With the development of technology and advances in pre-natal care, the childbirth experience should be safer than ever.  Yet, in Massachusetts, life-threatening and fatal complications associated with labor and delivery have increased at alarming rates for all birthing people, with Black women experiencing the highest rates of death. 

In this forum, legislators, healthcare experts and advocates discuss the state of maternal health in the Commonwealth, and how better access to care can ensure that giving birth is safe, nurturing and survivable. 

The speakers are:
Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha, Ph.D.
Emily Anesta
Nashira Baril, MPH
Representative Brandy Fluker Oakley
Representative Kay Khan, RN/MSN
Senator Liz Miranda
Lucy Lomas, M.D.
Jo-Anna Rorie, Ph.D.
GBH News Saraya Wintersmith is moderating the discussion

This event will be followed by a reception.


This talk is a partnership between the Commonwealth Beacon and GBH Forum Network supported by
Bay State Birth Coalition
Boston Children’s Hospital
Boston’s Higher Ground
Boston Public Health Commission
Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Children’s HealthWatch
MassNOW
Massachusetts Women of Color Coalition (MAWOCC)
NAACP, Boston Chapter
Neighborhood Birth Center
New England Medical Association (NEMA)
The Wagner Foundation
Boston Public Health Commission

Join Beck Mordini and Jenny Pell for a lively conversation about facing our pretty scary future with integrity, hope, plenty of know-how, and a great sense of humor. They dive into climate reality, appropriate technologies, skill-building, local food, and neighborhood solutions that will inspire you to jump into your own community-based projects with both feet. The dearth of leadership on the coming climate crises is insane, so what do we do, and what are you bringing to the table?  There's plenty of good news and lots of do, and who knows, maybe the suburbs will save the world.  

Jenny Pell is a career permaculture designer and consultant based on Maui whose extensive international portfolio spans everything from neighborhood foodscaping to large-scale climate resilient agroforestry. She was the lead designer for Seattle's first food forest, a successful and much-loved multi-stakeholder project. But teaching is her passion - growing food from seed to plate, watershed restoration, planting living banks of valuable genetics, buffering against the extremes of climate instability, and empowering people to learn important skills that will carry us through the coming challenges. And of course having good fun all the while, 'cause who wants to come to the party if you can't dance! Her website is https://permaculturenow.org.

FAREED ZAKARIA, best-selling author & host of CNN’s flagship international affairs show “Fareed Zakaria GPS”, discusses his latest book, “AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present” with STEVEN PINKER, Professor of Psychology at Harvard and author of twelve books.

Fareed Zakaria is the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post, and a bestselling author.

Cambridge Forum takes a look at three French female visionaries who led a revolution against women’s garments, that had previously limited and restricted their bodies.  By releasing women from their physical “prisons” they were able to accelerate the political liberation of their minds.

Anne Higonnet, author of Liberty Equality Fashion, is professor of art history at Barnard College and teaches an incredibly popular course on the history of clothing.
This new book grew out of Higonnet's class and archival research she did at the Morgan Library in Manhattan, where she discovered a complete set of Journal des dames et des modes fashion plates - the rarest fashion plates in the world - from the French revolutionary era, providing the ultimate evidence for what was generally fashionable, week by week, during the years dominated by Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France, Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe, and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals.

The discovery of these plates upended the dominant understanding of the era.
From one year to the next, these fashion revolutionaries led a rebellion against corsets, petticoats, and enormous skirts. Their flowing garments not only embodied freedom for modern women, but also marked the emergence of global capitalism, shopping culture, and the rise of powerful style influencers. In their starred reviews, Publishers Weekly says the book is “as rigorous as it is fun” while Kirkus commends Higonnet’s “meticulous research [and] energetic prose.” 

Join Cambridge Forum and Anne Higonnet in examining how politics, economics, and identity merged during the French Revolution and heralded a new feminism that is the antecedent to current, popular modes of self-expression and self-empowerment.


 

Delve into one of the darkest chapters in human history as Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum provides historical facts and answers your questions about Auschwitz, the largest and most lethal Nazi concentration and death camp. More than 1,100,000 people were killed behind its barbed wire fences.

Michael Berenbaum is the Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, and a Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University. The author and editor of 24 books, he was also the Executive Editor of the Second Edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. He was Project Director overseeing the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the first Director of its Research Institute, and later served as President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which took the testimony of 52,000 Holocaust survivors in 32 languages and 57 countries. His work in film has won Emmy Awards and Academy Awards. He has developed and curated museum exhibits in the United States, Mexico, North Macedonia, and Poland; and his award-winning exhibition Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away. has been seen in Madrid, Spain, Malmo, Sweden, New York, Kansas City, the Ronald Regan Library in California, and is now on view in Boston.


This event is presented in partnership with the Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. exhibit on view now at The Castle at Park Plaza in Boston.

Photos: (from top left clockwise to bottom left)
-A transport of Jews from Hungary arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland, May 1944
-Main entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. This photograph was taken some time after the liberation of the camp in January 1945. Poland, date uncertain.
-View of a section of the barbed-wire fence and barracks at Auschwitz at the time of the liberation of the camp. Auschwitz, Poland, January 1945.
-A transport of Hungarian Jews lines up on the ramp for selection at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in German-occupied Poland. May 1944.
Images provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Talks that are about physics, biology, astronomy, geology and more.

James Eldridge has served as State Senator for the Middlesex and Worcester district since January 2009. Senator Eldridge previously served as State Representative for the 37th Middlesex district. He serves as the Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Vice Chair Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources.

Kelly Siegel-Stechler is a Senior Researcher at CIRCLE, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University's Tisch College of Civic Life. Her research is centered on civic development and political socialization in schools.