Posted on 08/20/2014 6:46:44 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
FERGUSON, Mo. — Illai Kenney, a telecommunications student in Washington, found herself mesmerized by the constant stream of images flooding into her Twitter feed of protests underway in the small town of Ferguson, half a continent away.
Pictures of women whose eyes were swollen from tear gas. A mother’s anguished weeping. Hundreds of citizens marching through the streets, their hands held aloft in defiance of a police force that had killed an unarmed young black man. She knew one thing: She had to be there.
Kenney quickly packed a bag, got in a car with friends and drove 1,300 miles west along Interstate 70 to Ferguson.
“This is a movement. To see why these people — my people — were marching on the streets was just too much for me to just watch,” said Kenney, 25, who is black....
(Excerpt) Read more at mankatofreepress.com ...
Amen, Wake Up Erica.
You think that “shooting” in SLC was payback of some form?
Brown was also another wannabe rapper..
tonight Roger Hitchcock played some of Brown’s rap songs where he is rapping about the police, looting and robbing stores, getting lots of cash etc, killing people...
Oh noez...
Organizer Illai Kenney on the Generational Divide Among Civil Rights Activists
During the weeklong events commemorating the March on Washington, Moyers & Company associate producer Reniqua Allen noticed that a lot of black youth were upset that their voices weren’t being heard, not only by mainstream media, but also by some of their own leaders in the civil rights community.
To get a deeper perspective on the intergenerational divide, she spoke with Illai Kenney, a 24-year-old college student and activist with Black Youth Vote! who has been organizing and fighting for change in her community since she was nine. They talked about the burdens and benefits of being young and black in America, the role of hip hop in activism; and what black youth need to do in order to get their voices heard. Below is an edited version of their conversation.
(snip)
Allen: You’re involved with Black Youth Vote!, a group that works on registering young people to vote. Tell me about that.
Kenney: I’ve worked with Black Youth Vote! since I was nine, organizing and training young people. We bring them in from across the nation to train them to register young people to vote [and] to get young people to be civically engaged and active. For me, being young — under 18 — I couldn’t even vote for most of the time that I was working with Black Youth Vote! But the reality was that I had a voice. And I had a vision. And I had an idea. And I had feelings. And that was enough for me.
http://creativewell.com/pdf/ourgreenfuture.pdf
Illai Kenney, Howard University student
Illai is a leader within the powerful black youth vote movement working to increase civic participation.
She is currently a student organizer for the Responsible Endowments Coalition working to increase
awareness about socially responsible investing and community development at Howard University.
She co-founded Georgia Kids Against Pollution when she was 12 and has traveled the world advocating
environmental justice. Illai was the youngest delegate to the UN World Conference on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.
http://conference.aashe.org/2013/content/transforming-msis-sustainability-leaders
Illai Kenney, Howard University
Illai is a senior telecommunications management major at Howard University. She is a Program Associate in the Office of Sustainability where she manages the University’s recycling program procedures, policies, data and program development. She helps to educate the campus community to reduce waste and promote effective utilization of materials and resources. An internationally recognized environmental and social justice youth activist, her first public speech was at the Million Youth Movement Rally when she was nine and she founded the Georgia Kids Against Pollution when she was 12. She is a Brower award winner and has contributed to numerous environmental campaigns. She is attracted global media attention for challenging Coca-Cola over water practices in India and for speaking up about poverty at the UN Summit on Sustainability. An outspoken critic of the lack of government response to Katrina, Illai also works with Black Youth Vote to promote youth civic engagement.
and then the residents of Ferguson come out in the morning to clean up the mess
Flies like sh!t. Film at 11.
“She had to be there.”
She thinks it’s “historic”, no doubt.
Just like she thought voting for the paper-doll pResident was historic.
What’s gonna be “historic” is all the idiots that sunk this country—history will NOT look kindly upon them.
I live just south of Ferguson. There ain’t enough money to pay me to go up and mix into this fiasco! :-(
“Protests in Ferguson, Mo., lure many from across the US”
Didn’t read the article but I heard the story on the radio.
The title gave me a thought though. How many rednecks
has this lured in just out of sight. There are places
in this country where people are prepared for this and are
just waiting for it to happen. And, I think the potential
rioters know it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.