Conversation & Screening

Fighting Back Racism and Food Injustice Thru Green Spaces

Wed, Sep 15, 2021

7:00 PM–9:30 PM

This event will take place online via Zoom. Please register below.

Join us in this Latinx Heritage Month Kick-Off event. We will be screening the award winning docu-thriller, The Infiltrators(2019) followed by a conversation with poet, painter, and immigration rights activist Marco Saavedra and Professor Ángeles Donoso Macaya, Faculty Lead of Archives in Common.

“The Infiltrators tells the true story of two young immigrants who get purposefully arrested by Border Patrol, and put in a shadowy for-profit detention center. The film follows Marco and Viri, members of a group of radical Dreamers who are on a mission to stop deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention.”

“The Infiltrators” a film by Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra

In this event, we will also learn about the rehabilitation of the Bruckner-Mott Haven Community Garden, a collective community effort lead by La Morada sou-chef and educator Carolina Saavedra to fight food injustice in the South Bronx. Bruckner-Mott Haven Garden members and volunteers worked throughout the summer to build a large communal farm with organic veggies, flowers, and medicinal herbs. We hope to inspire and invite students to get involved in this community garden and/or mutual aid initiatives with La Morada in The Bronx.

Free and open to all, but please click here to register and attend this Zoom event.

This is an activity co-sponsored by Hostos Action Committee/Bronx; Seeds of Activism, Environmental Justice, Reimagining Justice, Common Ground, and ALMA Student Clubs; Archives in Common, as part of the Seminar of Public Engagement and Collaborative Research from The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY; La Morada Mutual-Aid Kitchen

And coordinated by Professor Ángeles Donoso Macaya (Modern Languages Department, BMCC), Professor Aaron Botnick (English Department, Hostos), Cristina Morales (CUNY Start, Hostos), Professor Lizette Colón (Counseling Center, Hostos), Hostos Action Committee and Hostos Student Activities Office.

This event will be conducted in English. For questions or accommodations for this event, please contact Hostos Action Committee at [email protected] and Lizette Colon at [email protected].

Speakers:

Marco Saavedra is a poet and a painter. After having lived as an undocumented immigrant for 27 years, he won political asylum in early 2021, stemming from his immigrant justice work. He works at his family’s Oaxacan restaurant in the South Bronx, La Morada, & enjoys painting and exploring the Hudson Valley with his baby niece. He is co-author of Shadows Then Light and Eclipse of Dreams (2020). His activism is featured in the award-winning film The Infiltrators (2019). A selection of his paintings was part of the West Harlem Arts online exhibition, Resilience 2021.

Ángeles Donoso Macaya is an immigrant professor, researcher and community organizer from Santiago, Chile, based in New York City. She is Professor of Spanish at The Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, 2020-2022 Faculty Lead of Archives in Common: Migrant Practices / Knowledges / Memory and a 2021-2022 Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellow. Her research centers on Latin American photography theory and history, counter-archival production, human rights activism, and feminisms. She is the author of The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship (University of Florida Press 2020), awarded Best Book in Latin American Visual Culture Studies, 2021, and translated as La insubordinación de la fotografía (Metales Pesados, 2021). Ángeles is also member the Bruckner-Mott Haven Garden and of colectiva somoslacélula.