WHY DO PROTESTS FAIL?

Don't miss this revolutionary discussion with Dr. Lenora Fulani, Alicia Garza, Souta Calling Last and Micah White on the pressing question:Why Do Protests Fail? 

Drawing on their pivotal experiences running for president as a third-party candidate, sparking Black Lives Matter, asserting indigenous rights, and co-founding Occupy Wall Street, these thoughtful activists will confront head-on the reasons that protests fail. Is it a lack of demands? Police repression? Absence of leadership? Or something deeper?

Understanding why protests fail is the only way to equip tomorrow's activists to create positive social change.

Symposium Speakers

Lenora Fulani, PhD

Dr. Fulani has long been active in creating change through political action.  She has twice run for president as an independent.  In 1988 she became the first woman and first African American in U.S. history to appear as a presidential candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.  In 1994 she co-founded the Committee for a Unified Independent Party, a national strategy center for independent voters, which currently has networks in more than 30 states.  She is a founder of the Independence Party of New York State.

Dr. Fulani has been a featured guest on countless TV and radio programs including Henry Louis Gates’ PBS documentary, America Beyond the Color Line, Crossfire, Hardball, Fox News, Inside Politics, Larry King Live, Washington Journal, Tony Brown’s Journal, BET’s Nightly News and The McNeil-Lehrer Report.  Her social commentaries on a wide variety of topics have appeared in newspapers nationwide including: USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, Reuters, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, New York’s Newsday. 

Alicia Garza

Alicia Garza is an organizer, writer, and freedom dreamer. She is the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, and the Principal of the Black Futures Lab. She is also the Strategy + Partnerships Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the nation’s leading voice for dignity and fairness for the millions of domestic workers in the United States. She has been the recipient of numerous awards for her organizing work, including the Root 100 2015 and 2016 list of African-American achievers and influencers. She was also featured in the Politico50 guide to the thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2015. She lives and works in Oakland, California.

Souta Calling Last

Souta Calling Last (Blackfeet/Blood) is the Founder and Executive Director of Indigenous Vision, a national educational nonprofit founded in 2015. Souta does not consider herself an environmentalist but more as a Blackfoot woman whose cultural practice is dependent on clean water and high functioning ecosystems. Her work on land and water protection started in childhood cleaning beaver ponds. She continued volunteering with streamside clean-ups, restorations, and community water education while obtaining a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Montana in Environmental Studies Water Resources.

She later gained experience with her tribe as a Water Resource Specialist and Drinking Water Operator obtaining her Master’s degree in Innovative Leadership and Change Management from the University of Phoenix. Before founding Indigenous Vision, Souta served as an Environmental Specialist in a National Tribal Drinking Water Program. Her connection to the landscape remained unhindered and she continued to organize lake shore clean-ups at drinking water reservoirs in the Phoenix area. Souta believes the land is a storybook of information filled with ecological and climate knowledge and that honoring ancestral observation will protect the land and water and will promote ideal human health and wellness.