Dwayne Royster

Dwayne Royster

Bishop Dwayne Royster is on the Board of Directors at PowerSwitch Action, which envisions a "multi-racial feminist democracy".

Background

Jamie Way of PowerSwitch Action (then Partnership for Working Families) profiled Bishop Dwayne Royster on July 27, 2016:

Affiliate POWER’s founding Executive Director, Bishop Dwayne Royster, will be transitioning to serve as Political Director for People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO) National Network at the end of this month. We thank Bishop Royster for his hard work, dedication and service in making POWER a resolute cornerstone for racial, economic and educational justice in the Greater Philadelphia area. We are proud of his leadership and all that he has done to support POWER in its development and commitment to prophetic boldness. We also thank him for his leadership on Partnership for Working Families’ Board of Directors and Executive Committee in helping to strengthen our national network. Below you will find Bishop Royster’s parting words:

“I am departing POWER to become the Political Director of the PICO National Network in Washington, DC. PICO is the nation’s largest faith-based organizing movement. For those that know me well this is not much of a surprise. I was a Political Science major when I started Boston College almost 20 years ago. Politics and activism/advocacy/organizing have been important to me since my childhood. My faith has been equally important to me longer than politics. I am finally able to work deeply at the intersection of two of my passions to bring about healing and hope for a broken world. It has been a hard decision to leave POWER and head to DC. Yet, I am feeling called to our nation’s capital for such a time as this. There is much going on in the world that requires faith voices to speak truth to power and demand justice in the land. For that reason, I feel called in this moment... this Kairos moment. I am not one who believes that faith should not be engaged in the political realm. For many communities all across this nation there is great pain. As the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman asked in his book Jesus and the Disinherited, ‘What does our faith have to say to people with their backs up against the wall?’ For far too long the church has been a sleeping giant. It is time to ‘Wake Up!’ God has always had a remnant that has lifted a witness for Justice but now we need the whole of the many faith traditions and communities across our nation to become engaged. Good people who do nothing in the face of injustice are not good people! We must work to challenge the narratives and stories that have anesthetized our faith traditions into a dreamless slumber that does not even produce rest. We do not need a sleeping giant, but instead a massive army of faith people in a cacophony of voices that calls this nation to its better self. A massive army that draws our faith communities out of the walls of their institutions and to care for the greater community that surrounds them, a call to care for all of God’s creation.’ So I head to Washington to be a faith warrior, to fight for a moral economy, to fight for racial justice, to fight for an end to mass incarceration, to fight for a pathway to citizenship, to fight for climate and environmental justice and to fight for issues yet to be named.”

WURD

Bishop Dwayne Royster does show on radio station WURD with Amadee Braxton.

National Leading From the Inside Out Alum

Dwayne Royster, Political Director, PICO National Network was a 2017 Rockwood Leadership Institute National Leading From the Inside Out Alum.