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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19101
United StatesThis is a campus activist. 20 years ago Ewuare X. Osayande was an influential force in the student movement that led to the development of Multicultural Affairs Offices on campuses throughout the nation. As the president of the Association of Black and Hispanic Collegians at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, Osayande successfully led the fight for increased recruitment and retention of faculty of color, the inclusion of Africana Studies in the curriculum as well as the establishment of the university's first Multicultural Affairs Department. As that university-based battle ensued, Phillip Pannell, Jr., a 14 year-old African American boy living with his family in the surrounding community in Teaneck, NJ, was shot and killed by a police officer. Osayande led a march for justice and peace of more than 1000 students from Teaneck to Trenton, NJ that made national headlines. That same year Osayande published An African Awakening, his first book of poems. Osayande's passion for justice has since become a life-long commitment to human rights and social justice. He has served as chairperson of a number of political organizations and speaks across the country. An independent scholar, Osayande has published more than ten books in this time. Forthcoming is an anthology of his work entitled Fighting Words: 20 Years of Literary Resistance.
Osayande is co-founder of POWER (People Organized Working to Eradicate Racism), a liberatory learning initiative that educates and empowers persons and organizations interested and involved in anti-racist work. He is founder of ONUS Rites-of-Passage, a manhood rites program for African American boys and young men that is rooted in anti-sexist and non-violent principles and practices. Osayande is also the producer and host of "The Resistance with Ewuare Osayande," an online radio program that features news, music and commentary that champions the concerns and causes of people of color worldwide.
His published books include the following titles: Black Anti-Ballistic Missives: Resisting War/Resisting Racism, Blood Luxury (with an introduction by Amiri Baraka), Free the Land: Revisioning Environmentalism, Caught at the Crossroads Without a Map, Misogyny & the Emcee: Sex, Race & Hip Hop and Commemorating King: Speeches Honoring the Civil Rights Movement.
Ewuare Osayande is a dynamic lecturer on issues ranging from race, class, gender, culture and religion to war, the environmental movement, social justice and globalization. He has spoken at over 500 different educational, religious and community centers from Harvard University to Howard University, from Riverside Church in New York to Al Aqsa Mosque in Philadelphia, from Alameda County Juvenile Hall in California to Graterford prison in Pennsylvania.
Osayande‘s convictions are infused in his life-work. As he has stated, “To violate someone because that person is female or gay or lesbian or poor or disabled or is a person of color, does not diminish that person’s humanity, rather, it diminishes your own. What matters in the end, is what we do on behalf of those who are suffering now. True freedom is experienced in the fight to dismantle all forms of oppression.” Osayande’s radical vision is rooted in the revolutionary spirit of his ancestors that fought slavery in the United States singing “Better to live one’s life for freedom’s cause, than to live and die a slave.”
Lewis Gordon, Director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought at Temple University, has called Ewuare Osayande, “Passionate, provocative, evocative, insightful and always truthful, Osayande’s work stands as one of the best examples of prophetic criticism that speaks not only to, and from, the contemporary Africana urban youth experience, but to anyone interested in the struggle for human liberation.”
For more information on Osayande and his work, please visit these sites:
http://osayande.org/
http://resistracism.org/
http://on-us.org/
and explore the "Ewuare Xola Osayande" page on Facebook.
General Interests: Organizing, Writing, Resisting Oppression, Agitating, Speaking, Teaching, Learning. Favorite Music: check out my online program "The Resistance with Ewuare Osayande" at gtownradio.com every 2nd and 4th Tues of the month at 10:30 PM EST. Political Views: anti-imperialist, socialist. Occupation: organizer Networking Goals: Network with students and professors toward creating and sustaining a movement for social justice and liberation. Added on 01-02-2011 Updated on 01-02-2011 |
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