Let's Talk Tuesdays- Community Healing Network June 5th, 2018

Making the Vision Real with Margaret Powell Happy Tuesday, CHN Friends: Last week, we began to sketch our vision of a flourishing future for Black children, and we invited you to share your visions with us. This week, we are pleased to highlight the vision and the work of Sister Margaret Powell, urban educator, and former college administrator and elementary school teacher. She works in Baltimore, Maryland, in a neighborhood described by the author Devin Allen as A Beautiful Ghetto. She is clearly a teacher who loves her students—and is loved by them in return. Her Vision In a conversation with me last Friday, Sister Margaret described a future in which Black children feel “so welcomed, loved, safe, nurtured, and empowered that those wonderful feelings stick with them for the rest of their lives.” She imagines a future in which Black children “have strong foundations, and are able to thrive, to reach their fullest potential, to be independent, and able to help others, and build communities that are strong.” As a former member of the Congress of Afrikan People, Margaret Powell is clear about the pathway to realizing her vision for Black children. She is guided by this wisdom from Pan-African psychologist Bobby E. Wright: Making the Vision a Reality In 2000, Sister Margaret left administration at the college level to teach at Matthew A. Henson Elementary School. She spent time with her students during and after school, and in and out of the school building. Even though she is retired, she still volunteers at the school every day. She established a weekly Saturday School which eventually became Super Scholar Second Saturday (S4), through which she provides opportunities for academic and cultural enrichment. Independent Community Healing Advocate Charlene Phipps, who had been working with Community Healing Network for years to promote the annual celebration of Community Healing Days, introduced Sister Margaret to that commemoration and to CHN’s Emotional Emancipation (EE) Circles, also called EECs. Sister Charlene and Sister Margaret worked together to celebrate Community Healing Days with the young people in S4 starting in about 2014, and to establish EEC 21217 in West Baltimore in 2015, co-facilitated by Sister Margaret with Brother Charles Hicks. The training that got EEC 21217 started was sponsored by Baltimore’s Black Mental Health Alliance and provided by Community Healing Network and the Association of Black Psychologists. EEC, or Emotional Emancipation Circle 21217, was launched as an all-adult group based at Pratt Library. It is currently operating at Matthew Henson Elementary School and now includes young people from the elementary to college level. As Sister Margaret says, “some of the young people from S4 invited themselves into the EEC,” which has become a wonderful space for the inter-generational healing and self-education that is necessary to pave the way to Sister Margaret’s vision for Black children. It is a vision we share. The older children have assigned themselves roles as leaders in the group, and everyone works together to understand how the forces of history have affected the lives of Black people—globally, nationally, locally, and at the level of family and the individual. According to Sister Margaret “We talk about the effects of racism and how we need to ‘Defy the Lie’ of Black inferiority.” Through quotes that are shared as a key part of the EEC Curriculum, participants encounter, respond to, and learn from the wisdom of our ancestors and elders. This is so exciting! In EEC 21217, people—from elementary school to adulthood together--are healing and finding their individual and collective voices on the journey toward emotional emancipation. Here's why Sister Margaret thinks the movement for emotional emancipation is so important: First, she quotes the Pan-African psychiatrist Frantz Fanon: "When we revolt it's not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe." Then she says: "In my opinion, the movement for emotional emancipation means being able to breathe. When we are empowered to breathe, we have the freedom to be well, grow, create, teach, learn to find/use our voices and value our Afrikan ancestry to heal and build our commUNITY." Thank you, Sister Margaret. It is a privilege to share your story. In the weeks and months ahead, we will be sharing the stories of Charlene Phipps and many other people who have been building the global grassroots movement for the emotional emancipation of Black people with CHN over the last 12 years. What do you think? Please share your thoughts about what we need to do to transform the world for Black children by clicking the button below. ______   PLEASE NOTE: Community Healing Days, Emotional Emancipation Circles, and all related marks are service marks owned exclusively and stewarded by Community Healing Network (CHN) for the benefit of the global grassroots movement for emotional emancipation, and may not be used without the express permission of CHN. Join the Conversation! DONATE TODAY! 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