William Dickerson II
Co-Executive Director
FAST FAVORITES
informing the movement in me
Book - Pedagogy of The Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Song - Shine by Tobe Nwigwe
Movie - Judas and The Black Messiah
Artist - Ryan Coogler
Activist Ancestors -
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am passionate about training and development first and foremost. There's a principle that is you can't hold people accountable for what they don't know. And so training and development is about creating a level playing field for ordinary people in community so that they can be powerful in rooms where decisions get made about their lives.
I see my role as really seeing and understanding the health of all the organizations inside the network and supporting the conditions for that health to be thriving and also supporting our centralized staff and their development of becoming their most beautiful, most bold, most powerful selves and the fundamental way that I do that is through meeting people where they are, but not leaving there through conscious invitation into their power.
When I was growing up one of the strongest distresses I had was not belonging to community. Being a black little boy, in a white context, made it clear to me that I didn't always belong to the spaces that I was in and that some of that had to do with the color of my skin and the ideology that comes along with that. My vision of MCAN is to create the conditions for community where everybody has the ability, the option to belong to it. That is connected to our deep investment in seeking to see each other wholly.
IN THE FIELD
As a trainer and an organizer, I am often in the front of spaces, but just as meaningful and critical is the time I get to spend in one on one conversations and building community.