Opening Keynote: The Case Against the Death Penalty
Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough
(Friday, March 4, 2022 | 7:00-8:30 PM)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948 includes the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. How then, do states continue to enact forms of corporal punishment like the death penalty? Human and civil rights activists from around the world have long disputed the use of the death penalty by governments. This keynote event aims to explore avenues for abolishing the death penalty and other forms of carceral punishment at the state and grassroots levels.
Middle Keynote: Critical Resistance: Redressing Harm Through Restorative Justice
Mariame Kaba
(Saturday, March 5, 2022 | 6:30-8 PM)
What does it mean to imagine a world without carceral punishment, and how do we get there? Mariame Kaba will bring into conversation the key points from her recently published book, “We Do This ‘Til We Free Us,” a reflection on prison industrial complex abolition and a vision for collective liberation. This middle keynote event will explore the various methods and applications of addressing harm, particularly those that go beyond punitive justice and attempt to restore relationships in communities. With this, Kaba will address issues of state power, the abolition of the prison industrial complex, and explore how individuals can incorporate critical resistance and restorative justice in their everyday lives.
Closing Keynote: Liberation Through Abolition
Dr. Ajamu Baraka
(Sunday, March 6, 2022 | 4:30-6 PM)
Evident in the growing exposure of the systemic oppression that occurs along racial and gendered lines, it is clear that death is disproportionately brought upon marginalized identities through systems of policing and power. From its origin as a movement to abolish slavery, abolition has grown to encompass the prison-industrial-complex, exploitative capitalism, and all aspects of injustice. This keynote will explore the call for abolition, the necessity to deconstruct the current forms of institutionalized racism, and the fundamental human right to live.
Panel 1: Death as a Form of Protest
(Saturday, March 5, 2022 | 9:30-11:30 PM)
While many protestors utilize strategies such as chanting and marching, die-ins, hunger strikes, and forms of self-immolation have also become important tactics for a wide range of movements. The use of death as a form of protest by activists has been able to evoke emotional reactions, draw media attention, and force the hand of policymakers. This panel seeks to explore the rise of death as a form of protest in response to social injustice. Speakers will discuss the moral complications of these tactics, the utilization of these strategies by movements, and its ability or inability to shift the public narrative.
Panel 2: State Responsibility: Preventing International Human Rights Violations
(Sunday, March 6, 2022 | 9:30-11:30 PM)
Following the Second World War, many countries have come together to create a series of international laws in an attempt to prevent widespread human rights violations. Despite these agreements, state entities continue to manipulate such laws through promoting state-sanctioned violence, including genocide and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment. This panel offers a conversation about the benefits and limitations of international law in preventing international human rights violations, and how we, as individuals, can hold state actors accountable for their actions.
Delegate Programming: Through the Lens of Death: Ethical Human Rights Reporting
(Sunday, March 6, 2022 | 1-2 PM)
Death is often sensationalized, dehumanized, or commodified by the media for publicity. These avenues of unethical reporting and dissemination of popular media have normalized traumaporn, circulation of graphic imagery, and the romanticization of injustice in the media. At the expense of harmfully affected individuals and communities, unethical media portrayal has become a widespread yet unexplored phenomenon popular in online spaces. Delegates will be led reflect and discuss the role and impact of the media in human rights and the complexities of consuming and producing media in the digital age. This event will serve as a prelude for a group visit to Northwestern’s Block Museum’s main exhibition, “A Site of Struggle: American Art against Anti-Black Violence.” This gallery explores how artists have engaged with the reality of anti-Black violence and its accompanying challenges of representation in the United States over a 100+ year period.
