Welcome to tUrn
We are glad you could join us,
and we are happy to offer over 20
In-person or zoom-based headliners this week that will
help us grow in our understanding of activism,
by which we mean, “caring enough about
something to perform a direct action.”
We have many thanks that need to be given,
over 100 people, departments, and groups are behind this tUrn week
and over 50 individuals and 25 organizations are featured during the week.
We will just name a few, and we encourage you to explore the
PARTNERS tab of our website to see the fuller lists.
ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½ College of Arts & Sciences and Law School, the International Human Rights Clinic, Climate Change Theatre Action, the Departments of Religious Studies, Political Science, Theatre & Dance, Music, Child Studies, English, Environmental Studies, Modern Languages & Literatures, the Center for Sustainability and Forge Garden, Environmental Justice & the Common Good, de Saisset Museum, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Mission & Ministry, Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, LEAD Scholars, REAL program, and the hard-working student campus leaders and the student crew....and that's just the backstage crew.
Our national partner for tUrn14
is the tUrn student group at University of Washington Seattle
led by Katrina and Lorien,
and our ongoing international partner
through the UN Paris-Committee for Capacity-building Network,
is EPTDO who, also this week, for 6 days in a row,
is running tUrn Afghanistan based in Kabul.
Small note, join us Thursday at 9:15 am
to meet this remarkable group
on zoom.
So many people
have come together
over our thirteen previous conferences
to create enriching talks and experiences, and to create
openings for nothing less than epiphanies
that tUrn14 now promises.
We hope you will
agree, our
speakers
rock.
We thank all of our partners who
led the way and who will present this week.
Headliner speakers
are our guides this week;
they ground us and help us find something
truly precious: a rooted, real, reflective, and refreshed
sense of hope.
During tUrn week, we tap into
our communal story and personal stories, and
learn how to connect with groups who are creating
hope in a world that seems anything but balanced.
We will learn that there is SO much we
can do to make things better, if we
can open ourselves to
this notion of
grounded
hope
and
community.
We begin with tUrn’s
LAND & LABOR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
and then will introduce our speaker
tUrn,
a volunteer-led, critical and creative,
interdisciplinary research and performance project,
acknowledges, that at ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½, and many institutions
where some of us study, work, teach, research, and dance,
we are on lands that have been inhabited for
millennia by Indigenous Peoples.
ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½ is located on the
unceded, traditional lands of the Ohlone
& Muwekma Ohlone.
We recognize
that U.S. public policy,
and Church Decrees, have been used to
displace Indigenous communities, erode Tribal Nation
sovereignty, and forcibly assimilate Native
individuals into U.S. society.
We affirm
Indigenous sovereignty,
and the living, resilient presence
of Ohlone and Muwekma Ohlone peoples
throughout this region, and work
to support all facets of
Indigenous culture
and causes.
Throughout this week,
we choose to center the perspectives
of people who have recently found themselves at the
frontlines of climate devastation, or who have been suffering
a climate crisis since colonization, or since enslavement,
or who come to the U.S. as refugees of the climate crisis
that the northern, wealthy nations have
for the most part, caused.
We center the creative and complex
expressions of artists of all lands, of healers, of
writers, who help open us up to the fullness
of our shared potential.
We acknowledge
the genocides of our world today,
the escalating violence, wars, tensions, and
suffering, and the vulnerabilities of all those who have not
amassed power for a living, but who have lived to care for all of life,
to develop their cultures and communities, to raise food and their families in peace.
We acknowledge the genocide against, and continuous displacement of, Indigenous
peoples, and recognize a land acknowledgement, while necessary,
without allyship and action, is insufficient as a
response to the profound violations of
human rights we bring forth in
our invocation here.
To this end, we in tUrn
move to center the perspectives, lived
experiences, visions, and wisdom of Indigenous peoples
and to create an era of healing. We encourage all
present here to dedicate themselves to
your local tribal causes, funds, and
campaigns led by Indigenous
people.
tUrn volunteers also acknowledge
our region's history of exclusion and mistreatment of
those whose labor was largely uncompensated,
and frequently exploited.
We especially acknowledge
the struggles for belonging experienced
by Asian-Americans and Asian/Pacific Islander
immigrants, Latine-Americans and Latine immigrants,
and enslaved Africans and their descendants, who worked this stolen land
for the colonists and settlers, and who continue to disproportionately face
economic oppression, racism, violence, and exploitation.
We share these acknowledgements
to encourage all of us here in the tUrn project
to consider how our work and learning in this space
and in our daily lives, can address these historic
and contemporary atrocities.
We invite everyone
in this space to recognize their ancestors,
and the forces of history that brought them here,
as well as the work they are engaged in to support
our shared, collective liberation, and the
liberation of future generations
from the bonds of
injustice.
Thank you for joining us
as we embark on another tUrn week, and
learn about just solutions to the poly-crises of climate,
ecology, environment, pollution and toxicity, land use, deforestation
and extractive economies, made worse by short-sighted leaders and owners,
telling the wrong stories over and over, stories of superiority, and
dominance, stories that have landed us in the very
socio-political and climate crises we now must
turn our attention to.
tUrn week features
a different set of stories, all
grounded in climate science, and brought
to you from the realms of art, science, engineering, law, policy,
business & education, journalism, activism, politics, intercultural
dialogue, spirituality, faith, and from lived experience.
Here’s to the stories and solutions we
need to rebalance, and to restore
harmony, between
all beings
Thank you for taking this moment
before we endeavor
to lean in
to the climate crisis together