Patrisse Cullors (born June 20, 1983) is an American artist and activist. Cullors is an advocate for prison abolition in Los Angeles and a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. She is also a LGBTQ activist.
Cullors was born in Los Angeles, California. She grew up in Pacoima, a low-income neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.[1] She became an activist early in life, joining the Bus Riders Union as a teenager.[1]
Cullors recalls being forced from her home at sixteen when she revealed her queer identity to her parents.[2] She was involved with the Jehovah's Witnesses as a child, but later grew disillusioned with the church. She developed an interest in the Nigerian religious tradition of Ifá, incorporating its rituals into political protest events. She told an interviewer:
For me, seeking spirituality had a lot to do with trying to seek understanding about my conditions—how these conditions shape me in my everyday life and how I understand them as part of a larger fight, a fight for my life.[3]
She later earned a degree in religion and philosophy from UCLA.[1]
Career
Cullors teaches at Otis College of Art and Design in the Public Practice Program.[4] She also teaches in the Master's Arts in Social Justice and Community Organizing at Prescott College.[5][6]
Cullors credits social media being instrumental in revealing violence against African Americans, saying: "On a daily basis, every moment, black folks are being bombarded with images of our death ... It's literally saying, 'Black people, you might be next. You will be next, but in hindsight it will be better for our nation, the less of our kind, the more safe it will be."[12]
With Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza (as "The Women of #BlackLivesMatter") listed as one of the nine runners-up for The Advocate's Person of the Year, 2015[21]
In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, Queerty named her among the fifty heroes “leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people”.[26][27]
In 2014 Cullors produced the theatrical piece POWER: From the Mouths of the Occupied, which debuted at Highways Performance Space.[28] She has contributed articles about the movement to the LA Progressive,[29] including an article from December 2015 titled "The Future of Black Life" [30] which pushed the idea that activists could no longer wait for the State to take action, and called her followers into action by encouraging them to begin building the world that they want to see.