Mar
18
Introducing The Jordan/Rustin Coalition’s New South L.A. Community Organizer
By
Hello fellow activists! My name is Rodney Nickens Jr. and I am the new South L.A. community organizer for the Jordan/Rustin Coalition (JRC). I am originally from Portsmouth, VA, a small town in the Hampton Roads area that is predominantly African-American and middle and working-class, much like many of the communities in South L.A. I grew up in a traditional African-American Southern Baptist church with strong family values, and the constant love and support of my family and community. As a child, my parents worked diligently to instill in me a deep appreciation for African-American history and culture as well as a deep-rooted passion for social justice, civil rights, and public service. When I came out to my family during my first year of college, they were expectedly a little uneasy with it, but despite our religious background and cultural inclinations, my family was nothing less than supportive and loving and gradually became more understanding and accepting.
After high school, I moved to Merced, CA where I attended UC Merced as a member of the first full graduating class. There, I was the Founding President of the African-American Student Association and the Founding Vice-President of the Merced Pre-Law Society, and earned my Bachelor of Arts Degree in U.S. History in May 2009. It was after an internship in Washington D.C. with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the U.S. Department of Justice that I found my passion for LGBT civil rights after seeing the devastation and heartbreak that the Prop. 8 marriage initiative had caused around the country. In the eve of the 2008 election, I witnessed media coverage of protests and reinvigorated activism taking place in major U.S. cities from coast to coast. I was also fortunate enough to participate in one in our nation’s capital.
Upon returning to California, I interned at the University of California Center Sacramento and worked in the State Capitol for the District Attorney’s Office where I wrote a policy analysis entitled, “Making the Case to Overturn California’s Proposition 8.” In addition to my research, I worked with Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. and Equality California to recruit volunteers and fundraise around the issue of marriage. I am very excited to join this important movement in South L.A. as we work in coalition to build support for the freedom to marry and prepare for the grand opening of our new office in South L.A. Although, we face various obstacles and challenges working in deeply religious communities that are facing a host of significant challenges themselves, dealing with the economic climate as well as various other social ills, I look forward to doing much-needed grassroots organizing in the African-American community to achieve full equality for LGBT people of all backgrounds!
Some of my major goals during the first half of 2010 include: successfully organizing canvasses with our coalition partners in predominantly Black communities, facilitating a “Black Camp Courage” event aimed at recruiting and training new Black LGBT volunteers and activists to our movement, and creating a JRC Religious and Faith-Based Collaborative to further conversations on issues of LGBT equal rights between Black clergy and the LGBT community. In addition to my work with JRC, I am also a graduate student in Afro-American Studies with concentrations in Sociology and Political Science at UCLA where my studies focus on homophobia in the Black community and its relation to gay black activism in California in the Prop. 8 aftermath. For more information on JRC and our upcoming events and activities please subscribe to our mailing list.
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–Rodney K. Nickens Jr.
*This article originally appeared at