Partnering for Resilience - Amplifying Community Relationships: Events
Fire + Flood Film Events
We're excited to share virtual screening options and events around the film Fire & Flood: Queer Resilience in the Era of Climate Change. These virtual screening options were made possible by a partnership between the film creators, the Queer Ecojustice Project, and the American Library Association's Resilient Communities: Libraries Respond to Climate Change initiative.
Fire & Flood: Queer Resilience in the Era of Climate Change, from the Queer Ecojustice Project, tells the story of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the fires in Santa Rosa, California, two-near simultaneous climate-related disasters in the fall of 2017, through the voices of LGBTQ people who lived through them and were part of the community response. The film explores the vulnerability of LGBTQ communities to climate disasters and also lifts up queer and trans strategies for resilience, transition, and survival. "Fire and Flood" was piloted at the National LGBTQ Task Force's Creating Change Conference in January, 2018, with positive feedback on the need for these stories in the LGBTQ movement.
View Fire & Flood at Home
April - May 2021
From April through May an option was available to view a screening of the film at home on one's own or with family and friends.
Join Us for a Fire & Flood Virtual Film Screening
April 26th, 2021
6:00 - 8:00 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time, U.S.)
Join Us for a Fire & Flood Panel Discussion
April 28th, 2021
6:00 - 7:30 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time, U.S.)
Panel Discussion Recording (Passcode: 461536Jk!)
Panelists
Dr. Bing (she/they) is Director, LGBTQ+ Resource Center and advisor of HokiePRIDE, since 2019. She works to support the mental, emotional, social, and physical wellbeing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Hokies by creating space and providing resources for marginalized individuals within the queer community and by facilitating learning opportunities for students, faculty, and staff. Alongside her work in academia, Dr. Bing created and ran the gender non-conforming fashion and lifestyle blog “I Dream of Dapper” that has been featured by Autostraddle, Buzzfeed, Dapper Q, Hudson Jeans, Love Inc. Magazine, Qwearfashion, and Madrid-based magazine S Moda.
Elisabeth Chaves (she/her) is team coordinator for the New River Valley chapter of Mothers Out Front, a nationwide organization mobilizing mothers and other caregivers to fight for a livable climate for all children. She is also a member of the New River Valley chapter of Virginia Organizing and sits on the statewide Environmental Justice Committee. She has a PhD in Planning, Governance, and Globalization from Virginia Tech and a law degree from the University of San Diego School of Law. Currently, she is a 2021-2022 BookEnds fellow at Stony Brook University.
Carol Davis (she/her) is the Sustainability Manager for the Town of Blacksburg, Virginia. In this role, she works on a broad range of sustainability issues, including: climate mitigation, adaptation and resiliency planning; alternative transportation; land use policies that advance green building and affordable housing; local and state energy policy; aging-in-place; water quality; and stewardship of public lands. In her spare time, Ms. Davis enjoys volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, the Poverty Creek Trails Coalition, and the New River Valley Bike Kitchen. She currently serves on the boards of Sustainable Blacksburg, The New River Land Trust, the New River Valley Bike Kitchen.
Dr. Brandy Faulkner is Gloria D. Smith Professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on race, law, and public policy. She is an activist and organizer centering racial and economic justice and is committed to cultivating community-based approaches to problem solving. She enjoys her time as an organizer with Virginia Organizing, joining hundreds of community members in grassroots movements across the state. She serves and trains national organizations dedicated to social and political change. By centering directly affected people, she has successfully worked with both institutions and individuals engaged in direct action organizing, advocacy, and public policy development.
Inga Haugen (she/her), University Libraries at Virginia Tech Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator; and Agriculture, Life Sciences, and Scholarly Communication Librarian, is a 13th generation farmer and fierce librarian. Haugen is the library liaison to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech (VT) including Extension and the ARECs (the research farms). She received her MIS from the University of Tennessee in 2014. As an experienced grazing dairy farmer, agriculture is a passion, which she brings to her librarianship. She welcomes collaboration and dialogue about land grants, extension (local and global), data management, and anything involving cows. Her research focuses on communities, and what it takes to build and sustain equitable, inclusive communities, additionally, how to work with libraries/archives to hold, host, and store the documents of those communities in a way that not only serves the communities needs, but prioritizes them. The land grant mission to address state, national, and global needs through teaching, research, and Extension is woven into all of her work. Haugen is a SciData scholar, and spent the entirety of her masters degree weaving scientific data curation and the content realm of agriculture together. Emerging considerations of her research focus around perennial problems of establishing trust, authenticity, and confidence in the information itself and the various channels for communicating the information.
Dr. Mae (Christina) Hey (Niin) Is an InclusiveVT Faculty Fellow for the Office for Inclusion and Diversity, assistant professor of American Indian Studies, Faculty Fellow for the Leadership and Social Change Residential College at Virginia Tech, and Faculty Fellow for the Virginia Tech Center for Food Systems and Community Transformation. She is a Sequoyah Fellow and serves on the Curriculum Committee for the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. She is an active member of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance’s Indigenous culinary mentorship program. Hey’s undergraduate education focused on geology and geography, human-Nature relationships. Her two graduate degrees are in curriculum and instruction. Her Ph.D. research focused on the confluence of Indigenous worldview/ knowledge and science education, a natural blending of traditional local knowledge and practices—practices that support creative problem-solving, human empowerment, community capacity building, and a more sustainable future. Additionally, her dissertation work allowed her to explore strategies for effectively working with Native populations as well as maintaining the integrity of authentic Indigenous voice through the process of research and reporting. Hey completed a two-year InclusiveVT postdoctoral fellowship under the Office of Inclusion and Diversity with the American Indian and Indigenous Alliance. In that position, she nurtured relationships with tribal communities in Virginia to aid in experiential learning and applied research programs at Virginia Tech. She also created bonds with Virginia tribes and continues to work with them on a number of grants for community viability projects related to Land-centered learning.
Veronica Montes (she/her/ella) Director for El Centro (the Hispanic Latinx Cultural Center) and advisor to the Latino Association of Student Organizations (LASO), coordinates events to celebrate Hispanic-Latinx Heritage Month, collaborates with the Hispanic-Latinx Faculty/Staff Caucus, and directs the operations of the Center. Previously, Montes worked for the New River League of Therapists serving as a counselor for families in the New River Valley community. She has also worked for the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) as a volunteer coordinator for new international students and at Michigan Tech University (Houghton, MI) helping undergraduate and graduate Hispanic-Latino students. Originally from Santiago, Chile, Montes received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from University Gabriela Mistral (Santiago, Chile) and her Master’s degree in Human Resources from Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti, MI). Montes has lived in Blacksburg, VA since 2008 and enjoys spending weekends with her family, attending football and soccer games and taking advantage of outdoor activities.
Questions
Contact us if you have any questions or would like more information!