PRESS RELEASE January 15, 2015 Contact: Ciara Taylor - TopicsExpress

PRESS RELEASE January 15, 2015 Contact: Ciara Taylor ([email protected], 850.284.5463) Dream Defenders Delegation to Palestine Stages Flash Mob in Downtown Nazareth in Solidarity with Palestinians View the Flash Mob Video Here: vimeo/116675694#t=143s Representatives at the forefront of the movements for Black lives and racial justice in the United States took a historic 10-day trip to Palestine recently to connect with activists living under Israeli occupation and apartheid, staging a flash mob in Nazareth to show solidarity for the Palestinian community. The delegation included Black and Latino journalists, artists, musicians, and community organizers from Ferguson, Missouri, Black Lives Matter, Black Youth Project 100 and Dream Defenders. Ahmad Abuznaid, Dream Defenders’ legal and policy director and a co-organizer of the delegation, said that the goal of the trip was to make connections. “The demonstration was a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people, to show that this movement goes beyond borders. The group decided to do the action as a call for people to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign that Palestinian civil society launched in 2005.” Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors helped to choreograph the flash mob after the idea came up in conversation with one of the delegation’s Palestinian tour guides. “I helped organize this flash mob because the offering of visible solidarity is both healing and courageous and allows for our work as organizers, artists, militants and healers to signal to both the state of Israel and America that the current movement for Black liberation is on the front lines of fighting against the occupation of Palestine.” St. Louis-based organizer Tara Thomas was struck by the similarities between the struggles of Palestinians and those of her community in Ferguson. “The parallels that can be drawn between the occupation in Palestine and the occupation of predominantly Black neighborhoods in the United States cannot be ignored. Palestinians were the first to reach out, sharing ways to protect Ferguson protesters from tear gas. We were honored to stand in solidarity by performing the flash mob in Nazareth. It was a small token of our appreciation. Our struggles are aligned which makes it imperative that our people be aligned.” The delegation is part of an ongoing effort to forge deeper connections and solidarity between Black and Brown communities in the U.S. and Palestinians. In November, students from Palestine visited Ferguson and St. Louis to meet with activists organizing protests in response to the police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. Also in November, the Dream Defenders voted to endorse BDS during a their national Congress. View the Flash mob video at this link: vimeo/116675694#t=143s. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DELEGATE BIOS Phillip Agnew is executive director of the Dream Defenders. A native of Chicago, IL, Phillip first became an organizer with the Student Coalition for Justice: a cadre of students from Florida A&M University, Florida State University, and Tallahassee Community College angered at the murder of Martin Lee Anderson in a Florida Youth Boot Camp. Cherrell Brown has been with Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) since December 2011. She has been organizing since her freshman year of college. She worked with Americorps to develop programs to improve retention of first generation college students, interned with the Beloved Community Center working on initiatives ranging from police accountability to environmental justice, received a grant to run a literacy program for a refugee relocation youth center, and chaired the Political Awareness and Involvement Committee of her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta. Charlene Carruthers is a Chicago-based writer, organizer and foodie. She has worked extensively to promote social justice and build leadership on local and national levels. Her passion for working with young leaders to build capacity and leadership has led her to work with and train youth and women of color across the country. She holds expertise in Black and youth political participation, civic engagement and digital engagement strategies. Charlene currently serves as the Director of Online Engagement at National People’s Action. She has worked for national progressive organizations including the Center for Community Change, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law and the Women’s Media Center and ColorOfChange.org. Patrisse Cullors is an artist, organizer and freedom fighter living and working in Los Angeles. As founder and executive director of Dignity and Power Now and co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter, she has worked tirelessly promoting law enforcement accountability across the nation. Dignity and Power Now is dedicated to protecting incarcerated people and their families in Los Angeles. As executive director, Patrisse has undertaken several projects ranging from the Coalition to End Sheriff Violence, Freedom Harvest artist collective, a bi-annual publication, the Dandelion Rising Leadership Institute and Building Resilience. In August of this year, the organization issued a report in collaboration with the UCLA Human Rights Clinic on the high percentage of black, mentally ill inmates. Founded in 2012, #BlackLivesMatter and Patrisse have been on the ground in both Ferguson and St. Louis providing support to those who have taken action and responded to the ongoing virulent anti-Black racism permeating our society. Patrisse and her team brought together more than 500 people from across the country to take part in the organization’s recent Freedom Ride from St. Louis to Ferguson. Marc Lamont Hill is one of the leading intellectual voices in the country. He is the host of HuffPost Live and BET News, as well as a political contributor for CNN. He is the former host of the nationally syndicated television show Our World With Black Enterprise and political contributor to Fox News Channel. An award-winning journalist, Marc has received numerous awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. In 2009, Marc joined the faculty of Columbia University as Associate Professor of Education at Teachers College. He currently holds an affiliated faculty appointment in African American Studies at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. In 2011, Ebony Magazine named him one of America’s 100 most influential Black leaders. Marc is the author of three books: the award-winning Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity; The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black life in America; and The Barbershop Notebooks: Reflections on Culture, Politics, and Education. Aja Monet is one of the most accomplished and respected poets within the community. She was a member of the first youth team from NYC to win the Brave New Voices Youth National Poetry slam. At the age of 19, Aja became the youngest individual to ever win the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café grand slam champion title (2007), ranking top 20 in the National Poetry Slam and 5th in the nation as part of the Nuyorican slam team within the same year. In 2008, Aja was on the Hollywood Slam team at Da Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles, CA. She has performed at the NAACP Pre-Inauguration Event for Barack Obama, on-Broadway at the Town Hall theatre, the Apollo theatre, the Nuyorican Poets Café, Bowery Poetry Club, B.B. Kings, The Schomburg Center of Harlem, and various college campuses, universities and venues around the United States, Europe, Cuba and Bermuda. Aja has served as a youth mentor and poetry slam coach for Urban Word NYC, working with at-risk youth in inner-city New York, and has for three years worked with Odyssey House as poetry/performance program coordinator, teacher, and mentor. Steven Pargett has served as the communications director of Dream Defenders since 2012. He is a former community advocate with the Southern Poverty Law Center and has a background doing creative consulting work for start-up businesses, college programming and political campaigns targeted at Millennial & People of Color demographics. Since 2008, Steven has helped to organize youth voter turnout and civic engagement in Black, Brown and Millenial Communities in each election, participating as an independent working to build independent political power for communities who have insufficient voice in the current political environment. Carmen Perez has been an activist nearly her entire life and has advocated for young men and women, providing comprehensive leadership training and opportunities for individuals in and out of the criminal justice system. In 2002, Carmen went to work for Barrios Unidos in Santa Cruz – an organization dedicated to re-entry services for formally incarcerated individuals, cultural and spiritual programming inside of California prisons and establishing peace in communities across the country and internationally. In 2005, while working for Barrios Unidos, Carmen met the man who would influence the next decade of her life – Harry Belafonte. Mr. Belafonte brought youth and elders together to travel to cities across the country under a common convent to build a national movement to end child incarceration. Carmen became involved as a youth representative helping to organize gatherings across the country and ultimately helping to set the future of the organization as an executive committee member of The Gathering for Justice. In 2010, Carmen became the Executive Director of The Gathering. In 2012, The Gathering took its national experiences and transferred them to the international stage where Carmen participated in a trans-national delegation that supported the 2011 peace truce between the world’s largest and most violent gangs, MS 13 and 18th Street, in the ravaged prisons of El Salvador – lowering the country’s violent crime and murder rate by 70%. In July of this year, she had the opportunity to share her life’s work and delivered her first TEDx talk inside Ironwood State Prison along with 21 other visitors and 22 inmates. She has recently been accepted into the Women’s Media Center Progressive Women’s Voices Class of 2014. Tef Poe (Kareem Jackson) was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a rapper and agent for social change. Through his unwavering integrity, sincere rhymes and passionate actions, Tef is changing the musical and social-political landscape. He built his reputation as a battle rapper in St. Louis and has continued to grow and expand his vision to a broader spectrum. Always having a penchant for politics and social justice, the subject matter easily found itself laced throughout his music. Tef Poe has had the pleasure of working with the likes of Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, Common, I-20, Killer Mike, Royce Da 5’9, and Big Boi. He has been mentioned in major media outlets such as MSNBC, BET, Noisey, The Source, XXL, Washington Post, New York Times, The Smoking Section, and HipHopDX. Sherika Shaw is the South Florida Regional Organizer for Dream Defenders and has been organizing with them since 2012. She is a graduate of The Florida State University. Sherika works locally with chapter from Tampa, FL to Homestead, FL and internationally, in places like Jamaica. She is hoping to continue growing as an organizer and trainer. Ciara Taylor serves as political director for the Dream Defenders, a civil rights organization directed by black and brown youth who are committed to ending systemic oppression in Florida by training and organizing youth and students in nonviolent civil disobedience, civic engagement, and direct action while creating a sustainable network of youth and student leaders to take action and create real change in their communities. Tara Thompson is a native of St. Louis who returned to the city in 2012. She has been immersed in the fight for justice for Michael Brown, an unarmed teen murdered by Ferguson police on August 9th, 2014, and all victims of state-sanctioned profiling and violence. Tara strives to build strong relationships with other struggles leading the charge for change around the world to share strategy and love. She holds a B.S. from Xavier University of Louisiana and an MBA from Webster University. Ahmad Abuznaid is a co-founder and legal & policy director for the Dream Defenders, a Florida based non-profit founded in the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy. Dream Defenders work to end systemic injustice and build collective power. Ahmad was born in occupied East Jerusalem. Maytha Alhassen is a University of Southern California Provost Ph.D. Fellow in American Studies and Ethnicity, studying historical encounters between Black internationalism and the Arab diaspora. As an artist, Maytha writes and performs poetry and has worked as a performer and organizer for the play “Hijabi Monologues.” She regularly appears on Al Jazeera English’s The Stream” as a guest co-host/digital producer and regularly appears on HuffPost Live, Fusion Network and Pivot. Maytha’s writings have appeared in CNN, Huffington Post, Mic, Counterpunch, La Vanguardia and in academic journals. As a member of the Blackout Arts Collective, she has facilitated creative literacy workshops with incarcerated youth at Rikers Island and wrote an intro on the power of Love in dismantling the prison industrial complex for an anthology of the youths poetry and visual art titled One Mic. Maytha recently co-edited a book on the Arab uprisings, youth and social media with Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, Demanding Dignity: Young Voices from the Front Lines of the Arab Revolutions (White Cloud Press).