Education.
Dialogue.
Positive action.
BRAVE SPACES 2020
SESSION TWO
Systems Change
MEET THE FACILITATORS
Becoming an Anti-Racist
Daniel Redic was born in New York City and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He is a prevention education specialist at the Center for Youth Services and a facilitator with Partners in Restorative Initiatives. He has been a youth worker and advocate for 12 years, engaging in topics ranging from the Raise the Age Initiative in New York State to youth housing in Rochester.
Daniel’s passion lies in race and equity education. He was responsible for agency-wide training and implementation of anti-racism programming at the Center for Youth through the Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. In 2019, he was formally introduced to restorative practices and found an affinity for the work as a way to integrate trauma-informed care, social emotional learning, and equity work through a restorative lens. Daniel lives in Rochester, spending time with his daughters and making music in his spare time.
Kristin Hocker is an assistant professor of clinical nursing and co-director of the Health Care Leadership and Management (HCM) program at the University of Rochester’s School of Nursing (SON). In addition, Kristin serves as the deputy Title IX coordinator for the SON, undertaking responsibility for the prompt and fair handling of sex-based harassment or misconduct complaints.
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Kristin’s passion lies in championing the actions and behaviors that generate equity as a practice and ensuring that all individuals feel welcomed, supported, and valued so that they are able to fully participate as their authentic selves. Recently, she has channeled that passion as an adjunct professor at the Warner School of Education, teaching educators about race and racism and how to be equity-minded in their practice. Kristin is chair of the Board of the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. She is a diehard fan of the work, the people, and the impact this work has on the community.
Redlining, Racist Policy, and Resistance in Rochester, NY
Shane Wiegand is a fourth grade teacher in the Rush-Henrietta School District. He has researched, compiled, and taught Rochester's history of structural racism and resistance in his classroom for the past eight years. Starting with ten fourth grade teachers in his school district, Shane has now trained over two hundred teachers in anti-racist curriculum across five districts: Pittsford, Rochester, Rush-Henrietta, Webster, and West Irondequoit.
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Based on the research and interviews conducted to develop this curriculum, Shane also created a lecture on the local history of redlining and has given hundreds of presentations to local civic organizations, non-profits, congregations, and student groups.
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Shane is a board member of Connected Communities, Beechwood Neighborhood Coalition, The Police Accountability Board Alliance, and City Roots Community Land Trust. He is an adjunct faculty instructor in the URMC Department of Neurology, where he lectures, leads workshops around white fragility, and consults on equity work. He and his wife live in the Beechwood neighborhood of Rochester.  
Representation Matters: Media Imaging and Stereotyping
MEET THE MODERATORS
Catherine Zuromskis, Ph. D. is an Associate Professor Photography and Visual Culture at Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the author of Snapshot Photography: The Lives of Images (MIT Press, 2013), and The Factory (La Fabrica, 2012), as well as a co-editor of the forthcoming WileyBlackwell Companion to Visual Culture (2020). Her writings on photography, film, and visual culture have appeared in Afterimage, Archives of American Art Journal, American Quarterly, Art Journal, Criticism, Los Angeles Review of Books, Photography & Culture, The Velvet Light Trap, and various edited volumes.
Mari Jaye Blanchard is an independent animator and Assistant Professor of Animation at Rochester Institute of Technology in the School of Film and Animation. Along with several of her own shorts which have screened internationally including festivals in Annecy, Melbourne and Berlin, she has produced animations for Sesame Workshop, MTV, and Comedy Central. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellow, an Asian American Arts Alliance UAI Fellow and a co-founder of the NYC animation collective Family Camp.
Mark Reisch is a 3D Animator whose work has been seen in several 3D Imax films including Lions 3D and Sea Monsters. He was part of the first team to successfully convert live action footage to 3D IMAX film. He worked on feature films, TV specials (including the History Channel’s Battle 360), and shorts. Mark’s interests and areas of focus include character animation, modeling and virtual reality (VR). He has recently collaborated with another faculty member on their first VR animated film which is a blend of 2D and 3D animation.
MEET THE PANELISTS
Aria A. Dines is a 2D Puppet Animator and Commercial Illustrator, currently obtaining two BFA degrees from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Aria has worked as a Freelance Illustrator for Reporter Magazine and on multiple student animated films as a Colorist. Aria has personally completed two animated films and is currently working on Animation Capstone and Illustration Capstone. Both will be completed and exhibited at RIT in the spring of 2021.
Joy Anderson is an animator and illustrator from Washington, DC. She has worked as an animator at Learning Without Tears, where she created videos for online educational workbooks. She has also worked on filmed games for online livestreams and television broadcasts for RIT SportsZone. She is currently in her third year at RIT, where she is pursuing a BFA degree from the School of Film and Animation.
'Wáats'asdiyei (Joe Yates) is a Haida from Craig, Alaska who has won multiple awards from his films across the globe. He is currently working as a writer for the PBS Kids show, Molly of Denali.
Rochester: History and Structural Racism
MEET THE FACILITATOR
Simeon Banister is Vice President for Community Programs at the Rochester Area Community Foundation. He is a former member of the Rush-Henrietta Board of Education. Additionally, he serves as President of the Greater Rochester Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission and on the boards of the Congressional Award Foundation, the Hillside Children’s Foundation, The Children’s Agenda, and the Genesee Land Trust. His career spans the public and private sectors, including positions in the New York State Senate, New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, the State University of New York, and several private commercial real estate firms. Simeon earned his undergraduate degree in Political Science at North Carolina Central University and his Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.