29
October
2019
|
15:52 PM
Europe/Amsterdam

Coastal Bend Social Forum Set for Nov. 9

Article by: Rosa Linda Reynoso

With a focus of bringing diverse representation of the population together to discuss issues and ideas that directly impact residents’ quality of life, this year’s Coastal Bend Social Forum (CBSF) includes topics ranging from immigration and reproductive justice to health care, prison abolition and protest music, among other issues. CBSF organizers and Del Mar College (DMC) will host this year’s one-day forum on Saturday, Nov. 9, on the College’s East Campus.

The event includes presentations by guest authors and activists Lisa Fithian and Diane Wilson, along with a film screening of A Strike and an Uprising (in Texas) and Q&A session with director Anne Lewis.

The forum is scheduled 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the College’s Wolfe Recital Hall and the Fine Arts Center Music Building located at Ayers and Kosar. The event is free and open to the public. For additional information, contact Dr. Dawson Barrett, associate professor of history, at dbarrett2@delmar.edu.

Fithian–who recently published her memoir, Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance–has been described by Mother Jones magazine as “the nation’s best-known protest consultant” for her non-violent civil disobedience work with Justice for Janitors, Occupy Wall Street and many other organizing efforts over the last several decades. Author Naomi Klein says Fithian “has helped drive some of the most creative, game-changing organizing of our time.”

Wilson is an environmentalist and fourth-generation shrimp boat captain (now retired) from Calhoun County, Texas. Her work targeting plastic pollution was recently featured prominently in Texas Monthly. She is the author of An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas. 

View a trailer of A Strike and an Uprising! (in Texas), the documentary featured during this year's forum:

 

Having been in the documentary film-making arena since 1970, Lewis’s film, A Strike and an Uprising! (in Texas), examines the state’s history through the lens of the San Antonio pecan shellers’ strike of 1938 and the Jobs with Justice march led by Nacogdoches cafeteria workers, groundskeepers and housekeepers in 1987. Lewis was associate director and assistant camerawoman for the 1976 Academy Award-nominated documentary Harlan County USA, a film that examines a coalminers’ strike in Kentucky.

In previous years, the forum has brought to Del Mar College renowned labor organizer and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Dolores Huerta and Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Sponsors of the 2019 Coastal Bend Social Forum include the Center for Progressive Studies and Culture, Inc.; the DMC Social Sciences Department and the College’s Mexican American Studies program.

 

About Del Mar College

Del Mar College empowers students to achieve their dreams. We offer quality programs, individual attention, outstanding instruction through faculty with real-world experience and affordable costs to credit and noncredit students in Corpus Christi and the South Texas Coastal Bend area. Nationally recognized while locally focused, we’re ranked in the top two percent of community colleges in the country granting associate degrees to Hispanic students (Community College Week). Del Mar College focuses on offering our students programs that match current or emerging career opportunities. Whether students are interested in the fine arts, sciences, business, occupational or technical areas, students get the education they need for the future they want at Del Mar College.