Can we just have a really honest conversation. Just a really honest conversation. Can we take the anger out just for a second? Just long enough to have a conversation. A meeting of the hearts and minds.
-Myrtle Thompson-Curtis
How do we co-create a world without prisons? We must cultivate the communities that support change, empathy, and accountability. Reimagining Safety gathers years of organizing wisdom through a conversation between Feedom Freedom’s, Myrtle Thompson-Curtis and Tawana Petty. Together we will learn how they are reimagining communal safety and reclaiming their healthy and safe communities without police.
Note: Cat Brooks was unable to present at this event.
ASL interpretation and CART (English) provided.
Guiding Questions:
- How are we seen and not watched?
- What are the times in your life you felt safe? What were the components of that safety?
- What kind of world do you want to live in?
Featuring:
Myrtle Thompson-Curtis is a life-long Detroiter and the Co-Founder and Director of Feedom Freedom Growers, a nonprofit that fosters health, education and creativity through participation in an urban garden. She is a member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Council and serves on the Board of the Jefferson-Chalmers Farmers Market. She is currently working to promote community safety and accountability by hosting workshops for ‘Green Chairs, not Green Lights,’ as well as transforming a once-abandoned house into the 291 Manistique Kulture Hub.
Tawana Petty is a mother, social justice organizer, youth advocate, poet, and author. She is intricately involved in water rights advocacy, data, and digital privacy rights education and racial justice and equity work. She is the National Organizing Director at Data for Black Lives and director of Petty Propolis, a Black woman-led artist incubator primarily focused on cultivating visionary resistance through poetry, literacy and literary workshops, anti-racism facilitation, and social justice initiatives.