In honor of Black History Month, join us for a conversation with
Immanuel Oni, Debra Jeffreys-Glass, Catherine Mbali Green-Johnson and Shanna Sabio!
Resisting Cultural Erasure:
Sharing Black Histories of the LES and Beyond…
Thursday, February 27
6:30pm-8pm, Free
70 E 4th Street, 1st Floor
M’Finda Kalunga ?Community Garden?, through an initiative led and organized by resident, educator, and LES Community Hero Debra Jeffreys-Glass, has celebrated local Black history and shared the history of the Chrystie Street African Burial Ground at its annual Juneteenth festivities since 2004?.
In 2022, FAB began collaborating with Jeffreys-Glass and garden members to honor the unmarked Burial Ground. That work recently culminated in the commission and installation of HALO by artist Immanuel Oni.
IMMANUEL ONI is a first-generation Nigerian-American artist and space doula living between New York City and hometown Houston, TX. He believes design is not about what he is making, but who he is making it for. As for art, it is religion. His work explores loss, memory, and its deep connection with space. He utilizes spatial justice design and visual storytelling to unearth narratives related to trauma, healing, and ritual. His canvas consists of repurposing existing public space infrastructure such as light posts, fencing, underutilized green areas or mobile spaces to prompt community dialogue and connection. His aim is to fuse the physical with the spiritual. He has led and participated in international art and urbanism workshops in Venice, Hong Kong, and Lagos. He has been a Fellow for the Design Trust for Public Space, Culture Push, New York for Culture and Arts, More Art Engaging Artist Commission NY, and received awards from Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY, Office of Neighborhood Safety, Architectural League of New York, the New York State Council of the Arts, and commissioned by Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc) as the artist for the Chrystie Street African Burial Ground Memorial Installation in the Lower East Side. He is a former Director of Community Design at the New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and Adjunct Professor at Parsons the New School for Design. He is the co-founder and Creative Director of Liminal, a non-profit that works at the intersection of art, unity, and space.
A native of Philadelphia, DEBRA JEFFREYS-GLASS came to NY to seek her fortune in the motion picture business in the mid-1980s. She moved to the LES in 1989, by way of the pre-gentrified Fort Greene area of Brooklyn. Despite the break-in on her first night on Norfolk street, she never looked back. She worked for 15 years as a production manager and production coordinator in film and television in NYC. While she never quite found the pot of gold at the end of the film rainbow, she met her husband Ted on one of those film jobs, and found a different kind of gold – a wonderful life with a husband and two little boys who are now grown men. She and Ted found a loving community in their LES neighborhood, and became active in M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden. Twenty-six years later, they are both still passionately committed to this green space. Debra was a long-serving co-chair and is currently the garden’s treasurer, and has organized many garden events over the years, including Juneteenth celebrations in the garden since 2005. Debra serves on Community Board 3s Health, Seniors, Human Services and Education committee, and is currently VP of the SDR Park Coalition. She holds a BA in Radio, Television and Film from Temple University, a dual MSEd in Early Childhood and Childhood education from Bank Street College, and an EdM in Private School Leadership from Teachers College. She has been a classroom teacher and school administrator for the past 17 years, and currently earns her coins as the Elementary Division Director at The Calhoun School. However, she gets most of her wealth from working with like minded folks who want to make their corner of the world a better place.
CATHERINE MBALI GREEN-JOHNSON is a visionary cultural leader and reparationist with over 20 years of experience in arts administration, community advocacy, and social justice. As the Chairperson of the East New York African Burial Ground Committee, she has been at the forefront of preserving and honoring the sacred burial site located beneath the New Lots Library. Under her leadership, the committee’s community-driven visioning process has secured a $7 million renovation, ensuring the site’s restoration and long-term protection as a space of remembrance and cultural significance.
Catherine is also the Founder of The Art of Reparations, a groundbreaking initiative that brings artists, creatives, and communities together to explore reparative justice through art, workshops, and public programming. In February 2025, she will launch The Art of Reparations podcast, creating a platform for dialogue on reparations through the lens of artists and culture bearers. She facilitates reparations workshops for organizations, foundations, agencies, and schools locally, nationally, and internationally.
In her role as Director of Programs at The Laundromat Project, Catherine curates programming that uplifts communities of color, supporting artists and neighbors as change agents within their own communities. Previously, she founded ARTs East New York, where she masterfully combined artistic expression and community engagement to drive social change. She also led the ReNew Lots Market and Artist Incubator, transforming vacant land into a thriving space for local entrepreneurs and artists.
Appointed by the Mayor of New York City to the Cultural Affairs Advisory Committee in 2018, Catherine played a key role in shaping the city’s first cultural plan centered on equity and inclusion. Her work is deeply rooted in the power of imagination, storytelling, and ancestral research, ensuring that Black and Indigenous histories are honored and that communities of color have the tools to co-create radical, sustainable futures.
Catherine continues to be a driving force in cultural preservation, community-led development, and reparative justice, bridging history, art, and activism to create meaningful societal change.
A proud mother of 3, SHANNA SABIO was born in Brownsville, and raised in Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant. She’s an anti-disciplinary artist, curator, cultural strategist, and public historian whose practice uses the intersections of art and technology, travel and urban planning to create healing, anti-racist, equitable, and inclusive spaces.
She’s co-founder and co-director of GrowHouse NYC, a community development cooperative that empowers Black people and our allies to collectively own and develop our communities resources, including property, cultural institutions and sites of memory, and artistic production.
GrowHouse was a founding organization of the Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition, and has used Walking Tours, Art Installations, Technology partnerships, Events and Teach-ins, Partnerships with colleges and universities to raise awareness of the Flatbush African Burial Ground.
The BLAC Land Trust is part of GrowHouse’s strategy to catalyze Black staying power in Bed Stuy, Ocean Hill, Weeksville and Crown Heights., and will launch a campaign to secure the first collectively owned property in a portfolio in Spring 2025.
