Christian Picciolini (Picture via his TED talk video)
On May 3, 2018, the Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance will host former white supremacist Christian Picciolini at its nationally renowned Upstander Speaker Series event.Christian Picciolini will share the inspirational story of his life, from his involvement with a white supremacist movement at age 14, to his rise to become the group's leader at age 16, to his decision to renounce his ties to the American neo-Nazi movement at age 22. He will speak at 7 p.m. at the Communities Foundation of Texas, 5500 Caruth Haven Lane, Dallas, TX 75225. Visit DallasHolocaustMuseum.org/news/events for tickets and information.
⏩ In 2011, he co-founded Life After Hate, an organization dedicated to providing the knowledge necessary to implement long-term solutions that counter all types of racism and violent extremism.Picciolini now visits schools and community organizations to counter extremism and help radicalized individuals disengage from extremist movements. Most recently, Picciolini founded Free Radicals, a global nonprofit organization that works with individuals and their families to separate them from hateful ideologies.
"We are so grateful to have an Upstander like Christian Picciolini tell his powerful story of redemption at our next Upstander Speaker event," said Mary Pat Higgins, Museum president and CEO. "Christian's presentation will give us the opportunity to explore the depths of racism through the lens of someone who spent years within the movement. Our hope is that Christian's testimony will inform and touch the community in a lasting, meaningful way. The new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum now under construction will allow us to further explore these kinds of topics."A TEDx Talk presenter in 2017, he is a Regional Emmy Award winner, a past contributor for CNN and CBS Evening News, and the author of the memoir White American Youth: My Descent into America's Most Violent Hate Movement and How I Got Out (Hachette Books, 2017).
The Dallas Holocaust Museum's mission is to teach the history of the Holocaust and advance human rights to combat prejudice, hatred, and indifference. In 2017, the Museum broke ground on a state-of-the-art, 51,000 square foot permanent home in the historic West End of downtown Dallas—the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, to be completed in the fall of 2019.
SOURCE: Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance
More About Christian Picciolini:
(via christianpicciolini.com)Christian Picciolini is an award-winning television producer, a public speaker, author, peace advocate, and a reformed violent extremist. His life’s work bears witness to an ongoing and profound need to atone for a grisly past, and an urgency to make something of his time on this planet by contributing to the greater good.Related Videos:After leaving the violent hate movement he helped create during his youth, he began the painstaking process of rebuilding his life. While working for IBM, Christian earned a degree in international relations from DePaul University, and later began his own global media firm. In 2011, Christian cofounded Life After Hate, a nonprofit dedicated to helping others counter racism and violent extremism. He is currently working to help build the world’s first global network of extremism preventionists, who are helping people disengage from hate movements and other violent ideologies around the globe. In 2016, Christian won an Emmy Award for his role in directing and producing an anti-hate advertising campaign aimed at helping youth disengage from white-supremacist groups. He has worked as an adjunct professor at the college level, and is a frequent commentator on national and international news networks. Christian Picciolini's memoir, WHITE AMERICAN YOUTH: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement—and How I Got Out, where he details his involvement in, and eventual exit from, the early American white-supremacist skinhead movement, was published by Hachette Books in 2018.
