Paul Robeson House & Museum Parlor Talks:
Michael Simmons, “A Life in the Struggle: SNCC & Radical Black Internationalism”
From his roots in Philadelphia, Michael Simmons has spent his life supporting movements for freedom and justice all throughout the world, with his political foundation being built through his activist experience within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Before their powerful 60th Anniversary Virtual Conference, The Paul Robeson House & Museum seeks to explore the influences, like Paul Robeson, that ushered him into a life in the struggle and what opportunities exist today to contribute to longstanding yet underrepresented radical Black internationalist organizing.
This is a special conversation intended to drum up local support and registration for the upcoming SNCC 60th Anniversary Virtual Conference taking place on October 14-16, 2021.
Learn more at the link and get registered here!
MICHAEL SIMMONS has been an international human rights and peace activist for over 50 years. Beginning as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s in the United States, over his career Michael has taken his work to Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. He has organized conferences and seminars in Europe and Africa on the impact of East-West Tension on the Third World; seminars on peace and reconciliation in Bosnia, Macedonia and Kosovo during and after the Balkan War; a regional conference on sex trafficking in the Balkans; and has done extensive work with Roma in Central Europe on Roma human rights issues.
He has lectured on and written about US foreign and military policy, nuclear weapons, conflict resolution, human rights, and all forms of violence against women, with an emphasis on trafficking of women and girls in the US, Africa and Europe. He regularly presents at international conferences and seminars, and frequently addresses workshops, symposia, classes, and student groups at universities in Europe and the United States.
Michael is the Codirector, with Linda Carranza, of the Raday Salon, a human rights program in Budapest, Hungary, focused on education and outreach. He also provides consulting services to non-governmental organizations, particularly those focused on human rights, anti-discrimination, and peace-building, and conducts trainings on human rights issues and advocacy for NGOs and youth activists.
