The Poets Platform

Ideally, community feedback would directly impact policy. In this moment where many folks feel either entirely removed from the political process or overwhelmed by it, Exhibit B will be joined by artists using the Democratic Party platform as a prompt.  We are proud to be part of DEMOCRAZY FEST going on from Aug 12-23rd at Co-Prosperity!  

More about DEMOCRAZY FEST:  The Democratic National Convention is coming back to Chicago this August 19-22, and the Left is coming back to protest, too!  Public Media Institute is coordinating a collaborative welcome to artists and activists coming into town.  We’re Lump’n it all together under the theme of “Democrazy.”  We are living in the legacy of the 1968 DNC protests when activists and artists came together in our city to fight war with love but were met with police violence and state repression. Lumpen 142: Democrazy will revisit these histories while prioritizing the urgent contemporary movements that will bring people back to our streets this year.

Artists Bios:

Czaerra Galicinao Ucol (they/them) is a queer Filipino writer from Chicago. Their debut poetry collection Pisces Urges was published by Sampaguita Press in 2023, and they are the Co-Director of Luya, a local grassroots poetry organization for people of color.

Nisha Atalie is a poet, editor, educator, and creature in a constant state of becoming and unbecoming. Some of her inspirations include Lake Michigan, her pup Moti, the moon, and friends and comrades—human and otherwise. Her biggest inspiration is the ongoing, centuries-long struggle to decolonize the world and uproot racial capitalism. Nisha is based in Chicago, on occupied Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi land.

I.S. Jones is an American / Nigerian poet and essayist. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Washington Square Review, LA Review of Books, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. She is currently an instructor with Brooklyn Poets and the 2023 Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar in poetry. She is the 2024 Artist-In-Resident as Northwestern University. Her chapbook Spells of My Name (2021) is out with Newfound. She is at work on her debut collection of poems.

FAYLITA HICKS (she/they) is a queer Afro-Latinx writer, spoken word artist, and cultural strategist. Newly based in Chicago, IL, Hicks is the author of the critically-acclaimed debut poetry collection HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, the 2019 Julie Suk Award, and the 2019 Balcones Poetry Prize. Currently, they are working on a second poetry collection, A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books, 2024), and a debut memoir about their carceral experience, A Body of Wild Light (Haymarket Books, 2025). Born in Gardena, California, but raised in Central Texas, they received their MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada College’s Low Residency Program (now University of Reno at Incline Village Low Residency MFA Program).

C. Russell Price (they/them).

Poet in Residence, Chicago Poetry Center

Editorial Collective Member, The Anarchist Review of Books. Core Faculty, Story Studio Chicago. Curatorial Board Member, Ragdale Foundation. Author of Tonight, We Fuck The Trailer Park Out of Each Other (Sibling Rivalry Press). and oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems (Northwestern University Press)

Eman Abdelhadi is an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities. She is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 – 2072.

Naked Brunch: Chicagoland band playing slinky funk rock.