The Black Community. The Police. The Solution | Seun Babalola | TEDxPSUBehrend

Seun’s talk will be on how to build better relations between the police and the African-American community. This is a hot button issue currently facing the United States that Seun has shown great passion for and he plans on tackling this topic by discussing proven ways to de-escalate police conflicts, telling the stories of those who were killed due to police violence, and giving accounts from his own life. Seun Babalola is a current college junior at Penn State University. Seun has been a large voice in the areas of social justice, civil rights, and equality at his school in numerous capacities. This past year as a sophomore, Seun served on the Student Government Association as a Senator and as the Director of the Diversity Committee which is the largest committee under the Student Government Association. To name just a few accomplishments, Seun and his committee teamed up with some of the largest student organizations on campus to hold forums that helped students engage in healthy discussions on various issues such as the presidential election, differences in the treatment of genders, and being Latino in America just to name a few. Earlier in the year, Seun along with three of his classmates Isaiah Rashaad Chatman, Demetrius Green, and Marquis McBride, co-founded the Men of Excellence program which is a project for young black men to excel and succeed in society through various programs, workshops, and just conversations with one another. Seun hopes to turn this program into a worldwide non-profit in the near future as the success and empowerment of young black men in our society is very important to him.
Very recently, Seun led a water drive for Flint, Michigan in response to their water crisis where he, along with several student leaders collected approximately 4000 bottles of water and hundreds of dollars in donations that he brought down to Flint with the help of his advisors. Seun hopes to continue to be a voice for change in social justice, civil rights, and equality through work in his community and beyond as he has hopes to attain a combined J.D. and Ph.D. in African-American Studies to be a professor and practice civil rights law. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx