Women History Month - Hands Up United

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Celebrating Women History Month HandsUpUnited.org

Transcript of Women History Month - Hands Up United

Celebrating

Women

History

MonthHandsUpUnited.org

Florynce Kennedy is a civil rights attorney,political activist, and pioneer in second-wavefeminism. She helped found the Women'sPolitical Caucus and the National Black FeministOrganization, and was an orginial member of theNational Organization for Women (NOW).Kennedy also founded the Feminist Party, whichnominated Shirley Chisolm (also on this list!) forPresident.In 1969, Florynce Kennedy organized feministlawyers to challenge the constitutionality of NewYork state's laws outlawing abortion, and thelaws were overturned in 1970. That's right - shewas part of the amazing team that made surewomen have final say over their own bodies. Shewas adamant about not wasting her life andchallenging the status quo. She once said"Sweetie, if you're not living on the edge, thenyou're taking up space."

Florynce Kennedy,

Civil Rights Attorney and Political Activist

She’s the Executive Director of SisterSong, and works every day to amplify and strengthen thevoices of indigenous women and women of color to ensure reproductive justice throughsecuring human rights. She was the first person of color to be hired at the Lesbian Gay &Community Center in Charlotte, NC, trained young African-Americans in philanthropy,fundraising and activism as a coordinator for Grassroots Leadership. She also foundedCharlotte's Black Gay Pride Celebration and Charlotte's African American Giving Circle.

Monica Simpson,

Executive Director

of SisterSong

The Founders of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement

These leaders have guided our generation to recognize and affirm the importance of Black livesin a world filled with oppression against and inside our community. Black Lives Matter is anideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically andintentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks' contributions to this society,our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.

Mama Taye,

Ferguson STL Activist

"I was born in 1964. I had a cross burned in my yard at age 10. But

Mike Brown was the first lynching I experienced. That was 40 years ago. And here we are, still, work to do. I

understood Ferguson in light of seven years of activism in Kirkwood after our city hall shooting. The two

incidents are not disconnected.”

Angela Yvonne Davis, an

American political

activist, scholar and

authorShe emerged as a prominent counterculture activistand radical in the 1960s as a leader of theCommunist Party USA, and had close relations withthe Black Panther Party through her involvement inthe Civil Rights Movement, although she was nevera party member. Her interests included prisonerrights; she founded Critical Resistance, anorganization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex.

Davis was arrested, charged, tried, and acquitted ofconspiracy in the 1970 armed take-over of a MarinCounty courtroom, in which four persons died. Herresearch interests are feminism, African-Americanstudies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music,social consciousness, and the philosophy andhistory of punishment and prisons.

We have Kimberlé to thank for coining the term "intersectionality", which led to much of herwork on race, gender, and how these things overlap in the feminist movement.

Her writings on civil rights, black feminist legal theory, race, racism, and the law have beenpublished extensively.

She wrote a background paper for the United Nations World Conference on Racism on race andgender discrimination, which helped facilitate the inclusion of gender in the WCAR ConferenceDeclaration.And that's not all - Kimberle is also the Director of the Center for Intersectionality and SocialPolicy Studies and Founder of the African-American Policy Forum.

Kimberly Chrenshaw,

Director of the Center for

Intersectionality and Social Policy

Studies and Founder of the

African-American Policy Forum

Julieta Garibay, Deputy

Advocacy Director with United We Dream

Every day she fights for the rights ofundocumented youth, helping them and theirfamilies find the voice that they didn't know theycould have in this country. She was born inMexico City and came to the US in her earlyteens. Presently Julieta is working on developinga woman's group at @unitedwedream to providea space for women to voice their opinions, theirideas and visions so that together they can usetheir perspectives to help the organizationcontinue to grow. Julieta cares about the youth,our future, and our world. She is a kind spirit anda genuine individual. United We Dream and theworld are lucky to have her.

Abby Bobé, a

technology activist and social entrepreneur

As former Community Manager at Black GirlsCODE, Ms. Bobé successfully managed a $100,000crowdfunding campaign to help the organizationeducate 2,000 girls and seed fund 7 chaptersacross the United States.

Prior to her work with Black Girls CODE, Ms. Bobéworked internationally, creating a ComputingTechnology Program in Tamil Nadu in South Indiathat taught 80 school aged children and 20women digital technology.

Abby moved to #Ferguson Missouri to giveactivists tech tools and founded the Tech Impactprogram. Working with Hands Up United, Abbyenvisioned and developed the Roy Clay Sr. TechWorkshop with the help of committedtechnologists and activists.

Sunny Chen,

Ferguson Activist

The people of Ferguson and of theGreater St. Louis area have saidenough is enough and took to thestreets to call out the system.Amongst the many voices and dailycommunity supporters, Sunny Chenstays active and encourages others todo the same.

"I believe one should act uponwhat moves their heart.Ferguson has moved myheart… so I have acted.”

Shirien, a

Palestinian American activist

Shirien's family is among the millionsdisplaced across the diaspora following the1948 expulsion and genocide ofPalestinians from their homeland.

After returning to Palestine and seeing theconditions of her people living in refugeecamps, Shirien began to draw portraits ofthe refugees, naming the project "AlwanAl-Shatat" (in English, Colors of Diaspora).

Shirien is currently selling prints of theseportraits, and donating 20% of all proceedsto the Middle East Children's Alliance,which serves Palestinian families withnecessary aid and programs.

You can buy Shirien's artwork here:https://www.etsy.com/shop/AlwanAlShatat/about

Michelle Alexander,

Civil Rights Advocate

and WriterMichelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civilrights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar. Inrecent years, she has taught at a number ofuniversities, including Stanford Law School,where she was an associate professor of law anddirected the Civil Rights Clinics.

In 2005, she won a Soros Justice Fellowship,which supported the writing of The New JimCrow, and that same year she accepted a jointappointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Studyof Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of

Law at The Ohio State University.

Prior to entering academia, Alexander served asthe director of the Racial Justice Project for theACLU of Northern California, where shecoordinated the Project’s media advocacy,grassroots organizing, coalition building, andlitigation.

Diamond Latchison,

Ferguson Freedom

Fighter

"These six months have been verybeautiful and powerful to me. OnAugust 9th, young people cameout, boots to the ground, leavingtheir past lives. And still, weremain. For years, Generation Ywas said to not care for the worldaround us. Well, look at us now.We, the protesters, are thepeople we’ve been waiting for.”

Yuri Kochiyama was

a Japanese-

American civil

right's activist

A close friend to Malcolm X, Yuri developedher passion for civil rights as a child whenher family was detained in a concentrationcamp in Los Angeles following the attacksin Pearl Harbor.

In the 1980s, she and her husband pushedfor reparations and a formal governmentapology for Japanese-American interneesthrough the Civil Liberties Act, whichPresident Ronald Reagan signed into law in1988.

Obiageli Ezekwesili,

founder of the

#BringBackOurGirls

movement

Ezekwesili began her career as co-founder of Transparency International, serving a director of the global anti-corruption body based in Berlin, Germany. She also served as Federal Minister of Solid Minerals and then as Federal Minister of Education during the second-term presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo. Since then, she served as the Vice-President of the World Bank's Africa division from May 2007 to May 2012.

Last year, after almost 300 girls were abducted from from Chibok, Nigeria by Boko Haram, Ezekwesili began the social media campaign, #BringBackOurGirls, to publicize their disappearance. Since then, many people have joined and left the movement while many more boys and girls continue to be abducted from their homes and schools by Boko Haram.

Laila Re, an Afghanistan Poet

She escaped from her native land with her familydue to civil war. They lived as refugees inIslamabad, Pakistan until her family immigratedto Canada in 1991. Laila has been raised inToronto, Canada since the age of 5 and it is whereshe currently resides.

She earned her B.A, B.Ed and M.Ed at YorkUniversity. She is a peace activist, certifiedteacher and poetess.

Pieces to Peace is a poetic account of Laila'sjourney of self-discovery in Toronto as a 26 year-old Afghan-Muslim woman living on her own forthe first time.

It is her story of pursuing her dreams whilecoping with personal issues of grief, trauma,poverty, cultural identity and belonging. Laila is awoman in becoming as she rebuilds herselfthrough poetry from pieces to peace.

Jamira Burley,

Senior Campaigner

Amnesty International

Jamira currently serves as a SeniorCampaigner for Amnesty InternationalUSA, where she leads on issues of gunviolence and criminal justice. In herinternational capacity, Jamira serves as theUnited States representative and co-chairto the UN Global Education First Initiative,Youth Advocacy Group. Jamira’s passion forchallenging the status quo has led her tothis journey of fighting for somethingbigger than herself.

Her work has been featured in thePhiladelphia Tribune, BET, Daily News, NewYork Times, ABC, Philadelphia Inquirer, USAToday, Settle Times and Huffington Post

Cherrell Brown, Social

Justice Activist

Cherrell has been organizing since she was 16. Asa first generation college student she wasselected to work with Americorps to developprograms to improve retention of first generationcollege students. She became politicized as anintern with the Beloved Community Center andworked on initiatives ranging from policeviolence to gender violence to environmentalracism.

During her junior year at North Carolina A&TState University, in 2011, she led a grassrootscampaign that organized hundreds of students toeffectively stop the reopening of a city landfillnear a residential neighborhood. The march wasone of the largest public actions in Greensborosince the sit-ins in the 1960’s. She currentlyworks as a National Organizer for Equal JusticeUSA, a national non-profit based in Brooklyn,New York.

Charlene A. Carruthers,

National Director of Black

Youth Project 100

Charlene is a political organizer and writer with over 10years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youthleadership development movement work. Her passion fordeveloping young leaders to build capacity withinmarginalized communities has led her to work onimmigrant rights, economic justice and civil rightscampaigns nationwide.

She has led grassroots and digital strategy campaigns fornational progressive organizations including the Center forCommunity Change, the Women’s Media Center,ColorOfChange.org and National People’s Action.

Charlene is deeply committed to working with youngorganizers seeking to create a better world. She hasfacilitated and developed political trainings fororganizations including the NAACP, the Center forProgressive Leadership, the New Organizing Institute,MoveOn.org, Young People For and Wellstone Action.

Fannie Lou Hamer, Civil

Rights Leader and

Political Activist

Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rightsactivist, civil rights leader, and philanthropist. Shewas instrumental in organizing Mississippi'sFreedom Summer for the Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee (SNCC), and later becamethe vice-chair of the Mississippi FreedomDemocratic Party, which she represented at the1964 Democratic National Convention in AtlanticCity, New Jersey.

Alice, Ferguson Activist

“I have love in my heart for Black people because they

are brave. I am protesting so Black people have freedom and rights. Freedom means Black people can go places

without being judged or hurt. I want everything to be fair.”

Alicia,

Ferguson STL Activist

"Life means living in a fearless environment. I am an activist who never knew

that August 9th, 2014 would change my life. It is

my duty to fight for not only my freedom, but everyone else’s. I have nothing to lose but my

chains.”

Mama Cat,

The Cook of the Movement

"Everyone has an important role inthis movement. Mine just happensto be to care, to comfort, and tonourish." -Mama Cat, whopersonally and with the help oforganizations like Operation Help orHush, has fed thousands ofprotesters since August.

Estella Mims Pyfrom,

Tech Activist and Educator

of Estella Brilliant Bus

After forty eight years of service to the Palm BeachCounty School District, Estella used her pension tocreate a mobile bus to bring technology educationto students in underprivileged communities.

The mission of Estella’s Brilliant Bus is to create anetwork of opportunities that will provideeducational training and self-help experiences inunder-served areas that will empower children andfamilies with life-long learning and access totechnology while partnering with communityagencies.

During the past two years, Estella has organized andoperated a food pantry and is now a partner withFeeding South Florida, which is a regional branch ofFeeding America distributing food to approx. 3,000individuals each month.

Heather,

Ferguson STL

Livestreamer

"I believe in justice and that Constitutional rights belong to all citizens, but our legal

system too often refuses to recognize that Black lives matter and disabled Black lives

matter too. When people who are black and disabled are killed by police, the media

often blames the deaths on the victims. As a livestreamer, my role is to help try to hold

police accountable, document the movement, and amplify the voices of people

who experience systemic oppression. ‘No one is free when others are oppressed’ is a guiding force in my life. #DisbilitySolidarity”

Elizabeth Vega

of Artivists STL, a

collection of political

activists in St. Louis

who focus on art-based

actions

She is one of the Ferguson protest leaders. Sheprotested at sports venues and attempted abanner drop. She co-led the St Louis Symphonyinterruption, was arrested at the pumpkinsmashing, yelled at the St Louis Post Dispatchprotest, and helped block traffic with herfreakshow in Clayton.

"I’m increasingly amazed at how a movementstarted to fight such divisions and injustice cancreate a family of choice that is soauthentically loving and supportive. Proof, Ithink, that the light of love does dispel hate.”

Rika Tyler,

Ferguson Activist

and Program Director of Hands Up United

As Program Director of Hands Up United,Rika works on ensuring programs are aligned to serving the community of Ferguson and the Greater St. Louis area.

Since the tragic murder of Mike Brown by Ferguson Police Officer, Darren Wilson, Rika has planned direct actions and bridged international solidarity with communities in Mexico and Palestine.

She also wrote a letter to President Barack Obama challenging him to live up to the promise put forth in his “My Brothers’ Keeper” initiative.