HOME IS WHERE THE FUND IS
A Story of Southern Synergy
Originally live: April 28th 2022 6.30pm ET
The Play
Elevate is at it again! Through another Elevate Signature Program, fusing a play with a panel of trusted health experts, Elevate and the Access Reproductive Care - Southeast will help you explore themes of Southern politics, abortion rights, and women’s health. As always, we’ll break down the issues, call you to action, and help you dive a little deeper.
Synopsis:
The year is 2022. Roe V. Wade, the legal ruling enshrining a constitutional right to abortion, is on the chopping block. Legislatures around the United States are rushing to restrict access to abortion. Journey into the belly of the beast to meet a woman and her two children, as they fight for reproductive justice and dream a new dream for this world. Radically living and loving in hostile territory, this family stands defiant. They will never back down.
Join us for an evening of incredible theater, trusted health information from the Access Reproductive Care - Southeast, and candid conversations!
The Artists
Maya is an interdisciplinary performer, teaching artist, and theater-maker based out of Brooklyn NY. As an artist educator, Maya seeks to dismantle oppressive power structures + amplify the voices of marginalized communities by decolonizing access to artistic practice. They also facilitate the development of new contemporary plays and ensemble-devised work in various capacities, including: Direction, Dramaturgy, Movement Direction/Choreography, Script Consultation/Editing, Deviser/Writer. Pre-Quarantine projects include: The Gap by Makaela Shealy, and Stumpwater with Sacred Circle Theater. Currently, Maya is cultivating ease + softness; while assisting the Revolution in the ways that they can.
Natalie Djondo (Zee) is a Virginia born actress happy to support reproductive health in partnership with Elevate Theatre Co. and ARC-Southeast! Nat initially worked with playwright ChelseaDee on her play Sheela and the Amazons with New Victory Theater Labworks last fall. Since then, she's performed with River's Edge Theatre Co. ( Silent Sky at Hudson River Museum) and performed various new plays with MFA Columbia University directors and playwrights (Sex Work, Pink: A Radio Play, Happy Birthday to Me and Horror Play). Natalie is a graduate of the 2-Year Professional Conservatory at the Stella Adler Studio and now based in New York City!
www.nataliedjondo.com
@natalie.djondo
Linda is an actor turned creator, Career Coach, and Assistant Director at a Senior Center. After work, she writes, performs, and produces to express her creativity. She is currently producing interview shows, “Shift Happens” with Geoffrey Owens as host on IGTV and “Shift Happens OVERTIME” on Youtube. In November, she’ll release her book, “Rethink and Grow Fans: Go From Yearning to Earning as a 24-Hour Actor” on Amazon. Follow @Lindakuriloff on Instagram to see what she’s up to next! Her solo show, Linda Means to Wait, is also available on Amazon.
Alverneq Rene Lindsay is a Brooklyn native and graduate of Atlantic Theater Company’s Acting Conservatory. She is overjoyed to be working with Elevate Theatre Company and ChelseaDee. As a performer, writer, and arts administrator, she is interested in exploring how audiences relate to the moral complexity of the anti-hero. As an arts advocate, she believes artists have the ability to generate empathy plus joy and hopes to help increase arts access through her administrative work. She is grateful to her friends and family for their love and support.
The Panelists
Oriaku Njoku (she/they), is a first-generation, Black, Igbo, Nigerian-American, queer, fat, Southern femme, healing centered coach living and loving in Atlanta, Georgia. As a Co-Founder and Executive Director of Access Reproductive Care - Southeast, she works at the intersection of abortion access and reproductive justice. She and her team at ARC-Southeast supports Southerners in navigating pathways to accessing safe, affordable, and compassionate abortion care through funding, logistics, and advocacy. Oriaku is deeply committed to finding joy and pleasure in everything she does and believes radical love is a core value that can be embodied and operationalized in movement spaces. She truly believes that we can and will create a cultural shift around how we address abortion in the South and invites you to join her in making reproductive justice a reality.
Renee Bracey Sherman is a reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and writer. She is the founder and executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions and share their stories at the intersection of race, class, and gender identity. She is also an executive producer of Ours to Tell, an award-winning documentary elevating the voices of people who’ve had abortions, and the co-author of the forthcoming book COUNTERING ABORTIONSPLAINING from Amistad/Harper Collins.
Jasmine Burnett is a reproductive justice activist, business owner, trainer with the Rockwood Leadership Institute, and a writer. She is the principal and founder of Blkfeminst Advisors LLC, a training, coaching, and peacemaking practice, working with individuals and organizations to support criminalized issues, people, and communities. Her most recent publications are in two anthologies, The Echoing Ida Collection and Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology From Middle America. She is also the lead writer for the new Rockwood curriculum, and participant guide called The HeART of Black Leadership, which was successfully piloted last year.
Behind the Scenes
Playwright / Co-director
ChelseaDee is a multi-hyphenate, interdisciplinary creator and arts educator. Specializing in theater-making, she also performs, teaches, curates, facilitates, develops curriculum, directs, and produces arts events. Her focus is creating new works of theater that highlight history and challenge dominant narratives. She has written, performed, and produced her own work such as her new solo show, The Guide to Getting What’s Yours. She is also a teaching artist who has facilitated workshops with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New York City Department of Correction, and the New Victory Theater.
(BA in Theater/Dance, Rhode Island College, summa cum laude)
Stage Manager
A company member of Third Rail Projects since 2011, Mr. Denis has been an original collaborating cast member in several of the company’s preeminent works including their Bessie’s Awards winning “Then She Fell”. Most recently he completed a 37 sold out run of “Confection” commissioned by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC in 2019. Throughout this time he has also supported his burgeoning career as international male burlesque sensation GoGo Gadget, with featured performances at almost 7 years of the New York Boylesk Festivals, featured in the 2012, 2013 & 2016 London Burlesque Festivals, performances in Boston, New York City, Denver, Toronto, Paris, Stockholm and Vienna. Mr. Denis is a hyphenate and has served as Technical Director, Stage Manager, Producer, Sound Engineer, Theater Electrician, and Guest Professor within the Dance and Theater sectors for the past 20 years.
Resources
Phone: (855) 227-2475
Email: info@arc-southeast.org
We provide funding and logistical support to ensure Southerners receive safe and compassionate reproductive care including abortion services. Through education and leadership development, we build power in communities of color to abolish stigma and restore dignity and justice.
Our collaborative is comprised of local reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations that share our vision.
We want all Georgians to access safe, affordable, and dignified abortion care when they need it. To defend our rights, we must fight for change at the state and local level.
SPARK defines Reproductive Justice as a social justice movement rooted in the belief that individuals and communities should have the resources and power to make sustainable and liberatory decisions about their bodies, genders, sexualities, and lives.
Reproductive Justice is pro-sex, sexuality, gender, queer bodies, access to abortion and contraception, birth rights and chosen families, and so much more!
Reproductive justice is struggling towards liberation within and with community. To working towards a world free of reproductive violence and oppression – systems of oppressions, institutional control, eugenics, medicalization, and violence that works to uphold and reinforce dangerous and negative policies, practices, and culture.
SisterSong is a Southern based, national membership organization; our purpose is to build an effective network of individuals and organizations to improve institutional policies and systems that impact the reproductive lives of marginalized communities.
SisterLove is on a mission to eradicate the adverse impact of HIV/AIDS/AIDS and other reproductive health challenges upon women and their families through education, prevention, support and human rights advocacy in the United States and around the world.
URGE is driven by young leaders. We build infrastructure through campus chapters and Community Activist Networks, where we invite individuals to discover their own power and transform it into action. Together, URGE members educate their communities and advocate for local, state, and national policies in solidarity with other justice focused groups.
Young people today are constantly depicted as disengaged and irresponsible. In fact, we are anything but. We are more progressive than our parents, more educated, and far more connected. We are powerful, engaged, and ready to lead.
We believe that justice will only be achieved once each of us recognizes the power of our own experience and joins up with others to create a different future. Working across the progressive landscape, we think, learn, and act together. We work together to build strong communities where sexual health is valued, reproductive rights are upheld, and each body is celebrated and supported to be well, happy, and thriving.
The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum works to build a movement for social, political, and structural change for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and girls. Our experiences have gone unacknowledged and unaddressed by mainstream U.S. culture throughout our history in this country. Our intersecting identities and the impact of racism, sexism, and hypersexualization have become more visible as AAPI women have refused to be silent. We have marched; we have forged bonds of solidarity; and we are now moving forward collectively to create a safer, more just world for ourselves and our communities.
At Feminist Women’s Health Center, we provide a range of healthcare services and we are committed to making our services safe and welcoming to the LGBTQIA+ community. Through community education, grassroots organizing, and advocacy programs we work to advance reproductive health, rights, and justice.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is a trusted provider of high quality affordable sexual and reproductive healthcare, an informed educator, a passionate advocate and a global partner helping similar organizations around the world. It works with millions of women, men, and young people worldwide.
WE Vote. WE Rise! is our year round integrated voter engagement program. As a member of the Georgia C3 Table, WE Vote, WE Rise! utilizes the VAN and investing in new technology including database to stay engaged with recently contacted voters. Base-building with this new set of supporters will grow power in year-round civic engagement efforts with response calls, phone banking, social media networking and other experimental ways to learn more about the values that our set of voters envision for Georgia
New Georgia Project (NGP) is a 501(c)3 non-profit focused on voter registration, engagement, and power building for the large and growing population of African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans in Georgia. NGP is part of a movement – not a moment – to meet the changing demographics of Georgia, to harness the unheard voices of the New American Majority and to position Georgia for leadership in the South and across the country, identify local policy priorities, demystify the political process, and move their families and neighbors to action.
The Guttmacher Institute envisions a future in which all people can realize their rights and access the resources they need to achieve sexual and reproductive health. This vision is aligned with a progressive and evidence-based definition of SRHR, grounded in human rights, which holds that sexual and reproductive health is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity but a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in all aspects of sexuality and reproduction.
The National Network of Abortion Funds builds power with members to remove financial and logistical barriers to abortion access by centering people who have abortions and organizing at the intersections of racial, economic, and reproductive justice.
The mission of the National Abortion Federation is to unite, represent, serve, and support abortion providers in delivering patient-centered, evidence-based care.
The 2.5 million members of NARAL Pro-Choice America fight for reproductive freedom for every body. Each day, we organize and mobilize to protect that freedom by fighting for access to abortion care, birth control, paid parental leave, and protections from pregnancy discrimination.
Like 77% of Americans, we believe in the legal right to abortion. We are the foot soldiers who work to ensure that abortion access is not only protected but expanded. Since 1969, our member-driven campaigns have propelled political and cultural change at every level, from the statehouse to the White House.
When it comes time to rally by the thousands on the steps of the Supreme Court in support of abortion access, our members are there.
Reproductive Justice Literature & Podcasts
Charis’s Reproductive Justice Reading List
https://www.charisbooksandmore.com/reproductive-justiceabortion
Fundamental Readings on Reproductive Justice
The Color of Choice: White Supremacy and Reproductive Justice
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
How Reproductive Justice Serves as a Model for Progressive Organizing
Reproductive Justice in Practice
Instagram accounts to follow:
Abortion Access and RJ
State Policy Trends at Mid-Year 2019: States Race to Ban or Protect Abortion
How One Texas City Exploited a Loophole in an Anti-Choice State Law
Abortion Rights are Under Attack: Support Abortion Funds - Podcast
Sticky Fingers, Sticky Conversations: BBQ and Reproductive Justice - Video
What Abortion Access Looks Like in Mississippi: One Person at a Time