One God One Community Brings Christian Picciolini To Evansville
Christian Picciolini, a reformed white supremacist skinhead will give a free talk about his life and transformation from a white nationalist and skinhead at 7 p.m. CST on Jan. 22 at the Victory Theatre in Evansville.
His appearance is presented by One God One Community – an Evansville faith-based entity consisting of the congregations of Temple Adath B’nai Israel, The Islamic Society of Evansville, First Presbyterian Church of Evansville and St. Benedict Cathedral Parish.
A free-will offering of cash and food items for the Tri-State Food Bank will be accepted.
Picciolini will also speak to high school students in the morning and afternoon of Jan. 22 before his evening talk.
Picciolini is an award-winning television producer, 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 a feeling of urgency to make something of his time on this planet by contributing to the greater good.
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, Picciolini earned a degree in international relations from DePaul University, and later began his own global media firm.
In 2009, he cofounded Life After Hate, a nonprofit dedicated to helping others counter racism and violent extremism. He is currently working to 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, Picciolini 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.
His memoir, “WHITE AMERICAN YOUTH: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement—and How I Got Out,” in which he details his involvement in, and eventual exit from, the early American white-supremacist skinhead movement, has been republished by Hachette Books.
Picciolini was most recently on CBS’ 60 Minutes with Scott Pelley. The feature, “An American Terrorist,” is available for viewing online at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rejecting-hate-after-spending-nearly-a- decade-spreading-it/
Picciolini’s evening talk at the Victory Theater is totally free to the community. Please spread the word.
