# data[].attributes.headline
"We understand our work to be generative, the future is uncertain and the world is constantly changing. Connection with today's mass movements like abolition and environmental injustice, and reminding everyone's right to a place to call home is all part of our capacious work as a Site of Conscience"

# data[].attributes.subject
"We understand our work to be generative, the future is uncertain and the world is constantly changing. Connection with today's mass movements like abolition and environmental injustice, and reminding everyone's right to a place to call home is all part of our capacious work as a Site of Conscience"

# data[].attributes.body
Lisa Lee

# data[].attributes.headline
The case of George Floyd will change the role of museums as vessels of knowledge into socially active agents.

# data[].attributes.subject
The case of George Floyd will change the role of museums as vessels of knowledge into socially active agents.

# data[].attributes.body
Robert Davis

# data[].attributes.body
FMV:

Roots of racism

In Rwanda, with the Revolution of 1959, the Tutsi are exterminated and others forced to exile, a state of racism is put in place The establishment of Hutu power. Hutu extremist movements take charge of the fight against “Tutsi domination”. The Interahamwe militias groups are set up and supervised/trained by the government in place. Racist political parties. Hate speech linked by state radio stations

THE GREAT ETHNIC DIVIDE

1990 war heightens racist speech by government agents

All negative images are projected on the Tutsi

Dehumanization of the Tutsi population

The Tutsi is described as cockroaches, cockroaches, snakes, etc.

In Congo, the Tutsi Banyamulenge are called Inyo., Insects

Tutsi women are infidels who appropriate the husbands of Hutu women or hate Hutu women

Tutsi are considered intelligent stick them use their ability to mistreat the Hutu

Tutsi women are described as Tutsi spies

Hutu are encouraged to have Tutsi concubines

Hutu women's fierce hatred of Tutsi women

From 1990, Tutsi women legally married to Hutu were constantly accused of being Tutsi spies

The policy of the majority people “Rubanda Nyamwinshi” at the expense of the minority

The Hutu 10 Commandments published by a government-funded newspaper published in the Journal Kangura, an independent bimonthly, no.6, Dec. 1990, p. 6-8.

Art 8: The Bahutu must stop pitying the Batutsi.

establishment and financing of the media of hatred; Journal Kangura wake up, Radio Milles Collines.

Censorship in schools

A mono-ethnic army

A monoethnic police

Very few Tutsi reach secondary and higher education

Marking of ethnicity on identification papers

The policy of ethnic quotas in the administration

Statistical surveillance in all areas of national life

Discrimination in access to public functions

Arbitrary arrests

Imprisonments

Forced disappearances

Consequences:

1,074,017 genocide victims declared and 934,218 victims counted (count carried out in July 2000 by the Ministry of Local Administration and Social Affairs)

Thousands of widows, orphans of the genocide

Disabled people of the genocide

Physical, moral and psychological injuries

The feeling of loneliness in the hearts of survivors and victims

The social fabric has been broken

Thousands of refugees

Thousands of prisoners

Genocide Denial

The genocide denial policy

Bodies are thrown into mass graves to distort all traces

Bodies were thrown into rivers,

Mass graves are always found here and there until now

Negationism by media, by internet

The Diaspora

Remains of thousands of genocide victims who have not yet been found

Witnesses to the genocide who are traumatized by their neighbours

Goods of survivors of the genocide destroyed

Cattle killed

Desecration of genocide monuments

Reluctance to commemorate the genocide by some group

Why are there still crimes of genocide?

The genocide ideology has been widespread and gained ground in parts of Africa.

Some governments have been made more responsible for protection against genocide when they are accused of having committed crimes of genocide

A hatred of genocide survivors is still noticeable in the countryside: until now, some genocide survivors face hatred from some of the neighbours.

Legal instruments for the prevention of genocide have remained a dead letter in many countries.

In some African countries and the world, the perpetrators brought the booty that they looted in their country while fleeing and invested it in those countries. These benefit from the protection of these host countries.

How to fight:

Name as such racism and discrimination

Do not take a detour in qualifying genocide

Promote legality and dignity for all human beings

Acting together in the prevention of crimes of genocide

Endless education

Pooling of efforts

Strongly condemn the authors of discriminatory laws

Imagine/innovate new means of combating racism and discrimination

Raising the awareness of young people to engage resolutely in the fight and prevention against the crimes of genocide.

The prevention of genocide has been the sole prerogative of human rights organizations.

May donor countries, aid workers around the world get involved in genocide education.

Produce a unique genocide education program and make it available to the community, youth and states.

To support, to help advance the prevention of the crime of genocide

Involve the population in developing real strategies and actions that can be taken at the community level to support/advance genocide prevention.

Creation of an international campaign for the prevention of genocide

Sensitize the media to become more involved in genocide prevention

Come together in regional, continental and global networking in the prevention of genocide.

Raise awareness around the world so that the genocide does not happen again.

Call on the United Nations to negotiate draconian measures against governments that do not respect genocide prevention measures.

# data[].attributes.body
from Mandy: Today we observe how race clearly intersects with migration. Our museum's work, therefore, is focused on structural racism and how it operates and intersects with other dynamics. In the work we do we find synchronicities with many other struggles in the country, in Africa and around the world. This is the basis for talking about universal issues such as human rights and social justice.  We go beyond the specific experience.  Although our museum is specifically about slavery, we also show the displacement and segregation that occurred before apartheid. Although often not talked about, apartheid was a legal regime - like the Nazi regime - that was voted for and recognised and supported by many countries in Europe. Usually, when talking about apartheid and its final years, this international support is ignored.

District Six's work is heavily influenced by the BC movement. The BC movement also had a huge influence on my upbringing and covered our lives.

In the anti-racist struggle, we must seek alliances among those who have been artificially divided by the construct of race.  Colour and race continue to be invoked by those in power to divide us.

The challenges that affect us in our anti-racist struggle are:
- the white saviour mentality that has dominated the world.
- The way apartheid has affected people and taken away their sense of agency.

The museum has become part of international tourism and our main focus is to create exhibitions and educational programmes that primarily engage local communities to give them back that agency. Much of our work is intergenerational and we recognise that the experience of racism is never one, so we connect with intergenerational experiences and also in other parts of the world

# data[].attributes.body
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

# data[].attributes.body
from Bert Davis: America’s Black Holocaust Museum was founded in 1984 in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin storefront by Dr James Cameron, the only known survivor of a lynching. In 1988 Cameron acquired a spacious free-standing building, where he expanded ABHM’s exhibits and employed staff. He dedicated his life to post-colonialism and post-slavery and the study of racial disparity. After working all my life in aquariums and zoos - I am a veterinarian - I feel like I have been called to work here.

The museum's mission is to raise awareness of the disparities that have been created by colonialism and slavery. For us it has been essential, at this moment, to capture what the American society thinks after the assassination of George Floyd. What I'm going to focus on in the last few minutes is Amendment 13, a prevalent issue in Milwaukee.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America reads that: Section 1. Neither in the United States nor in any place subject to its jurisdiction shall there be slavery or forced labour, except as a punishment for a crime for which the person responsible has been duly held convicted.

After the abolition of slavery, it was understood that America's main financial force was slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was developed accordingly.

In the United States, we have 25% of the prisons in the world. Beginning in the 1980s, systemic changes in the penal system led to the mass incarceration of people, which has led to more than 2.7 million people incarcerated in the United States today. Drugs, poverty, social exclusion became the driving force behind imprisonment. This, added to the profitability of the prison business, led to what is understood as
Prison – industrial complex. As a result, the United States incarcerates - in absolute numbers and per capita - more people than any other nation in the world. The majority of incarcerated people are people of colour.

The current prison system and previous systems have not worked and have not provided greater community security. A radical change of approach is necessary.

We have to promote alternatives to mass incarceration: investment in mental health, training, social services.

# data[].attributes.body
*This documentary contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing*

# data[].attributes.headline
In our theory of change, we believe that as a site of conscience we have the power to change narratives, public consciousness and imagine new solutions.

# data[].attributes.subject
In our theory of change, we believe that as a site of conscience we have the power to change narratives, public consciousness and imagine new solutions.

# data[].attributes.body
Lisa Lee

# data[].attributes.body
from Lisa: Chicago, name derived from indigenous languages. Chicago was home to many indigenous populations, following settlers violence, many indigenous were forcibly removed from the territories or killed. Today Chicago has the third-largest urban population in the USA, with a great number of indigenous populations.

The museum tries to make meaningful connections between all kinds of forced migrations.

In 2000, a new urban plan for Chicago promoted the destruction of social housing, resulting in a large loss of affordable housing. In addition, due to a long and highly racialised history, the homes of these people have historically been filled with resentment.

According to the law of '49, the United States must promote a home for everyone, which has not been fulfilled in recent years. Racially exclusive public mortgage policies have created an almost exclusively African-American population in affordable housing. These are falling apart and are in a state of disrepair in most cases. Housing is understood as a commodity on the market and not as a basic need or a universal human right.

In many cases, urban regeneration is meaning the removal of black people from cities.

The two biggest challenges to urban renewal in public housing are lack of federal funding and lack of public will due to stereotypes about public housing and the people who live in it. In our theory of change, we believe that as a site of conscience we have the power to change narratives, public consciousness and imagine new solutions.

We work with a large audience and teach in a maximum-security prison in Illinois. In the United States, while many houses are being dismantled, prisons continue to grow.

# data[].attributes.body
from Shirley: The intersectionality of oppression: it can come from race, class, gender... we need to pay attention to intercontections and keep the whole in mind as we discuss the program of today.

# data[].attributes.body
Shirley Gunn, Director, Human Rights Media Centre – South Africa
Born in Cape Town in 1955, Gunn grew up as an eyewitness to the injustices of apartheid. As a young woman, she worked as a nurse before turning to social work. While a student, she joined the African National Congress (ANC) and later the MK, the armed wing of the ANC. As a result of these anti-apartheid activities, Gunn was arrested in 1985, detained without a trial, and held in solitary confinement for 113 days. In 1990, she was again arrested after being falsely accused of bombing the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches. Gunn was detained with her infant son in deplorable conditions. When she made a formal complaint, her son was taken from her and recordings of his weeping were used to coerce her to confess. While he was returned to her, they were soon transferred to Caledon Women’s Prison, where they spent, in Gunn’s words, 68 days in “hell and anxiety.”

When it was discovered that security forces were responsible for the bombing, Gunn filed a civil court case charging defamation and won a settlement for the trauma she and her son endured. She went on to testify about her experiences to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa (TRC), and is now the Director of the Human Rights Media Centre, a Coalition member in South Africa that advances human rights through the collection and dissemination of victims’ narratives. She has partnered with the Coalition multiple times over the years, leading body-mapping workshops in Liberia (2010, 2012), Kenya (2012), Uganda (2016), as well as Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Sri Lanka (2017).

# data[].attributes.body
Ferdinand Ndayiragije, Legal Representative, Forum Pour la Mémoire Vigilante – Burundi/Rwanda
Ferdinand NDAYIRAGIJE holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication science from Université Lumière de Bujumbura. Refugee in Rwanda, he and his friends created a NGO “Forum pour la Mémoire Vigilante (FMV)” of which he is the Legal Representative.

# data[].attributes.body
Godefroid Sindayigaya, Forum Pour la Mémoire Vigilante – Burundi/Rwanda
“Where there is no vision, people perish!”

One of the Founders of Forum Pour La Memoire Vigilante, he is the director of Education, Leadership and Peace Studies in the Forum. Having experienced how leaders with no vision led to chaos in his region, he also founded Sensitive Servant Leadership Ministry (SSLM),  a platform that promote character building in schools, train and coach  leaders to serve not to be served, to listen to people and attend their needs sacrificially.  He organized many seminars with the objective of making and raising leaders of integrity. With a Master degree in Transformational leadership and a Master degree in Journalism, he wrote two books: Military Coup and Political Intransigence as Sources of disenchantment in Post-colonial Africa (2005) and La Presse Publique Pendant la Periode Electorale (2013) and many articles on leadership and good governance.  He is a teacher of strategic management and a consultant in Transformational Leadership. In December 2019, he was invited to speak at a Conference of “men in Uniform'' in the Philippines about how to raise leaders of Integrity. He is married to Jacqueline and they have three children.

# data[].attributes.body
Mandy Sanger, Education Manager, District Six Museum – South Africa
Mandy Sanger is the Head of Education at the District Six Museum since 2003. Her main focus is on youth and community participation in the life of the Museum through intergenerational, creative and educational encounters. In partnership with a number of community based organisations, she facilitates learning journeys that aim to build resilience and solidarity across various manifestations of class, race, gender, sexuality, age, geography, ability, power and privilege – where possible. Currently my work involves designing programmes related to memory, class, race and racism with a practice component that involves re-imagining a city that persists on its historical path of segregation.  Part of this encompasses District Six Museum’s partnership with expressive artists, community activists and public intellectuals in creating community spaces to reflect critically on the particular role of memorialisation as acts of inclusion or exclusion.

Her high school years are bookended by national protests against apartheid education (1976 and 1980 student revolts). She completed her undergraduate studies (B. A) and her Higher Diploma in Education (HDE) at the University of Western Cape (UWC) when the university was a hotbed of resistance to apartheid in the 1980s, her Honours in Education (B.Ed.) at the University of Cape Town. In fulfilment of a Master’s Degree with the University of Pretoria, she completed a research project on life histories of women clothing workers from District Six, before, during and after Apartheid forced removals. She taught at high schools in various working class communities for 15 years prior to working as a whole school facilitator in the Extra-Mural Education Project (EMEP). She also has experience as a trade unionist in the education sector from 1986.

# data[].attributes.body
Dr Robert (Bert) Davies, CEO, America’s Black Holocaust Museum – USA
Dr. Robert M. Davis is the President & CEO of America’s Black Holocaust Museum, a role he has held since September of 2019. Dr. Davis assumes leadership on the eve of the reopening of the beloved museum, which closed in 2008, two years after the passing of its founder Dr. James Cameron.

Dr. Davis has an extensive background in nonprofit museum management, education, and fundraising. Most recently, Dr. Davis was Principal of the nonprofit strategic consulting firm DRMD Strategies, LLC and former President and CEO to two Iowa organizations: the Dubuque County Historical Society and the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. He is the former President and CEO of the Zoological Society of Milwaukee. Prior to the Zoological Society, Dr. Davis was Vice President of Education for Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo.

Dr. Davis has a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from the Tuskegee University School of Veterinary Medicine (Tuskegee, Alabama) and a Bachelor of Science in Animal Science and Biology from Tuskegee Institute and University. He is a Board member of the Association of African American Museums (AAAM) and also a Board member and former Vice Chair of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM).

# data[].attributes.body
Lisa Lee, Director, National Public Housing Museum – USA
Lisa Yun Lee (BA, Bryn Mawr College, Ph.D., Duke University) is a cultural activist and the Director of the National Public Housing Museum.  She has served as the Director of the UIC School of Art & Art History where she is an Associate Professor of Art History and Gender and Women’s Studies.   She was most recently the 2017 Co-Curator of Open Engagement.  As the previous Director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, she oversaw a renovation of the house, installed a new permanent exhibition, and reinvigorated public programming at one of our nation’s most important historic sites.  Lisa is also the co-founder of The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council, an organization dedicated to creating spaces for dialogue and dissent and for reinvigorating civil society. She writes broadly about arts, culture, diversity, and aesthetics and politics, and has written a book entitled Dialectics of the Body: Corporeality in the Philosophy of Theodor Adorno  (Routledge, 2004), and also wrote the survey essay for the first comprehensive monograph of Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates (Phaidon, 2015). She serves on the boards of the American Alliance of Museums, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, 3Arts, and the Rebuild Foundation.