University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College will host a virtual panel discussion on Zoom Tuesday, Jan. 25 at 12 p.m. The panel will expound upon the topic, “Social Justice and Equity in the Pandemic.” 

This public event will be broadcast via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Register at www.uaptc.edu/mlk2022 

 The event is held in honor of the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and also ushers in Black History month, which is observed throughout February.   

 Panelists include Judge Tjuana Byrd, Professor Andre Cummings, and Judge Wendell Griffen. UA-PTC professor Mayo Johnson will moderate the discussion and the following Q&A session. 

 Judge Tjuana C. Byrd is a Pulaski County Circuit Judge in the 8th Division. Byrd serves by appointment as the chairman of the Racial Justice Task Force for the Arkansas Supreme Court’s Commission on Children, Youth and Families. See her complete biography here.

• André Douglas Pond Cummings is Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development and the Charles C. Baum Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law where he teaches Business Organizations, Contracts I and II, Corporate Justice, Entertainment Law and Hip Hop & the American Constitution. He is also the Co-Director of Bowen Law’s Center for Racial Justice and Criminal Justice Reform. See his complete biography here.

• Wendell Griffen is Pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, CEO and owner of Griffen Strategic Consulting, PLLC, and Circuit Judge for the Sixth Judicial District of Arkansas, Fifth Division. His consulting practice is based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and provides strategic advice and assistance to clients concerning cultural competence and inclusion (diversity). See his complete biography here.

• Mayo Johnson is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Arkansas - Pulaski Tech where he teaches Information Security. He is a member of the Cultural Diversity and Community Involvement Committee and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force. He is also a former Chair of the Little Rock Racial and Cultural Diversity Commission. See his complete biography here.

Featured Book for February
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, BookRiot, Library Journal • LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?

McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.

But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.

Featured Book for December
Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo

Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life.

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.

Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth―owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants, and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain, and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member.

Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.

Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of nine poetry collections and one previous memoir, Crazy Brave. Named Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019, she lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.

In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is "illegal" and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.

In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly "shopping days," when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center — confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all.

But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.

Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.