Dr. Mariah Parker will give the keynote address at Warren Wilson College’s Commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 13, 2023.
Parker (they/them) is a community organizer with the Union of Southern Service Workers, a rapper (under the stage name Linqua Franqa), a linguistics scholar, and a 2013 alum of Warren Wilson College. They made headlines when they were sworn in as a Georgia county commissioner at age 26 with their hand on a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The action went viral on social media and major news outlets. As a county commissioner, Parker focused on economic justice, criminal justice reform, racial equity, and raising the minimum wage.
Now Parker works for the Union of Southern Service Workers, the Southern arm of the Fight for $15 and a Union workers movement. The organization works with retail, fast food and other low-wage workers to take militant, non-violent direct action for fair wages, more regular schedules, paid sick days, healthcare benefits, safety at work, and other improved working conditions.
In addition to being a community organizer, Parker is an accomplished hip hop artist. They use their career as a rapper as a platform for activism and education, to inspire people, do mass civics education, and to share personal experiences. Their music is also intricately tied to their academic work in linguistics and language. Their stage name, Linqua Franqa, comes from the linguistic term “lingua franca,” or common language used to communicate across cultures. Parker said linguistics also gives them a toolkit to create inventive hip hop verses.
At Warren Wilson, Parker studied creative writing and modern languages, worked at the Writing Studio, and wrote for the student newspaper, The Echo. Those experiences inspired them to get their master’s…
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