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Anti-Racism Unconference Presenters
Click Session titles to read a complete description of each session.
Learn more about Marisa's session, "Fighting for Transgender Equality."
Dr. Marisa Richmond Volunteers as the Lobbyist of the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition , And Also Serves as Past President on the Board of the Davidson County Democratic Women (DCDW), is a Vice Chair of the Davidson County Democratic Party Executive Committee, and is a member of the Steering Committee of Trans United for Progress. She was the DCDW nominee for the Athena Award in 2012.
When she was DCPD Elected to the Executive Committee in 2008, she Became Openly to first transgender person to win an election in Tennessee. Also in 2008, she Became the first African American, transgender person to be Elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention from any state. She served as a delegate Tennessee again in 2012.
She has served on with previously With the Local and national Numerous Boards, treats Including the American Educational Gender Information Service (Board Chair from 1996 to 1999), GLSEN Middle Tennessee, the International Foundation for Gender Education (eGFR), National Center for Transgender Equality, National Transgender Advocacy Coalition, Rainbow Community Center, Tennessee Equality Project, Tennessee Vals, and Trans Advocacy Network.
She is a prolific writer on historical and transgender issues.
She has Received Numerous awards for her service eGFR Including the Trinity Award for Contributions to the Transgender Community, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tennessee Waltz, Vagina Warrior by Vanderbilt University's Project Safe, the Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign, the Chairwoman's ICON Award from Baltimore Black Pride, the Community Award from Nashville Black Pride, the Autumn Honors from OutCentral Cultural Center, and was named to the Trans remarkable 100 list of transgender Activists and leaders around the country.
Marisa has three degrees, all in US History. Her AB is from Harvard University, her MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from George Washington University. Currently She Teaches history and women's and gender studies at Middle Tennessee State University.
When she was DCPD Elected to the Executive Committee in 2008, she Became Openly to first transgender person to win an election in Tennessee. Also in 2008, she Became the first African American, transgender person to be Elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention from any state. She served as a delegate Tennessee again in 2012.
She has served on with previously With the Local and national Numerous Boards, treats Including the American Educational Gender Information Service (Board Chair from 1996 to 1999), GLSEN Middle Tennessee, the International Foundation for Gender Education (eGFR), National Center for Transgender Equality, National Transgender Advocacy Coalition, Rainbow Community Center, Tennessee Equality Project, Tennessee Vals, and Trans Advocacy Network.
She is a prolific writer on historical and transgender issues.
She has Received Numerous awards for her service eGFR Including the Trinity Award for Contributions to the Transgender Community, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tennessee Waltz, Vagina Warrior by Vanderbilt University's Project Safe, the Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign, the Chairwoman's ICON Award from Baltimore Black Pride, the Community Award from Nashville Black Pride, the Autumn Honors from OutCentral Cultural Center, and was named to the Trans remarkable 100 list of transgender Activists and leaders around the country.
Marisa has three degrees, all in US History. Her AB is from Harvard University, her MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from George Washington University. Currently She Teaches history and women's and gender studies at Middle Tennessee State University.
Learn more about Will and Meghsha's session, "Top 10 Things You Need to Know About Tennessee's Criminal Justice System"
Learn more about Nathalie and Marie's session, "Making Protest Art" |
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Nathalie Van Balen teaches art at the University School of Nashville, where she passionately guides young folks toward critical, compassionate thinking and creative expression.
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Marie Campbell is currently Assistant Director of Education, Programs, & Connections at Scarritt Bennett Center. In her current position, Marie coordinates the Belle H. Bennett House, a 10-month fellowship program for young women discerning vocation at the intersection of radical social justice and spirituality. She holds a Masters of Divinity from Vanderbilt Divinity School and a B.A. in Sociology from Belmont University. Marie is passionate about creative justice, liberatory education, and bold, intersectional feminism.
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Learn more about Jardana's session,
"Radical Wellness and Social Justice"
Jardana Peacock is a long time healing justice practitioner living and working in the southeast. She works in the region and internationally through her virtual holistic healing practice. She works primarily with change makers to move through doubt, overwhelm and trauma and towards greater wellness and healing. She also leads an annual Yoga for Liberation retreat, is currently writing a book (to be released in June 2015) and is opening a holistic leadership school in 2016. She has been featured on the Huffington Post and Decolonizing Yoga. She lives in Nashville with her son and partner. Larn more about Jardana's work.
Learn more about the "Racism and War" Roundtable
Learn more about "The White Non Profit Industrial Complex"
a Facilitated Discussion with:
Emily Green-Cain is a teaching artist who engages groups in creative drama, movement, early literacy, storytelling and puppetry. She is the Curriculum Coordinator for the Bringing Books to Life at the Nashville Public Library. She is chair of the Beloved Community Committee at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville; and a certified leader of Interplay, a community practice that uses storytelling and movement for community building and spiritual growth.
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Beth Foster is co-director of the Mercy Junction Justice and Peace Center at St. Andrews. A newspaper editor and reporter for 15 years, Beth was active in the Occupy movement and is a long-time animal rights activist. Beginning work with Mercy Junction, a ministry of the Presbytery of East Tennessee, two years ago, Beth works in faith-based organizing as part of Mercy Junction’s mission to create the “world as it should be,” a world in which “all people are equal and there is justice for all creation.” Learn more about Mercy Junction.
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Learn more about Kara Tragesser's session "Mass Incarceration and Women"
Kara Tragesser is the organizer of Struggle Sisters. After being incarcerated for 10 years on armed robbery charges, Kara began organizing with former inmates to stop the execution of Kelly Gissendaner. Calling themselves the Struggle Sisters, the former inmates were part of a successful organizing effort that stopped Kelly's execution twice and put a temporary moratorium on all executions in Georgia. The Struggle Sisters are now beginning work around issues affecting women caught in the system of mass incarceration.
Learn more about Rev. Jeannie Alexander's session, "Prison Abolition"
Rev. Jeannie Alexander is the Co Founder of No Exceptions Prison Collective. She served as the Head Chaplain for Riverbend Maximum Security Institution for three years until September 2014. Prior to that, she was the volunteer chaplain for two years, where she facilitated the creation of an unprecedented number of programs for insiders, both in minimum security and on “death row.” Before this, she worked as an attorney, but left the practice of law to become a community organizer and to complete a graduate degree in theology and ethics. As an educator, she’s been a professor of philosophy, ethics, and religion. As a pastor, she’s served and developed interfaith communities in prison based on a model of liberation theology, as well as served as co-pastor to Mercy Community Church, a congregation where 85% of the members were experiencing homelessness. She is the co-founder of Amos House and Open Table Nashville and was a writer for, and sat on the board of, The Contributor for several years. Two of her essays are published in And The Criminals With Him, and she features significantly in the documentary Tent City, U.S.A., available on Netflix. She lectures and preaches frequently on the topics of mass incarceration as slavery, mandatory sentencing, and the death penalty. She understands the Gospel as a manifesto for radical liberation now on earth and an invitation to experience God through the living presence of others.
Learn more about the "Black Lives Matter Panel Discussion:
Get Active. Get Organized. Fight Back."
Learn More about Tennessee Trans Justice(TNTJ) Project with LaSaia's session, “The Intersection of Race, Gender, & Sex: A Discussion of Issues Facing Trans Women of Color"
LaSaia Wade is a 28 year old Trans woman of color. She graduated at Middle Tennessee State University with a BBA, Bachelors in Business Administration. She has worked for many different organizations including TPOCC, TLC and many more. LaSaia is the Founder of TNTJ, Tennessee Trans Journey Project, where she now serves as Executive Director. She focuses on Economic Justice and seeks to create jobs and use funding to open doors for all Trans folks in the state of Tennessee.
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River Johnson is a 25 year old gay man from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He has been an activist and educator since 2013. He has traveled across 16 states so far teaching classes like, Sex and Gender 101, Trans Partners, and Trans Ally-ship. He is graduating with his Master's in Experimental Psychology from MTSU in May of this year. He is a huge My Little Pony fan, and has one extremely spoiled cat.
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Learn more about Oceana's session, "Radical Acts of Empowerment"
Oceana Glantz has studied Nonviolent Communication for the past 4 years. She has attended many workshops with Certified trainers and led Nonviolent Communication (NVC) study groups. Oceana is a single mother raising her 2 teenage daughters and biracial twin sons using NVC and Compassionate Parenting. Her interests are diverse and include living sustainably, gardening, and making healthy food available to all. She is also an Herbalist and was once a Massage Therapist.
Learn more about Dr. Angela Sutton's session, "White People in the Dismantling of White Supremace: A Brief History"
Historian Angela Sutton earned her PhD in Atlantic History from Vanderbilt University, where she has taught courses in Maritime History and Slavery. Her work on Precolonial West Africa and the Atlantic slave trade has been presented at international scholarly conferences in places like Curacao, the Netherlands, and England. The interest in Atlantic slavery and the slave trade has led her to explore ideas of equality and issues of social justice in the modern day. Her latest article will feature in Slavery & Abolition in September 2015. Follow on Twitter @DrAngelaSutton.
Learn more about Chris Crass' session, "Towards Collective Liberation"
Chris Crass is a longtime organizer, educator, and writer working to build powerful working class-based, feminist, multiracial movements for collective liberation. He gives talks and leads workshops on campuses and with communities and congregations around the U.S. and Canada, to help support grassroots activists efforts. He balances family with his public political work and believes they are deeply interconnected, as both are about working to bring our vision and values into the world.
Throughout the 1990s he was an organizer with Food Not Bombs, an economic justice anti-poverty group and network; with them he helped build up the direct action-based anti-capitalist Left internationally. Building on the successes and challenges of the mass direct action convergences of the global justice movement, most notably in Seattle against the WTO in 1999, he helped launch the Catalyst Project with the support of movement elders and mentors Sharon Martinas, Elizabeth 'Betita' Martinez, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Catalyst Project combines political education and organizing to develop and support anti-racist politics, leadership, and organizing in white communities and builds dynamic multiracial alliances locally and nationally.
Through Catalyst Project, where he was the co-coordinator for more then a decade, he worked with tens of thousands of activists working on a wide range of issues in their communities and on their campuses. Through workshops on anti-racism, feminism for men, developing collective leadership and lessons from past movements, Crass has supported hundreds of organizations and leaders around the country.
In 2000 he was a co-founder of the Colours of Resistance network, which served as a think tank and clearinghouse of anti-racist feminist analysis and tools for activists in the U.S. and Canada. After Sept. 11th, 2001, he helped to found the Heads Up Collective which brought together a cadre of white anti-racist organizers to build up the multiracial Left in the San Francisco, Bay Area through alliances between the majority white anti-war movement and locally-based economic and racial justice struggles in communities of color. He was also a member of the Against Patriarchy Men’s Group that supported men in developing their feminist analysis and their feminist leadership.
He has written widely about anti-racist and social justice organizing, lessons from women of color feminism, and strategies to
build visionary movements. His essays have been translated into half a dozen languages, taught in hundreds of classrooms, and included in over a dozen anthologies including Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World, On the Road to Healing: An Anthology for Men Ending Sexism, and We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America. He is the author of Toward Collective Liberation.
He graduated from San Francisco State University in Race, Class, Gender and Power Studies. Originally from California, he currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his partner Jardana Peacock and their son, River. He is a Unitarian Universalist and works with faith-based communities to help build up the spiritual Left. Find Chris at http://www.chriscrass.org/
Throughout the 1990s he was an organizer with Food Not Bombs, an economic justice anti-poverty group and network; with them he helped build up the direct action-based anti-capitalist Left internationally. Building on the successes and challenges of the mass direct action convergences of the global justice movement, most notably in Seattle against the WTO in 1999, he helped launch the Catalyst Project with the support of movement elders and mentors Sharon Martinas, Elizabeth 'Betita' Martinez, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Catalyst Project combines political education and organizing to develop and support anti-racist politics, leadership, and organizing in white communities and builds dynamic multiracial alliances locally and nationally.
Through Catalyst Project, where he was the co-coordinator for more then a decade, he worked with tens of thousands of activists working on a wide range of issues in their communities and on their campuses. Through workshops on anti-racism, feminism for men, developing collective leadership and lessons from past movements, Crass has supported hundreds of organizations and leaders around the country.
In 2000 he was a co-founder of the Colours of Resistance network, which served as a think tank and clearinghouse of anti-racist feminist analysis and tools for activists in the U.S. and Canada. After Sept. 11th, 2001, he helped to found the Heads Up Collective which brought together a cadre of white anti-racist organizers to build up the multiracial Left in the San Francisco, Bay Area through alliances between the majority white anti-war movement and locally-based economic and racial justice struggles in communities of color. He was also a member of the Against Patriarchy Men’s Group that supported men in developing their feminist analysis and their feminist leadership.
He has written widely about anti-racist and social justice organizing, lessons from women of color feminism, and strategies to
build visionary movements. His essays have been translated into half a dozen languages, taught in hundreds of classrooms, and included in over a dozen anthologies including Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World, On the Road to Healing: An Anthology for Men Ending Sexism, and We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America. He is the author of Toward Collective Liberation.
He graduated from San Francisco State University in Race, Class, Gender and Power Studies. Originally from California, he currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his partner Jardana Peacock and their son, River. He is a Unitarian Universalist and works with faith-based communities to help build up the spiritual Left. Find Chris at http://www.chriscrass.org/
Learn more about One People's Project and TARN's session, "Our State of Hate: A Case Study of AmRen."
Daryle Lamont Jenkins, is the co-founder and Executive Director of One People's Project, a Philadelphia-based organization founded in 2000 that monitors right-wing groups and individuals, particularly the more hateful elements, in an effort to learn more about their activities and encourage others to diminish their abilities to hurt the greater society. He has appeared on The Montel Williams Show, A Current Affair, Fox News, and the documentary Erasing Hate, the story of a neo-Nazi whom Darlyle helped out of the neo-Nazi scene.