THIS EVENT IS CANCELLED DUE TO EXPOSURES TO COVID
August 26, 2021
5:00pm
Event is free, but donations are welcome and appreciated! All donations will go to Truro Connections
How is Cape Cod addressing issues of racial and social justice? What are the key issues calling out for critical contemplation and conversation? How is the Cape doing in its quest to make the region more welcoming of diversity? These questions, and many more, will be considered by a Racial and Social Justice Panel on Thursday, August 26 at 5 PM at Edgewood Farm in Truro. This program, sponsored by Truro Connections, brings together three panelists who dedicate their work to racial and social justice. Tara Vargas-Wallace, founder of Amplify POC, Dr. Eric Cooper, President of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA)., and Robert Hall, Professor Emeritus of African-American Studies at Northeastern University, come together to examine meaningful ways to consider some of the important issues relating to racial and social justice on the Cape. Truro Connections is a collaboration of the Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, the Payomet Performing Arts Center, the Truro Friends Meeting House, and the Truro Historical Society. This program is free and open to the public. Please plan to bring a lawn chair as the program will be held outdoors on the grounds of Edgewood Farm.
Robert L. Hall is a Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and History at Northeastern University in Boston, MA.
Hall’s articles have been published in such journals as the Florida Historical Quarterly, the Griot, the Western Journal of Black Studies, the Independent Schools Bulletin, the Maryland Historical Magazine, Sociological Inquiry, and the Southern Quarterly. His original essays have appeared in several anthologies including Joseph E. Holloway’s Africanisms in American Culture (Indiana University Press, 1990 and 2005) John B. Boles’s Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Religion and Race in the South (University Press of Kentucky, 1988), Donald M. Jacobs’s Courage and Conscience:Black and White Abolitionists in Boston (Indiana University Press, 1993), Seeds of Change: Five Hundred Years After Columbus edited by Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), and Anne Bower’s African American Foodways: Explorations in History and Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2007). He is also the author of Do, Lord, Remember Me: Religion and the Forging of African American Culture in Florida (under contract with the University of Florida Press) and editor or co-editor of three books including Holding on to the Land and the Lord: Religion, Land Tenure, and Social Policy in the Rural South [with Carol B. Stack] (University of Georgia Press, 1982) and Making a Living:The Work Experience of African Americans in New England (New England Foundation for the Humanities, 1995).
Amplify POC Cape Cod is a racial justice initiative to help amplify the businesses owned by people of color (POC) on Cape Cod. Amplify was founded by Tara Vargas-Wallace, after the murder of George Floyd. As a Puerto Rican woman who is married to a Black man and mother to three promising Black children and as a social justice activist in the community, this issue was personal to her. In the spring and summer of 2020, community members began reaching out to Tara to ask how they could support the Black community. A list of Black owned businesses did not exist for the Cape region, and therefore, Tara created one as part of Amplify's first endeavour.
After some discussion with her local NAACP it was decided that due to the dynamics on the Cape it would be best to include all businesses owned by people of color as there simply weren't enough Black-Owned businesses in the region. The goal then became to amplify business owned by all marginalized groups of people thus adopting the term POC for People of Color.
Amplify provides training and educational opportunities to enhance economic development among people of color on the Cape. Because of systemic racism, we know that the COVID pandemic has disproportionately impacted POC and now is an especially important time to support small local businesses, especially those owned and operated by POC. We're hoping that Amplify - as a community driven initiative - helps to create a more equitable Cape Cod by fostering growth within and for our community.
Dr. Eric Cooper is the President of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA). He served in a similar position as Executive Director for the NUA at Columbia University’s Teachers College and as Adjunct Associate Professor for 7 years. Prior to this position, he was the Vice President for Inservice Training & Telecommunications for the Simon & Schuster Education Group. He has worked in the capacities of Associate Director of Research & Program Development for the College Board, Administrative Assistant in the Office of Curriculum for the Boston Public Schools, and Director of a treatment center for emotionally disturbed students, in addition to working as a teacher, researcher, counselor, and Washington Fellow.
Eric received a $400,000 award from the MacArthur Foundation and produced a television series of prime-time documentaries and training programs on improving the literacy skills of students with NAK Productions of D.C. With NAK, Eric works as producer for projects that have included numerous talk shows, teleconferences, and documentaries. These projects have been produced for PBS, AED, ASCD, James Comer, Peter Senge, W. Edwards Deming, The College Board, and the Carnegie Foundation.
In 2020 Eric was nominated for Secretary of Education by a coalition of national, regional, and education leaders from Alaska to Maine. He was supported as well by former Mayors and Commissioners who firmly believe in the capacity of all schoolchildren and youth to dramatically improve their life trajectories — especially those he has called “school dependent” in his published writings in the ’80s and beyond.
Dr. Cooper received a B.A. from City University (NYC) with a major in Psychology, an MA in Special Education, an Ed. M. in Educational Administration, and a doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies, all from Columbia University’s Teachers College.
After a university career spanning nearly fifty years at Boston College, UMass Boston, and Northeastern University, Barry Bluestone is now a Professor Emeritus at Northeastern. Arriving
at Northeastern in 1999, he became the founding Director of the university’s Dukakis Center for
Urban and Regional Policy and in 2008 became the founding Dean of the university’s School of
Public Policy & Urban Affairs.
Professor Bluestone was raised in Detroit, Michigan and attended the University of Michigan where he received his B.A. (1966), M.A. (1968), and his Ph.D. in economics in 1974.
As a political economist, Bluestone has written widely in the areas of affordable housing, income distribution, industrial policy, labor-management relations, and urban and regional economic development. He contributes regularly to academic, as well as popular journals, and is the co- author of eleven books including The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space, and Economic Change in an American Metropolis (2000) and The Urban Experience: Economics, Society, and Public Policy (2008). Earlier co-authored books included The Deindustrialization of America (1982) which detailed the loss of manufacturing in the U.S. and its consequences for workers, their families, and their communities and The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America (1988), the first major research detailing growing inequality in the U.S.
As part of his work, Bluestone spends a considerable amount of time consulting with civic organizations, community foundations, industry groups, housing developers, trade unions, and with various federal and state government agencies.
He is board chair of the Mistral Chamber Music group in Brookline, Massachusetts, a member of the board of the Payomet Performing Arts Center on Cape Cod, and serves as president of both the Madison Park High School Technical Foundation in Boston and Housing Forward Massachusetts.