About This Event
To open Season 3 of The Heart of The Culture series, we are excited to announce the rescheduled event, The Audacity of Hope Today, a conversation bringing together inspiring leaders in the struggle for justice and peace, representing three generations. Our speakers include Reverend Irene Monroe, Executive Director Saffana Anwar, BHAC Executive Director, Dr. Kris Manjapra, and Councilwoman E. Denise Simmons.
E. Denise Simmons has spent a lifetime in service to Cambridge. Now in her 13th term on the City Council – which includes three terms as Mayor – she has shaped the civic life of this city for more than three decades: as Executive Director of the Cambridge Civic Unity Committee in the 1980s, as a member of the Cambridge School Committee in the 1990s, and as a City Councilor since 2002.
In 2008, Denise made history as the nation's first Black, openly lesbian mayor – and the first Black female mayor in Massachusetts. As Mayor, she opened the doors of City Hall in ways Cambridge had not seen before: weekly walk-in hours for constituents, the Mayor’s Parlor made available for public celebrations, and a series of community Town Halls – for LGBTQ+ residents, renters, and senior citizens – designed so that people could speak directly to their civic leaders, not simply be spoken to. She has continued convening these forums well beyond her time in the Mayor’s office.
On the Council, Denise has fought for ordinance changes that deliver real wage fairness for City janitors and custodians – because the standard a city sets for its own workforce signals what it expects of every employer in town. As Chair of the Civic Unity Committee, she has anchored an ongoing civic dialogue about fairness, equity, and respect – both in the workplace and across the community. That commitment led her to advance legislation establishing an American Freedmen Commission and to open pathways for women and minority entrepreneurs to launch and profit from their own recreational cannabis dispensaries. As Chair of the Housing Committee, she led the successful push to triple the fees that developers must pay toward affordable housing, double the mandatory affordable units required in new developments, and pass the Citywide Affordable Housing Overlay zoning ordinance. Expanding the supply of affordable housing – and making sure Cambridge residents can actually access it – remains central to everything she does on the Council.
Denise has also been a strong, persistent voice for Cambridge’s seniors, working to protect funding for meal programs and essential services at a time when federal and state cuts threaten the safety net that older residents depend on. She has pushed for expanded outreach, stronger coordination among city agencies, and a greater role for seniors themselves in shaping the policies that affect their daily lives.
Beyond policy, Denise invests directly in people. She founded the Cambridge Girls Leadership Group, known as G.O.L.D., a mentorship program that gives 8th and 9th grade girls the confidence and skills to thrive in high school and beyond. She is also working to establish a permanent Cambridge History Museum, and she continues connecting residents with resources on how to most effectively search for affordable housing.
Kris Manjapra works at the intersection of global history and the critical study of race and colonialism. His research connects the Caribbean and Indian Ocean worlds. His books include a comparative study of global emancipation processes and the implications for reparations movements today: Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation (Scribner and Penguin, 2022), shortlisted for the 2022 New England Book Award and the 2023 British Academy Book Prize. His previous book, Colonialism in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2020), contributes to the emerging field of global race, colonialism, and diaspora studies. Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectual across Empire (Harvard, 2014) won the 2019 International Merck-Tagore Prize. Professor Manjapra is a general editor of The Cambridge History of Colonialism and Decolonization. He is the founder of a site-based nonprofit, Black History in Action, dedicated to the restoration and reactivation of a Black cultural heritage center in Cambridge, MA. Professor Manjapra directs the Arts & Humanities Social Action Lab at Northeastern University. Professor Manjapra is a Guggenheim Fellow, and has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute and the Berlin Academy of Advanced Study.
Rev. Irene Monroe (she, her, hers) can be heard on the podcast and standing Boston Public Radio segment ALL REV’D UP on GBH. As feminist lesbian public theologian, ordained minister, and syndicated religion columnist, Monroe’s columns appear locally and nationally in the U.K and Canada. Her papers are at Harvard University at the Schlesinger Library and Radcliffe College’s Research Library on the History of Women in America.
Monroe states, "As a religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the “other ” and it’s usually acted upon ‘in the name of religion,” by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating various forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.”
Monroe is a founder and now member emeritus of several national LGBTQ+ black and religious organizations, and as an activist, she has received numerous awards.
About This Event
To open Season 3 of The Heart of The Culture series, we are excited to announce the rescheduled event, The Audacity of Hope Today, a conversation bringing together inspiring leaders in the struggle for justice and peace, representing three generations. Our speakers include Reverend Irene Monroe, Executive Director Saffana Anwar, BHAC Executive Director, Dr. Kris Manjapra, and Councilwoman E. Denise Simmons.
E. Denise Simmons has spent a lifetime in service to Cambridge. Now in her 13th term on the City Council – which includes three terms as Mayor – she has shaped the civic life of this city for more than three decades: as Executive Director of the Cambridge Civic Unity Committee in the 1980s, as a member of the Cambridge School Committee in the 1990s, and as a City Councilor since 2002.
In 2008, Denise made history as the nation's first Black, openly lesbian mayor – and the first Black female mayor in Massachusetts. As Mayor, she opened the doors of City Hall in ways Cambridge had not seen before: weekly walk-in hours for constituents, the Mayor’s Parlor made available for public celebrations, and a series of community Town Halls – for LGBTQ+ residents, renters, and senior citizens – designed so that people could speak directly to their civic leaders, not simply be spoken to. She has continued convening these forums well beyond her time in the Mayor’s office.
On the Council, Denise has fought for ordinance changes that deliver real wage fairness for City janitors and custodians – because the standard a city sets for its own workforce signals what it expects of every employer in town. As Chair of the Civic Unity Committee, she has anchored an ongoing civic dialogue about fairness, equity, and respect – both in the workplace and across the community. That commitment led her to advance legislation establishing an American Freedmen Commission and to open pathways for women and minority entrepreneurs to launch and profit from their own recreational cannabis dispensaries. As Chair of the Housing Committee, she led the successful push to triple the fees that developers must pay toward affordable housing, double the mandatory affordable units required in new developments, and pass the Citywide Affordable Housing Overlay zoning ordinance. Expanding the supply of affordable housing – and making sure Cambridge residents can actually access it – remains central to everything she does on the Council.
Denise has also been a strong, persistent voice for Cambridge’s seniors, working to protect funding for meal programs and essential services at a time when federal and state cuts threaten the safety net that older residents depend on. She has pushed for expanded outreach, stronger coordination among city agencies, and a greater role for seniors themselves in shaping the policies that affect their daily lives.
Beyond policy, Denise invests directly in people. She founded the Cambridge Girls Leadership Group, known as G.O.L.D., a mentorship program that gives 8th and 9th grade girls the confidence and skills to thrive in high school and beyond. She is also working to establish a permanent Cambridge History Museum, and she continues connecting residents with resources on how to most effectively search for affordable housing.
Kris Manjapra works at the intersection of global history and the critical study of race and colonialism. His research connects the Caribbean and Indian Ocean worlds. His books include a comparative study of global emancipation processes and the implications for reparations movements today: Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation (Scribner and Penguin, 2022), shortlisted for the 2022 New England Book Award and the 2023 British Academy Book Prize. His previous book, Colonialism in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2020), contributes to the emerging field of global race, colonialism, and diaspora studies. Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectual across Empire (Harvard, 2014) won the 2019 International Merck-Tagore Prize. Professor Manjapra is a general editor of The Cambridge History of Colonialism and Decolonization. He is the founder of a site-based nonprofit, Black History in Action, dedicated to the restoration and reactivation of a Black cultural heritage center in Cambridge, MA. Professor Manjapra directs the Arts & Humanities Social Action Lab at Northeastern University. Professor Manjapra is a Guggenheim Fellow, and has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute and the Berlin Academy of Advanced Study.
Rev. Irene Monroe (she, her, hers) can be heard on the podcast and standing Boston Public Radio segment ALL REV’D UP on GBH. As feminist lesbian public theologian, ordained minister, and syndicated religion columnist, Monroe’s columns appear locally and nationally in the U.K and Canada. Her papers are at Harvard University at the Schlesinger Library and Radcliffe College’s Research Library on the History of Women in America.
Monroe states, "As a religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the “other ” and it’s usually acted upon ‘in the name of religion,” by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating various forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.”
Monroe is a founder and now member emeritus of several national LGBTQ+ black and religious organizations, and as an activist, she has received numerous awards.