Writer and spoken word artist Nikki Patin has long been an advocate for survivors of sexual assault, harassment, and harm in creative spaces. In 2005, she left a position as a teaching artist when the institution she was working for (which she prefers not to name) seemed uninterested in protecting students from sexual harassment and assault, and she started working at Rape Victims Advocates—now Resilience—as a sexual assault prevention educator. She remained involved in Chicago’s spoken word scene and continued to see pleas for protection from survivors ignored.
Poet Cherlnell Lane will guest during this month’s edition of Surviving the Mic on Monday, November 11. Patin says it’s important to amplify the voices of women like Lane, who is a Black woman from the south side of Chicago, because even though a majority of survivors are Black women and women of color, they don’t often get to tell their own stories.
Mon 11/11, 7 PM, K.L.E.O. Community Center, 119 E. Garfield, survivingthemic.org, free.
