“Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle – When Baltimore Awakes”

 This talk will be a comprehensive critique of the human/social service sector in Baltimore and how it perpetuates the system of white supremacy. Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS) is a grassroots think-tank which advances the public policy interest of Black people, in Baltimore, through: youth leadership development, political advocacy, and autonomous intellectual innovation. The organizational focus on public policy stems from the unique experience many of its founders had with the rigorous academic activity of policy debate. The founders of LBS ignited their passion for debate as high school students of the local urban debate league; however, it was their collegiate debate experience at Towson University that catapulted them into the world of activism and advocacy. In a community which has traditionally favored a dispassionate C-SPAN style of debate, LBS founders proliferated a style that was rooted in the cultural and intellectual resources of people of African descent.

Dayvon Love is the Director of Public Policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. He has been sharpening his oratory style and political thinking for more than a decade as a coach and competitor in policy debate through his high-school and college years. Love was so skilled at debate, it earned him a scholarship to college, where he and fellow debater, Deven Cooper, won the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) National Championship – the first time in history that an all Black debate team won the tournament. Incorporating hip-hop, poetry and personal experiences, their debate arguments flipped the script as they underscored how the practice of the debate community purveys the kind of racial inequalities existent in society today.