ideas worth spreading

Marisa A. Zap­a­ta is a researcher, edu­ca­tor and plan­ner. She is the Direc­tor of Home­less­ness Research & Action Col­lab­o­ra­tive and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Land-use Plan­ning at Port­land State Uni­ver­si­ty. She holds a doc­tor­ate in Region­al Plan­ning, a mas­ter’s in Urban Plan­ning and a bachelor’s in Anthro­pol­o­gy. When not work­ing, you may find her play­ing flute, read­ing a book, tak­ing a long walk or play­ing a board game. In Jan­u­ary, Dr. Zap­a­ta will take to the TEDxSalem stage to address how we can solve home­less­ness by rethink­ing who has a right to hous­ing.

What was your first TED expe­ri­ence? My first TED expe­ri­ence was prob­a­bly “ille­gal” because it was a TED “style” talk but not offi­cial­ly through TED. One of my friends from col­lege was doing a talk about health care issues that she was study­ing as a med­ical doc­tor. It was won­der­ful to see her, a per­son I had known for awhile, being on a stage and shar­ing her knowl­edge. I learned a lot from the talk!

Do you have a favorite TED Talk? How has it impact­ed your life or per­spec­tive? My cur­rent fave is by Gab­by Rivera who talked about cre­at­ing the first queer Lati­na super­hero. I didn’t grow up read­ing graph­ic nov­els, though my dad talked about his favorite super­hero — Spi­der­man. Like many things I have only real­ized as an adult, my lack of inter­est in a par­tic­u­lar thing was part­ly dri­ven by not see­ing peo­ple like me. I know a lot of peo­ple say rep­re­sen­ta­tion mat­ters, but it real­ly goes fur­ther than an image or a lan­guage. It’s also about ideas and con­ver­sa­tion styles and char­ac­ters who are like your fam­i­ly mem­bers. For me, super­heroes are about imag­ing dif­fer­ent types of futures. A super­verse with white men and hyper­sex­u­al­ized white women could nev­er be a future for me. But a Lati­na? That’s a super I can believe in. I also loved Gabby’s deliv­ery. Like Gab­by, I grew up learn­ing to tell sto­ries and for me, humor was a big part of that. See­ing her laugh on stage is a great reminder that humor can be such an impor­tant part of talks on seri­ous top­ics.

What does this year’s theme “Vision” mean to you? I love this year’s theme. Vision can mean so many dif­fer­ent things, but I think all of those things involved how we share our thoughts, ideas, fears, and hopes. Whether through lit­er­al shared sight or through lan­guage, we cul­ti­vate how we live in com­mu­ni­ty with one anoth­er. For my work, I think about how to envi­sion just futures, and cre­ate path­ways to move us in those direc­tions while prepar­ing for uncer­tain­ty. A lot of this work is about fore­sight — try­ing to think about how our futures might play out based on our presents. I think this is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when think­ing about home­less­ness. We have what can feel like an over­whelm­ing set of tasks in front of us, and list of pos­si­ble options. Envi­sion­ing futures allows us to struc­ture the work and the options.

Tell us some­thing about your­self we could nev­er tell from look­ing at you. My health pre­vents me from work­ing out as hard or often as I want. I’d love to be doing one hour of spin­ning or jog­ging or bik­ing to work, but my phys­i­cal health doesn’t match that. I’ve come to appre­ci­ate a long walk, but also, I just want to go jump on a tram­po­line for an hour!

What is the scari­est thing you have ever done for fun? I rap­pelled down a 28-sto­ry build­ing for a Big Brother/Big Sis­ter fundrais­er with my Lit­tle Sis from the pro­gram. It was for “fun.” It wasn’t real­ly all that fun.

Favorite books? And why. 

Bless Me, Ulti­ma by Rudol­fo Anaya. The sto­ry of a young boy caught between two cul­tures as a young Lati­no liv­ing in the South­west res­onat­ed with me as a cul­tur­al­ly mixed Mex­i­can Amer­i­can from Texas. This book was the first time I read some­thing where mag­i­cal real­ism was inte­grat­ed into the sto­ry, and one of the first times I had seen my cul­ture described in a fic­tion­al sto­ry.

Invis­i­ble Cities by Ita­lo Calvi­no. It’s hard to explain too much about the book with­out giv­ing it away! Maybe I can leave it with — it’s my world view. We all may come from sim­i­lar places and see and expe­ri­ence our com­mu­ni­ties in rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent ways.

Go-to karaoke song? Fan­cy by Reba McEn­tire

Chunky or smooth peanut but­ter? Chunky. All the way.

A ran­dom fact: A fire ant bite could kill me! 

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com