The Tennessee Celebration of
International Human Rights Day will take place on December 10th at 6pm
virtually.
Tennesseans gather each year on
December 10th to celebrate International Human Rights Day. This year will be
quite different, as the event will be held virtually. During the event, leaders
are acknowledged, and awards will go to human rights champions in three categories:
Rising Advocate, Outstanding Service and Lifetime Achievement.
The Rising Advocate Award will go to
Nashville’s 2020 Youth Poet Laureate, Alora Young; and members of the group Teens
4 Equality who organized the 10,000 person protest this summer in support of
African American rights.
The Outstanding Service Award will
go to Rev. Becca Stevens, who is founder and president of Thistle Farms and has
served as the chaplain at St. Augustine Chapel for more than 20 years; and Dr.
James Hildreth, the 12th president and chief executive officer of Meharry
Medical College, the nation’s largest private, independent historically black
academic health sciences center.
The Lifetime Achievement Awards are
going to Ernest “Rip” Patton Jr., a civil rights activist and veteran of the
Freedom Riders; and Rev. V. H. “Sonnye” Dixon, the lead pastor at Hobson UMC,
known as a passionate advocate for public education, a champion of human and
civil rights for all people, and a person unafraid to speak truth to power in
political, social, education and religious communities.
The theme for Human Rights Day this
year is “Our Shared Humanity: Rooted in Hope,” and will bring people together
in an uplifting celebration of the good that has come out of a year filled with
chaos. Rashad the Poet will do a performance piece around this theme, which
will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Beverly Watts of the
Tennessee Human Rights Commission. Panel members will be former Commission Chair
Jocelyn Wurzburg and past Human Rights Rising Advocate Awardee Justin Jones.
A committee of human rights
organizations, nonprofits, and advocates, including the Tennessee Human Rights
Commission, Metro Human Relations Commission, Scarritt Bennett Center,
Tennessee United for Human Rights, the Church of Scientology, and others, work
together each year to plan the event.
“This year more than any before we
have a need to acknowledge the goodness in mankind. Human Rights Day gives us a
chance to do that, while also recharging our batteries for the year to come,”
says planning committee chair Rev. Brian Fesler, pastor of the Church of
Scientology in Nashville. “The day centers around the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, and implementing the articles in that document are the best
chance we have for human survival.”
All information regarding the event
can be found on the website www.nashvillehumanrights.org.
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