Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire Will Award Citizen of the Year to Justice Roe Williams at the 18th Annual Black New England Conference
Justice Roe Williams (he/him) is a poet, writer, author, and now co-editor of his upcoming anthology, Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex: How to Resist, Disrupt, and Reclaim What It Means to Be Fit in American Culture” published in 2023 with North Atlantic Books. A unique book project that takes the journey of diverse bodies, from coaches to fitness enthusiasts, and their experience of the fitness industry and what it means to create inclusive movement spaces.
Justice is also a Certified Personal Trainer, head coach at Kettlebell Justice, founder of The Queer Gym Pop Up and BodyImage4Justice, and Executive Director of Fitness4AllBodies based in Boston. Williams is a trans, body-positive and social justice activist who continues to create safe spaces for all bodies now across the globe through his work with Fitness4AllBodies. He advocates for fitness being for everybody and the importance of trainers and fitness professionals using their status as gatekeepers to “act as a shield” to protect their clients and create safe, affirming practices and spaces.
A key component of his work has been working with people of all backgrounds to address and dismantle toxic masculinity and how it operates within a white supremacist patriarchal culture. His work has been featured in Men’s Health, Refinery29, Good Housekeeping, NPR, Pink News, Boston Neighborhood Network News, and more.
“Using the stories and experiences of trainers, coaches, and bodyworkers from diverse experiences, Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex describes and defines the Fitness Industrial Complex (FIC). This framework is created to name that fitness as an industry acts systemically to produce and ideologically maintain dominant body cultures. Bringing together the voices of activists within the fitness industry who are deconstructing and re-envisioning how we experience and understand fitness as it presently exists, this book shows how we are all connected in this fight to redefine fitness as a practice or ritual for all bodies.”
