All right, yes, my birthday isn’t until September, but I know where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing. I’ll be at the fourth Women in Secularism conference in D.C.
It will be bittersweet, as this is the first conference since Melody Hensley has left CFI. I also personally think recent changes at CFI have made the future of the conference unclear. Still, this conference has been an important catalyst for change in the atheist and humanist movements, and I expect it will be again. I’m not going to miss that.
Also, check out these speakers:
Johnetta Elzie
Johnetta Elzie, @nettaaaaaaaa, 26, is a protester and organizer, born and raised in St. Louis, who became known for documenting the events of Ferguson on Twitter in August 2014. Since then, she has worked to organize toward sustainable change. She sits on the planning team for mappingpoliceviolence.org and wetheprotesters.org to provide police accountability and organizer resources. In August 2015, she helped launch Campaign Zero, a comprehensive policy platform to address police violence in the United States. Johnetta believes that Michael Brown and the uprising in Ferguson forever changed her life. Her writing, “The TSA Searched My Hair Because I’m a Black Woman with Braids—And It’s Not Okay,” has been featured by Teen Vogue. Her work as a youth activist has been profiled in Teen Vogue, New York Times Magazine, The LA Times, and O Magazine, among others. Essence featured Johnetta on the cover of its February 2016 Black Girl Magic issue. She has been awarded the Howard Zinn Freedom to Write Award with fellow activist DeRay McKesson for their creation of the #Ferguson Protestor Newsletter, and been named to Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers 2015.
I’ve been advocating for Elzie to be a part of this conference for as long as I’ve known it was happening. To be fair, I received nothing but enthusiasm for the idea. I was just too impatient to wait for confirmation. Continue reading “Where I’ll Be for My Birthday”