Westheimer Peace Symposium: Peace Through Human Dignity: Justice, Mass Incarceration, and Immigration Detention in the United States

Registration is required. Please use the OneStop app to register for this event.

Description: This workshop explores how innocent people in Ohio, and across the United States, are wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.

Facilitator bio: Pierce Reed is the Director of Policy and Engagement at the Ohio Innocence Project. He is an attorney and former social worker. His bio is available here.”

Registration is Required. Please register for this event on the OneStop App.

Facilitator/presenter bio:
Dr. Lindsey Mattern is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Wilmington College. She teaches classes focused on human health, human nutrition, and public and global health. For over a year, she has also been teaching with Wilmington College’s Prison Education Program. After completing her bachelor's degree in Biology and Anthropological Sciences at The Ohio State University, Dr. Mattern earned her MA and PhD in Biological Anthropology from Indiana University. With a background in Medical and Nutritional Anthropology, her research focuses on nutrition and human health.

Session description:
Nutrition and health are deeply interconnected. When access to nutritious food is limited or denied, the consequences can extend beyond hunger, affecting both physical and mental health. In this workshop, we will examine the challenges of inadequate nutrition in carceral settings and explore how these conditions can contribute to immediate and long-term health consequences. Through real-world examples, we will consider how nutritional quality can shape health outcomes within carceral settings. Throughout the workshop, participants will also engage in a mindfulness-based art project, creating space for reflection on the relationship between food, health, and human well-being.

Registration is Required. Please be sure to register for this Westheimer session using the OneStop app.

Session Description:
This Lunch & Learn will focus on Saskia's experiences conducting research with Latinx immigrant youth in Harrisburg, PA while threading in research conducted by other people on immigrant populations across the country. Topics will include concerns with conducting research in undocumented populations, the school-to-prison pipeline, and experiences of youth with incarcerated parents. We will also address how policing disparities by neighborhood and the myth of the model minority factor into this system, as well as the experiences of transnational families—or, in other words, the way children and teens can be affected when some, but not all, family members experience detention, deportation, and migration.

Facilitator/presenter Bio:

Saskia Boggs is an associate professor of psychology at Wilmington College. A developmental psychologist by training, her research broadly focuses on cultural and ethnic minority adolescent development, particularly in neighborhood and school settings. She spent five of six years in graduate school working directly with immigrant youth in Harrisburg, PA across a combination of research projects and community giveback initiatives. Her interest in this area stems in part from her family's own recent immigration history. Her outdated faculty bio can be found here: https://www.wilmington.edu/faculty/saskia-boggs

Please be sure to register for the session using the OneStop APP

Session description:
In the first half of this session, Wes will guide you through an interactive poetry clinic centered on meaningful conversation their results in the creation of a shared poem. Using that poem as the foundation, Kevin will teach an improv/sketch workshop that helps participants build characters and cohesive scenes. Through these seemingly different approaches, participants will collectively develop language and ideas through poetry and then use themes, situations or lines emerging from that process as material for improvisation, performance and further conversation.

Facilitator/presenter bios:
Kevin Ballou is a performing artist whose work spans improv theater, scripted theater, stand-up comedy, film, poetry, and mixed media. A member of the Returning Artists Guild since 2020, Kevin uses humor and storytelling to explore the complexity of human relationships while creating opportunities for audiences to laugh, reflect, and connect. Through performance, he believes the arts can foster empathy, joy, and meaningful conversation.

Wesley "WallStreet Wes" Robinson is a professional poet, educator, and creator of Poetry Clinics. Drawing from his lived experience, including incarceration, he uses poetry as a tool for dialogue, healing, and social change. Through workshops and performances, Robinson works alongside overlooked communities, listening to their stories and transforming those conversations into original poems. His work encourages meaningful conversations about justice, humanity, and collective responsibility.

Registration is required. Please be sure to use the OneStop App to register.

Westheimer session description:

If an experience, memory, or migration story could be served as a meal, what would you put on the table?
This interactive workshop looks at the experience of migration through the metaphor of a meal. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of movement (migration) based on their own personal experiences, family histories, or stories they have heard. Participants will work with artist Gil Rocha to express those experiences in the form of a “meal.” Through drawing, painting, photography, collage, printmaking, maps, postcards, letters, text or : sculpture, found objects, clothing, personal objects, handmade objects. Participants may also draw from poetry, literature, sound, music, recorded voices, video, smell, soil, plants, water, packaging, or actual food.

Facilitator/presenter bio:
Gil Rocha is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and community leader based in South Texas. Born in Laredo, TX, he currently serves as Board President of the Laredo Center for the Arts, where he collaborates with other community members to foster cultural engagement through exhibitions, workshops, and public programming. Over the past 25 years, Rocha has also contributed as an educator and panelist at various art institutions. Rocha’s artistic practice spans through painting, collage, sculpture, assemblage, installation, mixed media and writing. Grounded in rasquache aesthetics and the complex dualities of the U.S.-Mexico border, his work examines the act of crossing—physically, culturally, and psychologically—while challenging fixed notions of identity, place, and belonging. He earned his Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006), a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio (1999), and educator certification from Texas A&M International University (2002).

Registration is required. Please register for this session using the OneStop App.

Session description:
The Braver Angels Community Forum on Immigration is a gathering that creates space for reflection, storytelling, and connection across diverse experiences and viewpoints. The forum begins with 2-4 ideologically diverse panelists sharing what's at the heart of the immigration issue for them, along with their ideas for improving the U.S. immigration system. Attendees in the audience then engage in a one-to-one brief conversation with each other about the same questions. The Forum follows the Braver Angels Way: individuals speak freely and fully without fear, and treat people who disagree with them with honesty, dignity, and respect. The Braver Angels Community Forum on Immigration is a gathering that creates space for reflection, storytelling, and connection across diverse experiences and viewpoints. The forum begins with ideologically diverse panelists sharing what's at the heart of the immigration issue for them, and then moves to inviting attendees in the audience to engage in a one-to-one brief conversation about the same question.

Session faciltators/presenter bios:
David Lapp is co-founder of Braver Angels and director of the Citizens Commission on Immigration at Braver Angels. David spent several years interviewing working-class Ohioans about their life experiences and families before helping to start Braver Angels. David lives with his wife Amber and six children in South Lebanon, Ohio, the home of the first-ever Braver Angels workshop in December 2016.

Registration is required. Please be sure to register for this session using the OneStop app.

Session Description:
Together, we will consider what it means to teach peace within the U.S. prison system and how these educational spaces can cultivate hope, humanity, and meaningful relationships. Rather than simply talking about our approach, we will invite participants to experience it. Sitting together in a circle, participants will engage in activities and dialogue modeled after practices used in prison classrooms. The facilitators, drawing on their experiences teaching inside correctional facilities, will share how peace education can foster connection, reflection, dialogue, and community within spaces defined by confinement.

Facilitator/presenter bios:
Dr. Laura Mishne Heller is a faculty member at Wilmington College whose teaching and scholarship span social work, criminal justice, and public health, with interests in health equity, education, and justice system reform. A dedicated faculty member in Wilmington College’s Prison Education Program, she advocates for expanding higher education opportunities for people who are incarcerated. She collaborates with the Ohio Innocence Project on education and dialogue around wrongful convictions and supports death penalty abolition through partnerships with Ohioans to Stop Executions and the Catholic Mobilizing Network. She also serves on the Board of Trustees for UpSpring, a Cincinnati-based nonprofit that helps remove educational barriers for children experiencing homelessness.
Link to learn more about Laura: www.linkedin.com/in/laura-mishne-heller-ph-d-lisw-s-39a777245

Aaron Nell currently works in Wilmington College's Prison Education Program. He graduated from Wilmington in 1995 and was inspired to study the prison system after playing music at a graduation ceremony in Warren Correctional Institution, the facility where he now serves incarcerated students. He has volunteered as an Alternatives to Violence Project facilitator for many years. Aaron plays music and writes and shares poems with other makers.

Dr. Jonathan Sparks-Franklin is assistant professor of Religion and Philosophy at Wilmington College. He teaches Peace Studies as well as Religion and Philosophy on the Wilmington College main campus as well as with the WC PEP program. He has a PhD in Religious Studies from Indiana University, an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and an MTS from United Theological Seminary. In addition to his teaching and scholarship, Dr. Sparks-Franklin is an active member of the Third Way Peace Fellowship, "a community of radical peacemakers serving Cincinnati neighborhoods through vegan food outreach, mutual aid, and innovative theological gatherings exploring the spirituality of active nonviolence."

Registration is required. Please be sure to register for this session using the OneStop app.

Westheimer session description
Sheena’s workshop invites participants to rebuild trust in their own perception, intuition, and ability to feel present and safe in their bodies. Through Indigenous Plant Listening, participants practice sensory awareness and reconnect with themselves and plants as living relatives that carry medicine and knowledge. Sheena introduces a four-step framework for creating everyday rituals that support healing, transformation, and embodied awareness. Participants then create a personalized ritual tea, accompanied by wildflower seed paper, transforming their intentions into something tangible that they can take home, plant, and continue to nurture. Sheena has facilitated many workshops and is comfortable sharing her lived experience as a justice-impacted artist.

Westheimer session facilitator/presenter bio:
Sheena Hanscel is an Indigenous artist, educator and founder of the Pollen Patch, an urban educational space and native ethnobotanical garden in Columbus, OH. She facilitates hands-on DIY workshops that focus on teaching practical, ancestral skills that empower people to reclaim self-care autonomy, while building reciprocal relationships with plants and the land.

Please be sure to register for this session using the OneStop app.

Session Description:

After September 11, 2001 the United States' immigration system shifted from one of diplomacy and economic exchange to one of national security. In this session, we'll explore modern approaches to immigration enforcement and how local law enforcement agencies in Southwest Ohio are allocating local resources in enforcing federal civil immigration law. We'll work to understand how the immigration system works, what the process of detention and deportation looks like, and how it's affecting our local communities..

Facilitator/presenter bio:
Samantha Searls is a Program Director at Ignite Peace (formerly known as IJPC, Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center). At Ignite Peace, Samantha leads their immigration justice work and facilitates educational programming on nonviolence and anti-racism. Originally raised in Findlay, Samantha attended the University of Indianapolis to earn a degree in social work and later received her Master of Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to her time at Ignite Peace, Samantha served as a community organizer working on environmental, economic, and social justice issues.

Registration is required. Please be sure to register for this event using the OneStop app.

Westheimer Session Description:
This session asks community members to gather together to learn about how music inspires connection, community, and courage in the face of social and political challenges. Both Clapp and Roma will share their experiences of establishing and conducting choirs inside prisons. They will ask participants to join together singing as they reflect upon prison and immigration detention and the role of music in creating awareness, hope, and solidarity among all people.

Workshop facilitator/presenter bios:

Laura Clapp is assistant professor of Music and Wilmington College. Laura most recently served as faculty in the college of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan where she also directed the University of Michigan’s prison outreach choir, Out of the Blue. Prior to graduate studies, Laura worked with Voices of Hope, a Minneapolis-based prison choir organization, as a recipient of the Yale Glee Club Service Through Music Fellowship. While in Minnesota, Laura also co-directed StreetSong, a choir for people who have experienced homelessness, and directed the choir at Peace United Methodist Church. Laura has served as a soprano and teaching artist with Border CrosSing and performed as a violinist in a string quartet at U-M. During her time as an undergraduate student at Yale, Laura served as a student conductor of the Yale Glee Club and a researcher for the New Muses Project, contributing to their database of women and BIPOC composers.

Catherine Roma has created numerous vibrant choral communities that reach across barriers of race, religion, class, sexual orientation and age. Her beliefs in feminism, social justice, and Quaker models of leadership fundamentally shape her approach to musical activism. She holds a doctorate in choral conducting from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music and was founder and longtime director of MUSE Cincinnati Women’s Choir and the Martin Luther King Coalition Chorale in Cincinnati. In 2012, Roma created the World House Choir in Yellow Springs, the name taken from a reflection by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in which he likens the modern world to a house that we must live in together. She currently serves as the Choir's director where she continues her social justice work.

In 1990 Roma became an educator in the prisons through the Wilmington College Prison Education Program and established the UMOJA Men's chorus at Warren Correctional Institution in Ohio; she has continued her commitment to conducting choirs in prisons to this day. For the past three years Roma founded and conducts NIA Men’s Chorus at Chillicothe Correctional and is dedicated to working with justice-impaired individuals.

This Westheimer Session is now filled to capacity. Please review the schedule and sign up for another session that is still open.


Session description:
Nutrition and health are deeply interconnected. When access to nutritious food is limited or denied, the consequences can extend beyond hunger, affecting both physical and mental health. In this workshop, we will examine the challenges of inadequate nutrition in carceral settings and explore how these conditions can contribute to immediate and long-term health consequences. Through real-world examples, we will consider how nutritional quality can shape health outcomes within carceral settings. Throughout the workshop, participants will also engage in a mindfulness-based art project, creating space for reflection on the relationship between food, health, and human well-being.

Biography:
Dr. Lindsey Mattern is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Wilmington College. She teaches classes focused on human health, human nutrition, and public and global health. For over a year, she has also been teaching with Wilmington College’s Prison Education Program. After completing her bachelor's degree in Biology and Anthropological Sciences at The Ohio State University, Dr. Mattern earned her MA and PhD in Biological Anthropology from Indiana University. With a background in Medical and Nutritional Anthropology, her research focuses on nutrition and human health.

Description of workshop:
Nutrition and health are deeply interconnected. When access to nutritious food is limited or denied, the consequences can extend beyond hunger, affecting both physical and mental health. In this workshop, we will examine the challenges of inadequate nutrition in carceral settings and explore how these conditions can contribute to immediate and long-term health consequences. Through real-world examples, we will consider how nutritional quality can shape health outcomes within carceral settings. Throughout the workshop, participants will also engage in a mindfulness-based art project, creating space for reflection on the relationship between food, health, and human well-being.

THIS SESSION IS NOW CLOSED. PLEASE REVIEW THE SCHEDULE AND REGISTER FOR A SESSION THAT IS STILL OPEN.

Session Description:
This session presented by the Friends Committee on National Legislation is a dialogue regarding Quaker perspectives on mass incarceration, especially in regard to immigration detention. It is a space to ask questions and to learn how Quakers are addressing key issues related to immigration detention throughout the country.

Facilitator Bio:
Maria Mitri started as the Migration and Policy Administrative Associate in 2025. She lobbies for a more just and humane immigration system that honors the inherent dignity of all human beings. Engaging legislators from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill, she works in collaboration with other faith-based groups to advance a shared vision of the world we seek. Specifically, she leads the Interfaith Immigration Coalition’s Legislative Affairs Working Group. Maria Mitri started as the Migration and Policy Administrative Associate in 2025. She lobbies for a more just and humane immigration system that honors the inherent dignity of all human beings. Engaging legislators from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill, she works in collaboration with other faith-based groups to advance a shared vision of the world we seek. Specifically, she leads the Interfaith Immigration Coalition’s Legislative Affairs Working Group.

This Session is FULL. Please review the Westheimer schedule and register for a different session.

Session Description:
In this Westheimer Lunch and Learn, Joe Spring discusses two common misconceptions about immigration in the media and public opinion: that immigrants are dangerous and commit more crime than the general public, and that immigration is a burden on the US economy. He will then contrast them with the realities that he has witnessed firsthand as an immigration lawyer. Joe will also share anecdotal stories about some of the Asylum cases he has worked on. These intense and graphic stories highlight what some of the immigrants are running from when they come to the USA seeking Asylum.

Facilitator/presenter Bio:

Joseph “Joe” Spring has been practicing law in the greater Cincinnati area since 2006. He grew up in Grandview Heights, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio a few miles northwest of downtown. He went to college at the Ohio State University, where he earned a Bachelors of Arts with a major in History. He studied abroad at the Cemenahuac language school in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He speaks Spanish fluently. After college he worked as a Career Developer at Catholic Social Services’ Job Reach program on the west side of Columbus. He entered the Cleveland Marshall College of Law in 2001. He worked as an associate attorney for three years before opening his own law office in 2009. His law firm currently has three lawyers, an office manager, and eight bilingual paralegals.

Registration is required. Please be sure to register for this session using the OneStop app.

Session Description:
This session highlights the Wilmington College Prison Education Program (PEP) through the experiences of faculty and site coordinators who work on regular basis with incarcerated students in the Wilmington College Prison Education Program. At the session you will learn a brief overview of the history of the Wilmington College prison education program; how classes are conducted in the PEP program, and the experiences of faculty and students inside the prison as they work toward their four-year B.A. degrees. You will have a chance to ask questions about the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections and the reason why education within the prison is critical to both the students and their communities on the outside.

Facilitator/presenter bios:
Hope Florea ('24) is the Wilmington College Prison Education Program (PEP) Site Coordinator for Lebanon Correctional Institute, where she works with Wilmington College students inside on a daily basis. Hope is '2024 Wilmington College alumn graduating with a double-major in English and Psychology and a minor in Political Science.

Dr. Ursula McTaggart is the Area Coordinator for the Wilmington College PEP program as well as professor of English at Wilmington College. Dr. McTaggart reestablished the PEP program in 2024 with the support of WC administration and staff. She specializes in American and African American literature, especially in literature’s interaction with social movements. Dr. McTaggart received her PhD in English and American Studies from Indiana University. In addition to her work as PEP Area Coordinator, she also teaches American literature surveys, Contemporary American Literature, African American Literature, Literature of Rural Life and the Environment, and composition, among other courses.

Please be sure to register for this session using the OneStop app.

Session Description:

After September 11, 2001 the United States' immigration system shifted from one of diplomacy and economic exchange to one of national security. In this session, we'll explore modern approaches to immigration enforcement and how local law enforcement agencies in Southwest Ohio are allocating local resources in enforcing federal civil immigration law. We'll work to understand how the immigration system works, what the process of detention and deportation looks like, and how it's affecting our local communities..

Facilitator/presenter bio:
Samantha Searls is a Program Director at Ignite Peace (formerly known as IJPC, Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center). At Ignite Peace, Samantha leads their immigration justice work and facilitates educational programming on nonviolence and anti-racism. Originally raised in Findlay, Samantha attended the University of Indianapolis to earn a degree in social work and later received her Master of Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to her time at Ignite Peace, Samantha served as a community organizer working on environmental, economic, and social justice issues.

Registration is required. Please be sure to register for this session using the OneStop app.

Westheimer session description
Sheena’s workshop invites participants to rebuild trust in their own perception, intuition, and ability to feel present and safe in their bodies. Through Indigenous Plant Listening, participants practice sensory awareness and reconnect with themselves and plants as living relatives that carry medicine and knowledge. Sheena introduces a four-step framework for creating everyday rituals that support healing, transformation, and embodied awareness. Participants then create a personalized ritual tea, accompanied by wildflower seed paper, transforming their intentions into something tangible that they can take home, plant, and continue to nurture. Sheena has facilitated many workshops and is comfortable sharing her lived experience as a justice-impacted artist.

Westheimer session facilitator/presenter bio:
Sheena Hanscel is an Indigenous artist, educator and founder of the Pollen Patch, an urban educational space and native ethnobotanical garden in Columbus, OH. She facilitates hands-on DIY workshops that focus on teaching practical, ancestral skills that empower people to reclaim self-care autonomy, while building reciprocal relationships with plants and the land.

Bio link: David Lapp is co-founder of Braver Angels and director of the Citizens Commission on Immigration at Braver Angels. David spent several years interviewing working-class Ohioans about their life experiences and families before helping to start Braver Angels. David lives with his wife Amber and six children in South Lebanon, Ohio, the home of the first-ever Braver Angels workshop in December 2016.

Description of event: The Braver Angels Community Forum on Immigration is a gathering that creates space for reflection, storytelling, and connection across diverse experiences and viewpoints. The forum begins with 2-4 ideologically diverse panelists sharing what's at the heart of the immigration issue for them, along with their ideas for improving the U.S. immigration system. Attendees in the audience then engage in a one-to-one brief conversation with each other about the same questions. The Forum follows the Braver Angels Way: individuals speak freely and fully without fear, and treat people who disagree with them with honesty, dignity, and respect. The Braver Angels Community Forum on Immigration is a gathering that creates space for reflection, storytelling, and connection across diverse experiences and viewpoints. The forum begins with ideologically diverse panelists sharing what's at the heart of the immigration issue for them, and then moves to inviting attendees in the audience to engage in a one-to-one brief conversation about the same question.

Please be sure to register for the session using the OneStop APP

Session description:
In the first half of this session, Wes will guide you through an interactive poetry clinic centered on meaningful conversation their results in the creation of a shared poem. Using that poem as the foundation, Kevin will teach an improv/sketch workshop that helps participants build characters and cohesive scenes. Through these seemingly different approaches, participants will collectively develop language and ideas through poetry and then use themes, situations or lines emerging from that process as material for improvisation, performance and further conversation.

Facilitator/presenter bios:
Kevin Ballou is a performing artist whose work spans improv theater, scripted theater, stand-up comedy, film, poetry, and mixed media. A member of the Returning Artists Guild since 2020, Kevin uses humor and storytelling to explore the complexity of human relationships while creating opportunities for audiences to laugh, reflect, and connect. Through performance, he believes the arts can foster empathy, joy, and meaningful conversation.

Wesley "WallStreet Wes" Robinson is a professional poet, educator, and creator of Poetry Clinics. Drawing from his lived experience, including incarceration, he uses poetry as a tool for dialogue, healing, and social change. Through workshops and performances, Robinson works alongside overlooked communities, listening to their stories and transforming those conversations into original poems. His work encourages meaningful conversations about justice, humanity, and collective responsibility.

Registration is required. Please be sure to use the OneStop App to register.

Westheimer session description:

If an experience, memory, or migration story could be served as a meal, what would you put on the table?
This interactive workshop looks at the experience of migration through the metaphor of a meal. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of movement (migration) based on their own personal experiences, family histories, or stories they have heard. Participants will work with artist Gil Rocha to express those experiences in the form of a “meal.” Through drawing, painting, photography, collage, printmaking, maps, postcards, letters, text or : sculpture, found objects, clothing, personal objects, handmade objects. Participants may also draw from poetry, literature, sound, music, recorded voices, video, smell, soil, plants, water, packaging, or actual food.

Facilitator/presenter bio:
Gil Rocha is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and community leader based in South Texas. Born in Laredo, TX, he currently serves as Board President of the Laredo Center for the Arts, where he collaborates with other community members to foster cultural engagement through exhibitions, workshops, and public programming. Over the past 25 years, Rocha has also contributed as an educator and panelist at various art institutions. Rocha’s artistic practice spans through painting, collage, sculpture, assemblage, installation, mixed media and writing. Grounded in rasquache aesthetics and the complex dualities of the U.S.-Mexico border, his work examines the act of crossing—physically, culturally, and psychologically—while challenging fixed notions of identity, place, and belonging. He earned his Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006), a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio (1999), and educator certification from Texas A&M International University (2002).

Registration is required. Please be sure to register using the OneStop app.

Session description:
We welcome you for the opening of the "Am I an American or Am I Not?" exhibition, a special traveling exhibition courtesy the Fred T. Korematsu Institute. The opening will include a dialogue with Jane Katsuyama, a U.S. citizen who was unjustly incarcerated with her family from 1942-1944. During the exhibition opening and the dialogue, we will focus on the history of unconstitutional Japanese American incarceration in the United States and the connections to present issues of U.S. immigration detention through a historical lens. You will hear about Jane and her family’s experience of internment and also how these experiences connect to the present.

Session facilitator/presenter bios:
Jane Katsuyama, is a cellist and community leader in Dayton, Ohio. Born in California to first-generation Japanese-American parents, Jane was forcibly removed, along with her mother and baby sister, from her California home when she was a toddler to a detainee camp at Poston, Arizona in the 1940’s. Her father was imprisoned, then later joined his family at the camp. This experience formed some of her early memories and inspired her to speak up for the rights of all. Jane made her way to Dayton with her husband Ron in the 1970’s. Jane has performed as the principal cellist with ensembles such as the Dayton Philharmonic and the Wright State University Symphony orchestras. An experienced educator, she also has taught at the University of Dayton, Stivers School for the Arts, and the Miami Valley School among others. Jane has served as the President of the Japanese American Citizens League and the National Japanese American Citizens League Legacy Fund Committee, and has held positions on the Kettering and Montgomery County Arts Boards, among others.

Paige Skaff is an advocate and catalyst for radical change. She is currently a direct doctoral student at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, studying Political Science with a concentration in Conflict Analysis and Management and a secondary track in Transnational and Comparative Politics and Policy. Her interests span a broad range of disciplines including migration studies, and critical theory – feminist, queer, crip, decolonial, discourse analysis. Her work professionally and academically focuses on vulnerability, victimization, and bodily violence, and how discourse and rhetoric contribute to human behavior. She is a certified forensic interviewer specializing in child sex crimes and has managed a rape crisis and child advocacy center, as well as use these skills to serve migrant victim of crimes with a resettlement agency. Paige is committed to continuing her education and efforts toward radical reconstruction for violence and victimization.

Registration is required. Please be sure to register for this event using the OneStop app.

Westheimer Session Description:
This session asks participants to gather together to learn about how music inspires connection, community, and courage in the face of social and political challenges. Both Clapp and Lucas will share their experiences of using music as a means to creating social awareness and shared purpose. They will ask participants to join together singing as they reflect upon the role of music in creating awareness, hope, and solidarity among all people.

Workshop facilitator/presenter bios:
Laura Clapp is assistant professor of Music and Wilmington College. Laura most recently served as faculty in the college of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan where she also directed the University of Michigan’s prison outreach choir, Out of the Blue. Prior to graduate studies, Laura worked with Voices of Hope, a Minneapolis-based prison choir organization, as a recipient of the Yale Glee Club Service Through Music Fellowship. While in Minnesota, Laura also co-directed StreetSong, a choir for people who have experienced homelessness, and directed the choir at Peace United Methodist Church. Laura has served as a soprano and teaching artist with Border CrosSing and performed as a violinist in a string quartet at U-M. During her time as an undergraduate student at Yale, Laura served as a student conductor of the Yale Glee Club and a researcher for the New Muses Project, contributing to their database of women and BIPOC composers.

Bob Lucas: Singing has been a way for me in this world. I grew up singing. The youngest of four boys. Mom would tell us, no singing until after supper. When I sing with people I feel empathy with them. We feel it together one for the other. When I sing a song that I have written, I try to share an innocence and vulnerability that inspires empathy. Empathy leads to caring. Caring can change a heart.

We will sing together!

In 1964 I had a folk trio called the Young -Uns. I was 15. It was then I came in contact with many people who are now legends of traditional music. It was life changing. I set my compass to a very clear though unknown destination. There was a world of old time traditional or whatever it might be called out there and I was going to find it. Folk Music was my destination and I am still headed there.

The music has taken me on a mighty road. I have no regrets.

In the late 60s I moved to Bloomington Indiana where I came in contact with a collision of folklore students, bluegrass pickers, oldtime fiddlers, jazz cats, rock and roll musicians, song writers, dancers and a myriad of other musical influences both local and international. Bliss.

Time passed I made a good friend in the great Jeff White playing a bluegrass happy hour. He called me one afternoon. He was on his way to audition for a spot working with Alison Krauss and Union Station. He needed a couple songs did I have any? I gave him two. He went off and got the job. Then just like that he got a job workin with Vince Gill. He left Alison’s band but the songs stayed. She cut them both and three more. You never know when your standing underneath a lucky star.

I played in lots of bands of many stripes then. I was the guitar player in a Bluegrass band and the banjo player in an old time band. I was writing tunes and songs that did and did not fit in those musical formats. I made a record that had banjo, horns and fuzz wa bass. Genre bender all the way.

I worked for a story telling theater company called Mad River Theater Works for 35 years making and touring original plays with original music. Many many songs and stories. My love of traditions blended with a respect for what people say and sing to each other. I have always felt cradled in the loving arms of the music. The music that has cradled humanity since people needed a way to humor, educate, entertain, calm, excite, and every other need. Pass time and pleasure, up tight and cooled out. I go on. Thank you music.

Registration is required. Please be sure to register using the OneStop app.

Talk description:
In this keynote address, Mr. Ayman Soliman will share his experiences with United States Customs Enforcement that resulted in his illegal detention at the Butler County Jail for over 70 days in the summer of 2025, while serving as the chaplain at the Cincinnati Children's hospital. Mr. Soliman was finally released after public and expert legal representation compelled the United States government to reinstate his asylum status.

Imam Ayman Soliman, M.Div, Ph.D.
Imam Ayman Soliman received his Islamic education in Islamic studies, both formal and informal, in Egypt. He holds an MA in Islamic Studies and is currently pursuing an MDIV in Islamic Studies and Muslim Chaplaincy as well as a PhD in Islamic Studies. He served as an Imam in Egypt for 14 years before moving to the US 12 years ago. In the US, he served as an imam and director of religious affairs in several Islamic centers before focusing on Muslim chaplaincy. He has served as the graduate students’ Muslim chaplain at Northwestern University, the Muslim chaplain in a correctional institution, and currently serves as the Muslim Chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. He is a member of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, the Association of Muslim Chaplains, and the North America Imams Federation. His areas of interest include Islamic law, Islamic biomedical ethics, interfaith work, and addressing Islamophobia.

Registration IS NOT required for this event.
Midwestern Mrs is a songwriter from Dayton, Ohio who refers to her music as “mom folk”. She has garnered the attention of many songwriting competitions, including having won the Bluebird Cafe’s Golden Pick Contest with her song “Stay Afloat.” She incorporates humor, vulnerability and a range of styles into her music.