“Critical Voices” Kickoff: Uprisings & Rights with Maina Kiai

Date: August 20, 2020

Welcome back to the Sorensen Center’s “Critical Voices: From Local to Global” speaker series!

On Wednesday, August 26 at 5:00 pm, internationally renowned human rights lawyer and activist Maina Kiai will lead a live discussion on mobilizing for change. As uprisings continue across the U.S. and around the world, following the killings of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, Maina will discuss movement building, local empowerment, and human rights.

Register now for this virtual discussion: https://bit.ly/0826CV-SC

Kiai is a prominent Kenyan human rights lawyer who served as the first-ever United Nations Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association from 2011-2017. He led fact-finding missions in Ferguson, Baltimore, Jackson, and other U.S. cities and urged U.S. lawmakers to stop an alarming trend to curb freedom of assembly around Standing Rock, women’s marches, and #BlackLivesMatter. When he stepped down as UNSR, Maina resumed his work as co-director of InformAction, a community organizing NGO in Kenya. He is a non-resident Scholar at the Sorensen Center and served as the 2019 Scholar-in-Residence. He currently leads a new partnership initiative at Human Rights Watch to build alliances and engage communities in human rights work. You may have seen Maina discussing American exceptionalism recently on PBS NewsHour.

We hope to see you on Wednesday.