Patrisse Cullors was raised in the home of Alton Cullors, who used to work at a General Motors plant in Van Nuys before it was shut down, forcing him to work in low-paying jobs.
33 Facts About Patrisse Cullors
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Patrisse Cullors described him as having a constant and caring presence in her life.
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Patrisse Cullors grew up in a Section 8 apartment in Van Nuys, a poor and largely Mexican-American neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.
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Patrisse Cullors said that she witnessed her 11 and 13-year-old brothers being needlessly slammed into a wall by police when she was 9 years old.
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Patrisse Cullors describes that she felt ashamed going there with her mother in a car, borrowed from their neighbor and Monte's on-and-off girlfriend Cynthia, since it was in a state of disrepair.
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Patrisse Cullors has cited this as one of the reasons for her activism.
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Patrisse Cullors became an activist early in life, joining the Bus Riders Union under the leadership of Eric Mann as a teenager during which time she attended a year-long organizing program led by the Labor Community Strategy Center.
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Patrisse Cullors learned about revolutionaries, critical theory and social movements from around the world, while practicing activism.
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Patrisse Cullors enrolled at Grover Cleveland High School in Reseda and was admitted into its social justice magnet program.
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Patrisse Cullors went onto acquire a degree in religion and philosophy at UCLA, as well as a MFA from the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California.
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Patrisse Cullors recalls being forced from her home at sixteen when she revealed her queer identity to her parents.
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Patrisse Cullors developed an interest in the Nigerian religious tradition of Ifa, incorporating its rituals into political protest events.
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Patrisse Cullors teaches at Otis College of Art and Design in the Public Practice Program.
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Patrisse Cullors teaches in the Master's Arts in Social Justice and Community Organizing at Prescott College.
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Patrisse Cullors further described her impetus for pushing for African-American rights stemming from her 19-year-old brother's brutalization during imprisonment in Los Angeles County jails.
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Patrisse Cullors has been the most publicly visible of the co-founders, especially after Garza and Tometi stepped back from regular involvement in the organization.
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In May 2021 Patrisse Cullors resigned from her formal role as executive director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, to focus on her second book and a multi-year TV deal with Warner Bros.
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Patrisse Cullors said that her resignation had nothing to do with alleged attempts to discredit her and that it had been planned for over a year.
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Patrisse Cullors co-founded the prison activist organization Dignity and Power Now, which succeeded in advocating for a civilian oversight board.
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Patrisse Cullors is a board member of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, having led a think tank on state and vigilante violence for the 2014 Without Borders Conference.
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Patrisse Cullors defines herself as a prison, police and "militarization" abolitionist, a position she says is inspired by "a legacy of black-led anti-colonial struggle in the United States and throughout the Americas".
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Patrisse Cullors cites the activist and formerly incarcerated Weather Underground member Eric Mann, as her mentor during her early activist years at the Bus Riders Union of Los Angeles.
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Patrisse Cullors cites Angela Davis for her "political theories and reflections on anticapitalist movements around the world", her work towards "a broader antiracist and antiwar movement", and her fight against white supremacy in the United States.
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Patrisse Cullors cites Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, as "provid[ing] a new understanding around what our economies could look like".
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In 2014 Patrisse Cullors produced the theatrical piece POWER: From the Mouths of the Occupied, which debuted at Highways Performance Space.
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Patrisse Cullors has contributed articles about the movement to the LA Progressive, including an article from December 2015 titled "The Future of Black Life" which pushed the idea that activists could no longer wait for the State to take action, and called her followers into action by encouraging them to begin building the world that they want to see.
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Patrisse Cullors describes it as a guide for activists on how to take care of each other and resolve internal conflicts while campaigning.
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Patrisse Cullors appeared in the 2016 documentary Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement.
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In October 2020 she signed her first 'overall deal' with Warner Brothers, a multi-year agreement that will see Patrisse Cullors develop and produce original programming across all platforms, including broadcast, cable and streaming, aimed at amplifying Black Lives Matter, black storytelling, and black perspectives.
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Patrisse Cullors produced the YouTube Originals series Resist, which premiered November 18,2020.
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Patrisse Cullors was taken to a hospital, where he went into cardiac arrest four and a half hours later and died.
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In 2021, a controversy arose in some media outlets, following reports that Patrisse Cullors had purchased several homes during a five-year period.
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Patrisse Cullors resigned from leadership of the Foundation the next month, and later revealed psychological exhaustion from the controversy, stating that she was receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.