About this Event
ROOTS
ROOTING
ROOTS PARTY!
Join multi-disciplinary artist in making roots out of paper and twine and participate in or listen to a discussion regarding liberty in America. This discussion will be centered around Dismantling Mass Incarceration led by the David Dinkins '56 Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School and co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice .
Saturday, September 19, 2026
1pm-3pm Root Making
3pm-4pm Communal Meal
4pm-5pm Discussion of Dismantling Mass Incarceration with Alexis Hoag-Fordjour
Come and go as you please and engage in whatever capacity you feel comfortable – make a root, enjoy a meal, participate in and/or listen to the discussion..
The Center for Arts and Advocacy is gifting twelve copies of Dismantling Mass Incarceration. The book provides tools to move from despair and critique to hope and action. First come, first receive!
ROOTS BACKGROUND
Edisa is in the process of making one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five roots out of paper and twine. 1865 represents the year that legalized chattel slavery ended in America. The roots are part of a performance installation, 3 RITES: Liberty, and will dangle from the ceiling to the floor to create an environment that the audience separates and moves through (as if moving through history), to eventually meet the liberty character.
Be part of the conversation, visioning, and change making!
Edisa Weeks is a choreographer, educator, and director of DELIRIOUS Dances. She is the recipient of several awards including a 2024 MAP Fund Grant, a 2022 Creative Capital Grant, and a 2024 Bessie for Outstanding Performance. She creates multimedia interactive work, which explores issues in society such as how the media is used to manufacture consent; examining what is the promise of America; and why life, liberty and happiness were included as unalienable rights in the United States Declaration of Independence. As an artist her practice involves gift giving which manifests in gold tattoos, communal meals, creative reuse workshops, roots parties, and elaborate hair designs that incorporate objects that can be repurposed such as silk flowers, wind-up toys, cooking utensils, condoms and more. Edisa is interested in providing creative spaces and performance rituals where people can engage with ideas, as she believes that art revitalizes the everyday to reveal something new about ourselves, and the revelation is an energy, a spark, that has the power to change the world.
Alexis Hoag-Fordjour is the David Dinkins '56 Professor of Law and co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice (CCJ) at Brooklyn Law School. She teaches and writes in criminal law and procedure, evidence, and abolition. Her scholarship focuses on interrogating the role of race, racism, and power throughout the criminal adjudication system. Through CCJ, she helps to bring the expertise of formerly incarcerated people into the law school classroom. Prior to academia, Hoag-Fordjour spent more than a decade as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, primarily representing death-sentenced clients in federal post-conviction proceedings in Tennessee. She regularly provides indigent defense trainings to state and federal offices, and advocates for an end to the death penalty.
Event venue & nearby stays
Center for Art and Advocacy, 22 Bancroft Place, Brooklyn, United States
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