The 23rd annual Empower-ment Congress Summit will take place Saturday, Jan. 17, at the University of Southern California. The summit, which begins at 9 a.m., will celebrate the 50th anniversary of key events in the civil rights move-ment including the Selma to Montgomery Marches and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Professor Cornel West, the prominent author and academic, will serve as keynote speaker at the summit’s plenary session at Bovard Auditorium. Special guests include Los Angeles County Supervi-sors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis and Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell.
The critically acclaimed spoken word performers, Get Lit, will also participate. Both West and Los Angeles County Super-visor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who founded the Empowerment Congress, will hold a media availability immediately afterwards.
Workshops led by distinguished experts will begin at 11 a.m. on topics ranging from sex trafficking, child welfare, violence as a public health issue and others. A resource fair will be held in the afternoon, with more than 30 booths providing information about county and community services.
The Empowerment Congress was born in the after-math of the Los Angeles civil unrest of 1992. Then City Councilman Ridley-Thomas founded the Empowerment Congress to serve as a model of civic engagement based on the principles of participatory democracy, reciprocal account-ability and intentional civility. Now widely regarded as the forerunner to the neighbor-hood council movement, its motto is to Educate, Engage, Empower.
Ridley-Thomas was first elected to office in 1991 and was considered by his constituents and colleagues to have served with distinction on the Los Angeles City Council for almost 12 years. Ridley-Thomas would later serve two terms in the California State Assembly, where he chaired the Assembly Democratic Caucus. His legis-lative work addressed issues with implications for economic and workforce development, health care, public safety, education, budget accountability, consumer protection and civic participation.
The Empowerment Congress Summit is a free event, but attendees are required to register at: http://empowermentcongress.org/ecsummit23/. The supervisor is a graduate of Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles and earned a baccalaureate degree in Social Relations (minor in Government) and a master’s degree in Religious Studies (concentration in Christian ethics) from Immaculate Heart College. Supervisor Ridley-Thomas went on to receive his Ph.D. in Social Ethics from the University of Southern California focusing on Social Criticism and Social Change.