“I didn’t come here to be a speaker to entertain…”
On Jan. 15, Lane Community College warmly welcomed LaTosha Brown, the keynote speaker for the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, for her first visit to Oregon.
Brown is a co-founder of the Black Voters Matter campaign, a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the principal owner of TruthSpeaks Consulting and the founding project director of Grantmakers for Southern Progress.
She has over twenty years of experience working in both the non-profit and philanthropic sectors on a wide variety of issues related to political empowerment, social justice, economic development, women’s leadership development and civil rights.
“I didn’t come here to be a speaker to entertain. I didn’t come here to be a speaker just to say some nice wonderful things, I came to be a speaker to be in conversation with you, because y’all we got work to do, and we have got to be honest about where we are and what needs to happen,” she said to start the evening.
When Black Voters Matter started their organization they didn’t call themselves a civic engagement group, and that is because she said they are a power building group.
The organization was co-founded by Brown and Cliff Albright, and the main purpose was reminding people of their own power and organizing them in a way where they are actually self-determined.
Voting does matter to Brown and the BVMF, but their goal is to increase power in their communities, as effective voting allows a community to determine its own destiny. The BVMF, “is in the process of identifying and building relationships with communities and organizations which would like to expand their civic engagement work and which are committed to building progressive power in the south.”
Brown mentioned that she enjoyed visiting places she hasn’t visited before to learn from the community. At LCC, Brown was excited as it enabled her to really learn about the community.
“I really love community colleges, partly because they are rooted in the community.” Part of her work as an organizer and activist is building community and that is where she is most passionate.
To Brown, community colleges are the anchors of the community. They’re where local people can go talk to students in order to get a better feel of the community and its issues.
She believes that everyone can be inspired when learning and connecting with people around the country. She recently did some international work with the UN around the International Decade of People of African Descent where she visited Geneva, Switzerland. While she was there, she was able to meet up with a group from Amsterdam who contacted her because they wanted to become affiliates of the BVMF.
The Blackest Bus in America is operated by the people in the BVMF, and is one of the many ways they spread their message. It’s an all-black bus with the white BVMF logo on it, and was set to resume on Jan.17 with Brown in attendance following her brief visit to Oregon. She mentioned that she loved their bus and that she loved rolling into local communities and seeing locals getting excited about seeing them. Brown recalled one of her fondest memories of when those present saw a group of students — children between the ages of 5 and 11 — who had started to run after the bus.
“Just seeing the kind of joy they had, and how much joy they brought us. I remember one of the children saying, ‘I am going to have me a bus like this, I love this bus!’ Part of the bus for us is that we are really sending messages of love, power and hope.”
When the people of BVMF get off the bus, their first mission is to ensure people feel joy and love. There is a lot of hugging, singing and dancing.
“What we knew was really important, was for people to feel a sense of their own power and sometimes people don’t think of love as power. But we think that love is the most effective power and ultimately all people want to feel loved —in a sense of longing and purpose.”
Brown believes that people can either continue down the road of chaos that many are on, or they can go down the other road toward building a loving community.
Brown ended her speech by asking, “What road will you choose?”
