Get To Know Activist Bree Newsome With These Interesting Facts

Bree Newsome is a name you really need to add to your pop culture — and American history — vocabulary, and not just because Ava DuVernay is talking about her. The 30-year-old activist is not just a self-described “Freedom Fighter” who valiantly (and, admittedly, illegally) scaled the flagpole at the South Carolina capital and tore down the Confederate flag, but she’s also an accomplished musician and filmmaker who has only seen glimpses of “her moment.” Here are a few things you need to know about Bree Newsome.

1. Like her Admirer DuVernay, Bree Newsome is a filmmaker

Newsome has some serious filmmaking cred as a graduate of New York University’s Tisch program. But even before that, she earned a $40,000 scholarship from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences — you know, the people who give out Emmy Awards — for her animated short film, The Three Princes of Idea, which she made as a high school student. Later on, still in her early- to mid-20s, Newsome made the short film Wake, which was screened in several festivals including Cannes. Cannes. One of its last hurrahs was a Grand Prize at BET’s Urbanworld Festival in 2011. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube:

2. Her filmmaking prowess and activism sometimes hang out together and make award-winning videos.

When she isn’t scaling flag poles, she’s getting the word out to young people to vote. While a student at NYU, she threw together a PSA called Your Ballot, Your Voice, which won a Grand Prize in a contest sponsored by MTV and NYU Tisch. And since she clearly has so much to say when it comes to politics, Newsome is responsible for the video for the comedy rap song “Shake It Like an Etch-a-Sketch,” which mocked 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign gaffe.

3. South Carolina isn’t the first state capitol she’s targeted for a protest.

Newsome organized a sit-in at the North Carolina state capital to protest attacks on voting rights. She is a co-founder of Stay Up NC and continues to serve as a field organizer for the activist group Ignite NC for which she works on cases to stop police brutality, namely in Charlotte. Her work started back with the shooting of Johnathan Ferrell, a former football player who was shot by police in 2013. So you can imagine that Newsome has been working pretty hard in the past couple of years.

4. She’s a musician who sings in a group that is appropriately named Powerhouse.

As if being a social activist filmmaker wasn’t enough, Newsome is also a musician who has been practicing and writing music since the age of seven. When she was 14, she wrote a six-part choral piece that was performed at the Baltimore Choral Arts Society that earned her a $12,000 scholarship from the Maryland Distinguished Scholars Competition. She performs with the funk band Powerhouse but is also getting ready to release a solo album of her own original music. Here is her single, “#StayStrong: A Love Song to Freedom Fighters”:

And here is Powerhouse covering Beyonce, since that’s something you absolutely need to see and hear:

5. She’s a horror and sci-fi geek!

Tribeca unearthed a panel that Newsome appeared on where she discussed the lack of diversity of women of color in genre filmmaking like horror and science fiction. Wake, her short film, has clear supernatural elements to it and she says she always grew up with an Octavia Butler book nearby.

What she has to say about equating activism with storytelling is creative catnip for anyone who loves hearing artistic people talk about their craft. I swear, Newsome’s brain never stops working, which leads me to this bonus fact…

BONUS FACT: Bree Newsome does not sleep.*

I don’t know how, when, or if she sleeps, but I would imagine that when she does, it’s still powerful. Let’s do everything we can to give Bree Newsome every possible opportunity to tell as many stories as possible. She is an absolute force to be reckoned with, and her career should be nothing less than ridiculously exciting.

*May not be a true fact.

Sources: Bree Newsome, Tribeca

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