Our House is a radically inclusive space where students form bonds across differences and find a sense of home. Beyond simply providing a “safe space” for diverse students, Our House offers opportunities for deep levels of student engagement through consciousness-raising activities and multicultural events that range from musical performances to art workshops to guest talks by social-justice activists. It’s also a comfortable place to hang out, study, hold club meetings, and meet with staff who are here to help you thrive in your studies and in life.
SPRING 2023 EVENTS
Your attendance at any of the events highlighted below can qualify you to enter a drawing for Airpods. Read more here: welcome.santarosa.edu/events
Accessibility Note: If there is a Deaf participant who requests interpreting services to access your event, please contact the Interpreting Services Office at least one week prior to the event to make arrangements. InterpretingServices@santarosa.edu, or send a text to (707) 230-3895.
Sanacion del Pueblo Campus Edition
Hosted by Our House, MEChA de SRJC, Petaluma Council, and North Bay Organizing Project
Tuesday, April 4th, 11am-2pm
Sanación del Pueblo (community healing) Campus Edition is coming to SRJC Petaluma, Tuesday April 4th from 11am-2pm!
This event is collaboration with Our House Intercultural Center, Petaluma Council, North Bay Organizing Project and MEChA de SRJC to help build a bridge for students experiencing stress and what we have heard as a desire for more support for mental health and physical wellbeing. We will be hosting this event on the same day as SRJC Petaluma’s Fresh Farmer’s Market and will also be offering lunch to students, as well as massage therapy, herbal workshops, art workshops, yoga led by the SRJC Petaluma’s Yoga Club, and restorative listening circles. This event will be held outside in the areas by Our House Intercultural Center and the Welcome and Connect Center. The event, including listening circles, has bilingual capacity and we highly encourage students whose primary language is Spanish to participate. We hope that students will experience a sense of support and relief as well as share their experiences and ideas on how to build a caring and supportive campus community.
When We Translate
Conversation with Kailea Frederick, NDN Collective/Loam
Wednesday, March 15th, 11am-12pm
Registration Closed.
"This work needs those who bridge worlds, who walk the in-between of identities, maybe accepted fully in none yet familiar with all." - Ruth Łchav'aya K'isen Miller
In a moment marked by social and political division, it can be easy to forget that many of us carry the inherent skills to create and build bridges between unlikely worlds. In this session students will be guided through an interactive exercise where they will have the chance to reflect on their own lived experiences and how they translate the worlds they bind together.
Kailea Frederick (she/her), Community Publisher, is a mother of Tahltan, Kaska and Black American lineage. She has dedicated the last ten years to working at the intersections of climate justice, resilience thinking and independent publishing, previously serving as NDN Collective's Climate Justice Organizer, Editor for Loam Magazine and as a Climate Commissioner for the City of Petaluma. Her diverse publications on climate change, disaster preparedness and parenting during collapse have been utilized as curriculum across schools in the United States and Canada, and her 2021 publication with NDN Collective, Required Reading: Climate Justice, Adaptation and Investing in Indigenous Power was recommended reading by the White House.
Why Fashion Inclusivity Matters
A conversation with HauteButch founders Karen Roberts and Danette Sheppard-Vaugh
Tuesday, March 28th from 12-1pm via Zoom and Our House. Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.
Registration is closed.
Join us to hear the stories of Karen Roberts and Danette Sheppard-Vaughn, the founders of the clothing label HauteButch. This local clothing company is a queer black-owned brand, founded in 2012 by Karen Roberts & Danette Sheppard-Vaughn in an effort to solve a problem that’s existed in the fashion industry since its birth – creating masculine clothing tailored to fit women’s bodies. Being a masculine woman herself, Karen has a unique and personal understanding of the struggles many queer individuals face when searching for clothing to fit not only their sense of style, but their bodies as well.
Karen and Danette will share the story of how they got started, and how students can launch into the design industry. For more information about this event, email Ri Bussey, Queer Resources, at abussey@santarosa.edu
Illegal Intimacy
Conversation and Poetry Reading with Alan Pelaez Lopez
Thursday, April 6th, 12pm-1pm
Registration is Closed
Join Alan Pelaez Lopez for a reading of their poem 'Illegal Intimacy' and a conversation about how countries and law enforcement surveil queer love, migration, and Blackness. You can join via Zoom from your own device or join from the Queer Resource Centers at both the Santa Rosa Intercultural Center (Pioneer Hall 380, Santa Rosa Campus) and the Our House Intercultural Center in Petaluma Campus (Jacobs Halls 116, Petaluma Campus) where lunch will be provided.
Alan Pelaez Lopez (@MigrantScribble), is an interdisciplinary writer, visual artist, and theorist from Oaxaca, México. In their poetic and visual work, Alan attends to questions of Black futures, trans kinship, and Indigenous (un)belonging. They are the author of Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien (The Operating System, 2020), a finalist for the International Latino Book Award, and to love and mourn in the age of displacement (Nomadic Press, 2020). Their writing is published in the Academy of American Poets, Best American Experimental Writing, Teen Vogue, Refinery29 and others.
Walk in Two Worlds: Intersections of Indigeneity and Gender in Academia
Conversation with Cash Martinez, Southern Pomo Writer
Tuesday, April 11th, 12pm-1pm
Registration is closed.
Join Native American journalist and community organizer Cash Grace Martinez (Southern Pomo) for a discussion and presentation on the experiences of Indigenous students, particularly Two-Spirits, in primarily white academic spaces, the myth of “decolonizing academia”, and how universities can work towards creating a more equitable environment for Native American students.
Cash Grace Martinez (he/him/his) is a Southern Pomo writer, journalist, and organizer, and a lineal descendent of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, where his father is an enrolled tribal citizen. He was born and raised on his ancestral lands of Sonoma County, and currently resides in San Francisco on the occupied lands of the Ramaytush and Yelamu Ohlone people. His work has been published in the Press Democrat & Sonoma Magazine, North Bay Bohemian, and El Tecolote, and shines a light on issues facing marginalized & disadvantaged communities. He is a current contributor at the quarterly magazine News From Native California.
We The Future!
Annual Social Justice Conference
Friday, April 21st, 9am-2:30pm
Click HERE for more information about We The Future
Queer Resources and Programming is Back!
Come and meet Ri Bussey at Our House (Jacobs 116) Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 9am-5pm
A word from Ri-
Hi all! I am your new Queer Resource Specialist. I would appreciate it if you could take a 5 minute needs assessment designed for LGBTQIA+ students. I would love hear what your needs are, what types of programming would you love to see, and what resources you think would be helpful. I would love your feedback so that I can continue to create a safe and trusting environment. Please click this LINK to get started. Thank you!
PAST EVENTS
Painting Workshop with Lucero Vargas
Tuesday January 31st from 12 to 1pm.
Registration is closed.
Attendees will meet at Our House (Jacobs 116) at noon. No art experience necessary!
Lucero employs a native folk art style to explore identity, post-colonialism, gender, and race in American society. Art transformed her life and has helped her heal her trauma. She hopes to use the same process to help young people and empower all marginalized groups, to capture their beauty and strength and share it with the world. Vargas strongly believes art is one of the best tools for anyone to heal the spirit, mind, and body.
Serving Face!
Professional Photoshoot with Cecilia Senocak Photography
Monday, February 13th, 12-1pm
Registration is closed.
This is a special opportunity for LGBTQIA+ students to get a professional photo, with a photographer who is dedicated to giving a little extra special attention for those who live and love radically! Working from a consent-based framework, our photographer will take a few shots and let you choose your favorite photo for editing. Because of this, we ask that you register for the event and provide your contact information for follow up. Spaces are limited, so registration is required.
Please email Ri Bussey for more information at abussey@santarosa.edu
Black Wellness: Cultivating Legacies of Vibrancy
Two-Part Workshop by Abi Huff
Tues & Thursday, February 21st & 23rd, 12-1pm
Registration is closed.
Join Abi Huff, Herbalist, Educator, Activist/Organizer for a community exploration that centers the Black Experience through dialogue, discussion, and practices rooted in a healing justice framework. We will explore the impact of systems of oppression on the Black Body, Psyche, and Black Spirituality/Cosmologies while focusing on a spectrum of anecdotes to support our healing that includes our connection to land, plant medicine, somatics, and ancestral healing.
Abi Huff has been building relationships with the plants intentionally for nearly 2 decades, realizing that the plants have been her primary Teachers who have raised her up. Her sacred work is dedicated to healing the land and people, facilitating explorations of ancestral healing through herbalism, somatics, plants and their spirit medicine, and the continued work of understanding and embodying the complexities of decolonizing our medicines, foods, relationship to land and place, and our lineages.
Self-Care Hour: Herbal Remedies and Meditation
Workshop by Nadia Solano
Monday, March 6th, 12-1pm
Registration closed.
Nadia Solano is back for another workshop on herbal remedies for mental and physical health and wellness. Nadia will guide us through a meditation, teach us about springtime herbal allies, and share an activity creating floral tea blends.
Nadia Solano (she/her) is a traditional yerbera who studied from elders in Mexico, a reiki practitioner, and reconnecting indigenous woman based in Southern Pomo land. Inspired by her father's garden and his innate communication with the plants, she strives to continue that conversation through plant medicine and communal offerings. Nadia hopes to inspire ancestral connection and forming alliances with plants as we walk this earthly path.
Power, Advantage, and Oppression
Training with On The Margins
Friday, March 10th, 3:45-6:15pm
Registration closed.
Join us for a dynamic training with On The Margins on the topic of Power, Advantage, and Oppression. Participants will:
- Reflect on how power and advantage show up for them personally.
- Identify what power is and how it shows up in society.
- Learn new ideas and perspectives on power sharing.
- Explore different ways to encourage a shift in power dynamics.
A little bit about On The Margins:
We envision a world without prisons and borders; that centers racial, gender, economic and ecological justice; that is pro Black Indigenous Womxn of Color and Trans communities; that cherishes pleasure, creative pedagogy, and imaginative exploration; and that centers community accountability.
Our commitment is inspired by Fannie Lou Hamer’s freedom teachings. We believe that "Nobody's free until everybody's free." Our work seeks to amplify community care, cultural wealth, and resilience in bold and politicized ways. Understanding that marginalized communities are under assault, we are trying to disrupt systems of oppression in academic, clinical, health systems, and political spaces.
More Herencia (Latinx Heritage Month) evens announced here soon! >>>
