Civic Love Community Dinner

Join the Pace Center and our campus and local community for a dinner full of connection and celebration. We will be bringing together students, faculty, staff, local leaders, and community members to break bread and build relationships. In her manifesto for 21st century activism, Detroit-based organizer Grace Lee Boggs implored, “We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other.”

Civic Love is one’s love for society, expressed through a commitment to the common good. It is a belief in the idea that we’re all better off, when we are all better off. We manifest Civic Love through all kinds of actions—volunteering, marching, speaking against systemic injustice, making reparations—and always with the love itself is the emotional heart of the work. Based on Lee-Boggs' work and that of the National Public Housing Museum, we invite you to invest in civic “love’s promise”—asking and answering questions ranging from “What sound wakes you at the start of your day?” to “What law would you change for the betterment of your community?” —to test if we can grow civic love.

Meet the Facilitator:
Geralyn Williams is the Assistant Director for Student Engagement & Leadership in the Pace Center. She leads the center’s leadership, activism, and advocacy initiatives through programming, curriculum, resources, and advising of student organizations. She is a self-identified Jersey girl, a baker, a sci-fi enthusiast, and a mental health advocate.

Brooke Johnson is the Pace Center’s Project 55 Fellow and Service Engagement Coordinator. She provides broad support for a range of sustained volunteering programs and for students seeking to uncover their own individual paths to service, as well as mentorship for a Service Focus cohort. She has been growing as a member of Ellipses Slam Poetry and is always excited by opportunities to listen and engage in more creative works.

Ida Malloy is a Pace Center Community Partner-in-Residence. She serves as the coordinator of civic engagement at The Baldwin School. Her personal and professional lives revolve around civic engagement and community activism. She believes that people define their lives by what they do and their willingness to make sustainable change. Ida is a proud resident of the city of Trenton, NJ.

Community Partner-in-Residence, Fern Spruill, whose family has lived and worked in Princeton for generations, is a true community leader and has taken on many roles that support the continued empowerment of the local community with a particular focus on underrepresented youth. Fern’s work includes her service as a board member on the Princeton Public Schools Board of Education and service as a council member on the Princeton Civil Rights Commission.

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Brooke Johnson
Co-hosted with: Pace Center for Civic Engagement

Contact the organizers