Our mourning and awakening continues this weekend as BLACK LIVES MATTER holds center stage.

THEATER: From the BOCH CENTER watch this potent, hyper-relevant performance piece called “Ode To The Young Black Man” from the 2016 City Spotlights final showcase, written and performed by program alumnus Alex Drumm!

MOVIES: The Coolidge Corner Theatre has recommended a list of anti-racist films to view, from director Spike Lee’s seminal 1989 wake-up call DO THE RIGHT THING, to last season’s under-appreciated stunner, director Chinonye Chukwu’s CLEMENCY.

The Coolidge has also curated three extraordinary documentaries illuminating the painful struggle for racial equality and made them available in their Virtual Screening Room:

TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM— A profound and enlightening meditation on the life and work of the literary legend and Nobel Prize winner

WHOSE STREETS?— A close-up look at the firestorm of protest that enveloped Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after the fatal shooting of an unarmed 18 year-old black man, Michael Brown, by a white police officer from the point of view of the people who lived and breathed it

 I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO– Based on novelist/activist James Baldwin’s incendiary observations about the history of race and class in America, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and as startlingly relevant as ever in light of how little progress has been made

A portion of the proceeds of all three documentaries will be donated to: Black Lives Matter Boston, The Massachusetts Bail Fund, and ACLU Massachusetts.

 

ARTS FESTIVAL: Watch the The 8th Annual Boston Public Schools Citywide Arts Festival! You can see dance, music, and theater performances from young people across the city. The artistic director of Medicine Wheel Michael Dowling once said something I’ll never forget: “Young people destroy things when they are not invited to create.” So tune in on June 9 at 7pm and see what our students have created HERE!