Working Together for Equity: Black Lives Matter Through the Lens of Civil Rights History

In this inflection moment, it isn't enough to be "not racist." We all must be anti-racist. Everyone must commit to the global struggle for justice. True change is only possible when the resistance is multi-racial, with BIPOC and white allies working together to dismantle racist systems and policies. In this workshop, we will remember the tradition of cross-racial organizing in this country and use that tradition to scaffold the work that is so needed now.

About Eisa:

Eisa Nefertari Ulen is the author of Crystelle Mourning (Atria), a novel described by The Washington Post as “a call for healing in the African American community from generations of hurt and neglect.” Eisa is the recipient of a Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center Fellowship for Young African American Fiction Writers, a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, and a National Association of Black Journalists Award. Her essays on African American culture have been widely anthologized, most recently “Black Parenting Matters” in Who Do You Serve? Who Do You Protect? (Haymarket), which won the Social Justice / Advocacy Award for 2017 from the School Library Journal’s In the Margins Book Committee.

Eisa has contributed to ReadersDigest.com, The Hollywood Reporter, Essence, Parents, The Washington Post, Ms. Health, Ebony, The Huffington Post, Pen.org, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Root, Truthout, The Defenders Online, The Grio, and Creative Nonfiction. Eisa graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master’s degree from Columbia University.

She has taught literature at Hunter College and The Pratt Institute. A founding member of ringShout: A Place for Black Literature, she lives with her husband and son in Brooklyn.