Dreaming Land Back into Reality 02

Clockshop presents a new series Dreaming Land Back into Reality, an exploration of the intersectional movements that work towards the return of stolen land. Community-led campaigns have lent a renewed momentum to the return of land to Indigenous, Black, and other communities of color in California. We turn our attention to collaboration within these efforts and the processes, languages, and imaginations that have brought about change.

Saturday, January 21, 2023
1:00–3:00pm

Clockshop
2806 Clearwater Street
Los Angeles, California 90039

Seats are Limited
This event is free and open to the public.
Clockshop suggests a $10 donation to help underwrite our public programs.
Doors open at 12:30 PM, program begins promptly at 1:00 PM. The conversation will be hosted indoors at Clockshop. Vaccination and indoor-use of masks are required for this event.

Expanding on the previous conversation on Indigenous stewardship models, we move to unpack the synergistic alliances by Black advocates working to heal the generational historic harms of settler colonialism. This second installment will examine the dispossession of land from the Bruce family of Bruce’s Beach and other Black Californians, from seizures through eminent domain to racist housing practices like redlining and racial covenants, and imagine the contemporary conditions that make reparations and land return attainable. 

This conversation features April Banks, artist and creative strategist; George Fatheree III, a real estate attorney with Sidley Austin LLP; and Kavon Ward, co-founder of Where Is My Land, the latter two having collaborated on the return of Bruce’s Beach to the Bruce family. The program will be moderated by Theresa Hwang, a community-engaged architect and founder of the Department of Beloved Places. The speakers will discuss how law, public policy, community organizing, and art can work together in envisioning and building toward the radicalizing work necessary to support the reality of reparations.

This program is the second of a two-part series. The first installment from October 8, 2022, focused on the LandBack Movement and Indigenous land rematriation and was recorded here.

Download our info sheet 'About the Reparations Movement' here.

Meet our Speakers and Moderator

April Banks is an artist and creative strategist working across visual art, social engagement, and exhibition design. Banks’ recent work time travels through historical archives and memories that amplify lesser-known stories and give narratives to the erased and intentionally forgotten. In February 2021, Banks completed a permanent public art sculpture, A Resurrection in Four Stanzas in Santa Monica, CA, commemorating a former Black community erased by eminent domain. Her work has been exhibited in the U.S. and internationally, and is in the Getty Museum and private collections. Banks received a Bachelor of Architecture from Hampton University and a Master of Science in Environmental Design from the Art Center College of Design.

Theresa Hyuna Hwang (she/her) is a community-engaged architect, educator, facilitator, and founder of Department of Beloved Places. She has spent over 15 years supporting equitable cultural community development across the US with multiple organizations and campaigns. She received her Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design (2007) and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University (2001). She is a licensed architect in California.

George Fatheree is a partner at Sidley Austin LLP. Fatheree has emerged as a preeminent advocate of legal transactions involving Black empowerment and culture: he most recently served as the lead attorney representing the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce in the historic return of the Bruce’s Beach property and advised the Black Owned and Operated Community Land Trust in Leimert Park. Fatheree serves on the boards of Destination Crenshaw and Loyola Marymount University, where he teaches real estate law. He graduated cum laude from Harvard University and received his law degree from Loyola Law School as a Fritz B. Burns Scholar and member of Alpha Sigma Nu.

Kavon Ward is a spoken word artist, activist, and reparative justice consultant. Ward is the founder and CEO of Where Is My Land, an organization dedicated to helping Black people reclaim land taken from them over the past 400 years. In 2020, Ward founded Justice for Bruce’s Beach and led the historical and successful movement to return land to the descendants of Black landowners Willa and Charles Bruce. Ward advocates for reparations for Black and Indigenous people pertaining to state-sanctioned property and land seizures. She is a former Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) fellow and public policy lobbyist. Kavon Ward holds a BA in Communications and a Master of Public Administration.

Support
Dreaming Land Back Into Reality and related programs are generously supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.