Lauren Merin
Template:TOCnestleft Lauren Merin was a Durham, North Carolina activist. She is a first year MFA student at Kingston University. Her interests include poetry, evolutionary biology, teaching, cats, social justice, fiction, and challenging gender normativity. She grew up in the Sonoran desert in Tucson, AZ, and hopes to reside in London for a very long time.
People’s Durham
People’s Durham's mission, says organizer Sendolo Diaminah, is to "further the agenda of justice in Durham," particularly southeast-central Durham, which has not benefited from the downtown renaissance and the bio-tech distinction of Research Triangle Park.
"We're here to increase the power and influence of the working class in Durham, particularly in black and Latino communities, the people who have the least amount of voice in the city," says Lauren Merin of People’s Durham.
The group formed in 2009, when Diaminah, Raymond Eurquhart (a previous Citizen Award winner) and several volunteer activists and community organizers met inside the cramped conference room at Southside Neighborhood Association Outreach Center at Enterprise and South streets.[1]