Within the last few years the Pittsburgh Racial Justice Summit has organized an Opening Ceremony separate from the day of the summit to give more time to the summit workshops and bring in activist voices from a national stage. This year we are very happy to invite Candi Brings Plenty and Dr. Molefi Kete Asante.
To do this we need money. We estimate that we will need an additional $4,000 to pay for the keynote speakers’ fees and travel costs as well as other costs associated with the Opening Ceremony. As a primarily volunteer-led event, 100% of all donations will go towards the costs for hosting the Opening Ceremony.
Please contribute what you can to help us reach our goal and to bring this year’s very timely keynote speakers.
(when prompted, please mark your donation as “Keynote Speaker Fund”)
Candi Brings Plenty
Candi Brings Plenty doesn’t just embrace change. She has a history of making it happen.
As the indigenous justice organizer for the ACLU of South Dakota, Candi works to build the ACLU’s public education and advocacy programs through coalition-building, leadership development, communication, and lobbying. She leads the efforts surrounding the ACLU’s NoKXL, NoDAPL, MMIW, and Two Spirit visibility work. She is also the organizer for all West River ACLU campaigns in South Dakota.
Candi, who identifies as Two Spirit – a modern umbrella term for indigenous people that recognizes there are multiple genders and that sexuality can be fluid – is a lifelong advocate for justice. As a Lakota cultural practitioner and through her spiritual activism, Candi works to bring her medicine to the Oyaté and advocates especially for the empowerment and visibility of Two Spirit warriors to reclaim their walk of life in the sacred circle.
Prior to joining the ACLU of South Dakota, Candi was the campaign adviser and executive proxy for the tribal president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the executive director of the EQUI Institute, a trans and queer health clinic, in Portland, Ore. She was also the founder of the Two Spirit Nation and led the Two Spirit encampment at Standing Rock for 11 months during the peaceful prayer movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Candi has a bachelor’s degree in Native American studies with an emphasis on tribal laws and treaties. She completed her graduate certificate in public and nonprofit management and pursued her master’s degree in public administration from Portland State University in Portland, Ore. Candi is an Oglala Lakota Sioux tribal member and a direct descendent of Crazy Horse’s Band. She grew up in the Black Hills and on the Pine Ridge Reservation, she is deeply rooted in her Lakota culture, spirituality, and language.
Candi will make uncharted impacts within the ACLU while engaging her indigenous communities to empower their civil liberties.
Molefi Kete Asante
Molefi Kete Asante is an activist intellectual who is currently Professor and Chair, Department of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University. He is also President, Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies. Asante is a Guest Professor, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China and Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa. Asante has published 83 books, among the most recent are The American Demagogue, Revolutionary Pedagogy, The History of Africa, Classical Africa, An Afrocentric Manifesto, The Afrocentric Idea, As I Run Toward Africa; African Pyramids of Knowledge; Facing South: An African Orientation to Knowledge. Asante has published more than 500 articles and is considered the most published African American scholar as well as one of the most distinguished authors in the African world.
He has been recognized as one of the 10 most widely cited African scholars. Asante has been recognized as one of the most influential leaders in education. Asante completed his M.A. at Pepperdine and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, at the age of 26, and was appointed a full professor at the age of 30 at the State University of New York at Buffalo. At Temple University he created the first Ph.D. Program in African American Studies in 1988. He is the founder of the theory Afrocentricity and one of the major professional trainers of Afrocentric teachers.
Asante was born in Valdosta, Georgia, of Sudanese (Nubian) and Nigerian (Yoruba) heritage. He is one of sixteen children. He is married to Ana Yenenga. He has three children, Mario, Eka, and MK, Jr.
Dr. Asante is a poet, novelist, dramatist, and a painter. His works on African language, multiculturalism, and human culture and philosophy have been cited and reviewed by journals such as the Africalogical Perspectives, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of Communication, American Scholar, Daedalus, Western Journal of Black Studies, and International Journal of Pan African Thought. The Utne Reader called him one of the “100 Leading Thinkers” in America.
He is the International Organizer for Afrocentricity International, a global African organization involved in establishing new pathways to African identity and culture seeking to create a global consciousness.