Celebrating Bethlehem's Southside Culture
The Lehigh Valley Sierra Club’s recent meeting was a workshop-style dialogue for Sierra Club members to consider equity in the outdoors. The discussion was premised around the question of who feels safe or unsafe in outdoor spaces and doing outdoor activities. The main goal for the meeting was to investigate how the mainstream environmentalist community…
“Black Lives Matter” Lyrics Whenever I state that “Black lives matter,” the words “All lives matter” get hurled back and they hit me like a round of bullets straight to the heart. This is a fact I’m very much aware, but somehow you feel the urge to silence my message that life for us in…
PC: Emma Ackermman On October 24th, Basement Poetry hosted a live poetry reading at Touchstone Theatre that Diedre Van Walters, the MC of the event, framed as a form of protest. As Van Walters put it at the start of the event, these artists and poets did not share their thoughts and experiences, their ways…
This summer Bethlehem Area Public Library (BAPL) hosted a variety of anti-racist educational programing to bring depth and specificity to Bethlehem’s conversations about race and anti-racism. One such program was a series of workshops on theories and histories of race and racial justice, facilitated by teacher, activist, and writer, Linda Wiggins-Chavis. Though the workshops are…
On Thursday, July 23, people from the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia came together over Zoom to share their insights and reactions to Danez Smith’s powerful and haunting poetry collection, Don’t Call Us Dead. The Queer Poetry Reading Group discussion was hosted by the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, and sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley…
“RYDA” Spoken Word Performance “RYDA” Lyrics I’m Rydin, I’m Rydin, I’m Rydin, I’m Ghost (Aye) Where I’m going? No one knows I’m Rydin, I’m Rydin, I’m Rydin, I’m Ghost (Aye) Where I’m going? No one knows I’m Rydin, I’m Rydin, I’m Rydin, I’m Ghost (Aye) Where I’m…
“To be black in America right now is a wound. Nothing seems to exactly describe the pain in my lower back, my chest, blooming between my lungs, hanging so, so heavy in my heart. My grief is miles deep, ancestral deep. I think of my father, my brother, my sister. I think of both of…
*Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels The field of public health deserves a lot of attention right now as this field offers us answers for how we should address the risk factors for this recent pandemic. Importantly, conceptualizing racism and racial justice as a public health issue has also gained traction. Lehigh University’s College…
On July 14th, BAPL began a series of workshops about race and racism facilitated by Linda Wiggins-Chavis. This series, called “Dialogues on Racial Justice: An Introductory Workshop Series on Issues of Systemic Racism in the United States,” continues the much needed work of grappling with racism in our communities in order to facilitate necessary institutional…
This featured photo, “Southside Public Library,” by Ryder Griffith at Southside Proud, is licensed by CC. BY-NC 2.0. Bethlehem Area Public Library (BAPL) is taking action on the call by the Black Lives Matter movement and The Fight 4 Black Lives to have difficult conversations about race and racism in our communities and across America….