Conversation: Jane Kay & Dr. Lydia Otero

In conjunction with the new exhibition Living With Injury, join us for a conversation between journalist Jane Kay and writer & historian Dr. Lydia Otero who will discuss their reporting and scholarship around contamination and contested landscapes in Tucson. 

After the conversation, from 6:30pm – 9pm attend the Opening Reception: November 2025 Exhibitions and celebrate MOCA’s new exhibitions Living with Injury and Fernando Palma Rodríguez: Tlazohuelmanaz (offering of love) with food by Reservation Sensation, drinks by Brick Box Brewery, and music!

 

About the speakers

Jane Kay is the investigative journalist who published her findings in the Arizona Daily Star in 1985 confirming what the community long suspected: TCE was poisoning Tucson’s south side. The series would go on to win national awards for its journalistic excellence and thorough reporting as well as spawn successful class action lawsuits on behalf of residents. Kay’s series revealed that roughly 20,000 residents had been unknowingly exposed to the tainted water as early as the1950s. Her first series of stories ran over the month of May 1985 with follow-up stories in December 1985 based on newly gathered evidence. The revelations sent shockwaves through Tucson and surrounding districts and made the effects of pollution on the southside neighborhoods impossible for local and federal agencies to ignore. The reporting also helped inspire the formation of Tucsonans for a Clean Environment (TCE), ultimately helping to spur a historic and groundbreaking environmental justice movement on Tucson’s southside.

Lydia R. Otero received a Ph.D. in History in 2003 and is an Emeritus Associate Professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona. Their scholarship employs space as an analytical tool to explore urban redevelopment and contested landscapes in Tucson, Arizona related to and legitimized by history and white dominance. They specialize in Public History, Latinx Urbanization and Placemaking in Latinx Communities. Otero’s essays on (Re)claiming Place and History, Heritage Conservation and Collective Memory have appeared in various book anthologies and scholarly journals. In 2011, La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwestern City (2010) won a Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association. Otero released In the Shadows of the Freeway: Growing Up Brown & Queer in 2019 which merges personal memoir and the historical archive. Otero released their second memoir, L.A. Interchanges: A Brown & Queer Memoir on July 31, 2023. More information at https://www.lydiaotero.com/

 

About Living With Injury 

This exhibition pays homage to the predominantly Mexican American community members whose uniquely Tucson methods were remarkably successful in fighting some of Tucson’s most powerful defense industries responsible for contaminating water sources, causing severe illness within communities on the southside of Tucson in the 1980s. Living With Injury invites community members to participate in various remembering acts and collective history making, both to acknowledge damages visited upon the community by environmental racism, and to celebrate the triumphs and insights of southside organizers. Curated by Mexican American Heritage and History Museum Co-Director Alisha Vasquez and Dr. Sunaura Taylor of the Disabled Ecologies Lab at UC Berkeley, and featuring work by local artists and researchers who have lasting connections to this history including Tucsonense artist Alex! Jimenez; southside turned Chilango journalist and filmmaker Franc Contreras; and community researcher and scholar Dr. Denise Moreno Ramírez.

 

Accessibility Information 

Accessible parking near a ramp is available on the south side of McCormick St., in front of MOCA’s main entrance. MOCA has an accessible restroom in the lobby and all exhibition spaces are ADA compliant. MOCA is committed to providing access to the arts for everyone; for additional information or for accessibility requests, please call MOCA’s front desk at 520.624.5019 or email info@moca-tucson.org.

 

Image Credit:  Sunaura Taylor, Speculative Aquifer.