KCC Reads, the common reading program at Kingsborough Community College, adopts _Just Mercy_ by Brya The mission of KCC Reads is threefold.
Kingsborough's common reading program was inaugurated at a meeting of the Faculty Assembly in Spring 2001. Like universities across the country, we wanted to adopt a program that would cultivate a reading culture and foster campus community through reading, discussion, teaching and research on a single book. Since its inception, the program has been highly collaborative, with participation of memb
ers from every part of our campus in events, meetings, debates, art projects, book nominations, reading groups and other programs. The utility of a university common reading program is in the way it not only fosters a spirit of community but can function to develop students in important ways: research and public speaking skills, critical thinking and writing skills, leadership skills, as well as preparing our graduates for senior college or for the career they may enter upon graduation. Student enrichment is therefore our primary focus: to introduce students to intellectual life and buoy their growth, their skills and their development as socially responsible, civically engaged citizens. KCC Reads also aims to enhance and sustain campus community: through a Cohort that organizes events and selects the annual book as well as the broader collective work of teaching, reading and conducting research on the annual book. Finally, the program engages a social justice agenda, both through research elaborating the social and political themes of chosen books, and through philanthropic, social justice and other volunteer work in Brooklyn, wider New York City, and ihe world beyond our urban borders. To these ends, we organize an Events series in which a large number of students, staff and faculty collaborate. Our first event is the KCC Reads Inaugural Day, where we launch the program for the year, discuss teaching strategies and distribute the book to students. We then host a number of smaller events throughout the year—film screenings, field trips, talks or panel discussions of the faculty and invited guests, teaching workshops, student roundtables and multimedia presentations, events for Black and Women's History Months and for the KCC Eco Festival—followed by holding our culminating program, the KCC Reads Annual Student Conference where students present their work on the book through panel and roundtable discussions, poster and Power Point presentations, and as part of multiple exhibitions. Kingsborough students also participate in the planning and management of this event, which concludes with a Keynote Lecture given by the author of that year's book or an expert in the field. The conference involves two additional mechanisms of student support. First, the KCC Reads Social Justice Award is given to studens who present the best paper, project or art piece on a social justice theme. Secondly, we publish a student journal—Paideia: The Journal of KCC Reads—including outstanding scholarly and creative work in multiple genres with a focus on material presented at the conference.
06/03/2020
>>> hi friends! -- plz note: the film just mercy available to screen for free for a month -- see under: https://www.justmercyfilm.com/ -- and note that the film only covers one major strand of the book -- the book is a broad expose of mass incarceration, the justice system, mass incarceration and the death penalty. it is required reading. but the film is good too in the absence of having read it. 👍
>>> i just posted this on the women's march global page: Women's Marchers: I was outrageously impressed by the mobilization effort @ the school walkouts last week. We participated at my school @ CUNY. And, we have just had tragic news of another fatal shooting of one of our black sons, Stephon Clark, shot in his own backyard by the police who mistook his cell phone for a weapon, they say. We need to find a way to link these efforts, because they are of course linked social problems, and because one issue we have here in the states is that it is a lot easier to get Americans to care when the victims are white children. But when the victims are African American and Latino males, like Stephon Clark and the long lineup of murdered sons coming before him, similarly slain, the challenge is far more challenging, much harder to get people engaged on the mass scale we saw last week, not least of which because the perpetrators are policemen. The problem of gun violence, put on the radar and on the map so effectively by this group last week, and at other times and future times, I hope can be merged / allied with the problem of police brutality and in particular the tragic continuous issue of the mortality rates of our black sons -- just as we need to protect elementary and high school and college students from random shooters, we need to protect this group specifically from not just the guns owned by civilians who shouldn't have them but, sadly, from our own police forces. I will help obviously, and I hope that we can make something happen on this, together. as reported in today's NY Daily News:
>>> an event not to be missed -- Ian Manuel is the subject of Chapter Six of _Just Mercy_, he is the imprisoned youngster who writes poetry. Ian has since been released from prison -- yay! -- and he will be at this event at SVA. See details on the poster:
01/05/2018
06/10/2017
>>> our keynote speaker talked about this campaign, the importance of it as the figure who establishes the framework for criminal justice in a place:
06/03/2020
12/18/2019
01/26/2019
12/17/2018
08/18/2018
03/21/2018
03/21/2018
03/15/2018
03/07/2018
06/10/2017
06/06/2017