AFP wraps successful Social Justice Festival
The Anne Frank Project’s 15th Annual Social Justice Festival: Ideas + Action = Justice was a major success. More than 800 participants attended this signature two-day event on October 4 and 5!
With 15 different sessions for our festival audience to be a part of, participants were actively engaged in kinesthetic learning opportunities focused on teaching people how to respond versus react to their worlds.
Our Donn Youngstrom Featured Presenter for 2023, Autumn Rose Williams, opened our festival with an empowering poem, “My Favorite Holiday,” followed by a keynote address and workshop the next morning. Ms. Williams led participants on defining who they are and loving the body they are in. While also providing ways we can support local Indigenous peoples such as attending Indigenous events, seminars, and workshops.
AFP’s campus spotlight department this year, Hospitality and Tourism, provided us with an amazing session that opened our minds and our appetite! For this program, we welcomed Chef Darian Bryan, a Jamaican chef and Food Network winner, as he prepared the recipes for curry chicken and Jamaican rice and peas. Using the power of story through food culture and recipes, participants got to taste this delicious cuisine. Looking to try Chef Darian’s cuisines? You can dine at The Plating Society and Bratts Hill by Chef Darian on Seneca Street!
Chief Empowerment Officer of A Long Talk About the Uncomfortable Truth, Kyle Williams, shared important history on racism toward Black people in American, engaging our festival community in conversations to activate anti-racism. Williams also joined AFP’s founding board member and Holocaust survivor, Sophia Veffer, on a panel discussion about racism and antisemitism, along with another presenter, Dr. Reuben Faloughi. Participants during this session, witness Black activists and Jewish activists together sharing one common story of changing ignorance into knowledge.
We look forward to hosting our 16th Annual Social Justice Festival in 2024! Dates to be announced soon.
The Anne Frank Project is a program of SUNY Buffalo State University.
