Mark Harris

Mark Harris, an award winning journalist and educator, has spent decades working for the recovery of culture, promoting sobriety, healthy non-addictive living, and the importance of uncovering hidden history for personal and community healing. Mark has worked with school districts, communities, and both national and state task forces on gangs, and culturally specific addiction prevention coalitions.
    Raised in a family of educators and health care professionals, Mark's work on diversity issues concerns health disparities in the local, state, and national substance abuse treatment industries, as well as disproportionate minority confinement, which results in addictions among people of color going untreated except through the so-called justice system.   His presentation is entitled Maroon Zikr (Rememberance). The word Maroon comes to us from the Taino people who applied it to their African comrades in the struggle against the Colonizer-Slaver. With Freedom, comes the Spiritual Response-Ability to continually emancipate yourself and others, while being true to your Original Creative Freedom loving interdependent nature.