 Hello, my name is Shaya Rakil-Farley and I am the Education and Community Action Coordinator for Garamia Theatre and I'm going to read a land acknowledgement today. We would like to recognize the native people whose ancestral lands are where Garamia Theatre operates. We wish to acknowledge the land of the Kikapu, Tawakoni, Wichita, and Kato people, which is now called Dallas. Comanches in Kiowa have also lived in this region, although it is not often recognized as their homeland. We acknowledge that Dallas is stolen land and that this city was built with stolen labor. Garamia Theatre's De Grove honors the experiences and cultures of black, indigenous, and people of color. We call for the unity and solidarity of all of our peoples in making a better world. Thank you for joining us tonight for a virtual talk by Cristiana Ray Colón, artist of the Vanguard of Revolution. My name is Virginia Grace. I am the Mellon playwright in residence at Garamia Theatre in Dallas, Texas. Garamia Theatre inspires and engages people to uplift their communities through transformative Latinx theater. Garamia has become a cultural resource in Dallas and North Texas. One of the largest Latinx theater company in the entire state, primarily serving the Dallas population, which is 43% Latinx. This evening's talk is about the ways in which we can imagine the possibility of new worlds as artists. And in that way, artists are at the vanguard of revolution. Cristiana's current work explores Afrofuturist media as a catalyst for social change. A foundational premise of her organizing is that artists can be that vanguard. That it is the social duty of creatives to envision, imagine, rehearse, design, and embody our liberated future. We cannot achieve alternatives to the existing harmful violent systems and institutions if we can't first imagine them. First, we have to imagine them and then we must build them together. Through science fiction, Afrofuturism, and speculative media, we have the ability to create opportunities to rehearse the future together. I'm so excited to share the brilliance, the tenacity, the vision of Cristiana Recolón with you tonight. You've got to honor the code. Follow roads that climb. Ascend with intention, get your mission aligned. Mind mountain-sized for quarts that quantum vibrations, but dig yourself gently not to crack the foundation. I said, you've got to honor the code. The hypertext of your self-hood. I hyper-flexed, but it felt good to rise in my power, to ground in my purpose, to shine on my powers, because I never had an enemy. I felt skin on the perimeter, fear in my light will make them dim to me. I honor the code, encrypted me, then grow taller than tails, chiseled on the crypt wall. I was working at the pyramid till I slipped, fall for the scheme. Quit competing with my sisters, now I floss with the beans, diamond, web between stars. I indigo empathy. Ultraviolet, the wicked giggle with their new toys. I feast me with life forms that get tipsy on noise. Ancient rain dance make the sun thunder. I shape-shift in the fissures till the gun wonder what it blasting at. I jaguar and willed to be the master of my habitat. Camouflage in Congress while my entourage laugh in the back, strapped in black and suited up. I flute a swarm of hornets at those suited up to shoot at us. Lights action because we cute and stuff. We shooting moons to ruby dust. No plastic planet ruling us. My granddad had the truth engraved in cola nuts to use as cuffs. Link with all the heirlooms scattered in your snack-tron chatter. The code conduct electric pulse embedded in your laughter. You've got to discipline your energy to rise inside your matter. What's up, y'all? I am Cristiana Ray Cologne, poet, playwright, screenwriter, educator, activist, world-builder, and that was an excerpt from one of my plays, Suspension. And Suspension is a dystopian, Afrofuturist high school rebellion story about some young teens who rise up against their school's oppressive security and surveillance system. And it is no secret that my work, my agenda for my writing is to provoke the collective imagination around freedom, how we can be more free, how we can dismantle oppressive systems, violent systems, and imagine how to build new systems beyond that. And this play, Suspension, specifically looks at the intersections of policing and education. And I wrote Suspension. It first started as a 10-minute short play for a conference called Geographies of Justice that my mentor and good friend of Dr. Barbara Ransby organized at the University of Illinois, Chicago at UIC here in Chicago where I am at home. And the Geographies of Justice conference was intended to bring together artists, scholars, activists from across America, Palestine and South Africa to kind of dream about the resonances of the different things that we are organizing for and struggling to dismantle. And one of those intersections was education and policing. So I am an abolitionist, you know, at my core, I believe that our systems of policing in America need to be completely dismantled. You know, I absolutely believe that defunding the police is a path toward abolition, but that's a horizon-based goal, right? I understand that we need to be building alternative systems alongside dismantling the harmful systems that we're currently embroiled in. And I think that policing shows up in other institutions, you know, often when we talk about defunding the police and we talk about abolition, we are talking about police forces. But policing shows up in all kinds of institutions that are deeply embedded in our lives. And one of those is education. And I think right now the education system that we have is more focused on conformity, more focused on building a labor class, more focused on building a working class, than building thinkers, learners, dreamers, doers. And a lot of the experience that young people are having in the classroom is about control. And I have seen this, you know, I'm a product of public schools, I went to Chicago Public Schools. And when I was in school, there were not police officers stationed at the front desk when you walk in. You weren't immediately greeted by the police state when you came into a learning environment. And I also am a teaching artist. And so when I go into high schools around Chicago to teach playwriting, to teach poetry, you know, the first experience that you have upon walking in the building is being greeted by a CPD officer and putting your stuff through an x-ray belt like you're going through the airport and walking through a metal detector. And I think that those measures like that environment is immediately contradictory to an environment of learning, of liberatory thinking. And so I wanted to write something that sort of explored that, that sort of imagined the dystopian ends to which we might arrive if we continue on the path that we're on of really replacing some of the more nurturing and care-based practices in our schools of, you know, mental health practitioners and conflict resolution and peace rooms and mediation, replacing those measures with policing. And then, you know, along the lines of budget, we are investing in systems of policing that are really contradictory to the care and the environment that I believe are necessary for a liberatory learning environment. I have really been in CPA schools where they have transformed rooms of the schools into holding cells. And so my play, Suspension, is meant to critique some of those intersections. And so the 10-minute version of the play, I mentioned that I wrote for this conference, Geography of Justice, organized by my mentor, Dr. Barbara Ransby. And I started just with this image of a black girl suspended. And so we know that black girls are the group that are most suspended in public schools, the highest rates of suspension. And so I wanted to sort of play with that image along with the resonance of, you know, the word suspension as meaning literally like hung in limbo. And so I started with this image in my mind of a black girl literally suspended from the ceiling. And I imagine like what would the world have to be? What is this dystopian disciplinary system where this could be possible? You know, in this dystopian disciplinary world that I think is sort of a glimpse into like where we could end up if we continue on the path that we're on of emphasizing punishment over repair in our education systems. And I wrote this 10-minute piece about these black girls sort of rising up and rebelling against this system and overthrowing this system. And so that is sort of the flash forward. And then later I was invited by Victory Garden Theater here in Chicago to expand that 10-minute play into a full-length play. And so I then wrote the world that leads up to that moment. And the poem that I opened with is an excerpt from the play where a character named Yonega Yahura is introduced. And so Yonega comes in and she introduces herself at the school assembly with this poem. And the poem is kind of in this realm of double-speak where she's kind of on the surface exalting or affirming some of the language of this new disciplinary code. You have to honor the code. But then she kind of turns it on its head and uses metaphor and really subversive language to invite the young people to dream in sort of like this poetic code that may be the rigid and like linear thinking of the school's disciplinary system and enforcers might not understand. And so for me, the character of Yonega represents that spirit of infiltration, of sort of coming into a system, coming into an institution to which you have access and using that access to really explode some of the more oppressive structures within that system. I am a person that anytime anyone asked me for professional advice, my advice is always infiltrate and pillage. And so I have been afforded the privilege of access to elite education spaces, cultural spaces. And so I'm always trying to really be honest about my positionality and the privilege of having the platforms that I have and the access that I have. And then really using that privilege to return stolen resources to the communities from which they were stolen because I believe by nature, institutions are consolidations of power and consolidations of resources that have been looted from other spaces. So how that looks in schools, for example, my alma mater, the University of Chicago in the High Park, very elite education institution and also like very exploitive of the resources and the communities surrounding it in ways that are not necessarily empowering to the people that have lived in that neighborhood for generations. And so that institution consolidates resources and power and then gets to decide how to meet it out and distribute it. And then that gets looked at as philanthropy or charity. So if you have access to an institution, I always tell folks, it doesn't always have to look like burning down the system from the inside. It could really look like you have access to a copy machine and maybe you make copies of flyers for your local activist organization that needs to pass out flyers for their next upcoming action. So you're really good at baking cookies. So maybe you make cookies for the next, you know, meeting that's happening. Whatever it is, whatever it is that you have access to, whatever resources or institutions that you're able to infiltrate, use that privilege, use that positionality to funnel resources back to the communities from which they were ultimately divested from. Because I really believe that like the systems of oppression that we experience are systems of engineered scarcity. We actually live in a world of abundance, of abundant resources where everyone could be taken care of, where everyone could have all the things that they need. And the violence that we experience is because scarcity has been engineered by capitalism. And so that is part of what this character in this play suspension of Yananga represents. She comes in as sort of the resource coach that is supposed to help the young people get adjusted to this new disciplinary code, this new system in the school called Panoptika, which is sort of an artificial intelligence inspired PA system. So if you can imagine the PA in your high school, the public announcement system being able to spy on you like a Siri or Alexa. And if you're with your friends goofing around in the hallway and you use a swear word, like you are automatically issued a disciplinary infraction. And so that's kind of the dystopian world that I've created. And the character of Yananga comes in, you know, under the guise of being a part of the system and then is recruited to be the cheerleading coach, the coach of the power to your team, some of the primary young people are on and uses that positionality to help the young folks tap into their power of their consciousness to hack the Panoptika system when they are suspended. So one of the pillars of this dystopian disciplinary code that I created is success inversion therapy. So it imagines a world where, you know, the parents all get a notification through the schools, mobile app, they don't really read it. They kind of all click agree. And what they just agreed to is this new disciplinary code that includes success inversion therapy where the school has sort of framed suspending young people upside down as having these cognitive and behavioral benefits. What they learn to do from Yananga, from their power to your coach is to hack the system using the power of meditation and using the power of your minds. And so that, you know, is kind of in that shell like what my work is intending to do. Really like explode some of the systems of oppression that we are struggling against. In this case, the intersection of policing and education to really critique those systems, you know, I use this sort of dystopian lens to point out that like some of, you know, we would think that it would be like unthinkable that a school could suspend young people upside down from the ceiling. But a lot of the things that are actually happening to our young people in these systems are unthinkable. And so I sort of use these metaphoric extreme to point out what is really broken with the system we have. And then use Afrofuturism and sort of African mysticism and a combination of those aesthetics to provoke the imagination around what is possible. What is possible when we give young people sovereignty over their own learning experiences. What is possible when we give communities sovereignty over how they navigate harm and conflict and repair. Because I really believe that we don't need to outsource our sovereignty and outsource our conflict mediation to a militarized armed police force that is literally descended from slave patrol. So, you know, Newsflash, if you didn't know, American policing is literally descended from slave patrol. Our system of policing in America, you know, after the 13 amendment, allegedly freed enslaved folks, you know, the caveat in there is slavery is illegal, except as punishment for a crime. And so what we have is then armed militias going out to return escaped enslaved folks to their plantations and those armed militias evolving into what we know as modern day policing. And then slavery evolving into mass incarceration and a system that systematically criminalizes black and brown folks and having their labor exploited in these penitentiaries and systems of incarceration. And so slavery has been legal in America every day that you have drawn breath in the form of mass incarceration. And so, you know, I really believe that in order to dismantle those systems, we have to return sovereignty to people not turning over their authority, their personal sovereignty to armed folks that are literally descendants of slave patrol. But that means like having uncomfortable conflict and really rooting down inside ourselves to learn how to navigate conflict with love and to learn the skills that we need to not have to call folks with guns when we have disagreements. You know, you don't have to call someone with a gun if your neighbor's music is too loud. I think because we have become so indemnically disconnected from ourselves, from our neighbors and from each other, we've become accustomed to relying on an armed militia to navigate conflicts that should really be within our own power to navigate, our own spiritual power. So that is what my artistic mission is and what I am doing creatively when I say that I'm using Afrofuturist aesthetics and African mystic aesthetics to propose alternate realities and to provoke the critical imagination around what other things we could have other than these systems that we have inherited that are so inherently violent and harmful. You know, a lot of times when I talk about abolition, you know, folks are like, what are you gonna do when, you know, someone steals your iPhone on the train or what do you do when someone breaks your house or what do you do when there is, you know, a sexual assault? I think these are all really good questions because abolition is not about absence. It's not about just getting rid of something. It's about imagining what we could have in its place. So imagine if you could call 911 and instead of the one size fits all answer of we're gonna send people with guns to your house, you had 18 very specialized options of what you could get instead. You know, someone that is specifically trained in domestic violence, de-escalation, someone that is specifically trained in sexual assault, response and care. And I think that if we abolish, defunded, divested from this militarized system that is consuming so much of our resources with more and more expensive weapons, more and more expensive surveillance systems, more expensive trainings under the guise of reform. We invested those resources in actually cultivating other types of alternatives and responses. We could really avoid a lot of the deadly encounters that people of color are experiencing in this country through the current form of policing that we have. And so that is what we mean when we say abolition. That is what we mean when we say defund the police. And that is what my creative work is around, is really provoking the imagination around what those other systems are that we could have. Because I think if we don't believe that we could have something else, then we cannot, you know, we have to first believe it and be able to envision it. And I really believe that collective imagination and collective vision is the force that reshapes our reality, is the force that changes the world. And so I am always writing to provoke that collective imagination toward more liberatory possibilities. Because I really believe that through collective imagination, another world is possible. And if you want to learn more about my work and how to get involved in imagining alternate universes and building new worlds, you can check out the Let Us Breathe Collective, which is the organization that I co-founded. The Let Us Breathe Collective is an alliance of artists and activists organizing through a creative lens to imagine a world without prisons and police. We operate the breathing room space, which is a beautiful 4,000 square foot community center on the south side of Chicago, where we host events and trainings and all kinds of good stuff. And we have recently acquired the plot of land adjacent to our space, breathing room gardens, where we grow lots of food. And the food that we grow there is connected to mutual aid programs across the city, where we distribute hundreds of free meals with food grown from our gardens. And so we have programming outdoors in the gardens. We have programming in our recently renovated space. You can check us out at LetUsBreatheCollective.com, LetUsBreathe773 on Instagram. We are also part of the Black Abolitionist Network and the campaign to defund CPD. So you can check out those platforms and organizations as well to get involved in the organizing work. But find a way to get plugged in, because we are what we need. Since the onset of the pandemic, I have returned to the basics of theater, body, breath, and voice. And at its fundamental core, theater is about imagining a new world, about building that world with other people, and inviting others to witness and experience that world with each other. I hope that you'll join us next week for an interview by Priscilla Solis Ibarra with Chaz Jewett and Sharon Day. This last episode of this series will discuss Indigenous art practice and how body, mind, and spirit can become whole through time-honored Indigenous cultures and practice. I'm going to leave you tonight with a quote by Priscilla Ibarra. She says, I dream a world where the birds sing, and the seasons change, and the land, water, and wind are free. And where reciprocity, not competition, is the value that structures our relations. Thank you. Good night.