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Home is sanctuary. Home is sacred. Home is the body that carries you, the land that holds your people, the memory that cannot be erased.
Our homes, our lands, our bodies are unsafe in this current climate. Certain bodies are territories under enhanced surveillance and places ancestors blessed are being stolen, bombed, and disappeared.
This is the water we swim in: ICE raids and cultural erasure, the ongoing displacement of Indigenous, Palestinian, trans, disabled, immigrant, and climate-impacted communities. This is the ground from which we build. Sometimes we plant in ash, sometimes we grow from cracks in concrete. We start organizing forward now.
Hosted as part of artEquity's tenth Anniversary Alumni Gathering, this two-hour public gathering brought together cultural workers, organizers, and artists across movements to share models, experiences, and stories about what is working and how we can build power towards a shared freedom. We'll hold space for the grief of what's been lost and celebrate the love that endures.
What's at stake? What still roots us? And what kind of home do we make possible when we gather like this?
Panelists
- Carmen Morgan, artEquity founder and executive director
- Set Hernandez, filmmaker and community organizer from Bicol, Philippines and co-founder the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective
- Donna Simone Johnson, actress, choreographer, liberator, and co-artistic director of Watts Village Theatre Company
- Amal Bisharat, Palestinian American multidisciplinary artist: a theatre director, theatre maker, producer, actor, musician, photographer, and on the board of directors for Mena Theater Makers Alliance
- Nizhóní Begay, Diné and Quechua, social media coordinator for The Chapter House, event and grant manager at the Lindy Waters III Foundation, and the communications and development coordinator at the Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC)
Bios
Carmen Morgan (Moderator)
Carmen Morgan is a national activist leading conversations at the forefront of the field on equity, inclusion, and racial justice issues. She is the founder and director of artEquity, a national organization that supports the intersections of art and activism. She has provided leadership development and organizational planning for staff, executives, and boards for over 100 non-profit organizations. She is the 2020 recipient of the Paul Robeson Award by Actors’ Equity Association and Actors’ Equity Foundation and a YBCA 100 honoree. She’s on faculty at Yale’s David Geffen School of Drama where she addresses issues of identity, equity, and inclusion in the arts.
Carmen’s work is rooted in popular education, community organizing, and a commitment to social justice. She remains dedicated to community building and activism, and has worked in the non-profit sector for over 25 years.
For over twelve years she worked with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) on structural and organizational equity. With her guidance, OSF implemented innovative programming, policies, and new organizational structures to support ongoing inclusion efforts. In addition, she served as the consultant for Theatre Communications Group’s diversity and inclusion initiatives and programming, where she partnered with TCG to launch a national Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Institute for theatres. She has supported national and regional cohorts and provided customized resources to theaters and arts organizations in the US and Canada, including Art Institute of Chicago, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Theatre Workshop, Woolly Mammoth, Long Wharf Theater, Hubbard Street Dance, Stages Repertory, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Cal Shakes, Steppenwolf, New York Foundation for the Arts, Association for the Performing Arts Service Organization, League of American Orchestras, Opera America, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, to name a few.
Prior to founding artEquity, for fifteen years Carmen directed Leadership Development in Interethnic Relations (LDIR), a nationally-recognized social justice program co-sponsored by Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Central American Resource Center, and the Martin Luther King Dispute Resolution Center. Prior to her work with the LDIR program, Carmen was the Associate Regional Director for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international human rights organization, where she oversaw human rights work on the US/Mexico border; gay liberation and sovereignty education work in Hawai’i; and tenant rights and racial/economic justice work in California and Arizona.
Carmen is a founding member of the California Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), a former Human Services Commissioner, and is currently on the Board of Directors for Black Women for Wellness, a community-based organization serving women in South Los Angeles. She has presented at numerous national conferences including the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, National Association for Multicultural Education, Grantmakers in Health, Grantmakers in the Arts, Americans for the Arts, The California Endowment, and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, to name a few.
Amal Bisharat (Panelist)
Amal Bisharat (she/her) is a Palestinian-American multidisciplinary artist- a theater director, producer, writer, and musician based in LA and San Francisco. She is Artistic Director & Co-founder of Meem Collective, a music and sound design company collaborating with MENA/SWANA artists in theater, film and TV. With Meem, she is also currently developing "Morning in Jenin Musical", a Palestinian refugee story adapted from the internationally best-selling novel “Mornings in Jenin” by susan abulhawa. Bisharat holds a BA in Music and Theater and spent 12 years working as a theater and music director in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District. In 2023, as Artist-in-Residence with Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco, she co-produced and directed their signature program, ReOrient Festival of Short Plays (2023), and directed an online reading of The Gaza Monologues by Ashtar Theatre-Palestine (2023). Bisharat is a current member of the board of MENATMA (MENA Theater Makers Alliance) and served on the Community Council for Golden Thread’s 2024 Season for Palestine. She is grateful to have received support for her work from the following organizations: San Francisco Arts Commission Artist Grant (2023), TBA Arts Leadership Residency Grant (2023), Investing in Artists: Artistic Innovation CCI (2024), Zoo Labs: FUND (2024), and Doria Feminist Fund (2025).
Bisharat is also an award-winning photographer, capturing the magic of live performance- dance, theater, and music with her arts-focused photography company. Bisharat believes in the transformative power of art and storytelling whether on a stage, in a photograph, or in the stories we tell ourselves.
Set Hernandez (Panelist)
Set Hernandez is a filmmaker, writer, and community organizer whose roots come from Bicol, Philippines. Unapologetically queer and undocumented, their filmmaking uplifts and complicates stories about their communities. An audio-centric film, Set’s documentary feature debut UNSEEN (POV/PBS, 2024) received an Independent Spirit Award and was shortlisted for Best Feature at the IDA Documentary Awards. The film and its companion podcast are noted for their use of accessibility to cater to undocumented immigrant and blind/disabled audiences. UNSEEN is also groundbreaking as one of the first media projects ever to be led by an intersectional team of queer, undocumented immigrant and disabled/blind artists. Set’s past film work includes COVER/AGE (Social Impact Media Awards Finalist, 2020) about healthcare access for elderly undocumented adults, as well as impact producing for CALL HER GANDA (Tribeca, 2018) about US militarism and anti-trans violence in the Philippines. Set also served as impact producer for IN PLAIN SIGHT (2020), addressing the culture of mass incarceration in the country through skytyping planes that placed abolitionist messages across the continental US. Set’s filmmaking has been supported by the Sundance Institute, NBCUniversal, JustFilms | Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, among others. Their writings and contributions have been published on Rappler, Documentary Magazine, Global Impact Producers Alliance, and beyond. Since 2010, Set has organized around migrant justice issues, from deportation defense to healthcare access. They co-founded the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective which promotes equity for undocumented immigrants in the film industry. In their past life, Set was a published linguistics researcher, focusing on bilingualism. Above all, Set is the fruit of their family’s love and their community’s generosity.
Donna Simone Johnson (Panelist)
Donna Simone Johnson (she/him) is a queer actor, director, cultural worker and Mama whose practice bridges performance, pedagogy, leadership and organizing. She serves as Co-Artistic Director of Watts Village Theater Company, leading community-rooted programming that uplifts the stories, futures, and sovereignty of South L.A. communities.
A founding member of Theatre Commons LA and HardCorps, her work investigates belonging, lineage, and liberation through embodied storytelling and curation. As a performer, Johnson has earned multiple NAACP Theatre Awards, the LAPD/LASA Award for Excellence, and is a Princess Grace Award semi-finalist Johnson holds an M.F.A. in Acting from CalArts and an M.Ed. in Somatic Education from NYU. He continues to teach, choreograph, and mentor the next generation of artist-activists, cultivating art as a site of homecoming, resistance, and repair. Donna Simone is currently in residence at Kayenta Arts Foundation, developing new work at the intersection of Christianity, Blackness, and Queerness that also reimages how artists build sustainable structure for collective liberation. It's a lot. She's staying hydrated.
Nizhóní Begay (Panelist)
Nizhóní Begay (she/her) is Diné and Quechua from Tucson, AZ with roots in San Antonio and now based in Los Angeles. She is the Programming and Communications Coordinator at The Chapter House, an Indigenous community arts space founded by Emma Robbins (Diné) that comes together in times of struggle and celebration. Nizhóní is also the Event and Grant Manager at the Lindy Waters III Foundation, founded by NBA player Lindy Waters III (Cherokee/Kiowa) and led by Loren Waters (Cherokee/Kiowa), where she supports the Foundation’s work and leads the College Prep mentorship program for Native youth. Most recently, Nizhóní is supporting Loren’s film Tiger and its awards campaign. She also does the communications for the Sage-Based Wisdom podcast with Indigenous comedians Jana Schmieding and Brian Bahe. In her free time, Nizhóní loves to attend Star Wars conventions.
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