Rebuilding the City from the Bottom Up

Join SCI-Arc on Saturday, December 7th for Plant City Spoils with JoNina Abron-Ervin and Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin as they discuss the high price of rent, evictions and gentrification across America that are throwing record numbers of poor and low-income people out of the inner cities and into the streets. How do we rebuild inner cities from the bottom up? How do we create a new economy in the inner cities that is of, by, and for poor people?

JoNina Abron-Ervin is an activist, author, and a retired educator. Her work includes leading a campaign to end the naked jailing of Black men in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She is a former editor of The Black Panther newspaper and author of the book, Driven by the Movement: Activists of the Black Power Era. A retired Western Michigan University associate professor of communication, she has published several articles about the Black Panther Party and the Black Power Era.

Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin is an American writer, activist and black anarchist. He is a former member of SNCC, the Black Panther Party and Concerned Citizens for Justice. Following an attempt to frame him on weapons charges and for threatening the life of a Ku Klux Klan leader, Ervin hijacked a plane to Cuba in February 1969. While in Cuba, and later Czechoslovakia, Ervin grew disillusioned with the authoritarianism of state socialism. Captured by the CIA in Eastern Europe, he was extradited to the US, put on trial and sentenced to life in prison in 1970. He was introduced to anarchism whilst in prison, inspiring him to write Anarchism and the Black Revolution in 1979. Released after 15 years, Ervin remains politically active.

Presented in conjunction with SCI-Arc's PST ART: Art & Science Collide exhibition Views of Planet City.