Sun 6/25 @ 3-5PM
Most northeast Ohioans know the horrific story of the murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice at the Cudell Recreation Center on Cleveland’s Westside in November 2014 when he was killed by a police officer who gunned him down within seconds of driving up on him. There’s currently a memorial garden dedicated to Tamir at the rec center, although the gazebo where he was playing was dismantled and shipped to Chicago when the city of Cleveland proposed to trash it despite his mother’s objections.
It has now been reconstructed in a landscaped lot next to the Stony Island Arts Bank, an arts & culture facility in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood created by artist/ “urban interventionalist” Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation. And this week it will host a celebration of the 21st birthday Tamir never got to celebrate: he would be turning 21 on June 25.
In Chicago at the Tamir Rice Memorial Gazebo, Tamir’s mother Samaria Rice, family and friends will gather to celebrate his life and promote Ms. Rice’s ongoing campaign for justice.
Michael “Uncle Mike” Petty will lead a prayer, followed by a welcome from Ms. Samaria Rice. Guest speakers include theater director Terrence Spivey who helped develop the play Objectively/Reasonable: A Community Response to the Shooting of Tamir Rice, 11/22/14, performed in Cleveland in 2016 and 2017, on performing arts; LaTonya Goldsby and Kareem Henton, who’ll talk about activism. The program will also feature performances by avery r. young, Syleena Johnson and Terence Tykeem; and closing remarks by the Rice Family.
The Foundation says, “Rebuild Foundation is the proud steward of the Tamir Rice Memorial Gazebo — an object of deep care in our conservation work — near which Tamir Rice was murdered. After the City of Cleveland moved to destroy the structure and a number of museums in Cleveland declined to house the gazebo, our founder, artist Theaster Gates, offered to help preserve and make the structure visible as a call to action and potent reminder of the racial violence Black bodies face at the hands of law enforcement. At the request of Ms. Rice, in the fall of 2016, the gazebo was brought from the Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio, to the Stony Island Arts Bank in partnership with the Tamir Rice Foundation. Thank you, Ms. Rice, for entrusting us to care for Tamir’s legacy in Chicago.”
The event is free and open to all. Go here for more information and to reserve a spot at this memorial service in Chicago.