Events

Event Description

“Who Gets Remembered? Public Policy, Memory, and the Monuments We Build”

Monuments are public statements of power, and the budgets we provide for historic preservation can tell us what we care about. After living in Alabama for eight years, Jose Vazquez, Communications Director at the ACLU of Alabama and community organizer, discusses how governments actively shape collective memory and how those memories shape future policy.

In this talk, Jose will discuss their work promoting the National Monument Audit, a study of 50,000 conventional monuments, and how it brought them to craft their own interactive anti-monument in Montgomery, Alabama. Overall, Jose will highlight how creative storytelling is central to both policy debates and community power.

Students will leave with a deeper understanding of how public policy decisions embed themselves into culture, and a challenge to consider: If you had the power to fund public memory, whose stories would you make sure future generations inherit?