Issue 3: December
By LASA Diversity Council
Our Picks
Independent Artists Celebrate the Holidays
No matter how you celebrate the holidays, the beauty in the art of the season always brightens this time of the year. Independent Artists and Graphic Designers have come together in collaboration with the digital art archive Creative Boom to share their distinctly unique interpretations of the holiday season in 2021. Artists such as Avila Chidume, Sharron Caddie, and Isabella Felie showcase their art in this digital exhibit.
Artist: Angélica Dass
Angélica Dass, a Brazilian photographer, has created a life-long photographic project titled Humanae. It fights against the stereotypical labels of white, black, yellow, brown, and red. These boxes that people are shoved into diminish the diversity of the human experience, generalizing entire groups and painting them with the same brush. The artwork instead documents humanity’s diverse colors by matching Pantone colors to people’s skin. Dass hopes that Humanae allows for social discourse surrounding race.
There are almost 4,000 volunteers from all backgrounds which further establishes the message that we all build humanity (Humanae).
Podcast: The Queer Arabs
This podcast centers around Middle Eastern/Southwest Asian and North African identities as well as LGBTQ+ identities in those cultural spheres. These episodes are recorded in both English and Arabic, and the hosts and speakers from all over the world discuss about sex positivity, racial justice, and gender liberation.
Book: Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis
Women, Race and Class is a 1981 book by Angela Davis, a radical political activist and academic. It contains Marxist feminist analysis of gender, race and class. Ranging from the age of slavery to contemporary injustices, this groundbreaking history of inequality offers an alternative view of female struggles for liberation. Tracing the intertwined histories of the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements, Davis examines the racism and class prejudice inherent in so much of white feminism, and in doing so brings to light new pioneering heroines, from field slaves to mill workers, who fought back and refused to accept the lives into which they were born.
Current Events
In December, we celebrate many different holidays important to the faiths and cultures represented at LASA. Among them are:
Chanukah (11/28 - 12/06)
A Jewish holiday commemorating the Macabees’ retaking of Jerusalem during the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd Century BCE. This holiday centers around the lighting of a Hannukah menorah (or Hanukiah) for eight nights, adding a candle each night. This celebrates the miracle that a day’s supply of oil kept the holy menorah of the Temple burning for eight nights until more oil could be supplied.
Christmas (12/25)
A Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. The series of Christian holidays surrounding and including Christmas are honored in a variety of different ways across the globe from Krampusnacht shenanigans in Germany to Las Posadas in Mexico.
Kwanzaa (12/26 - 01/01)
An African-American holiday celebrating the unique culture and heritage of African-American communities originally, created by Maulana Karenga in 1966 drawing from a diverse range of traditional harvest festivals in Africa.
Ōmisoka (12/31)
A Japanese holiday marking the end of the year and the coming of a new one, most commonly marked by a shared family meal of udon or soba noodles.
Get Involved
Generation Serve Volunteer Opportunities
Generation Serve is a fantastic resource for students, or anyone else, to find a wide variety of volunteer opportunities. On the Generation Serve website, there is a calendar that shows the different opportunities, dates and times, what times they are, and how many spots are available. Some of the many volunteer opportunities they provide are helping at food pantries, delivering food, park clean-ups, and much more. If you're interested, make sure to check the website periodically, the available spots fill up very quickly! Here’s the link:
https://calendar.generationserve.org/calendar/family-volunteering/202110/44/28663
Blue Santa Volunteer Opportunities
Warehouse Volunteers: Come join the Blue Santa team at the Warehouse. Blue Santa is an organization that helps provide gifts for lower income families. All children deserve to have Santa come and visit them, and you can help with this! There are multiple opportunities to help out, some of which include, wrapping presents and organizing toys at the warehouse.
Delivery Day’s Volunteers: On delivery days, people will drive up earlier in the day to pick up large gift packs. Then the volunteers will drive and deliver the gifts to the families.
https://www.bluesanta.org/volunteer
The Junior League of Austin
The Junior League of Austin offers many opportunities for individuals to give back to their community. Through the Coats for Kids, they help provide winter coats to more than 32,000 children every year. Find out how to support the organization from coat donations to distribution volunteering at: