Join us for a discussion of Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey with author Dan Berger in conversation with Jasson Perez. 

The Black Power movement, often associated with its iconic spokesmen, derived much of its energy from the work of people whose stories have never been told. Stayed On Freedom brings into focus two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom.

Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons fell in love while organizing tenants and workers in the South. Their commitment to each other and to social change took them on a decades-long journey that traversed first the country and then the world. In centering their lives, historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power united the local and the global across organizations and generations.

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, Stayed On Freedom is a moving and intimate portrait of two people trying to make a life while working to make a better world.

**We ask that all in-person attendees wear masks in the event space during the program for the health and well-being of the speakers and other guests. We will have a reception afterwards with light refreshments and books available for purchase.***

Dan Berger is a historian of activism, Black Power, and the carceral state. His previous books include Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era, Rethinking the American Prison Movement, and Remaking Radicalism. He lives in Seattle and coordinates the Washington Prison History Project.

Jasson Perez has organized for 20 years as a community, labor, and social movement organizer nationally and locally in Chicago. His main areas of organizing have been fighting the privatization of public schools and parks and organizing to stop mass incarceration, criminalization, and policing. You can find Jasson’s writing and research at Dissent, Spectre, Jacobin, Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE) and the Cook Center on Social Equity

This event is cosponsored by Haymarket Books and In These Times. While all our events are freely available