The Strategy and Soul Movement Film Theater
Presents the acclaimed feature- length documentary
Join Patrisse Cullors
Next Thursday, March 30, at 6:30 PM
at the Strategy and Soul Movement Theater
3546 Martin Luther King Blvd.
for the showing of
Haskell’s Wexler’s Classic Film
BUS RIDERS UNION
Patrisse Cullors came into the Strategy Center as a member and later Organizer in Training at 17 years old from Cleveland High School. A force of nature, she modeled what Eric Mann wrote in Playbook for Progressives: “Builds a Base and Never Walks Alone.” She came to the Center and Bus Riders Union along with Carla Gonzales part of a politically conscious group of young, gifted, Black, Brown, women, queer high school students— who helped shape the next decade of the Strategy Center.
As with all active members, she was recruited into the Center’s National Leadership School for Strategic Organizing where “Organizer in Training” (OIT) was a badge of honor. One of our allies said the Strategy Center trains Leaders.
She helped organize our Drum and Chant Corps, the Summer Youth Organizing Academy for high school students, and was a dedicated organizer for the Bus Riders Union. She and Eric Mann went to New Orleans on the first anniversary of Katrina along with Damon Azalee-Rojas, Mark-Anthony Johnson, and Francisca Porchas. We sold out 100 “Self Determination for the Black Nation” T-shirts and hundreds of copies of Eric’s Katrina’s Legacy: White Racism and Black Reconstruction in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We worked alongside the great Bus Riders Union leaders Della Bonner, Kikanza Ramsey, Ricardo Zelada, Chris Mathis, Rosalio Mendiola, Norma Henry, and the cast of dozens who are the true movie stars in the film Bus Riders Union.
Patrisse went on to initiate Reform L.A. Jails to fight for the rights of her brother, Rodney O. Cullors, and thousands of other Black and Latinx imprisoned men and women who were “tortured and brutalized” in the L.A. County Jail by sheriff’s deputies.
Patrisse, along with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, founded Black Lives Matter whose influence continues to this day. Today, she is an accomplished and compelling Black liberation performance artist.
On Thursday March 20 at 7pm please join us to celebrate the history that we all made together and Fight for the Bus Riders Union Campaign for Urban Reconstruction against the L.A. Metro that continues today.
