Thank you Pitzer College for inviting The Arts Area founder John Machado to speak on arts advocacy and organizing in the Inland Empire! It was a pleasure speaking with the Critical Action & Social Advocacy (CASA) students and co-presenter Christy Roberts Berkowitz. For over three years, The Arts Area has served as a community partner in the CASA Pitzer program, working with artists and students on collaborative projects, art exhibitions, and community-based participatory research on issues of regional equity and social justice in the arts and arts education. This includes research into long-standing systemic issues of access in education. These concerns include the use of property taxes to determine school funding, high stakes standardized testing, as well as teacher pay and workloads, among other issues. Arts education is an important facet of the wide variety of educational resources that are unequally dispersed between communities: rich and poor, rural and urban, White and non-White. Please join us in the important community advocacy work of expanding equitable access to arts education for all students. @casa_pitzer @pitzercollege @create_ca @artsed411 @caforthearts #casapitzer #theartsarea #artseducation #accm2021 https://www.instagram.com/p/COLw8gDBAEO/?igshid=1o83pdjg38ql3