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Oral History Interviews and Community Power: Riverside Women Creating Change
Saturday, November 8, 3:30-4:30 PM; doors open at 3:00
Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties
3855 Market Street, Riverside
FREE. All are welcome.
With Nicolette Rohr and Deborah Wong of the Inlandia book Riverside Women Creating Change.
Come learn how oral history is a vibrant tool for bottom-up knowledge, from family history to local organizing, then help us conduct a live oral history! We will interview Jen Larratt-Smith, a community organizer involved with Riverside Neighbors Opposing Warehouses (R-NOW). This interview is part of the Riverside Women Creating Change project.
Deborah Wong is an ethnomusicologist and Professor of Music at the University of California, Riverside, known for her scholarship on Asian American performance. In Riverside, she was drawn to work on police brutality after the death of Tyisha Miller in 1998 and has long been involved in the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability. She believes in the importance of grassroots action, and she has learned that those who show up make the decisions…. and can make the difference.
Nicolette Rohr was born and raised in Riverside and earned a Ph.D. in History from UCR in 2018. She has worked on several public history projects in Riverside. As a specialist in popular music and the 1960s, Nicolette has brought her research home with projects on the folk revival in Riverside and the book While We’re Here, We Should Sing (Inlandia, 2016), written with Riverside singing group the Why Nots (including Nicolette’s grandmother). She is co-founder and current chair of the Riverside chapter of Brady United Against Gun Violence and volunteers with Glocally Connected, the Riverside Art Museum, and Eden Lutheran Church.
Jen Larratt-Smith is Founder and Chair of Riverside Neighbors Opposing Warehouses (R-NOW), a grassroots community organization that has been fighting for smarter land use in our communities for over three years. R-NOW’s work has been featured in multiple stories in local, state, and national news organizations, including the Press Enterprise, CalMatters. The Guardian, KQED, and CBS KCAL. When not community organizing, she works as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker for Kaiser Permanente at the Center for Healthy Living.
