Musician/activist Stephan Said to join Susan Bro, Khizr Khan at We Are Here diversity festival

Singer, activist and host of ‘borderless’ Stephan Said will lead Charlottesville youth in a conversation about social change, empowerment, and unity at the We Are Here diversity festival this Saturday at Ix Art Park, as well as lead the audience singing his new song “We The People.”

The Virginia-raised Iraqi-American artist who Billboard Magazine calls “this generation’s Woody Guthrie,” filmed the music video for his upcoming single “We The People” working with Charlottesville and Richmond, VA youth, community organizations, and Richmond’s acclaimed One Voice Chorus this past winter.

“We The People” to be distributed globally by The Orchard/Sony this summer, is a powerful statement for equality and unity rising from the front lines. The video and accompanying mini-documentary will be featured in an upcoming episode of borderless, the docu-series that follows Said as he travels the globe meeting people who are changing the world.

Sponsored by the University of Virginia and the City of Charlottesville, the We Are Here Diversity Festival will bring together members of the University and the local community through creative expressions of diversity. In addition to Said, the festival will feature keynote speeches by Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, and attorney Khizr Khan, the father of U.S. Army Capt. and University of Virginia alumnus Humayun Khan, who was killed while deployed in Iraq in 2004.

“Charlottesville is particularly poised to make a statement of diversity and inclusion on the national stage – this is the festival’s goal,” says Vanessa Braganza, the organizer. Said says, “the mission of We Are Here Festival and “We The People” are closely aligned –my inspiration for ‘We The People” was to lift a positive message up from front lines of political divisiveness to bring us together for change.”

Sponsored by the University of Virginia and the City of Charlottesville, the We Are Here Diversity Festival will bring together members of the University and the local community through creative expressions of diversity. A spectrum of local non-profit organizations that serve minority groups will offer “flash talks” on their missions at the April 14 festival, which will feature the live assembly of a community mural, a Google Earth Virtual Reality space to explore the world, and other cultural activities.