The Global Summit — Community Healing Network, Inc.:
VALUING BLACK LIVES:
THE ANNUAL GLOBAL EMOTIONAL EMANCIPATION SUMMIT℠
2015 Summit Theme
Taking Control of Our Destiny:
Confronting the Deadly Mindset at the Root of the Devaluing of Black Lives
Hosted by
The Honorable Karen Bass (D. Calif.)
Ranking Member of the
United States House of Representatives
Africa Subcommittee
Presented by
Community Healing Network, Inc., & The Association of Black Psychologists
Thursday and Friday, September 17 and 18, 2015
Session 1--Thursday, Sept 17, 2015, 12noon-5 pm, Room 206
Session 2--Friday, Sept 18, 2015, 9 am-5 pm, Room 207B
Walter E. Washington Convention Center
801 Mt. Vernon Place, N.W., Washington, D.C.
If you have any questions or concerns, please email us directly at Info@CommunityHealingNet.org.
For lodging information, please visit http://www.cbcfinc.org/alc/accommodations.
*Please Note: This link is provided for your convenience. CHN is not affiliated with any of the hotels listed on the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's website.
REGISTRATION
CONFIRMED U.S. PANELISTS
Tom Burrell, author
"Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority"
Wizdom Powell, PhD, MPH.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Ikaweba Bunting | Division Chair of Social and Behavioral Sciences
El Camino College, Compton Center Gardena, CA
Dr. Taasogle Daryl Rowe, President
The Association of Black Psychologists
Dr. Cheryl Tawede Grills, Immediate Past President
The Association of Black Psychologists
Rev. Frederick J. Streets | Pastor of Dixwell Congregational Church and Former Chaplin at Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
Wekesa Madzimoyo
Co-Director, AYA Educational Institute
Annelle Primm, MD, MPH
Senior Psychiatrist Advisor for Urban Behavioral Associates
Norma Day-Vines, PhD
John Hopkins School of Education
Aiesha Turman
Founder and Executive Director of The Black Girl Project
Across the globe, Black people are under attack on multiple fronts. In this, the International Decade for People of African Descent, we invite you to join Community Healing Network (CHN) and The Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) in developing a unified response that goes to the heart of the challenges we face as a people. This September, we will launch an urgent and ground-breaking international conversation to devise plans to overturn the lies of White superiority and Black inferiority: the root causes of the devaluing of Black lives and the countless injustices against people of African ancestry around the world.
Valuing Black Lives: The Global Emotional Emancipation Summit℠ will be a forum within which Black people of diverse nationalities, backgrounds, and experiences can collectively explore the many dimensions of these lies. We will examine how the lies manifest themselves no matter where we find ourselves in the world and how they are implicated in nearly all the problems confronting Black communities, and we will discuss why they must be taken into account in developing strategies aimed at addressing problems confronting Black people wherever we may be. We invite young people, parents, leaders of civil society, historians, educators, physicians, mental health professionals, economists, entrepreneurs, entertainers and media professionals, lawyers, advocates, activists, elected officials, policymakers, and all Black people interested in improving conditions for men, women, and children of African ancestry around the world--to share your knowledge and join us in co-creating strategies to reclaim our humanity and dignity, and take control of our destiny.
WHAT
Valuing Black Lives: The Annual Global Emotional Emancipation Summit℠ is a solutions-focused, action-oriented forum presented by Community Healing Network (CHN), in collaboration with the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) to bring together leaders of African ancestry from around the world to develop action plans to free ourselves and our children from the lies of White superiority and Black inferiority--once and for all.WHO
CHN is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that has been working since 2006 to build the global grassroots movement for emotional emancipation to help Black people overcome and overturn the lies of White superiority and Black inferiority. ABPsi is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that seeks to promote and advance the profession of African psychology, influence and effect social change, and develop programs that address and work to alleviate problems of Black communities and other ethnic groups. ABPsi is augmenting the movement for emotional emancipation by bringing to it an international agenda for the “liberation of the African mind and enlivenment and illumination of the African spirit.”In 2011, CHN reached out to ABPsi to ask for its professional expertise and technical assistance in helping to build an international network of Emotional Emancipation (EE) Circles℠ , self-help support groups designed to help Black people heal from the historical and continuing trauma of racism. Together, CHN and ABPsi have planted seeds for EE Circles in cities across the United States, including Ferguson, MO; New York City, NY; Baltimore, MD; New Haven, CT; Tuskegee, AL; Oakland and San Diego, CA; and countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, Cuba, and Ghana.
WHY
The United Nations has recently called attention to the fact that the descendants of the victims of enslavement, people of African ancestry all over the world, are today among the “poorest and most marginalized groups” who “have limited access to quality education, health services, housing and social security, … and all too often experience discrimination in their access to justice, and face alarmingly high rates of police violence, together with racial profiling.”In his December 10, 2014, remarks on the launch of the International Decade for People of African Descent, His Excellency Sam Kahamba Kutesa, President of the General Assembly, added extemporaneously: “While we remember being free from physical slavery, I think people in Africa and those of African descent face one challenge today, and that is overcoming the slavery of the mind. That challenge we must face both at home in Africa and among those of our descent; because otherwise, we will remain eternal slaves.”
Leaders and visionaries including Yaa Asantewa, Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Senghor, Aime Cesaire, Steve Biko, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X have, each in his or her own way, called us, as a people, to the work of freeing ourselves from mental enslavement.
CHN, in collaboration with ABPsi, is leading the struggle to help Black people everywhere emancipate ourselves from the “slavery of the mind.”
For nearly four centuries, the world has been fed toxic lies about the history, worth, and value of people of African ancestry. These lies are all rooted in the lies of White superiority and Black inferiority. These lies were devised to justify the exploitation of Africa, the richest continent on the face of the earth, and the enslavement and subjugation of African people.
These lies are at the root of the massacre of the Emanuel 9 in the United States, Afro-phobia in Europe, and the skin-lightening epidemic in parts of Africa. They are at the root of the too-common police killings of Black people, and violence within Black neighborhoods around the world. They are at the root of global structural racism. They explain why, to the world, Black lives do not matter as much as White lives do.
These lies have led to the dehumanization of Black people and the devaluing of Black lives. They contribute to the under-development of Black communities, Black-White mental and physical health disparities, the criminalization, mass incarceration, and wanton killing of Black people, and many of the other problems we face around the world. They also undermine our ability as a people to solve these problems.
In order to address the many challenges facing Black communities globally, we, Black people, must free ourselves from the lies, and reclaim and keep our “righteous minds.”
CHN’s aim is to engage a critical mass of Black people in the movement for emotional emancipation by the year 2019, the 400th anniversary of the forced arrival of Africans at Jamestown colony in the United States, so that by the year 2020, we, as a people, will begin to see ourselves in a whole new light.
HOW
Valuing Black Lives: The Annual Global Emotional Emancipation Summit is part of a multi-faceted set of strategies developed by CHN to build the movement for emotional emancipation. This first Summit, which will be hosted by the Honorable Karen Bass (D. Calif.), Ranking Member of the United States House of Representatives Africa Subcommittee, and held in conjunction with the 45th Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in Washington D.C. on September 17 and 18, 2015, will launch an international conversation about the lie, its origins and effects, and concrete strategies for extinguishing it.The objectives of the 2015 Summit are:
1. To define the problem, its global dimensions and its origins, to describe its effects on the health and well-being of Black people the world over; and to begin to share and develop concrete strategies to help Black people recover from the trauma caused by the lies;2. To expand the global network of activists focused on overcoming and overturning the lies;
3. To establish international working groups for continuing collaborative action, and planning for future summits; and
4. Release a Summit communiqué summarizing our deliberations and outlining our next steps.
Morning plenary sessions will explore how the lies of White superiority and Black inferiority have manifested themselves in different parts of the world and different sectors of societies, how they have been internalized by Black people, and emerging strategies for overturning them. Afternoon sessions will focus on solutions (including how to incorporate strategies for addressing the lies into our respective efforts for justice, equality, and development), and will be followed by report-back sessions to inform the drafting of the Summit communiqué.
Confirmed and invited panelists and participants include representatives of the Pan African Movement, the African Union, the United Nations, and major Black associations in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
The 2015 Valuing Black Lives Global Emotional Emancipation Summit is the first of many to come. We will start where we are with what we have and build urgently and insistently until Black people everywhere are healed from trauma, freed of deadly stereotypes, and emotionally empowered to enjoy life in all its fullness.
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*Valuing Black Lives, Valuing Black Lives: The Annual Global Emotional Emancipation Summit, Emotional Emancipation Circles, EE Circles, EECs and all related service marks and logos are owned exclusively and stewarded by Community Healing Network, Inc.
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