Featured, Roddenberry Fellowship
Meet Charlene, a 2019 Roddenberry Fellow
October 25, 2019
Meet Charlene, a 2019 Roddenberry Fellow
Charlene Carruthers is a strategist, author and a leading organizer in today’s Black liberation movement. As the founding national director of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), she has worked alongside hundreds of young Black activists to build a member-led organization of 18-35-year-olds dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Charlene is the author of the bestselling book, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements.
Charlene is also the creator of the Chicago Center for Leadership and Transformation (CCLT) a pilot project will build a locally rooted and nationally connected learning community for political education, grassroots organizing, language, and strategic communications capacity building.
“I’m a builder who believes in cultivating the leadership of the people who are most close to social justice issues. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, traveling across the United States and the world taught me the value of investing in people to drive movement work towards the direction of transformation. As a result, I have decided to build the Chicago Center for Leadership and Transformation (CCLT). The CCLT will be a 21st-century movement building institution that trains, educates and connects people on the front line of social justice and collective liberation.”
During the 2019 Fellowship
Given Chicago’s rich historical and contemporary movement-building, the CCLT will bring together Chicago-based community organizers and activists with their peers across the nation and globe. Chicago is on the cutting edge of localized movement building that is connected to national and international movements. The city is home to organizations and institutions that have driven concrete change including reparations for police torture victims and ousting prosecutors who consistently abuse power and resources.
The CCLT will build on the work of existing institutions and increase our overall capacity to develop the leadership our movements need to transform issues of racial, gender and economic justice.
“The Chicago Center for Leadership and Transformation (CCLT) will be a 21st-century movement building institution that trains, educates and connects people on the front line of social justice and collective liberation work by cultivating a learning ethic grounded in transformative leadership development. Organizations will send new and seasoned organizers, members and leaders to attend trainings. We will have a robust learning community that goes beyond what happens within the Center. We will be an imagination space where leaders sharpen themselves and others and craft replicable models.”
