niki franco is a queer, marxist, Black caribbean organizer. her work is an attempt to disjoint, at every node, the normalcy of assumed Caribbean subservience to empire.
through her writing, scholarship, and organizing work, she illuminates + builds off the legacies of the Global South insisting on life and socialist reconstruction.
niki is the host of podcast show, getting to the root of it with venus roots and she is writing her debut book, to be published by 1804 books in 2026.
Inquiries/Bookings : info@venusroots.com
selected WORK + CONTRIBUTIONS
MODERATOR: the five blessings of ifa: with gabrielle felder (LA)
WORKSHOP FACILITATION: settler colonialism 101, center for constitutional rights
november 2024
WORKSHOP FACILITATION: anti-imperialist art workshop, the people’s forum (NYC)
august 2024
panelist: building the cultural front, spark summer school for organizing, the people’s forum (NYC)
july 2024
WRITER: op-ed: us media is failing the public on the crisis in gaza
essence magazine
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: 2023 International thematic residency changing climate, santa fe art institute (NM)
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: rising: climate in crisis, A STUDIO IN THE WOODS (Louisiana)
april 2023-MAY 2023
fellow: civic media fellowship, university of southern california Annenberg Innovation Lab (LA)
co-creator: short film, every step is a prayer
july 2021, nowness x superblue
WINNER: BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM, MIAMI SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2021
Winner: Best editing, best cinematograpy, black film fest new orleans 2023
NOMINATION FOR BEST U.S. SHORT: PALM SPRINGS SHORT FILM FEST 2022
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: the well, a collaboration between o,miami and the university of miami’s sylvester cancer center
april 2022-december 2022
MODERATOR: Resilient Cartographies: Everyday strategies of social justice that (re)emerged during pandemic times 2022, university of British Columbia, VANCOUVER CAMPUS
GUEST LECTURER: Black and native solidarities 2022, university of miami
artist-organizer fellow 2022: open collective fOUNDATION
WORKSHOP FACILITATION: MLK WEEKEND 2022, NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: better world by design conference (bwxd) 2021, brown university x rhode island school of design
MODERATOR: 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF ATTICA PRISON UPRISING PANEL
SEPTEMBER 2021, MAYSLES DOCUMENTARY CENTER
DOCUMENTARY CONTRIBUTOR: VISIONS OF ABOLITION, UCLA’S FEM MAGAZINE
GUEST SPEAKER: EARTH DAY, DISASTER CAPITALISM TEACH IN, dartmouth college
moderator: in conversation with vijay prashad: the internationalist history of the communist manifesto
GUEST SPEAKER: abolition or extinction, dartmouth college
moderator: a dIALOGUE ON pROTEST, pOLICING, AND dEMANDING THE FUTURE WE NEED, design museum magazine
2020 FALL ARTIST RESIDENCY: UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy
moderator, curator: aBOLITIONIST PRAXIS: BRINGING OUR IMAGINATION TO LIFE
UCLA, LUSKIN INSTITUTE ON INEQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY
pANELIST: other swing voter, sep 30th
boston university, center for antiracist research
Fellow: 2020 INAUGURAL COHORT FOR AFROTECTOPIA FELLOWSHIP
Writer: New Dream Defenders Campaign Works to End Cash Bail System in Miami
Miami new times
Writer: essential workers at miami publix and trader joe’s stores want hazard pay
Miami new times
Workshop Facilitator and Instructor: “Poetry as a liberatory practice”
Dr. Regina B. Shearn Corrections Transition Program at Everglades Correctional Institution in Miami
Guest SPEAKER: “Settler Colonialism and Capitalism: A Love Story
UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana & Chicano Studies CCS 188, “Decolonial Queers: Unsettling Bodies & Lands”
Panel Moderator and Facilitator: “cultivating queer joy”
MoMa Ps1 in NYC
Panel Moderator and Facilitator: “the science of sex”
THE STANDARD SPA, MIAMI BEACH