"Baptized in Tear Gas" Book Launch

Join author Elle Dowd for an evening of storytelling, music, art, testimony, and transformation in celebration of the launch of her new book, Baptized in Tear Gas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist.

We're especially delighted to share that SOUL's Tanya Watkins will grace us with a reflection piece.

The evening will conclude with a remembrance of baptism and an informal reception with time to get your book signed and mingle.

WHEN: Saturday, August 14th. Doors open at 6 p.m., Program begins at 6:30 p.m.

WHERE: Grace Place in the South Loop (637 S Dearborn St)

SPONSORING CONGREGATIONS: Grace Episcopal Church, St. Luke's Lutheran Church of Logan Square, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

HOSPITALITY NOTES:

• Grace Place is fully accessible
• Parking: 18 parking spaces are available at Jones College Prep (Harrison and South Plymouth Court). Do not park in the spaces marked “I-Go Car,” the engineer spots, or the handicapped spaces (unless you have credentials to do so).
• Public Transit: CTA Train: Red Line Harrison, Blue Line LaSalle or Jackson, Purple/Brown/Orange/Pink Lines Library/State/Van Buren, Green Line Adams or Roosevelt. CTA Bus: many city local and express bus lines terminate within blocks of Grace Place. Metra Trains: LaSalle Street Station (2.4 blocks), Union Station (8 blocks), Olgivie Transportation Center (10 blocks). South Shore Line: Van Buren Street Station or Roosevelt. Plan your travel on Google Maps.
• Covid Precautions: *UPDATED* Regardless of vaccination status, everyone is required to wear a mask. We ask that everyone practice mutual hospitality with one another, being respectful of whatever mask wearing or distancing each individual is comfortable with.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In Baptized in Tear Gas, minister and activist Elle Dowd invites readers to experience her transformation from what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as "the white moderate" into an Assata Shakur-reading, courthouse-occupying abolitionist. Like in baptism, this alteration requires parts of us to die--our tone policing, white niceness, respectability politics--so that we may be reborn. Through the Uprising in Ferguson, God made Elle into something new. Now it's our turn.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elle Dowd is a bisexual candidate for ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She was radicalized in St. Louis, where she learned from the revolutionary, queer, Black leadership during the Ferguson Uprising. She was formerly a co-conspirator with the movement to #decolonizeLutheranism and currently organizes as a faith leader with SOUL in Chicago, serves on the board of Euro-Descent Lutherans for Racial Justice, writes regularly for the Disrupt Worship Project, and facilitates workshops on gender, sexuality, and the church. She lives in Chicago with her spouse and two Sierra Leonean daughters.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Grace Place Episcopal Church of Chicago, 637 South Dearborn Street, Chicago, United States