06/18/2026
Some histories are remembered. Others are buried. What happens when communities work to bring them back into view?
NYSCCRR Chair Dr. Seanelle Hawkins and Commissioner Lurie Daniel Favors will participate in a panel discussion at Reclamation Day: A Reunion of Hope, following a screening of 'Reparations Now: Inside the Movement to Repair America's Past'.
📅 Saturday, June 20
📍 Wythe Hotel Theater, Brooklyn
Event registration: https://www.bliscollective.org/reclamation-day
🎟️ Please note: Tickets for film screening and panel are separate from general admission to Reclamation Day. See the event page for details and registration.
On Saturday, 25 Kent Ave will kick off a new national ritual: Reclamation Day. The festivities, held in Brooklyn, will be grounded in Black and Indigenous narratives of joy and resilience, blending art, performance, and movement-building, with over 50 other artists, organizers, and cultural leaders. Reclamation Day, also dubbed a Reunion of Hope, will serve as a counter-commemoration to the nation’s 250th anniversary, occurring one day after Juneteenth. It seeks to tell a truer story of the nation’s semiquincentennial—a part of a larger mass movement to reclaim and reframe the story of America—through the lens of its organizer, the BLIS Collective.
BLIS stands for “Black Liberation, Indigenous Sovereignty,” and the New York City–based Collective is dedicated to building narrative and solidarity infrastructure across movements while growing the cultural and strategic power necessary to pass bold policy.
The festival will comprise three zones—Reclaim, Repair, Reimagine—each asking a grounding question. To reclaim, what does it mean to have our communities preserved, protected, and passed down in spite of colonization, slavery, erasure, and capitalism? To repair, what does it mean for us to stay in relationship with each other when harm is ongoing and unresolved? And to reimagine, what futures might we conceive if we treated hope as a discipline? Read more from Fatima B. Jalloh: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/black-liberation-indigenous-sovereignty-reclamation-day/
