June 11, 2026
6 - 9 pm
TILT Institute
Free
TILT’s exhibition, How We Stay Free, functions as a timeline for protest movements in Philadelphia and a site for active engagement with civic discourse. Abolition School facilitators Talia Charidah, DJ Graves, and Christopher R. Rogers will lead visitors through an interactive activity, reflecting on their personal connections with public forms of resistance to institutional power. Join us to learn more about the Abolition School and their latest journal, Everyday Sh!t: Notes on Abolition and Reconstruction.
The W.E.B Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction trains aspiring and current movement organizers in how to understand the world and how to change it. They do so through a combination of history, political economy, strategy, and skills. Through concise readings and seminar-style discussion, students study the historical emergence of the world we inhabit and the forces shaping it today. In the process, they develop an understanding of the mutual constitution, past and present, of economic exploitation (capitalism), racial domination (slavery and colonization), and sexual and gendered oppressions (patriarchy)—which, understood together, provide a roadmap for the sorts of movements and strategies that will be their undoing.
Facilitator Biographies
Talia Charidah, MPH, is a public health researcher and poet whose work has focused on the impact of displacement on identity formation and mental health, particularly for refugees and immigrants from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region. She is interested in the ways in which those who are displaced cultivate community and connect to their ancestral homelands, transcending borders. Currently, she is a Project Manager in The Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements and Population Health Equity, collaborating on a project focused on illuminating structural racism in the healthcare industry.
DJ Graves is an organizer who is focused on creating long term sustainable change through counter-hegemonic educational institutions. He works as one of two Outreach and Engagement leads at the Ginger Arts Center located in North Chinatown, where he ensures that middle and high school age individuals across Philadelphia find a safe third-space. Grounded in theories of intersectional and internationalist principles, Graves is often engaging in collective work to end capitalistic systems of oppression.
Christopher R. Rogers has more than a decade of experience working for justice-oriented arts, advancing Black culture, and building community ties in the Greater Philadelphia area. In addition to his role as faculty at Haverford College, he currently coordinates Friends of The Tanner House, incubating a revitalized Henry Ossawa Tanner House at the intersection of Black heritage preservation and community-based cultural organizing. Rogers has been a fervent supporter of aspiring movement leaders who serve communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration. He recently released a collaborative book, My City Need Something: Portraits and Prose for Black Existence, with documentary photographer Karim Brown. The publication is an extension of the themes present in the exhibition, How We Stay Free.
How We Stay Free — April 9 – June 27, 2026
