Gentrification
image credit: volar.site
Are you free enough to resist with love?
-Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
(from the VOLAR website)
The first two webinars of this series will focus on gentrification and displacement, and community building with Dr. Marisela Gomez, a Dharma teacher who has followed Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings for the last twenty years, and one of the founders of The Village of Love and Resistance (VOLAR), an organization in East Baltimore dedicated to building capacity for local residents to co-own and co-lead the redevelopment of their majority black and low-income neighborhoods.
Dr. Gomez belongs to the Baltimore and Beyond Mindfulness Community Sangha, and has written extensively about historical and current practices of rebuilding abandoned and disinvested communities in America.
VOLAR is a black and brown-led collective with more than 100 years of experience of living, working, worshiping, studying and playing, and praying in East Baltimore. VOLAR plans to renovate and transform a facility into a community and wellness center as well as rebuild and reinvest into the surrounding area through engagement of the people and implementing neighborhood development projects.
Scroll below for all webinars.
Emerging from the illusion of separation: Mindful Resistance of Uneven Development in Black and Brown Communities in Baltimore Webinar 1
with Dr. Marisela Gomez
February 8, 7:00-8:00pm EST
In this webinar you’ll learn about how the history of US community building has been uneven, the trauma that has caused, and the equitable ways we can rebuild with collective power.
Emerging from the illusion of separation: Mindful Resistance of Uneven Development in Black and Brown Communities in Baltimore Webinar 2
with Dr. Marisela Gomez
March 28, 7:00-8:00pm EDT
A continuation of the conversation from the first webinar, Dr. Gomez will get into the alternative big picture level and bring more context to this topic, using VOLAR as one practical example.