Art Salon VI
The Twin Cities are blessed with an incredible arts community. And this summer some of those amazing artists are gathering to support abortion access.
Join NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota for a hybrid event — in person* or virtually**, on Friday, July 30th for our 6th annual Art Salon. Hop online to admire and purchase the work of local artists or meet us at the gallery in St. Paul to support reproductive freedom. Suggested donation of $20 at the door.
While in past years 100% of the proceeds have benefited the work of NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota, this year we’ll be offering 20% of an individual artist’s sales to the artist. Get something new for your walls, and support reproductive freedom and the local arts community in one fell swoop!
Sneak peek at some of this year’s artists: Amanda Dobbratz, Brittany Kieler, Crystal Quinn, Edie Overturf, Emilie Robinson, Erin Paradis, Jane Deal-Braund, Jasmine Peck, Jim Hittinger, Josh Bindewald, Josh McGarvey, Kristen Sanders, Leah Monson, Lindsay Splichal, Mara Benowitz, Meghanne Bartlett, Michael Gaughan, Roxie Schmitz, and more!
*COVID-19 protocol: Please wear masks inside when you are not drinking, maximum of 25 individuals allowed in the space at one time.
**Online auction platform available for viewing starting on Friday, July 16th.
Upcoming Twin Cities Volunteer Clinic Escort Trainings
Our monthly Volunteer Clinic Escort Trainings are back – with a virtual twist! Fill out our interest survey using this link below and we’ll provide call in information closer to the event.
For more than a decade, NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota has trained clinic escort volunteers who help people safely into their local abortion provider. Clinic escorts are a friendly face and a safe barrier between patients and the anti-choice protesters who harass women outside of clinics. NARAL has trained hundreds of volunteers for our Minneapolis and Robbinsdale clinics – and we’re inviting you to become one of them.
Join us on June 21st or July 13th, 2021 via Zoom for a clinic escort training. Here, you can learn the history of clinic escorting, the logistics of working with Minneapolis providers, and how to handle clinic protesters.
After the training, you’ll have the opportunity to sign up for specific escorting dates.
Reproductive Freedom Book Club
Our current selection is Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
Schedule:
- Wednesday, April 21st, 6:00-7:00pm, Parts One-Three, pages 3-166
- Wednesday, May 5th, 6:00-7:00pm, Parts Four and Five, pages 167-310
- Wednesday, May 19th, 6:00-7:00pm, Parts Six and Seven & Epilogue, pages 311-388
Where: Zoom online meeting (Info will be provided upon receipt of R.S.V.P.)
Our next selection is The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin.
Three-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts her most incredible novel yet, a “glorious” story of culture, identity, magic, and myths in contemporary New York City.
In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn’t remember who he is, where he’s from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power.
In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it’s as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.
And they’re not the only ones. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She’s got six.
Schedule:
- Wednesday, June 9th, 6:00-7:00pm, Chapters 1-7, pages 1-213
- Wednesday, June 23rd, 6:00-7:00pm, Chapters 8-16 + CODA, pages 214-434