Will You Be an Angelic Troublemaker?

1. DeRay Mckesson, 34, and Brittany Packnett Cunningham, 35, Practical Steps

“DeRay” has earned first-name status in the Black Lives Matter movement, particularly for his work at protests in Ferguson and Baltimore, while Cunningham, an accomplished activist in her own right and a member of the Obama administration’s police reform task force, joined him to co-found Campaign Zero, a platform of research-based policy solutions to end police brutality in America. In a nation begging for a road map to end institutional racism in the justice system, this is as close as it gets.

2. Safoora Zargar, 27, Voice Behind Bars

For exactly five minutes on alternate days, Safoora Zargar gets to speak with her husband, Sirwal. While Sirwal is at their home in Delhi, Safoora has been in Asia’s largest prison, Tihar Jail, since April 10. She was arrested on charges of instigating a riot in northeast Delhi during President Donald Trump’s February visit by giving an “inflammatory speech” in the area just a day prior. In those five minutes, Sirwal and Safoora, besides exchanging legal updates, mostly talk about her health and how to make things as comfortable as possible for their coming baby. She was arrested when she was three months pregnant. Read more on OZY.

The fight for justice by the LGBTQ community and the Black community have been intertwined from the beginning. Rates of violence are even higher against transgender Black people, including the recent killing of Tony McDade. Hearns is the founder and executive director of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, which fights for the rights of Black trans people. A native of Columbus, Ohio, she splits her time between Washington, D.C., and Harlem.

Times like these encourage us to examine the racial history of the United States and the impact that has had on today. OZY is proud to partner with The Great Courses Plus to offer two free weeks to take classes like America’s Long Struggle Against Slavery taught by Professor Richard Bell.
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1. Thasunda Brown Duckett, 46, Taking Over Wall Street

The CEO of Chase Consumer Banking and one of the few Black female executives in the financial industry, Duckett has championed economic initiatives aimed at bolstering African American jobs and businesses — while also talking about racism in the workplace and how she broke through the old boys network of banking. Both Fortune and American Banker have called her one of the most powerful women to watch, and she was recently appointed to Nike’s board of directors, showing that her corporate star power is here to stay.

2. Jewel Burks Solomon, 31, Putting the Black Dollar to Work

As policing policies and Confederate statues tumble amid America’s racial reckoning, here’s a statistic to consider that gets at America’s skewed power structure: A mere 1 percent of companies that secure venture capital funding have Black founders. Enter Solomon, the head of Google for Startups, a newly created position designed by the tech giant to help empower a diverse range of startups. Solomon is also a managing partner at Collab Capital, a venture fund that is backing Black-owned businesses — building a path to sustained wealth for a community that lacks it. Read more on OZY.

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1. Jay-Z, 50, Mogul Moves

Aka Shawn Carter, aka Beyoncé’s husband, Jay-Z rose from selling crack in the projects to become the first hip-hop billionaire, according to Forbes. And he uses his clout: Carter called up Minnesota’s governor to talk about the George Floyd case as “a dad and a Black man in pain.” Meanwhile, his Team Roc social justice organization takes up the cause of arrested protesters, and he backs criminal justice reform efforts across the country as a founding partner of the Van Jones-led Reform Alliance.

2. Ava DuVernay, 47, Auteur of the Moment

Out of college at UCLA, DuVernay decided to make her mark in journalism … just in time to cover one of the most racially complex trials of the ’90s: the O.J. Simpson trial, which drove DuVernay out of journalism. Her new path has made her one of the leading lights of a slightly more inclusive Hollywood, where she’s earned acclaim and awards for films like Selma and the Netflix series When They See Us. Her searing 2016 documentary on mass incarceration, 13th, is a must-watch for context on the post-George Floyd protests roiling the nation. Read more on OZY.

Wearing a gray sweater, hoodie and leather gloves, the actor best known for the Star Wars franchise gazed out at the crowd that had assembled in Hyde Park in London. As he seized the megaphone, he personified the moment: the breaking down, the getting inspired, and the seeking both solace and justice for George Floyd’s death. “Black lives have always mattered; we have always been important!” Boyega shouted, tears rolling down his cheeks. Read more on OZY.

1. Stacey Abrams, 46, Voting Rights Lion

From best-selling Harlequin romance novelist and Georgia house minority leader to the face of voting rights … and maybe even vice president? After unsuccessfully running for governor of Georgia amid a 2018 election rife with electoral irregularities and questionable voter purges, Abrams has become an eloquent advocate for fairness in America’s political system.

2. Kah Walla, 55, Beaten but Unbowed

Walla’s presidential ambitions in Cameroon began with a confrontation. It was 2010, and the opposition Social Democratic Front was planning to field its longtime chairperson for the third time in the following year’s election against President Paul Biya. Walla challenged her party leader to a primary. When he refused, she quit. A decade later, the 55-year-old management consultant is a leading face of the Cameroonian opposition. The rare woman in the country’s top political echelons, the president of the Cameroon People’s Party has faced arrests, death threats and beatings. But that has only strengthened her resolve to end Biya’s four-decade dictatorship. Read more on OZY.

The lone Black Republican in the U.S. Senate gave one of the most dramatic floor speeches in recent history four years ago while talking about how he had been targeted by police officers because of his race. And now the South Carolinian is leading the charge for the Justice Act, a Senate bill to make lynching a federal hate crime, encourage the banning of chokeholds and increase use-of-force disclosures — though it’s been criticized by Democrats for not going far enough. His voice, a leading one on issues of criminal justice reform and racial profiling, will remain critical in the days to come.

1. Charlamagne Tha God, 41, Early Morning Grilling

Otherwise known as Lenard Larry McKelvey, the South Carolinian is a New York Times best-selling author, producer and actor, and he makes up one third of Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club, asking the tough questions. What sets this radio personality apart is his fearlessness as well as his ability to make guests feel comfortable. Just ask Joe Biden, who slipped up and told Charlamagne that not voting for him is anti-Black, or when conservative talker Rush Limbaugh appeared on the show and said white privilege doesn’t exist. He is not only making space for these conversations but pressing the issue. Expect much more before Election Day.

2. Wesley Lowery, 29, View From Somewhere

The journalist became a national name by getting arrested while covering the Ferguson protests, then won the Pulitzer Prize for documenting police shootings for the Washington Post. But Lowery was never quite free to speak his mind: The powers-that-be kept a lid on his social media presence which they at times felt was too skewed in favor of the Black Lives Matter side of things. Now he’s moved on to become a correspondent on the new short version of CBS’ 60 Minutes on the Quibi streaming platform, and more freely bash the “view from nowhere” journalism of old. As he recently told the New York Times, a newsroom’s “core value needs to be the truth, not the perception of objectivity.”

A British journalist, Saini is the author of Superior: The Return of Race Science, a disturbing look at the history of racist scientific thought, which global leaders tried to snuff out after World War II, and yet continues to rear its ugly head. Other books of hers include Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World.

1. Elizabeth Hinton, 36, From Ivory Tower to Community

In 2017, Hinton, a professor at Yale, released her book, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America, in which she examined the implementation of federal law enforcement programs beginning in the mid-1960s, formulating a system of mass incarceration of Black American citizens. Hinton says her book inspired her to transfer her education from the campus to the community — to work directly with law enforcement, community groups and nonprofits. Read more on OZY.

2. Stella Nyanzi, 46, Iron Lady

In February, Ugandan security agencies failed once again to exorcise the revolutionary spirit of Stella Nyanzi, one of Africa’s most determined dissidents, after a court order commuted the 18-month sentence the anthropologist had received for “cyberbullying” Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni. Her radical rudeness (she once called Musevini “another pair of buttocks”) is significantly deconstructing the system of fear laid from the ground up by the brutally eccentric dictator Idi Amin and reinforced by Museveni, the former rebel chief who helped topple him. Accustomed to a life of civil disobedience and bodily harm as a former journalist, Nyanzi has persistently taunted the nation’s No. 1 citizen for years about poor governance — consequences be damned. Read more on OZY.

The historian is the best-selling author of How to Be an Antiracist. Through memoir-based writing, Kendi makes antiracism accessible — even to children — forcing readers to reexamine their own deeply held biases. A New York native, he is the founding director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University and is now launching a similar center at Boston University.

1. LeBron James, 35, More Than Hoops

Whether you believe he’s the G.O.A.T. on the basketball court, LeBron is surely one of the all-time greats to watch when it comes to speaking out on issues of social importance. While many athletes have lent their support to Black Lives Matter, the Los Angeles Laker has taken his work a step further by launching the voting rights group More Than a Vote, attempting to combat some of the voter suppression that has helped contribute to institutional racism in America.

2. Bubba Wallace, 26, Stars and Barred

In the wake of the George Floyd protests, Wallace called for the Confederate flag to be banned at NASCAR events — and the sport’s only Black driver was successful, following that victory by racing in Martinsville, Virginia, with his race car draped in a #BlackLivesMatter-themed paint scheme. His decision was bold (after all, roughly 80 percent of NASCAR fans are white, and traditionally the sport’s viewers have leaned conservative). But the 2018 Daytona second-place finisher’s principled stand will enter the history of powerful cultural moments in sport.

A six-time All-Star and 2010 National League MVP, Votto has been one of the best sluggers in baseball in recent years. But the Cincinnati Reds star had one big hole in his swing: race. And he admitted it in a striking op-ed in the Cincinnati Enquirer, in which he wrote his previous defenses of police made him “complicit” in the death of George Floyd, and he did not properly understand the Black experience. Votto apologized to his teammates of color and vowed to use his platform for racial justice moving forward.

1. Benjamin Crump, 50, Grievers’ Go-To

The civil rights champion is representing the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, but he is no Benny-come-lately, having also represented the poisoned children of the Flint water crisis and relatives of shooting victims Travyon Martin and Michael Brown. Born near Fort Bragg, N.C., the oldest of nine kids, his mother worked as a hotel maid — a humble history for the Omega Psi Phi leader and Florida State-trained lawyer.

2. Sherrilyn Ifill, 56, Breaking Educational Barriers

She immigrated to the U.S. from Barbados as a child, alongside her cousin, the late PBS NewsHour anchor Gwen Ifill. And as an adult, she has followed in the footsteps of Thurgood Marshall, first by attending the University of Maryland law school he helped desegregate and now by heading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund he founded. But Ifill hardly lives in Marshall’s shadow, having been a key fighter in protecting the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action in higher education — among other issues pressing to the forefront amid America’s new racial reckoning.

The son of a Russian Jewish crime novelist and a Christian minister has sued the police at least 75 times — and that was before the progressive public defender was surprisingly elected to become Philadelphia’s district attorney in 2018. Known for representing groups like Black Lives Matter and Dreamers pro bono early on, Krasner is providing a road map for de-escalation, from decriminalizing marijuana and limiting cash bail to dismissing a third of his homicide prosecutors and pursuing shorter sentences in plea deals.

1. Joy Buolamwini, 30, Woke AI

A Ghanaian-American computer scientist and digital activist at the MIT Media Lab, Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League, an organization that challenges bias in decision-making software. Her pioneering research shows how automated recognition and artificial intelligence technologies are not optimized for non-white people — leading to disastrous unintended consequences for those with darker skin. From driverless cars to infrared tech to algorithm-assisted policing, her research will be critical to understanding how even computational justice isn’t blind.

2. Dr. Ala Stanford, 49, DIY COVID-19 Offensive

“I reached out to [the] city and the state,” says Stanford, standing in a Philadelphia parking lot where she’s taking a break from testing people for COVID-19, “from my state senator to the city and then the governor’s office. Nothing.” In a burst of activity, Stanford contacted all her Black doctor associates across the United States. The call to action was twofold: Did they have testing kits they could spare, and would they appear with her on Instagram Live to debunk misinformation about the virus? Read more on OZY.

The epitome of #BlackGirlMagic, Corbett is a rarity as an African American woman scientist at the National Institutes of Health leading the government’s search for a vaccine to end the coronavirus outbreak. She also hasn’t been afraid to take a professional risk by exposing the lack of diversity around her, particularly when she called out President Trump in February for a lack of scientists of color on his coronavirus task force.

1. Selena Gomez, 27, Passing the Mic

With one of the world’s biggest Instagram followings, some 180 million scrollers in all, the actress and pop star has quite the platform. So the Texas native recently turned over the keys to her vast kingdom to Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, in order to spread the message of the movement — in addition to speaking out herself against racism.

2. Jay Versace, 22, Next-Generation Voice

Modern-day civil rights leaders ply their trade as much on social media as in the streets. In the online regions where wit, fearlessness and brevity garner the greatest rewards, it takes a talent like Versace to break through. He’s the one out there leveraging his 1.5 million Twitter followers to pump out truth and resources during wild times. It can be as simple as “corona so ugly I’ll smack that bitch,” or as intricate as him speaking on why ancestral veneration is important. Either way, he’s seamlessly transitioned his content from funny to informative. Read more on OZY.

In May, the founder of accessories label Brother Vellies posted on Instagram, tagged retailers like Sephora, Target, Whole Foods and Barnes & Noble, and asked for each to take the “15 Percent Pledge” — a promise to buy 15 percent of their products from Black-owned businesses. James’ call to action wasn’t just about the Black Lives Matter movement, but also about the disproportionate impact Black businesses have experienced from COVID-19 closures. Of those brands, only Sephora has publicly committed, but other retailers, from Rent the Runway to Bando and Nox, soon took the pledge as it went viral.