Join us for a new series of online discussions with activists about the lessons they have learned while working long-term with people who share their goals but not their identities. Our fifth event will be with Mandy Carter and Pam McMichael on Thursday, July 22nd from 6:30 to 7:45 PM (ET).
Register on Zoom at bit.ly/PMCJUST5.
Our intention is to illuminate challenges and rewards of communicating with others across historically divided lines of identity:
to grow self-awareness of implicit bias and assumptions;
to acknowledge the vulnerability required to have deep conversations;
to gain insight in ways of listening and working with silence;
to recognize the power and benefit of our interconnectedness.
Mandy Carter
Mandy Carter is a North Carolina-based black lesbian activist with a 53-year movement history of social, racial, and LGBTQ+ justice organizing. Her active participation in voter mobilization and voter participation includes her being a non-partisan Poll Worker for her Precinct in Durham, NC. A co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition that advocates non-partisan civic engagement in partnership with the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Underscoring the importance of electoral politics in social change movements, Ms. Carter was one of the five national co-chairs of Obama LGBT Pride, the national LGBT infrastructure for U.S. Senator Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential campaign and win. She had done the hard work of organizing grassroots networks, especially people of color throughout the South. She is a former member of the Democratic National Committee’s Black Caucus and LGBT Caucus.
Pam McMichael
Pam McMichael comes from a farming and factory working family in Kentucky and credits her parents for shaping the values that led to her path of social justice. She moved to Louisville for grad school, and credits Black and white civil rights leaders there for bringing her up as an organizer.
She is a co-founder of the national Showing up for Racial Justice (SURJ), the regional Southerners on New Ground, and the Louisville/statewide Fairness Campaign. For twelve years, McMichael served as the Executive Director of the renowned Highlander Research and Education Center. Her earliest solidarity organizing included South Africa, Central America and Palestine, as well as linking US foreign policy to domestic issues. She was a national fellow with a Rockefeller Foundation project to address crisis in U.S. democracy. An experienced trainer and facilitator, she is currently doing consulting work with a variety of groups.
McMichael is committed to the integral role of art and culture in good organizing, her most recent project as co-writer and co-producer of We’ve Been Down this Road Before, a 4 minute call-to-action video about how immigrants have been targeted and scapegoated throughout US history. She is also a poet and playwrite, working on her next play and a book manuscript.
McMichael serves on the c3 Board of SURJ, is a board member of the Carl Braden Memorial Center, in Louisville, and is active with the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. She a Tri-Chair of the Kentucky Poor People’s Campaign, as well as a Tri-Chair of the national Steering Committee.