Patrisse Cullors Biography
Patrisse Cullors is a Black Lives Matter activist, artist, and writer from the United States. Cullors coined the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2013 and has written and spoken extensively about the movement.
How old is Patrisse Cullors? – Age
She is 39 years old as of June 20, 2022. She was born in 1983 in Los Angeles, California, U.S. Her name is Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac.
Patrisse Cullors Family
Cherice Foley, her mother, is a Jehovah’s Witness. Gabriel Brignac was her biological father, whom she did not meet until she was eleven years old. She grew up in the home of Alton Cullors, who used to work at a General Motors plant in Van Nuys before it closed, forcing him to take low-paying jobs. She has three siblings — two brothers named Paul and Monte, and a sister named Jasmine.
Patrisse Cullors Education
She attended Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks, an affluent mostly-white school for gifted children. She also claims that the white girls at her school were the ones who introduced her to weed. However, at the time of her arrest, she was enrolled in summer school at Van Nuys Middle School, a school primarily comprised of children from working-class families and non-whites.
The transition was difficult for her because, unlike her previous school, this one had a metal detector and was patrolled by police. Cullors also attended Grover Cleveland High School in Reseda, where she was accepted into the social justice magnet program. She went on to earn a degree in religion and philosophy from UCLA, as well as an MFA from the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design.
Who is Patrisse Cullors married to? – Partner
Cullors considers himself to be queer. She married Janaya Khan, a social activist and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, in 2016.
Patrisse Cullors House
He spent $6 million on a home in Southern California. It was purchased with donations to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, or BLMGNF. This transaction raises concerns about the social justice organization’s use of donations.
Patrisse Cullors Net Worth
She has an estimated net worth of $5 million.
Patrisse Cullors Controversy
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation denied paying for real estate purchases. They claimed she had not been paid since 2019 and had only received $120,000 since 2013 for her work with the organization. Cullors has defended her actions as an effort to care for her family, and the criticism has been described as an “effort to discredit and harass” her.
Some BLM activists accused her of “monopolizing and capitalizing” on the organization’s fight. She later revealed she was suffering from psychological exhaustion and was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2022, she denied allegations of misusing donations to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation but admitted to hosting two parties at a mansion purchased for $6 million by the BLM foundation, which she regretted.
Patrisse Cullors Books
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, Cullors’ memoir, was released in January 2018. It was co-written with journalist Asha Bandele, and Angela Davis wrote the foreword. The book is divided into two parts: All the Bones We Could Find, which recounts her adolescence, and Black Lives Matter, which explains how those experiences led to her co-founding the social justice organization. The book deals with the imprisonment and disenfranchisement of black men like her father, incarceration “is how our society responded to his drug use…I think we have a crisis of divesting from poor communities, black communities in particular, and reinvesting into these communities with police, jails, courts, prisons”.
Cullors describes the first series of marches she, Garza, and Tometi organized in the aftermath of Zimmerman’s acquittal in the 13th chapter, A Call, A Response. On February 4, 2018, it debuted at number 12 on the nonfiction hardcover The New York Times Best Seller list.
Her second book, An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Change Yourself and the World, was published by St Martin’s Press on January 25, 2022. Cullors describes it as a manual for activists on how to look after one another and resolve internal conflicts while campaigning.
Patrisse Cullors Black Lives Matter
Cullors co-founded Black Lives Matter with community organizers and friends Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. The three started the movement in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in Trayvon Martin’s death. Cullors coined the phrase #BlackLivesMatter in 2013 to back up Garza’s use of it in a Facebook post about the Martin case. Cullors went on to say that her motivation for advocating for African-American rights stemmed from her 19-year-old brother’s brutalization while imprisoned in Los Angeles County jails.
Cullors and her BLM co-founders, Garza and Tometi, set out to create a decentralized movement governed by the collective consensus of its members, and in 2015, a network of chapters was established. Cullors has been the most visible of the co-founders, particularly since Garza and Tometi stepped back from active involvement in the organization. She credits social media with exposing violence against African Americans.
In 2017, she stated that the movement would not meet with US President Donald Trump, just as it would not have met with Adolf Hitler, because Trump “is literally the epitome of evil, all of this country’s evils — be it racism, capitalism, sexism, homophobia.” Cullors resigned from her formal role as executive director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation in May 2021 (after six years in the position, which included setting up the organization’s infrastructure) to focus on her second book and a multi-year TV deal with Warner Bros. She claimed that her resignation had been planned for over a year and had nothing to do with alleged attempts to discredit her.
