Social Justice/Public Witness – Week of 6/9/24

Tomorrow is National Children’s Day; there will be arts and crafts as well as a children’s march at 11:30. The event will take place at Washington Park from 10-1; no doubt the food trucks will show up en masse so you can have lunch after church tomorrow.

Wednesday at Noon

MARCC’s delegate meeting will take place via Zoom; the topic is Connecting Communities With Affordable Housing. Co-presenters are John Schrider, Jr., Director of Legal Aid of SW Ohio and Stacey Purcell, also of Legal Aid. Connected Communities is a policy that will likely be passed by City Council which will increase the number of housing units along thoroughfares; notably absent is policy language regarding affordable housing. Zoom in here.

SURJ Cincinnati will host Let’s Talk About Race, a Tedx Talk followed by discussion. How can we white people improve our capacity to talk and learn about race? According to Shelly Tochluk, people just beginning to pay attention to race generally arrive to this conversation well-intentioned, but without knowing how racially-loaded their language is. People of color, on the other hand, often arrive rather worn-out from years of frustration and with a more developed understanding of racial dynamics. Register here.

A celebration of the freeing of the last slaves in Texas will kick off with a block party at The Banks beginning at 4 Friday. Saturday, the parade will originate in the West End at 10 and continue to City Hall. Then the Juneteenth Festival will take place at Mirror Lake in Mount Adams from noon to 9. Sunday there will be a praise festival at Seasongood Pavilion from 2-6. Finally, the National Underground Freedom Center will host an event on the traditional date, June 19th, from 10-6:30.