This panel will focus on women in the context of their historical and political environments, and how those environments led to their singular and group actions for voting rights. 1920-2020 and beyond. 2020 marks the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment which gave some women the right to vote. Voting rights have always been a […]

What Cheer Writers Club Members are invited to sign up now to write & create Art in the Fields together on Sat, Sept 12 at What Cheer Flower Farm, a nonprofit in Olneyville that gives flowers to charity. Write, draw & create among the blossoms alongside (but six feet away from) other local creatives.

Inspired by 19th and 20th century suffragists fight for women’s suffrage, today the fight continues to keep the franchise and universal adult suffrage. What are impediments that keep eligible voters from exercising their franchise? What can be done to overcome barriers and encourage broader participation as we look to the November 2 election? How will […]

One of the issues suffragists in the 19th century campaigned for, including Rhode Island’s Elizabeth Buffum Chace, was prison reform. What is being done to address the reliance of community safety policies on policing and prisons, overcome biases in the criminal justice system, promote the exercise of justice with equity, and not unjustly burden communities […]

Annette Gordon-Reed, a Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning scholar, is a preeminent historian of early America, law, slavery, and the country's third president. Join us for a conversation about Thomas Jefferson's impact on our republic and the distance between his principles and lived reality. She will be joined by Brown University Assistant Professor Emily […]

Author and local historian Janet Lisle will detail the lives of a close-knit group of 19th-century women living at the corner of West Main and Swamp Roads, who, despite their youth, led Little Compton’s abolition efforts in the century’s early decades.

The fight for “Equal Pay for Equal Work” was a cause championed by American Suffragists starting in the 1850s. What can be done today to promote employee equity regardless of sexual orientation, gender, age, race, or ethnicity? The social ramifications of pay in-equity are brought to the forefront during the current public health emergency, especially […]

Today, we know about the Rough Riders mostly as a colorful chapter in the life of Theodore Roosevelt. But there is much more to the tale. In his talk, New York Times deputy op-ed editor Clay Risen will explore the untold history of the regiment and explain what made it such a significant part of […]

With so many local creatives in financial straits, What Cheer Writers Club is holding a practicum on financial relief available to writers, illustrators and podcasters negatively impacted by Covid or otherwise in need of funding for creative projects. Register now for Writer Relief: Funds & Fellowships for RI Creatives with RISCA’s Mollie Flanagan, online on […]