Reimagine Public Safety

Pollen + Pillsbury United Communities

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About This Event

Zoom

September 14, 2021

Join us on September 14 for a conversation with advocates, artists, and organizers on the future of public safety in Minneapolis.

Content Connection

Created in partnership with Pillsbury United Communities, this story and video series explores community perspectives on policing, public safety, and imagining a better path forward.

More Information

Event Details
Speakers

Event Details

Reimagine Public Safety

September 14, 2021
10:30am-12pm Central

Join us on Zoom

A conversation with advocates, artists, and organizers on the future of public safety in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis is asking itself big questions about the future of public safety. It’s clear that the current system of policing doesn’t serve our communities in equitable, constructive, or healing ways. What’s less clear is where we go from here. The answers will come not from a singular source, but through examining the layered histories, needs, and experiences that shape community expectations of public safety.

Join Pollen and Pillsbury United Communities on September 14 to hear from advocates, artists, and organizers who are asking the hard questions, finding answers from within, and imagining a better path forward. Together, we’ll explore community perspectives on policing, public safety, city budgets, and what we can do at the community level to turn imagination into action.

SPEAKERS

Erika Thorne, Showing Up For Racial Justice Twin Cities

D.A. Bullock, Reclaim The Block + Bully Creative Shop

MJ Carpio, Coalition of Asian American Leaders

Rodolfo Gutierrez, HACER

Moderated by Ruby Oluoch, Pollen

With a reading by Ricardo Levins Morales

This event is part of our Reimagine Public Safety story and video series featuring different community perspectives on public safety in Minneapolis. Read the four features before our event on September 14th.

#ReimaginePublicSafetyMN

Created in partnership with Pillsbury United Communities with generous support by:

Tickets are $15. We’re also offering a pay-what-you-can ticket option.

PROGRAM

Welcome & Performance 10:30am
Panel discussion 10:45am
Small group conversations 11:30am

ACCESSIBILITY

Live captioning is available, and ASL interpreters are available upon request. When registering, please let us know what you need to fully experience the event.

SPECIAL THANKS

Pollen’s events programming is presented by the Bush Foundation with additional support provided by Software for Good, Hiring Revolution, Eide Bailly, and Clockwork.

Speakers

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DA Bullock

Reclaim The Block + Bully Creative Shop

Featured Contributor

DA Bullock

Reclaim The Block + Bully Creative Shop

D.A. Bullock has been an award-winning cinematographer, writer and director for over 15 years. As a film and television director, an ad-agency creative, cinematographer and an editor, Bullock has honed every facet of his filmmaking repertoire. In 2011, Bullock founded Bully Creative Shop in Minneapolis. Bully Creative Shop believes in story. “Story is the spark. Story plants the seed of innovative thinking. Story shakes up the status quo.” In 2014, Bullock was also named a McKnight Foundation / IFP Minnesota Media Arts Fellow.

Work done for Pollen

Reimagine Public Safety

a story and video series
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MJ Carpio

Coalition of Asian American Leaders

Featured Contributor

MJ Carpio

Coalition of Asian American Leaders

MJ is an organizer for Yes 4 Minneapolis, the Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL), and Filipinx for Immigrant Rights & Racial Justice Minnesota (FIRM). At Yes 4 Minneapolis she does field work to help pass the creation of a Department of Public Safety with a public health approach in place of the current police-only system. At CAAL she facilitates conversations, leads activities, and helps build community and governmental relationships to combat anti-Asian racism and reimagine public safety. At FIRM her focus is providing intergenerational and multicultural history and political education. Across all her work, MJ seeks to honor her Filipino heritage of resistance, address misunderstandings about Black- and Indigenous-led movements, combat internalized racism rooted in imperialism, and foster an understanding toward the interconnected struggles of underrepresented peoples.
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Rodolfo Gutierrez

HACER

Featured Contributor

Rodolfo Gutierrez

HACER

Rodolfo Gutierrez is the Executive Director of HACER, where he has been serving since May 2007 with extensive professional experience in quantitative and qualitative research and evaluation. He has spoken in several forums and is greatly committed to working with those interested in drawing a state of Minnesota where disparities are eliminated, and are not based on ethnic or cultural differences anymore. Originally from Mexico, Rodolfo carries previous experience in research in Mexico and the U.S., which has been extremely useful while working with different and diverse communities, not only Latino. His formal education includes History (bachelor’s and PhD) and Demography (MS), with extensive experience in research on demographic change. He offers a strong background in quantitative and qualitative research with an emphasis on immigration, education, healthcare access, and cultural incorporation of diverse communities. Rodolfo was named to Pollen and AARP’s 50 Over 50 list in 2020 as a nonprofit honoree.
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Ricardo Levins Morales

Artist

Featured Contributor

Ricardo Levins Morales

Artist

Ricardo Levins Morales is an artist and organizer based in Minneapolis. He has been active in movements for racial, environmental and economic justice since his family moved from Puerto Rico to Chicago in the late 1960s. His first political home was the Chicago Black Panther Defense Committee and his most recent, MPD150.

Ricardo was a founding member of Northland Poster Collective (1979-2009) and continues to use art, writing and teaching as political medicines to promote healing and resistance in the face of oppression. He works out of a storefront studio with a team of radical troublemakers (all members of the Newspaper and Communications Guild/CWA).
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Erika Thorne

Showing Up For Racial Justice

Featured Contributor

Erika Thorne

Showing Up For Racial Justice

Erika Thorne has been a progressive activist, writer, facilitator, and cultural worker since 1974. She focuses on cross-race coalition building and anti-racism work with other whites. She’s been a core trainer with Training for Change for 25 years. Erika has worked with environmental justice groups, undocumented immigrants, Hmong organizations, domestic violence activists, housing projects residents, the national education department of a large US union, and a full range of nonprofits, organizers and rabble-rousers. Erika is on the core organizing team of SURJ-TC (a white co-conspirator group.) She also loves to facilitate training of trainers, conflict waging, ethical grassroots fundraising, and meetings – especially real sticky ones. Erika was the Managing Director of MN Friends for a Nonviolent World for nearly three years, and coordinated the Alternatives to Violence Project-MN, offering intensive workshops in prisons and jails, for five years. As a former dancer for social change, she brings joyful physicality to her facilitation. This summer, she’s in a musical play, Queen B, outside in the parks!