Town Hall

Zaquia Mahler Salinas’ Town Hall campaign objective is to gather, reflect, amplify, document, and hold in the community individual stories that speak to the Far South/Border North focus areas to demonstrate the power of individual and collective narratives and the role they should play in informing public policy in multiple the lowest quartile California Healthy Places Index communities. Through community performances and sharing events, the campaign seeks to gather, perform, and commune around the significance of speaking truth to power, telling otherwise unheard stories, and holding these personal experiences as invaluable expressions of societal truths. The events are like a “town hall” that simultaneously holds space for individuals to be seen and heard in their story through a personalized retelling of that story in spoken word, soundscape, and movement. Key folx in local political office and areas of public life related to topics like social justice, civic engagement, and public health in the “town hall,” and in other positions of power will be invited to these events to witness and listen as their constituents offer their “public comments” in the form of performance. This campaign seeks to empower people and dismantle the divide between individuals, their communities, and those representing them at the local government level.