Jay Jurden
Wednesday Evening
Jay Jurden is a queer comedian, writer and actor, originally from Mississippi. Jay
regularly performs comedy all over New York City. He has written for Vulture, Teen
Vogue, The New Yorker, and Scruff App's game show, "Hosting." He has also been featured
on MTV News' "Need to Know” and High Maintenance on HBO. Jay recently performed on
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and was featured on Comedy Central. In 2019,
he was selected for Just for Laugh’s New Faces of Comedy and Timeout New York named
him one of their "Comedians to Watch”.
Rinku Sen
Thursday Lunch
Rinku Sen is the former President and Executive Director of Race Forward: The Center
for Racial Justice Innovation and the Publisher of the award-winning news site Colorlines.
Race Forward brings systemic analysis and an innovative approach to complex race issues
to help people take effective action toward racial equity through research, media,
and practice.
Under Sen’s leadership, Race Forward has generated some of the most impactful racial
justice successes. One example is the groundbreaking Shattered Families report, which
changed the immigration debate with research on how record deportations of parents
were leading to the placement of thousands of children in foster care, often separating
them permanently from their families. Sen was the architect of Drop the I-Word, a
campaign for media outlets to stop referring to immigrants as “illegal,” resulting
in the Associated Press, USA Today, LA Times, and many more outlets dropping the i-word,
affecting millions of readers every day.
A visionary and a pragmatist, Sen is one of the leading voices in the racial justice
movement, building upon the legacy of civil rights by transforming the way we talk
about race, from something that is individual, intentional, and overt to something
that is systemic, unconscious, and hidden. Prior to her work at Race Forward, Rinku
served in leadership roles for over a decade at the revolutionary Center for Third
World Organizing (CTWO), where she trained new organizers of color and crafted public
policy campaigns. Sen’s cutting edge book Stir it Up, read widely by community organizers
and taught on campuses across the country, theorized a model of community organizing
that integrate a political analysis of gender, class, poverty, sexuality, and other
issues.
Sen’s second book The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age
of Globalization told the story of Moroccan immigrant Fekkak Mamdouh, who co-founded
the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York in the aftermath of September 11 and
is currently being made into a film.
Rinku is the Co-Chair of the Schott Foundation for Public Education and sits on the
boards of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, Working America, and the Philanthropic
Initiative for Racial Equity. A highly sought-after keynote speaker for colleges Sen
has spoken at Harvard, Brown, University of Michigan, Penn State, and was the Commencement
Speaker at Antioch New England.
Sen received a B.A. in Women's Studies from Brown University and an M.S. in Journalism
at Columbia University. A native of India, Rinku grew up in the northeastern factory
towns, and learned to speak English in a two-room schoolhouse.
White Lies
Thursday Afternoon
Chip Brantley is the co-creator and co-host of White Lies, an investigative podcast
from NPR that explores the 1965 unsolved murder of James Reeb in Selma, Ala. Brantley
is the author of the book The Perfect Fruit, and his work has appeared in Slate, Gourmet, the Oxford American, The New York Times,
and The Washington Post, among others. He was the creative producer of Whitman, Alabama, an experimental documentary that was a 2018 Emmy nominee in the New Approaches in
Documentary category. An instructor in journalism at the University of Alabama, Brantley
is the founder of the Desert Island Supply Co., a nonprofit creative writing program
for kids in Birmingham, Ala.
Andrew Beck Grace is the co-creator and co-host of White Lies, an investigative podcast
from NPR that explores the 1965 unsolved murder of James Reeb in Selma, Alabama. His
nonfiction film work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and
on PBS’s Independent Lens. His interactive documentary, After the Storm, has been
exhibited internationally and was nominated for an Emmy in New Approaches to Documentary.
Andrew teaches nonfiction filmmaking and journalism at the University of Alabama.
In collaboration with Western Wyoming Community College
Partnering for Justice
Friday Lunch
The presentation will discuss how three governmental agencies collaborated to respond
to a perceived hate crime against homeless Native American community members in Riverton
Wyoming. The agency’s joint efforts facilitated a community response to hate and led
to institutionalizing prevention efforts.
- Allison Sage - MSW, Director Office of Tribal Health, Horse Culture Program and Tribal
Foster Care Director
- Lillian Zuniga - Wyoming Department of Health, Office of Health Equity Program Manager
- Rosa Salamanca, Community Relations Service, USDOJ Mediator
