Peninsula College’s Social Justice Week Honors the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and seeks to highlight the current challenges, issues, and actions toward change that reaffirm King’s wisdom and remind us of the multi-dimensional legacy of his teachings and actions. Peninsula College will host events on January 17 and 20 as part of Studium Generale’s Social Justice Week, in partnership with Magic of Cinema.
The event on January 17 will begin at 5:00 pm, while the January 20 event will be part of the college’s regular Studium Generale programming and start at 12:30 pm.
Both events will include a screening of the 2020 documentary Since I Been Down, a film that spotlights Kimonti Carter and follows his efforts, as well as a wide group of prisoners, as they create a model of education that is transforming their lives, their communities, prisons, and potentially our own humanity.
Since I Been Down showcases Tacoma, WA, as a community impacted by lack of investment in resources and the fear-based policies of the 1980s and ‘90s that sacrificed and labeled their most vulnerable children as irredeemable “super predators.”
The film presents dramatic stories of how fear, racism and a false sense of safety, security and prosperity, arrested the development of one American community, discarding the poorest and targeting brown and black youth and led to the disappearance of an entire generation of children.
The screenings will be followed by panel discussions and Q and A. On January 17, Carlos Osorio, Lesley Hoare, and Dr. Kate Reavey will join in conversation. On January 20, Osorio and Hoare will be joined by Deborah Espinosa.
Osorio (he/him) is the former Baking and Pastry Instructor at Clallam Bay Corrections Center. While employed at the prison, he began volunteering with inmate cultural groups and re-entry services. That experience – organizing with inmates right in our backyard coupled with the Movement for Black Lives that took our nation by force after the murder of George Floyd – inspired Osorio to begin work on many local grassroots projects with a variety of local groups. Some of these include Food Not Bombs, Sequim’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion conversations, Forks Human Rights Group, Reparations Law Democratic Inmate-led Cooperative, Shut Down the Northwest Detention Center and building the Party for Socialism and Liberation – Olympic Peninsula, a movement right here on the Peninsula that says worker’s rights and human dignity come first, before individual profits.
Hoare (she/her) has lived in the community of Forks for 13 years. She currently works at the Forks branch of Peninsula College in the Learning Center and as an ESL teacher. She also works part-time as a medical interpreter.
Hoare organizes with el Comite de Derechos Humanos de Forks and volunteers at Clallam Bay Correction Center (CBCC). Her efforts have been focused on, and in solidarity with, the immigrant community and those behind bars, two parts of the community that are often not afforded the same human rights as others in the same geographic community.
Dr. Reavey (she/her) is the director of Studium Generale, a member of the college's Longhouse Team, and the Faculty Equity Coordinator for Peninsula College. Dr. Reavey has an MA in poetry from the University of California, Davis, and a PhD in interdisciplinary studies with a focus on humanities and culture from Union Institute and University. In her doctorate studies, Dr. Reavey focused on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Espinosa (she/her) is the founder of Living with Conviction https://livingwithconviction.org/
She is an attorney and a photographer who combines her legal training and visual storytelling skills to advocate for the rights of the poor and marginalized, both at home and in Africa. She also works to strengthen those rights by providing legal technical assistance to state and national governments, primarily in the global south. For more of Espinosa’s moving and important photography, see https://www.sameskyphoto.com/
Both events are free and open to the public.
To join the event on January 17 at 5 p.m., please use this Zoom information: Zoom meeting at https://pencol-edu.zoom.us/j/82707853221. Meeting ID: 827 0785 3221.
To join the event on January 20 at 12:30 p.m., please use this Zoom information: Zoom meeting at https://pencol-edu.zoom.us/j/82278252780, Meeting ID: 822 7825 2780