Spring 2024

Kamau Franklin, Founder of Community Movement Builders of Atlanta: Community Movement Builders (CMB)
is a Black member-based collective of community residents and activists serving Black
working-class and poor Black communities. CMB emerged out of a need to respond to
encroaching gentrification, displacement and over-policing. CMB organizes to bring
power to Black communities by challenging existing institutions and creating new ones
that our people control.

Fall 2023

Jodi Hill and Sarah Carthen-Watson of the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center (LAFHAC): LaFHAC is a New Orleans based
civil rights non-profit dedicated to enforcing the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and ending
housing discrimination and segregation across the state of Louisiana.

2022

Derecka Purnell: Derecka Purnell is a lawyer, author, and activist. Her book Becoming Abolitionists:
Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom was released in 2021 by Astra House.
In the widely praised book, Purnell details how multi-racial social movements rooted
in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love have pushed her and a  generation
of activists toward the cause of police abolition. The book travels across geography
and time, and offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa,
from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings.

2018

Jordan Mazurek of the Abolitionist Law Center’s Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons: The Campaign to
Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP) is a collaboration with the Abolitionist Law Center. FTP’s
mission is to conduct grassroots organizing, advocacy, and direct action to challenge
the prison system which is putting prisoners at risk of dangerous environmental conditions,
as well as impacting surrounding communities and ecosystems by their construction
and operation. Inspired by the abolitionist movement against mass incarceration and
the environmental justice movement.

2018

Adrienne Maree Brown: Adrienne Maree Brown is a writer, activist and facilitator. From 2006 to 2010, she
was executive director of the Ruckus Society. She also co-founded and directed the
United States League of Young Voters.

2017

On Wednesday, November 8, 2017, the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice will
host Adrienne Maree Brown, as our 13th Annual Social Justice Speaker. Adrienne is an author, science fiction
scholar, and community organizer/healer. She draws inspiration from the work of Octavia
Butler and believes that visionary fiction can help us to create communities that
we want to live in. While here, Adrienne will facilitate a student organizing workshop,
and will also deliver a lecture to the university community based on her book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.

The workshop is from 9:30 am until 11:45am and will teach students how to organize
and respond to emerging social issues. Please use this link to register for the workshop:
https://goo.gl/forms/DtILdoHV1jxdNwKX2

The lecture will be held at 2:00pm in the Student Union Grand Ballroom. Adrienne will
sign copies of her book immediately following the lecture.

2016

2016- Our 2016 Social Justice Speaker was Chris Eder a retired US Air Force MSgt with PTSD. He served 23.5 years as a combat correspondent.
Today, Chris considers himself a broadcast journalist, turned yogi who now creates
mala beads to support several non-profit organizations such as, Mindful Yoga Therapy
for Veterans and the Give Back Yoga Foundation. Chris spoke about the importance of
peace and the ability of yoga to help individuals recover from trauma. Students and
faculty were enthused to participate in Eder’s well-attended yoga class and found
his presentation captivating.

2015

2015- In November 2015, Marc Bousquet an Associate Professor of Film and Media at Emory University addressed the neoliberalization
of higher education. Bousquet is the author of the well-known critique of higher education,
How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation and is preparing
a sequel, Monetizing the Student. He is a frequent contributor to the higher education
trade press, co-editor of The Politics of Information: The Electronic Mediation of
Social Change, and coeditor of Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers. He founded
Workplace: A Journal of Academic Labor and has served on the editorial board of several
journals, including AAUP’s Academe.

2014

 2014 –In November 2014, we welcomed Angela Davis to mark 10 years of the Social Justice Speaker Series.  Professor Davis is the author
of nine books and has lectured throughout the United States as well as in Europe,
Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. In recent years a persistent theme of
her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the
generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty
and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies
as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being placed on
the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List.” Her most recent book is The Meaning of Freedom and
Other Difficult Dialogs. Like many other educators, Professor Davis is especially
concerned with the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the
prison system than to educational institutions. Having helped to popularize the notion
of a “prison industrial complex,” she now urges her audiences to think seriously about
the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st century
abolitionist movement.

2013

November 2013, Lee Shull. Following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Shull advocated for stronger
gun safety legislation by engaging lobbyists, resulting in the toughest gun safety
laws in the country. By rallying friends and neighbors together, he created Sandy
Hook Promise. Sandy Hook Promise helps the community heal and advocates for change.
His lecture demonstrated the importance of activism and community involvement. 

 

 

2012

On Monday, Nov. 5, 2012 one of the founders of Occupy Wall Street, Justin Wedes, spent the day with our students for this year’s Social Justice Speaker Series. Justin’s
day was a whirlwind of exciting activity. He held an activist organizing workshop
at 11, had lunch with the Southeastern Sociological Association, graduate students,
and students from other departmental clubs including Reconnect. At 2pm Justin gave
his keynote address to a packed house in Pottle Auditorium where he dispelled myths
about the Occupy movement, discussed the importance of the movement in shifting national
conversation about financial institutions, and recent relief activities by Occupy
in post-Sandy NYC. But perhaps the most interesting part of the day occurred after
his talk. Over a dozen students continued to talk with Justin on the grounds outside
of Pottle. After about an hour the conversation with students moved to Starbucks and
then, after dinner with several faculty, students met again with Justin at a downtown
restaurant. Justin was inspired by our students’ enthusiasm and passion and they were
eager to learn and share with the veteran organizer. Thanks to everyone who helped
make this year’s event successful!

2011

In November 2011, the Social Justice Speaker Series brought Shane Windmeyer to Southeastern’s Pottle Hall. The Series is known for cutting edge speakers covering
a diverse array of topical subjects, and Windmeyer continued this tradition. He is
a national leader and advocate for gay and lesbian civil rights, and co-founder and
executive director of Campus Pride, the only national organization for student leaders
and groups working to create safer college environments for LGBT students. Windmeyer
brought students on stage, dressed them in colorful boas and had them do their best
dancing in a very lively and engaging talk to a packed house. Although lively and
often fun, his talk, “The Impact of Hate,” focused on challenging students to explore
prejudices around them as well as their own, and to motivate them to make a difference
fighting prejudice and hate in their own communities. Participants were “dared” to
take action and fight the roots of prejudice.

2010

In November 2010, Ann Williams Cass was the first featured speaker of the program, discussing “Immigration and Secure
Borders: Dispelling the Myths”. She is the Executive Director of Proyecto Azteca,
a self-help housing program based in San Juan, Texas, inspired by the late Caesar
Chavez. She has been an activist and organizer in Texas since the 1980s. She brings
a wealth of experience and knowledge in community and economic development issues
on the South Texas border related to housing, health care, immigration and education.

The November 2010 program also featured a panel discussion with Ted Quant, Jacinta
Gonzalez, Dennis Soriano, and Jacob Horwitz, discussing “The Streets Will Not Be Silent:
The Story of the Congress of Day Laborers and the Fight for Justice”. Ted Quant is
the Director of the Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice at Loyola University in
New Orleans. The Twomey Center works to shape social justice consciousness and take
action on issues of workers’ rights, racism, poverty, and justice. Jacinta Gonzalez
and Dennis Soriano of the Workers’ Center for Racial Justice in New Orleans fight
theft, prejudice and the other unjust structural realities with which Latino immigrants
struggle daily. Jacob Horwitz is a community organizer for the Workers’ Center.

Concluding the November 2010 program was Jesse Diaz, Jr. presenting “Confronting the Two Faces of the Immigration Rights Movement in the
Context of the Immigration Industrial Complex.” Jesse Diaz Jr., along with Hernandad
Mexicana Transnacional, advocates for immigration rights through campaigns against
anti-immigrant hate groups and other repressive actions toward the immigrant community.
He is a founder of the Placita Olvera Working Group that organized the 2006 Gran Marcha
and Gran Paro Americano 2006. Jesse is currently teaching Sociology at the University
of Texas-Pan American.

 

2009

In 2009, the Social Justice Speaker Series again featured two individuals Omar Freilla and Diane Wilson. Omar Freilla is founder of Green Worker Cooperatives, an organization dedicated
to bringing worker-owned and eco-friendly manufacturing jobs to the South Bronx in
New York. Green Worker Cooperatives incubates these types of employment opportunities
in response to high unemployment and decades of environmental racism. They don’t have
the luxury to wait for new alternatives; therefore, they’re creating them. They believe
that in order to address our environmental and economic problems we need new ways
to earn a living that don’t require polluting the earth or exploiting human labor.

Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper, began fishing the bays off the Gulf Coast of Texas
at the age of eight. In 1989, while running her brother’s fish house at the docks
and mending nets, she read a newspaper article that listed her home of Calhoun County
as the number one toxic polluter in the country. She set up a meeting in the town
hall to discuss what the chemical plants were doing to the bays and thus began her
life as an environmental activist. Threatened by thugs and despised by her neighbors,
Diane insisted the truth be told and that Formosa Plastics stop dumping toxins into
the bay. Her work on behalf of the people and aquatic life of Seadrift, Texas, has
won her a number of awards including: National Fisherman Magazine Award, Mother Jones’s
Hell Raiser of the Month, and the Louisiana Environmental Action (LEAN) Environmental
Award. An Unreasonable Woman, her story of the struggle against the polluters of the
Texas Gulf Coast was Diane’s first book. Her most recent book is HOLY ROLLER: Growing
Up in the Church of Knock Down, Drag Out; or How I Quit Loving a Blue-Eyed Jesus.

2008

On November 6, 2008, Allan Johnson addressed the issues of patriarchy and gender inequality. He is a writer, teacher
and public speaker working to address issues of privilege, oppression, and social
inequality. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan in
1972. He taught for 30 years and now devotes his time entirely to writing and public
speaking on issues such as patriarchy and male privilege, the dynamics of gender inequality
in families, schools, and workplaces, sexuality and relationships between women and
men, and the dilemmas of manhood and fatherhood. Dr. Johnson has written numerous
books, including: The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice, and Promise,
The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology, Privilege, Power, and Difference, and The Gender
Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, the latter which has been used in Southeastern’s
Sociology of Gender course

2007

The Speaker Series featured two presenters in 2007, Sakura Kone and Medea Benjamin.

Sakura Kone, representing Common Ground Collective, spoke about the recovery and redevelopment
of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He has assisted with distributing aid, establishing
a community health clinic in the Lower Ninth Ward, and advocating for the continuing
needs of people in New Orleans as the coordinator of media and events for the organization.

 

 

 

Medea Benjamin is Founding Director of Global Exchange, a membership-based international
human rights organization dedicated to promoting social, economic and environmental
justice around the world. She has struggled for social justice and human rights in
Asia, the Americas, and Africa for over 25 years ( www.globalexchange.org). She also
co-founded Code Pink, a women’s peace group that has been organizing creative actions
against the occupation of Iraq. Since the tragic events of 9/11, Ms. Benjamin has
been organizing against a violent response. She traveled several times to Afghanistan,
including with a delegation of 9/11 families, to highlight civilian casualties caused
by the US invasion. She helped bring together the groups forming the coalition United
for Peace and Justice.

2006

In 2006, Morris Dees, co-founder and Chief Trial Counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, spoke about
the right to be free of racial oppression. The Center is internationally known for
its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and
its tracking of hate groups.

 

 

 

2005

The initial speaker was Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and The Death
of Innocents, and advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.