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.
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