at Fisk University's new John Lewis Center for Social Justice.
https://www.fisk.edu/university-news-and-publications/fisk-announces-inaugural-john-lewis-center-fellows/
...."The Policy/Activism Fellow will follow in the footsteps of iconic Fiskites Diane Nash and the late Congressman John Lewis to continue the fight against bigotry and confront ongoing attacks on civil rights like voting, healthcare, and education.
.....
Justin Jones, the policy/activism fellow, is a community organizer who recently won the democratic nomination for the Tennessee House of Representatives District 52.
Originally from Oakland California, Mr. Jones’s commitment to social change and activism has brought him from the streets of Oakland to Ferguson, Missouri; and from ceremonies of resistance in Standing Rock to a 62-day sit-in outside the Tennessee StateHouse. As a student at Fisk University, Mr. Jones became involved with organizing student campaigns for the expansion of healthcare in Tennessee, the repeal of restrictive state voter ID laws, and community accountability in cases of police brutality. He served on the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Healthcare Campaign and led actions at the Legislature, and across the South, for the expansion of Medicaid.
In 2015, while a student at Fisk, Mr. Jones helped coordinate a federal lawsuit and served as a plaintiff against the State of Tennessee for its restrictive voter ID laws that targeted students. During the racial justice uprisings in the Summer of 2020, Mr. Jones served as a strategist and direct-action organizer for the People Plaza’s 62-day sit-in aimed at promoting policies of racial justice. Mr. Jones has been arrested more than a dozen times for non-violent protest. He has received awards from the Tennessee Human Rights Commission, ACLU of Tennessee, Tennessee Alliance for Progress, Fisk University Alumni Association, the Vanderbilt Organization of Black Graduate Students, and the Nashville NAACP. Mr. Jones recently published his first book with Vanderbilt University Press detailing his sixty-two days of nonviolent resistance during the summer of 2020."
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