#BlackLivesMatter: DeRay Mckesson at WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of View, Monday 26 August 7.30pm

CoverDeRay McKesson is an American activist associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. He was one of the organisers of protests against the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, and used social media to share what was happening. He tells his story in The Guardian:

We did not know many things in those early days, but we knew a few things well: that Michael Brown should be alive, and that we would not and could not leave the streets. And so we stayed, all night, every night, confident that we were on the right side of justice.

We are very lucky that DeRay Mckesson is coming to Christchurch. He is a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement, a co-founder of Campaign Zero (an organisation focused on ending police violence in the United States), and also the host of award-winning podcast Pod Save The People. He's talking at a WORD Christchurch event this coming Monday 26 August, 7.30pm at The Piano, and is also one of the big names at TedXChristchurch this weekend.

Here's a quick intro to DeRay from the Sydney Opera House Antidote Festival of Ideas, action, & change:

DeRay's book On the other side of freedom: Race and Justice in a Divided America is a:

"meditation on resistance, justice, and freedom, and an intimate portrait of a movement from the front lines ... Continuing a conversation about activism, resistance, and justice that embraces our nation's complex history, he dissects how deliberate oppression persists, how racial injustice strips our lives of promise, and how technology has added a new dimension to mass action and social change. He argues that our best efforts to combat injustice have been stunted by the belief that racism's wounds are history, and suggests that intellectual purity has curtailed optimistic realism."

Listen

Bonus pic: Janet from The Good Place.

More about DeRay Mckesson

WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of View

WORD Christchurch presents Shifting Points of View — a spectacular line-up of New Zealand and international speakers to warm you up and get you thinking. Shifting Points of View runs from Sunday 18 August to Saturday 14 September 2019. Visit our page on WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of View for more information, previews, reviews, and WORD reading.

DeRay Mckesson: #BlackLivesMatter Monday 26 August 7.30pm at The Piano

In August 2014, twenty-nine-year-old activist DeRay Mckesson stood with hundreds of others on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to push a message of justice and accountability. These protests, and others like them in cities across the country, resulted in the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, in his first book, The Other Side of Freedom: Race and justice in a divided America, Mckesson lays down the intellectual, pragmatic, and political framework for a new liberation movement.

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