WATCH THE EVENT LIVESTREAM:

• OACC YouTube: https://youtu.be/LzIzLaro39Y
• BAMBDFEST Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BAMBDFEST2019/videos/296000932318842

[THIS IS A VIRTUAL EVENT.]

UPDATE (7/30/21): In consideration of our presenters’ and audience members’ health and safety, we have decided to pivot this event to a VIRTUAL ONLY format and cancel all in-person components. We will notify attendees how you can access our event remotely. Please RSVP to receive the latest updates.

Oakland-based API and Black artists and community organizations unite for an afternoon of performance and dialogue centering our shared history, challenges, and vision for what safety look like in all communities. The event will open with a land acknowledgment by Kanyon Sayers-Roods, a member of the Costanoan Ohlone and Chumash people. Featured artists include Ayodele Nzinga, City of Oakland 2021 Poet Laureate and founding Producing Director of Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc., and Michelle Mush Lee, Principal and Founder of Whole Story Group. They will join in conversation with Oakland City Council President and District 2 Councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas and moderator James Burch, Policy Director of the Anti Police-Terror Project.

The event is presented in partnership with the Black Arts Movement District Community Development Corporation as part of BAMBDFEST 2021. Donations are appreciated and no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

BAMBDFEST 2021 is LIVE!

BAMBDFEST 2021 INTERNATIONAL is 31 days of art, culture,  education, civic discourse,  and networking events offered  as a community celebration  of  our legacy of  resilience,  our massive reservoir of talent, and  our legendary determination for equity and justice for Black People. BAMBDFEST 2021 is hybrid event offering both virtual  and live programming. For more information on festival programming please head to bambdfest.com.

Featured Poets and Speakers

Kanyon Sayers-Roods is Costanoan Ohlone-Mutsun and Chumash; she also goes by her given Native name, “Coyote Woman”. She is proud of her heritage and her native name (though it comes with its own back story), and is very active in the Native Community. She is an Artist, Poet, Published Author, Activist, Student and Teacher. The daughter of Ann-Marie Sayers, she was raised in Indian Canyon, trust land of her family, which currently is one of the few spaces in Central California available for the Indigenous community for ceremony. Kanyon’s art has been featured at the De Young Museum, The Somarts Gallery, Gathering Tribes, Snag Magazine, and numerous Powwows and Indigenous Gatherings. She is a recent graduate of the Art Institute of California, Sunnyvale, obtaining her Associate and Bachelor of Science degrees in Web Design and Interactive Media. She is motivated to learn, teach, start conversations around decolonization and reindigenization, permaculture and to continue doing what she loves, Art. Learn more at https://kanyonkonsulting.com/coyotewoman/.

Ayodele Nzinga is the founding producing director of the Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc., Oakland’s oldest North American Theater Company. Nzinga is a multi-disciplined creative force; a brilliant actress, producing director, playwright, poet, dramaturg, performance consultant, educator, and community advocate. She is the founding Director of the Black Arts Movement Business District Community Development Corporation, Oakland, (BAMBD CDC); and founding producer of BAMBDFEST an annual international month-long arts and cultural festival celebrating and hosted by the Black Arts Movement and Business District in Oakland CA. Learn more at https://www.ayodelenzinga.com/.

Mush Lee is a writer, narrative strategist and CEO of Whole Story Group, LLC, an organizational consulting firm founded on the principles of equity, storytelling and transformative leadership. In 2019, she was invited to serve as one of the Cultural Affairs Division’s Cultural Strategist-in-Government (CSIG), where she worked in City departments to infuse policy-making and practices with new creative and culturally-competent thinking and problem-solving to promote civic belonging and well-being. Mush’s talks and writings have been featured on Vogue, HBO, PBS, AfroPop, Summit Series, Social Venture Network, National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE) and the Berkeley Communications Conference. A Harvard University, Project Zero Fellow, Mush is frequently a featured speaker on contemporary culture, racial justice and women of color in leadership. She has shared the stage with cultural powerhouses like Natalie Baszile, Hope Solo and Harrison Ford and spoken for Stop AAPI Hate and See Us Unite campaigns. Her writing is published in All the Women in My Family Sing, an anthology of essays by women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Mush serves as a Cultural Affairs Commissioner and a member of the Funding Advisory Committee for the City of Oakland. Learn more at www.wholestorygroup.com / @wholestorygroup

For two decades, Council President and District 2 Councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas has been an advocate for working people, leading the passage of policies in Oakland to create the building blocks for regional, state, and national change. A resident of District 2 for over 20 years and a lifelong community organizer, Councilmember Bas started out in Chinatown organizing Chinese immigrant garment workers to win their wages back. She also worked in coalitions to raise Oakland’s minimum wage with paid sick leave, create living wage jobs on the old Oakland Army Base, and reduce diesel truck pollution at the Port of Oakland. Learn more at https://www.oaklandca.gov/officials/nikki-fortunato-bas.

James Burch is the Policy Director for the Anti Police-Terror Project and the Justice Teams Network, and the President of the National Lawyers Guild, Bay Area. In 2007, he worked for the Southern Center for Human Rights where he investigated human rights conditions in GA and AL prisons, jails, and court systems. James left in 2009 to study civil rights law at Georgetown. After graduating, James moved to the Bay Area where he worked with the Frisco 500 before joining APTP’s Black Leadership Committee and assuming the role of Policy Director. Learn more at https://www.antipoliceterrorproject.org/.