Surviving, Movement building and activism

The Racial Justice Network (RJN) brings together over thirty organisations and individuals from across the West Yorkshire region to proactively promote racial justice. We work to raise awareness about race inequality and injustice by listening and working with disempowered communities to challenge and hold powers to account.  We seek to bring racial justice into mainstream thought and build solidarity.

As an organisation we aim to organise and mobilise with racially minoritised communities and take positive and effective action, therefore in this seminar, Peninah Wangari-Jones (Director at The Racial Justice Network) and Sharon Anyiam (Project Officer) will explore the strategies and challenges of intersectional anti-racist organising and activism.  Our discussion will cover colonialism, the recent UK BLM protest, and the role of women in activism.

Peninah Wangari-Jones is an anti-racist activist, organiser and Director at the Racial Justice Network. With a focus on coloniality, social justice, race equality & equity and marginalised communities.  Her interests include migration, intersections, building power and movements. She is also undertaking a PhD at University of Manchester on impact of coloniality on Black activism.

Sharon Anyiam is a project officer with the Racial Justice Network and is an anti-racist organiser who has been a member of RJN since 2018 and has helped facilitate various local and international community engagements. Her passion for social justice also motivates her research interest, thus she is also a PhD researcher exploring Black millennials, criminalisation and resistance and lectures part-time.