Slow but steady progress on removing offensive place names in Oregon

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Canadian Museum and the Chinatown Storytelling Centre both opened in Vancouver with the goal of documenting and honoring the role of Chinese immigrants in Canadian history. Roughly 13,000 people have visited each museum since their openings, and members of the Chinese Canadian community say the exhibits preserve important stories while acknowledging the harm Chinese Candians have faced.

Chicago students organized and, for the first time, convinced the city to rename a park in honor of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. The former Douglas Park was named after a Civil War era Illinois senator who advocated to expand slavery, and whose wife owned slaves. Not daunted by the city’s bureaucracy, the students canvassed in their community and gathered over 10,000 signatures for a petition to change the park’s name. The campaign, which began in 2017, was much harder and longer than the students anticipated, but by forming a coalition and continuing to speak out they persevered.

In Minnesota, volunteer chaplains are attending community events at the request of the participants to provide counsel and support to anyone who may be experiencing symptoms of trauma. Before attending any event to lend help, the volunteer "clergy, spiritual leaders and mental health leaders" first undergo a virtual cultural sensitivity and trauma training. During the events, the interfaith chaplains often perform volunteer duties, but also wear orange shirts to be easily identifiable for those who would like to share.

Black Lives Matters protests have been sustained by an autonomously organized mutual aid network providing a range of services for protesters and community members. Requests for information and assistance are sent using encrypted communication. The groups provide medics, public protest art, legal and financial aid, and even mechanics to service protesters’ cars and a group that helps protesters replace glasses that were damaged or lost due to police encounters. The extensive mutual aid network enables flexibility to respond to a diverse set of changing needs, sustaining protests longer than in other cities.

Contextualizing artistic representations creates more complex narratives and offers an opportunity to educate about historical memory. The Atlanta History Center has opened an exhibition that illuminates the absence of people of color in the “Battle of Atlanta” Cyclorama, an artwork that celebrates the 1864 Union victory. The museum presents the work alongside interactive guides and films that explain the erasure of African Americans from the memory of the scene.

Soil collection ceremonies offer a meaningful way to help cope with and create institutional memory of racial violence across the United States. The Equal Justice Initiative is working to keep the victims of lynching and racial violence alive in America’s collective memory by promoting a practice common across cultures—the collection of soil. Communities collect soil from sites of racially motivated killings into jars, which are then displayed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama.

Governments in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere use crowdfunded donations to restore historic areas and fund new developments. The approach can build democratic participation and community cohesion while plugging budgetary holes from falling tax revenue.

Project 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Commemoration Initiative is a public art installation to memorialize the Vietnamese who fought alongside U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War, as this group is often forgotten. The memorial tells stories from the perspective of the Vietnamese, highlighting the impact of war on families and communities.

A team of Western art conservationists trained a community in Tibet how to restore historic monasteries that were crumbling due to the effects of climate change. Over decades of restoration work, the team sparked a cultural renaissance in the region and is providing economic opportunities for women.

The Heartland Earthworks Conservancy finds and works to preserve ancient, Indigenous earthworks in Ohio. They use a device called a magnetometer to find electromagnetic remnants in the soil that reveal buried and disassembled structures like walls, ditches, and mounds.