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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (June 24, 2015)
Diversity in the Workplace June 24, 2015 Race, Faith and Justice C ontinued from P age 3 young folks who we followed to the space of resistance and place of injustice.” The protest was described in a recent interview he had with Jake Dockter, a Portland activist who helps run a blog on anti-racism and faith, “Theology of Fergu- son.” “After our spontaneous prayer meeting, young folks asked us to step aside as they stood in the middle of the street willing to risk arrest. The line of police wielding long brown wooden batons and donning riot gear marched lock step toward the young folks in the street. Something got a hold of me. I darted out in between the youth activists and advancing police. I knelt and prayed. I was promptly surrounded by police, snatched up and placed in a blood stained police van, but the youth would not back down.” Sekou says the youth activists then sat down in the street for nearly two hours following his arrest and refused to leave until he was released. When the police captain failed to negotiate them out of the street, Sekou says he was finally released from the po- lice van where he was held. Sekou says he was arrest- ed again in Ferguson last Octo- ber participating in what is now known as Moral Monday, a day when pastors and rabbis read aloud a list of unarmed men and women shot and killed by police. When Ferguson came to a head, Sekou was a reconciliation schol- ar in residence at the Martin Lu- ther King Education and Research Institute at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. His teaching background in- cludes work as a youth pastor in Saint Louis where he having taught alternatives to gang vio- lence to middle school students and directed the Fellowship Cen- ter in the Cochran Housing Proj- ect. Sekou has also published a collection of essays, Urbansouls (Urban Press, 2001), and his latest book, Gods, Gays, and Guns: Es- says on Religion and the future of Democracy (Campbell & Cannon Press, 2012). His appearance in Portland is free and open to the public. It will take place Monday, June 29 from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Warner Pacific College McGuire Auditorium, lo- cated at 2219 S.E. 68th Ave. The event is presented on behalf of the Portland NAACP, Warner Pacific, the YWCA of Greater Portland, Impact Northwest, City Serve Port- land, the Albina Ministerial Alli- ance, the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, and A Common Table. Page 5
