equity and will invite both scholars and movement builders. Teach-ins will occur over two days (one Thursday evening hybrid session and one Saturday in-person session) to give sufficient time for both internal and external learning and conversation.
Read about our 2022 Teach-in Series here.
Learn more about our 2023 Teach-in Series below.
2023 Spring Teach-in Series
Topic: Housing and Displacement in Philly
- April 13th, 5:30 PM & April 15th, 10 AM
Topic: Land and Urban Agriculture in Philly
- May 11th, 5:30 PM & May 13th, 10 AM
Topic: The Carceral System in Philly
- June 8th, 5:30 PM & June 10th, 10 AM
April 2023
Akira Drake Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. Her research examines the ways that disenfranchised groups re-appropriate their marginalized spaces in the city to gain access to and sustain urban political power. She is the author of Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta’s Public Housing, which explores how the politics of public housing planning and race in Atlanta created a politics of resistance within its public housing developments. She is also the lead author of A Green New Deal for K-12 Schools, through her work with the climate + community project. She has received funding from the Spencer Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Innovation Initiative and Projects for Progress funds to support her work around school facilities planning in Philadelphia public schools. Dr. Rodriguez has also consulted or lead engagement processes for several local, state, and federal projects including the Philadelphia Authorized Depositories Study for Fair Lending, the Disparity Study for Philadelphia’s Office of Economic Opportunity, and the 2021 Cleveland Housing Plan.
Save the UC Townhomes is a resident led coalition to save the UC Townhomes, a 70 unit low income subsidy based housing project at 40th and Market in so called “Philadelphia, PA”.The UC Townhomes is a 70 unit Section 8 Subsidy Based Project housing development located at 3900-90 Market St. in Philadelphia, PA. Built in 1983, the townhomes are located within the boundaries of the West Philadelphia neighborhood known as the Black Bottom, an historically black neighborhood largely displaced in the late 1960s through the City government use of eminent domain to make way for what is now known as “University City.” The townhomes, with land bought from the city for $1 after the Rizzo administration found itself in federal court for housing discrimination in locating section 8 sites, were built and are still owned by IBID Associates, a subsidiary of the Altman Group. On July 8 2021, owner Brett Altman informed the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that it would not renew it’s federal tax subsidy and would put the property up for sale on July 8, 2022. Local business news reporting estimated the sale price at upwards of $100m. UC Townhomes tenants were given notice that they would have to move by July 8th, 2022 but as of August 2022 many have not received a housing voucher from HUD to begin looking for a new place to live. The owner has already extended the contract to September 7th and will likely need to do so again. As anyone who has tried to find a Philadelphia landlord who will accept housing vouchers as a form of payment can tell you, this is a near impossible task on such a short time frame. This is especially true in a year where inflation has caused rent prices to soar and the payment schedule for vouchers has not kept up with market prices The Covid-19 pandemic has only compounded the difficulty of potential relocation. UC Townhomes residents are organizing to halt the sale and demolition of their homes. Please read over the materials on the website to learn more about the issue and join the campaign!
Kenny Chiu is a South Philly native, a School District of Philadelphia graduate, and now a student organizer for Students for the Preservation of Chinatown (SPOC). He is a second-year undergraduate student studying Urban Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and is an organizer member for the Coalition to Save the UC Townhomes, Fossil Free Penn, and People’s Kitchen Philly
*Details on our May guests below.
May 2023
Lan Dinh (she/her) is the Co-Executive Director and Farm and Food Sovereignty Projects Director for VietLEAD. She is responsible for developing and delivering youth curriculum and program activities and building the existing community garden into a community food project. Lan has over eight years of experience in teaching healthy cooking, nutrition, gardening, and food justice for youth, adults, and communities. Previously, she was an Assistant Farm Manager and Instructor at the University of California Santa Cruz’s Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and a Youth Organizer for the Urban Nutrition Initiative in Philadelphia. Ms. Dinh received her Bachelor’s Degree in Health and Societies with a Concentration in International Health & Nutrition from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011 and a Certificate in Ecological Horticulture from the UCSC Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems in October of 2013.
Erica Mines is the Philadelphia Food Policy Advisory Council Manager at the Office of Sustainability. She is a North Philadelphia native-born in the Strawberry Mansion section of the city. She brings her experiences growing food at the Hunting Park Community Garden, working in the food industry and managing the Hunting Park Farmer’s Market. Erica has been a community organizer in our city’s fights for racial and economic justice. She has helped to advance food equity in the city she has called home since a child. Erica is from a working-class family that sometimes had to rely on subsidy programs. She saw first-hand how racist and unjust policies led to less fresh and sustainable food options, criminalization, disinvestment, and marginalization in her community. She came to FPAC to help build a more empowered, sustainable, and just food system. Erica believes we must approach access to fresh, quality, and sustainable foods as a basic human right. We must put power, education, and resources into the hands of Black and Brown community members historically harmed by our food system.
Located in North Philadelphia, Glenwood Green Acres is a historic garden that was founded in 1983 after a whisky barrel factory on the site burnt to the ground. Mr. & Mrs. James along with other Neighbors rallied together to save the land from being developed, and successfully created a 4-acre plot of land reserved specifically for gardening. Glenwood Green Acres was preserved by the Neighborhood Garden Trust in 1997. Today, the number of gardening plots is over 90, and the cultural diversity of the garden continues to grow as people from all over Philadelphia come seeking a gardening community.
The Holly Street Neighbors Community Garden is a living memorial to honor its founder Winnie Harris. We commemorate her dedication to grow food organically. Our strength comes from love. We’re committed to driving change that leads to greener, better educated communities, free of gun violence. Stand with us.
*Details on our June guests below.
June 2023
Nikki Grant is Amistad Law Project’s Policy Director and co-founder. She is the proud daughter of Jamaican immigrants and grew up in a tightly-knit, working class West Indian community in Orlando, Florida. As a young person, she witnessed poverty, racial segregation and inequitable schools in her community, as well as her father’s disabling chronic illness. She was inspired by the demonstration of care by primarily Black women neighbors and church family to work towards social equity through a Black feminist lens. Nikki is a movement lawyer and a founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration. She is also a board member of the Abortion Liberation Fund of Pennsylvania, where she serves on the Community Organizing committee.
Through a collaborative writing process with filmmakers, three women bring to life “The Command Center to Bring Women Home,” an imagined space run by formerly incarcerated women for those with nowhere else to turn but to each other, a place where mothers can reunite and heal with their children, and women are able to hold and comfort one another.
