Niki Franco is a queer, black caribbean abolitionist community organizer, writer, podcaster, and facilitator of spaces for collective study. Seeking to disrupt the bureaucratic frameworks of academia and transactional ways in which relationships exist under capitalism, NIKI’S work experiments with truth-telling, radical history and thought, pleasure, joy, and revolutionary imagination.

NIKI curates educational and cultural programming that navigates the current urgency on internationalist solidarity, and environmental and ancestral preservation. NIKI IS ALSO THE HOST OF PODCAST SHOW, GETTING TO THE ROOT OF IT WITH VENUS ROOTS.

Currently, Niki is serving as the national co-director of anti-war organization, Dissenters and writing her debut book, to be published by 1804 books in 2025.

Inquiries/Bookings : info@venusroots.com

selected WORK + CONTRIBUTIONS

WORKSHOP FACILITATION: settler colonialism 101, center for constitutional rights
november 2024

WORKSHOP FACILITATION: anti-imperialist art workshop, the people’s forum
august 2024

panelist: building the cultural front, spark summer school for organizing
july 2024

WRITER: op-ed: us media is failing the public on the crisis in gaza
essence magazine

MODERATOR: TENDERNESS: A BLACK QUEER MEDITATION ON SOFTNESS AND RAGE WITH ANNIKA HANSTEEN-IZORA

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: 2023 International thematic residency changing climate, santa fe art institute

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: rising: climate in crisis, A STUDIO IN THE WOODS
april 2023-MAY 2023

fellow: civic media fellowship, university of southern california Annenberg Innovation Lab

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
JANUARY 2022-DECEMBER 2022

SPEAKER + 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

Facilitator and Instructor: SOCIALIST POLITICAL ECONOMY 101, A LOOK INTO THE US AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH
(F)empower 2 DAY BOOT CAMP: BUILDING QUEER FEMINIST FUTURES