Who Is Black Lives Matter DC?
We are a radical collective of Black artists, infrastructure builders, movement healers and strategists from the future, organizing in the here and now.
Queenlin
Queenlin has a Masters in Creative Arts Therapy with a concentration in Movement Therapy and is a passionate advocate for mental health services being accessible to all communities, investing in holistic/alternative healthcare options and breaking the stigma of mental health in black and brown communities. Queenlin is a professional artist with a history of performing and choreographing social political work for over 10 years with organizations such as Kariamu & Company Traditions, Dancing for Justice and TheVillage DC. She continues her work as a movement therapist, teaching artist, healer and wellness consultant in D.C. Queenlin is currently a member of BLM DC working as a co-organizer in Childcare and the Healing House. Queenlin facilitates the Movement Meditation Mondays, Black Joy Sundays, Black Joy Dance and Multicultural Healing Spaces for the BLM Healing House. She also works within her own practice, MovU centering her work around mind-body, healing and wellness consultation.
Speaking Topics: Mental Health in Black Communities & Psychology/Health and Wellness
Makia
Makia is a queer, fat, Black liberation organizer and Community Outreach Coordinator of Black Lives Matter DC. Originally from Harlem, New York City, she joined the movement as a student diversity leader at the University of Rochester. At the height of the Ferguson Uprising in 2014, she began mobilizing students and greater Rochester community to take a stand against police brutality. When the local KKK planned to march through predominately Black neighborhoods next door to her campus, she pushed the university to be more than allies and act as shields for the community. This led to her co-founding, Building Leadership and Community Knowledge (B.L.A.C.K.) a membership-based racial justice collective in Rochester, NY. Within six months, their team built a base of sixty dues-paying members, raised over $24,000, co-sponsored a volunteer-based mentoring program, and organized 3 direct actions with over 400 attendees. In 2015, she moved to DC to get more connected with the Movement for Black Lives. While in DC for the last three years, she has worked on actions such as disrupting the 45th presidential inauguration, coordinating the first blockade against education secretary Betsy Devos, and supporting coalition work to implement a public health lens response to intra-community violence. In addition to her Black Lives Matter work, she has organizes safe spaces for fat Black femmes and non-binary people in DC such as #DearFatGirls Clothing Swap, and Fat Girl Swim meet-ups. Her work is based on the notion that we must try things we have never tried before in order to build a world we have never seen before.
Speaking Topics: Student Activism, Black Lives Matter Global Network, Solutions to Intra-community violence, Mobilization & Outreach
Follow her work at FB @MakiaLoveG | MakiaGreen.com | Makia@blmdc.org
Katie
Katie re-envisions community-driven initiatives as a new basis for racial justice, global development, and peace-building. Currently Katie handles events and the Network Hub for Black Lives Matter DC. As a consultant, she focuses on strategic planning and organizational culture, event/retreat planning, social media, storytelling, and fundraising. Previously Katie managed programs and the DC office of The Advocacy Project, including its Peace Fellowship Program which partnered with 14 grassroots organizations in 10 countries.
As a fellow at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey Center for Conflict Studies, Katie conducted field research on water conflicts in Ethiopia and worked for over five years in refugee resettlement in three major U.S. cities.
Katie received a Certificate in Community Engagement from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, a Bachelor’s in Peace Studies from Whitworth University, and a Master’s degree in International Peace Studies from the United Nations-mandated University for Peace.
Reach out to Katie to volunteer with BLM at “volunteerblmdc@gmail.com”
Dornethia aka Nee-Nee
Dornethia is a wife, mother, manager, educator, community organizer and activist. A Native Washingtonian, Dornethia attended Virginia State University and obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of the District of Columbia. She is a member of the P.G. County People’s Coalition and P.G. County Community Empowerment Police Accountability Forum (CEPA). She contributes her time and knowledge to help eliminate the underlying culture that promotes police brutality, mass incarceration, school closings and all ills of the racist capitalist structure. Her focus is looking for ways to build power collaboratively with marginalized communities and transform the systems that oppress us in the DMV area. Within BLMDC Dornethia is a co-coordinator with the Direct Action Pod. She organizes, strategic and consistent mobilizations to prevent racist and oppressive abuses. The work also consists of educating the community on action planning, safety skills, techniques, and the rights and laws within protesting in DC.
April
April Goggans is an organizer, disrupter, single mother of one, proud southeast DC resident and a Core Organizer with Black Lives Matter DC. Her organizing work focuses on community power building, affordable housing and tenants rights, direct action organizing, intra-community violence, policing and police brutality. She recently launched #KeepDC4Me, a leaderFULL coalition that disrupts, confronts and dismantles systems of state sanctioned violence and oppression that displace and criminalize Black people while triggering intra-community violence in southeast DC through political education, building community power, and direct action. April has been organizing for more than 20 years and almost 10 of those years have been in southeast Washington, DC.
She is driven by the reality that respectability won’t save us, and that our community already has all that it needs to address the critical issues we face.
April previously interned for the National Association of Blacks for Reparations in America and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. She also served on the board of directors of the National Association for Ethnic Studies. Additionally, April served as a charter school administrator and vocational specialist with vulnerable and dropout populations, and as a residential counselor for the care of pregnant and parenting, teens and their children.
As Tenants’ Association president at Marbury Plaza Apartments in southeast DC, April led a two-year rent strike resulting in a historic settlement with the owners, Attorney General of DC, and the Director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs securing $5 million in property repairs and a 50-75 percent rent abatements for tenants.
April is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and a Union chapter Vice- President At-Large, Steward and Legislative Coordinator. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Black Studies, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology, and a master’s degree in Clinical Sociology from the University of Northern Colorado. She is a Stryker Scholar and the recipient of two Departmental Scholar awards. She works and plays in Washington D.C. with her 19-year-old daughter.
More at aprilgoggans.com.
Khadija
Khadija Carr is a poet, singer, and visual artist from Silver Spring, MD. Khadija is committed to healing through the arts. Black Lives Matter DC is her first organizing home where she has worked to create safe spaces for Black folks to create, affirm, and share their artistic gifts and skills while processing racial trauma and stress. Through art, she relates to and makes sense of the world around her, it is what makes her come alive. Her work is a reflection of all that moves her, breaks her, and makes her whole. She is also the creator and facilitator of the Black Lives Matter DC Writing Workshop Series. When not creating, she can be found barefoot in the grass, climbing trees, or sipping tea.