Division News & Statements
Speakers announced for 2016 MLK Commemoration Week
October 19, 2015
Grand Valley's 2016 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Week will feature a prominent journalist and author, and the social activist behind #BlackLivesMatter.
Touré is well-known for his social commentary. He is a former NBC contributor and former co-host of MSNBC's "The Cycle." A contributing editor to "Rolling Stone" and other publications, he is the author of several books, including "Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now."
Patrisse Cullors is a Los Angeles-based social activist who, with two other people, started the movement #BlackLivesMatter in 2013, taking their inspiration from the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. She is the truth and reinvestment campaign director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
Commemoration week activities will run January 18-23. Touré is the keynote speaker on Monday, January 18, in the Fieldhouse on the Allendale Campus; Cullors will give a presentation on January 20 at the Kirkhof Center on the Allendale Campus, which will be simulcast to an audience in the Eberhard Center on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus.
It will mark the fourth year that classes have been canceled on the King holiday, allowing more students, faculty and staff members to participate in events.
New in 2016, a Teach-In will be held during the commemoration week, on January 21. Grand Valley has hosted Teach-Ins for the past two years in the spring. Organizers said holding the Teach-In during commemoration week activities will deepen and advance social justice work that has been inspired by King.
Touré will also speak on January 18 at the 30th annual Grand Rapids Community College program and on January 19 at Davenport University.
For more on the speakers or Grand Valley's MLK commemoration week events, visit www.gvsu.edu/mlk.
- See more at: https://www.gvsu.edu/gvnext/2015/speakers-announced-for-2016-mlk-commemoration-week-8945.00000.htm#sthash.FUofTk4i.dpuf