Open Mic Night: Finding Hope in Hopeless Times
In an era of genocide, ethnic erasure, massacres, indigenous expulsion from ancestral land, state violence, and institutionalized racism, there comes a moment when we must stop and wonder.
What is going on? How did we get to this point? What is wrong with the world? What is wrong with humanity? How do we make sense of this? What can we do? Can we do anything at all?
We have our voices. Come join us at the Red Herring restaurant for an open mic poetry night to share your spoken word, poetry, songs, and other reflections on the struggles of the oppressed.
Themes welcomed: Hope, love, peace, joy, triumph of the human spirit, connection, solidarity, grief, loss, refugees, fleeing, violence, war, oppression, state violence, institutionalized racism, evil, and anything related to those themes.
Proceeds will go to help victims of the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis.
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The Rohingya are an ethnic and religious minority in Myanmar, where the current government is expelling them en masse from their ancestral lands, burning their villages, raping and killing their women and children, and sending them in droves to neighboring Bangladesh. Bangladesh no longer wants to deal with the refugees and their camps, and is in talks with the Myanmar government--which has refused to allow in journalists to report on what is really going on--to send the Rohingya back to Myanmar.
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This event is just the most recent in an ocean of so many other atrocities, genocides, refugee crises, and forced diasporas in our own time and in the past: Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Syria, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Mexico, Guatemala, the Jewish diaspora.
Tickets are $3 at the door. All proceeds will go to help victims of the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis. Refreshments will be available for sale as well. Hope to see you there! External Event Url
1209 W Oregon St, Urbana, IL, United States
