Over the past two weeks there have been countless protests around the country against police brutality. One such protest was planned for Monday night in Wilmington.
That planned protest, however, turned into a healing space. Event Organizer Da’Shaun Harrison said the idea was to have the protest, but with the numbers that came out the event became an intimate setting for folks to come together and heal.
The group of college-aged students were able to network and discuss issues of racism.
“I think that with us being, you know, 19, 20, 25 years old, we have so much momentum and so much power that we bring together that the movement couldn’t go on without the Millenials,” Harrison said.
Harrison added that young people bring a new sense of hope and presence to the movement.
The group created a GroupMe, which is like a group text message, to plan and organize events in the future.
Interview with Sarah Johnson | for: WWAY
Da'Shaun Harrison
Da’Shaun Harrison is a trans theorist and Southern-born and bred abolitionist in Atlanta, GA. They are the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and several other media/literary honors. As an editor, movement media and narrative strategist, and storyteller, Harrison uses their extensive history as a community organizer—which began in 2014 during their first year at Morehouse College—to frame their political thought and cultural criticism. Through the lens of what Harrison calls “Black Fat Studies,” they lecture on blackness, fatness, gender, and their intersections. Harrison currently serves as Editor-at-Large at Scalawag Magazine, is a co-host of the podcast “Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back,” and ⅓ of the video podcast “In The Middle.” Between the years 2019 and 2021, Harrison served as Associate Editor—and later as Managing Editor—of Wear Your Voice Magazine.