Johnetta Elzie | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1989-04-16)April 16, 1989 (age 36) |
| Other names | Netta |
| Alma mater | Our Lady of Good Counsel,Southeast Missouri State |
| Occupation(s) | Activist, community organizer |
| Known for | Ferguson protests |
Johnetta "Netta"Elzie (born April 16, 1989) is anAmerican civil rights activist. She is one of the leaders in the activist group We The Protesters and co-edits theFerguson protest newsletterThis Is the Movement with fellow activistDeRay Mckesson.
Elzie grew up in North County St. Louis, where her mother owned a hair salon.[1] Elzie attended Our Lady of Good Counsel, a private school where she was often the only black student in her class.[2] She then studied journalism[3] in college atSoutheast Missouri State.[1]
Elzie became involved in activism following theshooting of Michael Brown. On August 9, 2014, viaTwitter, Elzie learned of Brown's death and that his body was left for hours in the street a short distance from her own childhood home. Mourning the recent death of her own mother, Elzie drove to the site of Brown's death and began tweeting about the scene she encountered.[1] She became involved in protests[4] and in organizing volunteers and donations, as well as in continuing to document events;[5] in his bookThey Can't Kill Us All,Washington Post reporterWesley Lowery described Elzie as "the most prominent of the citizen journalists telling the story ofFerguson."[2]
Elzie has been active in theFerguson, Missouri andBaltimore, Maryland protests[6] and she, with Mckesson and data scientistSamuel Sinyangwe, created "Mapping Police Violence", which collected data on people killed by police during 2014.[7][8]
TheLos Angeles Times has named Elzie to its list of "The new civil rights leaders: Emerging voices in the 21st century."The New York Times profiled Elzie and McKesson as leaders of the group that built "the nation's first 21st-century civil rights movement."[3] In January 2015The Atlantic named her one of the leaders of theBlack Lives Matter Movement.[5]
Elzie uses social media outlets such asTwitter in her activism.
She has been a field organizer forAmnesty International, and has volunteered with a girls' group called the Sophia Project in St. Louis.[9]
Elzie and McKesson were awarded theHoward Zinn Freedom to Write Award from the New England branch ofPEN in 2015 for their activism.[10][7]
They were also named as two of the 53 people onFortune's 2015 list of "World’s Greatest Leaders."[11]
