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Tag Archives: INOSAAR

Green Party calls for the All-Party Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ)

Posted on October 17, 2020 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI


This article is based on that of Green Party member Dr Nicola Frith in Green world on 19/10/20 published here.

In a historic move, the Green Party of England and Wales has become the first major national party to commit to seeking reparatory justice for the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Afrikans (TTEA). 

Members overwhelmingly voted in favour of the E3 motion ‘Atonement and Reparative Justice For African Enslavement‘ on the final day of their Autumn Conference on the 11th October 2020. Proposed by Green Councillors Cleo Lake (Bristol) and Scott Ainslie (Lambeth), and supported by the Greens of Colour and the Young Greens, the motion will see the Green Party call on Parliament to establish an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice. 



Azzees Minott, chair of the Greens of Colour and a significant contributor to getting the motion adopted, stated, ‘I am thrilled that Greens have been able to lead a historic movement in Britain by passing this motion. So many people see the Greens as a single-issue party, but achieving true social and racial justice is also at the core of what members care about because it’s all connected.’ 

Tyrone Scott from the Young Greens added: ‘As a young person of African descent, it has always been a source of shame to me that the UK was so complicit in enslavement. Our school curriculum only offers the most basic teachings of our colonial past, which generally only celebrates the power of the British Empire without detailing how this created deep racial inequalities in this country and across the world, which continue to exist to this day. The Young Greens were proud to work on this groundbreaking motion which sets a precedent to all other UK political parties.’

The All-Party Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice is a campaigning project founded by the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE) and now driven by the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC). 

The need for this Commission has long been supported by the work and activism of other members of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR), including those of the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement, the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee and the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR). 

The campaign aims to urge the UK Government to commit to a holistic process of atonement and reparations in accordance with the United Nations Framework on a Right to a Remedy and Reparation. A key part of the process includes recognizing and addressing the longstanding legacies of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism, such as the racial discrimination of majority world peoples, socio-economic inequality and environmental injustice.

Cleo Lake said, ‘Getting this motion to conference has been a great example of collaborative working with key reparations campaigners.  

‘It represents a significant milestone towards acknowledgement, justice and reconciliation over a painful shared history, the legacy of which still plays out today through rife global inequality, racism, Afriphobia, and a ravaged planet that continues to be pillaged and disrespected.’ 

The vote at national level follows on from the work of Lambeth Council, led by Green Party Councillor, Scott Ainslie. Earlier this year, Lambeth, which is home to the largest African-Caribbean population in the UK, became the first local authority to pass a successful motion calling for an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice to address the impact of slavery on current racial inequalities in the UK. 

Ainslie, who co-signed the motion to Conference, said: ‘This motion is a step towards “Global Britain” finally facing up to the impact it has on countries throughout the world.

‘If Britain can properly address the legacies of its colonial past and present, then it can truly deal with the root causes of our country’s socio-economic inequality and systemic racism.  

‘By engaging in a genuine process of reparative and transitional justice, we can begin to heal holistically and re-balance these injustices inflicted by the few which cause endless suffering to the many.’

At the root of this motion lies the work of some of the UK’s foremost reparations scholar-activists: Esther Stanford-Xosei and Kofi Mawuli Klu, co-vice chairs of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE). 

Since 2001, PARCOE has been leading different reparative initiatives, including the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and its petition, which has gained over 20,000 paper and online signatures. PARCOE have long been working to put the voices of grassroots and Afrikan Heritage Communities at the centre of the struggle for reparations. 

Klu described the motion as a ‘giant leap’ for Afrikan Heritage Communities of reparations interest as they march towards ‘self-determination to achieve reparations that will meaningfully impact on Planet Repairs.’ 

He paid tribute to others in the ISMAR and the Peoples Reparations International Movement (PRIM), noting that ‘with this enlarging grassroots force of peoples becoming the change, we can now convincingly express confidence in our ability to win the case for the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice and make reparations doable as a unifying force of all who desire Planet Repairs.’

He noted that it has taken ‘almost three decades of painstaking campaigning endeavours to raise consciousness enough for such results to be the works of not just a few, but the many, including now the Greens of Colour and Young Greens.’ 


Esther Stanford-Xosei, Coordinator-General of the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign, said, ‘The passing of this motion by the Green Party is vindication of our efforts. We have believed all along that our community organising efforts will eventually have the ground-up impact of winning more allies who grasp the necessity for an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice and understand it as a repairing process.’ 

‘This repair is important, not only for the restoration of the agency of our Afrikan Heritage Communities and stopping the despoliation of the Earth as our human habitat, but also for the rebalancing of society. Afrikan Reparations is a cause that will redress the globalised historical and contemporary injustices of what we call the Maangamizi (Afrikan Holocaust of chattel, colonial and neo-colonial enslavement).’

Emphasising the unifying narrative of reparations and its integral links to environmentalism, she stated that ‘no home in the world has been untouched by such manifestations of the Maangamizi as the climate and ecological crises.

‘That is why the Afrikan reparations we are seeking must have the Planet Repairs impact of restoring the familyhood of humanity which began from our Afrikan peopling of the entire world.’ 

Passing the motion at national level is, however, only the first step. The next step is to build on existing work that is underway between communities and councillors at local levels. 

As Lake states, ‘The aim is that as many local authorities as possible also pass motions calling for the All-Party Commission, as well as other overarching and region specific resolutions.’

Cities with direct links to the transoceanic trafficking in enslaved Afrikans and areas with strong Green support will be selected as priorities. 

To improve understanding about reparations as a holistic process and its links to Planet Repairs, Greens of Colour will be working with the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and the INOSAAR to produce motion templates and guidance, as well as dedicated workshops for councillors, regional parties, activists and citizens. In the meantime, further information and FAQs can be found on the Green Party Living Room. 


Esther Stanford-Xosei and Kofi Mawuli Klu participated in a Green Party conference fringe session with Cllrs Scott Ainslie and Cleo Lake organised by Greens of Colour to sensitise Green Party members to the contents of the motion on 3rd October 2020. The recording of the session can be found here.

Posted in ALL PARTY PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSION OF INQUIRY (APPCITARJ), INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AFRIKAN REPARATIONS, ISMAR, PALM, Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement, REPARATIONS, SMWeCGEC, STOP THE MAANGAMIZI CAMPAIGN, STOP THE MAANGAMIZI PETITION | Tagged AEDRMC, Afrikan Heritage Communities, Afrikan Reparations, APPCITARJ, British Colonialism, Communities of Reparatory Justice Interest, GPEW, Green Party, Green Party Conference, Greens of Colour, INOSAAR, Neocolonialism, Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement, Pan-Afrikan Reaparations Coalition in Europe, Pan-Afrikan Reparations 4 Global Justice, Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice, Pan-Afrikanism, PARCOE, Planet Repairs, Reparationist, Reparations Scholar-Activism, Reparatory Justice, STOP THE MAANGAMIZI PETITION, TTEA, Young Greens | Leave a comment

INOSAAR Roundtable on Universities & Reparative Justice

Posted on October 11, 2020 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI



    About this Event

    This is the livestream video of the International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) Roundtable Discussion facilitated by Professor Joyce Hope Scott, Clinical Professor of African American Studies at Boston University, Boston, USA which took place on 09/10/20.

    In this third roundtable hosted by the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR), our panellists discuss the role and responsibility of universities in the struggle for reparative justice and in the context of recognizing the university sector’s historical links to slavery and colonialism.

    Reparations and acts of reparative and transitional justice will be interpreted broadly. For example, we could read the history of the Black colleges and universities in the USA as reparative, alongside the proliferation of centres and programmes dedicated to Black, Africana, African and African American Studies, which have sought to counteract the negative stereotypes of African peoples institutionalized by establishment academia.

    In 2003, Brown University in Rhode Island, USA, became the first higher education institution to openly acknowledge and apologize for its links to African enslavement. Its report, ‘Slavery and Justice’, acted as a catalyst for other institutions to establish how they profited from the enslavement of Afrikan peoples and functioned as primary sites in which racialized discourses were produced and validated.

    In some cases, recognition has resulted in the adoption of what might be considered reparatory measures, including: raising funds for educational grants and scholarships; renaming buildings and removing insignia and statues linked to enslavement, colonialism and racism; erecting new statues, monuments and sculptures; and inaugurating dedicated research centres.

    In 2014, an attempt to gather these efforts together and share practices across higher education institutions resulted the creation of an international consortium of ‘Universities Studying Slavery’, which now includes around seventy colleges and universities in the USA, the UK, Ireland and Canada.

    More recently, in 2019, the University of Glasgow signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University of the West Indies to work together on the foundation of the Glasgow Caribbean Centre for Development which was widely reported as being a reparative justice initiative.

    It is against this backdrop of widening interest and increased lobbying for universities to recognize and redress their links to enslavement and colonialism that we are asking our panellists to consider the following questions:

    • What are some of the ethical questions raised by conducting research into the links between universities and their histories of Afrikan enslavement and colonialism?

    • Within universities, as sites of educational knowledge production, what are the different ways that reparation and reparative justice can be approached?

    • What processes are already underway within universities that might be defined as reparative?

    • What role should universities play, and what responsibilities do they have, in engaging with local, national and international communities (including communities of reparations interest) on matters of reparative and transitional justice, and what principles should guide that engagement?

    • What consideration has been given to creating spaces within higher education institutions to enable difficult conversations to take place within and outside of the university community?

    Our panellists include:

    Dr Nicola Frith is a Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Edinburgh and co-founder of the INOSAAR, who focuses on the legacies and memories of enslavement and reparations.

    Professor Gus John, Visiting Professor at Coventry University and Honorary Fellow and Associate Professor at UCL Institute of Education at the University of London, is a renowned activist and academic who has been working in education, youth work and social justice since the 1960s.

    Dr Athol Williams is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where he focuses on ethical leadership, corporate responsibility and applied ethics.

    Professor Kris Manjapra, Associate Professor of History at Tufts University, and Chair of the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora. Manjapra is also a steering committee member of the Tufts Action Group; a grassroots organization of faculty and staff working in alignment with the Movement for Black Lives. Manjapra works on histories of colonialism, decolonization, plantation economies, and reparations movements. His most recent book is Colonialism in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

    Professor Jemadari Kamara, PhD, is Founding Director of the Center for African, Caribbean and Community Development (CACCD) and Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is former Senior Fulbright Professor at the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal; international coordinator for the Youth Education and Sports (YES) with Africa Program (which has served nearly 3,000 African youth); Senior Advisor to the Boston Pan-African Forum; treasurer of the West African Research Association and Member of the board of directors of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century. Prof. Kamara has extensive expertise in Community Development and Public Policy; Black Social Movements; African-American Urban Politics and African-American Intellectual Thought. His numerous publications include State of the Race – Creating Our 21st Century.

    Esther Stanford-Xosei is a Jurisconsult, Interdisciplinary (Law & History) Scholar-Activist, Co-Vice Chair of PARCOE and Coordinator-General of the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign.

    Posted in INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AFRIKAN REPARATIONS, ISMAR, PRIM, Uncategorized | Tagged Athol Williams, Esther Stanford-Xosei, Gus John, INOSAAR, International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations, Jemadari Kamara, Kris Manjapra, Nicola Frith, PARCOE, REPARATIONS, Reparative Justice, Reparatory Justice, Tufts Action Group, Universities, University of Glasgow, UWI | Leave a comment

    Motion: Atonement and Reparations for the UK’s Transatlantic Traffic of Enslaved Africans

    Posted on July 10, 2020 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

     



    Further to our earlier post yesterday (below), it has come to our attention that the Atonement and Reparations for the United Kingdom’s Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans motion moved by Islington Green Party Cllr Caroline Russell was amended by Labour Party Cllr Gulcin Ozdemir.

    Full Council has passed the amended motion “Atonement and Reparations for the United Kingdom’s Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans”. Click here for more information: https://t.co/BcATxea4NV #IslingtonFC

    — Islington Council (@IslingtonBC) July 9, 2020

    One of the significant amendments was removal of the text:

    Write to the Speaker of Parliament, Chair of the Women & Equalities Committee and Chair of the Home Office committee to request that they establish, and seek UK Government support for the establishment of an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice and calling on the Government to commit to holistic reparations taking into consideration various proposals for reparations in accordance with the United Nations Framework on Reparations.

    Unfortunately, the Islington motion moved by Cllr Caroline Russell and also retained in the amended motion by Cllr Gulcin Ozdemir also omitted (we were told by accident due to working with an older draft of which there were several) this key text:

    • In 2003 the Lambeth based Black Quest for Justice Campaign (BQJC) initiated a class action for Pan-African Reparations for Global Justice against Queen Elizabeth II and agents of the Crown as Head of State and Head of the British Commonwealth calling for the establishment of a Reparations Commission of Inquiry. This action was denied on the grounds that the Crown could not be prosecuted, and these crimes could not be enforced prior to the enactment of the International Criminal Courts Act in 2001.
    • In 2004 the Rastafarian movement were denied their appeal for reparation because the UK government felt it could not be held responsible for events of past centuries.

    Of course these omissions are unacceptable to us and we await the passing of the Lambeth Council Resolution on 15/07/20.

    The full amendments to the Islington text can be found here:
    AMENDED ISLINGTON MOTION PAGES 1-6

    Please read the following text in light of what we have recently discovered.

    Original Post 11/07/20

    We are pleased to report to you that the ‘Stop the Maangamzi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC) has been part of the drafting of a historic motion on reparations passed by Islington Council on 9th July 2020, (see below). The motion was moved by Green Party Cllr Caroline Russell. This motion came about as a result of SMWeCGEC teamwork with Cllr Scott Ainslie from Lambeth Green Party, other colleagues in the Green Party & Greens of Colour, as well as Cllrs in Lambeth & Islington Labour Party. It builds on the demand in the Stop the Maangamizi postcard calling for elected officials to support the demand for the establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Commission on Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ).

    2020 Groundings 2

    This motion is largely an outcome of engagement with Cllr Scott Ainslie in demonstration of  his commitment made at the 2019 Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March to follow-up with a motion on reparations. The motion in Islington was able to pass because of Green Party and Labour Party collaboration and consensus-building around key aspects of the text that the SMWeCGEC contributed and which were added to by members of the Green Party and the Labour Party.

    Thanks @ScottMEPLondon, I have responded in the affirmative. https://t.co/fJIwRGIsVO

    — EstherStanfordXosei (@Xosei) August 3, 2019

    Check your email inbox. You’ll see what start we are off to

    — Scott 💚 London (@GreenPartyScott) August 2, 2019

    Hearing from #Cofi about how we need to lead humanity back to honouring Mother Earth. ⁦@uk_march⁩ “we are returning to the wisdom of our ancestors who warned of the dangers of exploiting the earth’s resources” pic.twitter.com/euaiBZ1baK

    — Scott 💚 London (@GreenPartyScott) August 1, 2019

     

    From the SMWeCGEC’s perspective, one of the highlights of this Islington Council Reparations Motion is recognition of our campaign demand for the establishment of the APPCITARJ, which is an essential phase in a participatory administrative reparations process. In addition to reference to selected landmarks in the UK chronology of campaigning on reparations. We also contributed significant amounts of text to the original Islington and Lambeth motion.




    A similar motion was submitted by Green Party Cllr Cleo Lake in Bristol on 7th July 2020.

    The first drafted motion spearheaded by Cllr Ainslie will actually be voted on by Lambeth Council at the forthcoming Council meeting on Wednesday 15th July 2020.

    The SMWeCGEC is truly appreciative of Cllr Ainslie and all others that worked with him from the Lambeth Green Party, Greens of Colour, including Cllr Lake and also Cllr  Russell, to ensure that such motions could be submitted.

    Cllr Scott has truly been exemplary in working in such a way which honours the guidance in the INOSAAR Principles of Participation in recognising the existence of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR); and the necessary ethics that this entails. This includes respecting the existence of historical and contemporary reparations work, research and other initiatives at regional, national and transnational levels.

    We are also pleased that engagement with the Green Party which was commenced years earlier (between 2002 – 4) with other Green Party elected officials under the auspices of the then Rendezvous of Victory, has now borne some outcomes that help take the goals of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) Further.

    img010

    We also take this opportunity for recognising the efforts of Lucie Scott in Hackney who recently got in touch to inform us that she had proposed a motion passed in 2018 which recognised the demand for the APPCITARJ. See here Hackney NSN 2018 IR motionFinal (1) for further info.

    The following are a few relevant tweets and other publicity:

    Last night Islington Council passed our Green Party motions on reparations and glyphosates 💚

    Thank you @CarolineRussell for putting them forward 🙏🏼

    Together we’re fighting for environmental and social justice in our borough ✊🏽

    — Islington Green Party (@islingtongreens) July 10, 2020

    Great news and respect due to @Xosei @GreenPartyScott @STOPMAANGAMIZI on this collective move forward towards #Reparations https://t.co/Wf1oEigYqs

    — Cleo4DeputySocialRacialEcoJustice💚🖤⚖️ (@CleoDanceBaton) July 10, 2020

    It is great news! Watch out for a joint @Lambethgp @LambethLabour motion on atonement and reparatory justice for the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans @lambeth_council on Wednesday 15th July. @Xosei @STOPMAANGAMIZI @GreensofColour @CleoDanceBaton https://t.co/E2kPVdXWfn

    — Scott 💚 London (@GreenPartyScott) July 10, 2020

    Yes! @GreenPartyScott, this would not have happened were it not 4 OUR @STOPMAANGAMIZI team work with YOU, @Lambethgp, Ors in @TheGreenParty & @GreensofColour like @CleoDanceBaton; thanks 4 honouring your commitment made to us @ the 2019 @ReparationMarch @Mawusafo @planetrepairs https://t.co/REXGID1Z0Z

    — EstherStanfordXosei (@Xosei) July 10, 2020

    Such good work! A real step forward. Respect to @CleoDanceBaton @ParcoeInfo @STOPMAANGAMIZI @GreenPartyScott and many others for their strength and focus https://t.co/qWs5w5jLnr

    — INOSAAR (@inosaar) July 10, 2020

     

    Should those who toppled Colston's statue be prosecuted?

    RT if you agree with @CleoDanceBaton that it's NOT in the public interest👇🏾

    & to echo her call for a national Truth & Reparatory Justice committee "to get what is needed to repair our community"

    ➡️https://t.co/NLrN3XO4fN pic.twitter.com/5UXJKfBcf4

    — Bristol Green Party (@bristolgreen) July 9, 2020

    "This isn’t just about monetary compensation, it goes much wider than that," says former lord mayor, Cleo Lake https://t.co/dkLYBLrIUt

    — Bristol24/7 (@bristol247) July 7, 2020

    I will not soften my message to beg favour or make truth more comfortable. Either you believe in justice or you collude with injustice. Today I take #Reparations motion to #Bristol Council. #IfNotNowWhen #400Years https://t.co/EqIgbUVqAV

    — Cleo4DeputySocialRacialEcoJustice💚🖤⚖️ (@CleoDanceBaton) July 7, 2020

     

    dr-walter-rodney

    Dr #WalterRodney‘s wisdom is relevant to #Afrikan struggle 4 #Reparations “A struggle doesn’t drop from the sky; it has roots, it has been going on for years; people’s energies, their consciousness, their organizations have evolved in response to specific historical conditions.”

    The following video featuring Esther Stanford-Xosei, legal advisor to then existing Black Quest For Justice Campaign (BQJC), is one of the earliest video recordings which tracks the demand for what has now become known as the All-Party Parliamentray Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ). However its modern-day antecedents, as well as that of the Ubuntukgotla People’s International Tribunal For Global Justice (U-PITGJ) can be traced back to the the work of Kofi Mawuli Klu who wrote the following paper Charting an African Self-Determined Path of Legal Struggle for Reparations as a contribution to the 11 December 1993 working conference of the African Reparations Movement (ARM UK), co-founded by the late Bernie Grant MP and others.

     

    vintage-calligraphic-elements-1nyoWZ-clipart
    The following comments from SMWeCGEC Co-Initiator and Co-Vice Chair, Kofi Mawuli Klu provide another layer of historical context to the significance of this motion for the SMWeCGEC and the wider ISMAR.

    Also this comment from Kofi is in response to a dialogue between him and Akyaaba Addai-Sedo based in Ghana about the same motion.

    Yes, the awesome beauty of this historic action of the London Borough of Islington, to which the work of yourself, Brother Akyaaba and others of the GLC, contributed upon the foundations laid throughout the ages by Kodwo Enu (Ottobah Cuguano), Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglas, Henry Sylvester Williams, John Archer, Marcus and Akosua Boahemaa Amy Garvey, CLR James, Claudia Jones, Paul Robeson, George Padmore, Ras Makonnen, WEB DuBois, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and his stalwarts of the Pan-Afrikan Congresses, is the change in Language and concepts insisted upon by our Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWECGEC), backed strongly by our colleagues of the INOSAAR based at the University of Edinburgh, and friends of the Green Party! So, for example, instead of the so-called very derogatory insulting ‘Slave Trade’, which the likes of Walter Rodney had very well repudiated as no trade at all, there is now acceptance of our PARCOE formulation that it is the Transatlantic Trafficking of Enslaved Afrikans (TTEA)!

    Not yet Uhuru; but there is now being galvanized by new waves of Rebellion at home and abroad our Long March to the victorious Reparatory Justice achievement of the Pan-Afrikan revolutionary winning of Planet Repairs, in order to secure our own MAATUBUNTUMAN Pan-Afrikan Union of our Communities of Resistance, stronger unifying those in our Mothercontinent with those in the diaspora, in a New Global Justice World of UBUNTUDUNIA, not by opportunistically riding upon the topdown ramshackle bandwagons of Neocolonialism like the so-called African Union (AU) of misleaders, but rather by the independently organised grassroots-embedded Worldwide Black Power of our Afrikan People in our own Afrikan Communities of Resistance!

    Forward Ever Onward!
    There is Victory for Us!
    Amanda Ngawethu!

    Elsewhere, Kofi says this:

    Thanks, Sister Esther, Yes, our Stretch of the Maangamizi Counteraction Intergenerational Long March of our ancestral Freedomfighting Afrikan Sheroes and Heroes has now come to one of its major decisive Reparatory Justice Turning Points towards our long desired total Pan-Afrikan Liberatory Rendezvous of Planet Repairing Global Justice Victory! Now is Our Time to Seize WISER than ever before to ensure our Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice Making of, and Black People’s Power contributions to, the Global Justice Writing of true World Ourstory/History is accelerated to its definitive, irreversible and completely victorious destination! Our MawuLisaga, the almighty God of Afrika and the entire World of, and beyond, Miano Nana Asase Yaa Mother Earth be thanked, with all the gratitude due also to our revered Ancestors, for the day we met to begin battling together for the more systematic movement building harmonization of the collective and individual efforts of our Afrikan people glocally towards the better intellectually organic and organisationally disciplined achievement of this sacred purpose! Akpe: Thank you very much!

    The rest of us also agree with Kofi who has rightly stated elsewhere:

    The biggest gratitude goes to the God of Afrika and the Pluriverse, to our revered Ancestors and also to all of us who have kept faith with them for a true Reparatory Justice that can only be holistic Planet Repairs in its Global Justice for all meaningfulness! Lots more work to do!

     

    Until next time!
    ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign International Steering Committee Spearhead Team (ISC-SMWeCGEC)

    Posted in AFRIKAN HELLACAUST, AFRIKAN RESISTANCE, ALL PARTY PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSION OF INQUIRY (APPCITARJ), INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AFRIKAN REPARATIONS, ISMAR, MAANGAMIZI RESISTANCE, REPARATIONS, REPARATIONS REBELLION 2020, REPARATIONS REBELLION GROUNDINGS, SMWeCGEC, STOP ECOCIDE, STOP THE MAANGAMIZI CAMPAIGN, STOP THE MAANGAMIZI PETITION | Tagged 1st August, AEDRMC, African Reparations Movement, Afrikan Diaspora, Afrikan Heritage, Afrikan Heritage Community for National Self-Determination, Afrikan Liberation, Afrikan Reparations, Afriphobia, Afriphobic Racism, Anti-Black Racism, APPCITARJ, ARM UK, Black Quest For Justice Campaign, Black Radical Imagination, BQJC, Commission of Inquiry, Community Service, Ecocide, Emancipation Day, Genocide, Grassroots Leadership, Grassroots lobbying, Green Party, Greens of Colour, Hellacaust, IAmWitness, IDPAD, INOSAAR, International Social Movment for Afrikan Reparations, ISMAR, ISMAR-Building, Labour Party, Lambeth Green Party, Lobbying, Movement-Building, Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement, PARCOE, People Power, Planet Repairs, Race, Reparations2020, ReparationsRebellion, Reparatory Justice, Self-Repairs, Social Movement, Stop the Maangamizi, We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! | Leave a comment

    PARCOE POSITION STATEMENT ON UNIVERSITIES & REPARATIVE JUSTICE PROGRAMMES

    Posted on December 2, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

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    Posted in AFRIKAN RESISTANCE, Ecocide, Extinction Rebellion, MAANGAMIZI RESISTANCE, MAANGAMIZI RESISTORS, REPARATIONS, SMWeCGEC, STOP ECOCIDE, STOP THE MAANGAMIZI CAMPAIGN, Uncategorized | Tagged #ExtinctionRebellion, Activist Knowledge-Production, Afrika, Afrikan Caribbean, Afrikan Diaspora, Afrikan Heritage, Afrikan Heritage Community for National Self-Determination, Afrikan Liberation, Afrikan lobby, Afrikan National Question, Afrikan Reparations, Afrikan Sovereignty, Antigua & Barbuda, Battle of Ideas, Caribbean, Caribbean Citizenship by Investment, Caribbean Exceptionalism, Caribbean Reparations, CARICOM, CARICOM Ten-Point Plan, Compensation, Educational Repairs, Extinction, Extinction Rebellion, GAFRIC, Genocide, Geopolitics, Global Afrika, Global Afrikan Claim, Global Afrikan Family Reunion International Council, Indigenous Peoples, INOSAAR, International Decade for People of African Descent, International Law, International Law From Below, International Social Movment for Afrikan Reparations, ISMAR, Jamaica, Lobbying, Maangamizi Criminal, Maatubuntujamaas, MAATUBUNTUMAN, Mother Earth, Movement-Building, Pan-Afrikan Reparations 4 Global Justice, People Power, Professor Gus John, Rematriation, Repatriation, Right to Afrika, Right to Afrikan Identity, Sankofahomes, Self-Repairs, Social Movement, Substantive Afrikan Representation, Theresa May, UK Reparations Activism, UN-IDPAD, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, University of the West Indies, UWI | Leave a comment

    OUR REPARATORY JUSTICE CHALLENGE TO LABOUR: TACKLE YOUR OWN MAANGAMIZI COMPLICITY!

    Posted on April 13, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

    “The future will have no pity for those men and women who possess the exceptional privilege to speak the words of truth, instead have taken refuge in an attitude of cold complicity and mute indifference.“

    Revised quote from Frantz Fanon, ‘Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays’, 1994

     

    Greetings Supporters of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC)

     

    The letter below is the latest in the ongoing correspondence between Esther Stanford-Xosei and MP, Heidi Alexander, on issues to do with the SMWeCGEC and the campaign’s work for reparatory justice:

    ESTHER STANFORD-XOSEI LETTER TO HEIDI ALEXANDER MP RE RESPONSE FROM FCO MINISTER LORD AHMAD

    The letter from Esther Stanford-Xosei deals with the response from Foreign & Commonwealth Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the UN, Lord Ahmad to the 2017 ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition and its accompanying correspondence.

    The exchanges so far show that as much as sections of the Labour Movement are becoming more interested in communications with certain constituencies of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR), there is a greater need to ensure that the Labour Party is challenged to develop a correct way of dealing with the issues raised in the correspondence and our Afrikan Heritage Communities in consonance with the ethics of reparatory justice. This must also be done in such a way that recognises Afrikan people’s human and people’s right to Substantive Afrikan Heritage Community Representation.

    What this means is that Labour Party is being challenged by SMWeCGEC and other Afrikan Reparations campaigners to engage in ‘institutional self-repairs’ in the ways it deals with Afrikan Heritage Communities and our autonomous community organisations as well as the issues that concern us. Only by doing so, will it become a worthy stakeholder with locus standi in Afrikan Heritage Community reparatory justice engagements.

    In livicated Service!

    Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign International Steering Committee Spearhead Team (ISC-SMWeCGEC)

     

    Posted in AFRIKAN HELLACAUST, AFRIKAN RESISTANCE, ALL PARTY PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSION OF INQUIRY (APPCITARJ), INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AFRIKAN REPARATIONS, ISMAR, MAANGAMIZI RESISTANCE, MAANGAMIZI RESISTORS, PREFIGURATIVE POLITICS, REPARATIONS, Reparatory Justice, STOP THE MAANGAMIZI CAMPAIGN, STOP THE MAANGAMIZI PETITION, THE 2018 AFRIKAN EMANCIPATION DAY REPARATIONS MARCH | Tagged Afrikan Heritage, Afrikan Heritage Communities, Afrikan Liberation, APPCITARJ, Battle of Ideas, Black Radical Imagination, BlackVotingCanonFodderNoMore!, British Colonialism, British Government, Cognitive Justice, Commission of Inquiry, Counterinsurgency, Ecocide, GAPP, Genocide, Global Afrikan People's Parliament, Global Apartheid, Grassroots Leadership, Grassroots lobbying, Hellacaust, Houses of Parliament, INOSAAR, International Social Movment for Afrikan Reparations, ISMAR-Building, Labour Movement, Labour Party, Lobbying, Maangamizi, Movement-Building, Neocolonialism, NothingAboutUsWithoutUs!, Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice, Pan-Afrikanism, People Power, Reparations March, Reparatory Justice, Self-Repairs, SMWeCGE Petition, Social Movement, Stop the Maangamizi, Substantive Afrikan Representation, Tax Fraud, We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! | Leave a comment

    INOSAAR TEMPLATE LETTER TO MPs RE:THE ACADEMIC LEGITIMACY OF THE CASE FOR AFRIKAN REPARATIONS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR BRITISH STATE POLICY-MAKING

    Posted on April 11, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

    INOSAAR PARLIAMENT

     

    Greetings Supporters of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC)

    Last October we notified you about the launching of the International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) in association with PARCOE, the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe. We in the International Steering Committee Spearhead Team of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (ISC-SMWeCGEC) recognise this initiative for making a significant and unprecedented contribution to developing the intellectual arsenals necessary for tackling Afriphobia and other manifestations of the genocide/ecocide; particularly its mentacide within and beyond educational institutions. We are also pleased that the SWWeCGEC is recognised in the INOSAAR Principles of Participation.

    Since the launch event, the INOSAAR has had a conference in Birmingham and looks forward to two follow-up events in Senegal and a conference in Benin. One of the follow-up actions arising from the recent INOSAAR Birmingham Conference was for INOSAAR members and constituencies to support us in getting their MPs to support a meeting in the House of Parliament to discuss ‘The Academic Legitimacy of the Afrikan Case for Reparations and its Implications for British State Policy-Making’.

    See this link for the template letter which you can amend accordingly and send to your own MPs if you are based in the UK. The text is also reproduced below.

    Please let INOSAAR know of any progress you make with your MPs by emailing Dr Nicola Frith & Professor Joyce Hope Scott at inosaar.ed.ac.uk.

     

    Dear [MP NAME]

    I am writing as local constituent regarding a matter of concern to me as a person of Afrikan heritage/a concerned member of the public [DELETE AS APPROPRIATE].

    I was horrified to recently discover that up until 2015, tax-payers in Britain, including myself as a descendant or relative of enslaved Afrikans [DELETE IF NOT APPLICABLE], were paying off a debt that was accrued as a result of the compensation awarded to British enslavers as legislated with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (see, for example, the article in the Bristol Post from 13 February 2018).

    The opinion of experts working in the field, like Bristol-based historian David Olusoga, has strengthened my own conviction about the injustice glaringly showed in this matter (see, for example, the article published in The Guardian on 12 February 2018).

    Such is the public outrage, that a petition has been started about this misuse of taxes. This increasing public interest is stimulating not only public debate, but also academic research and discourses relevant to policy-making regarding these and other pertinent issues of domestic and foreign policies.

    The 17 March 2018 conference in Birmingham of the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) is an example of such activity, which is drawing together both scholars, activists and policy-campaigners to exchange perspectives on their thinking and actions about how best to address these kinds of injustices.

    One recent political response has been the plan unveiled by the Labour Party for firms with links to the so-called Atlantic ‘slave trade’ to contribute to the setting up of a Slavery Educational Trust (see, for example, the article in The Standard on 23 March 2018).

    In response to these developments, I am requesting your support to host a meeting in the Houses of Parliament to discuss ‘The Academic Legitimacy of the Afrikan Case for Reparations and its Implications for British State Policy-Making’.This proposed meeting in Parliament is important because, as hinted at in the ‘Refund Our Taxes’ petition, the refund of tax monies can assist the Afrikan Heritage Community to effect its own innovative ‘Pempamsie’-planning approaches to reparatory justice. In other words, Afrikan Heritage Communities will be able to design their own bespoke reparatory justice programme that will satisfy their own self-determined interests and purposes. Examples of such approaches include educational and other community self-repairs, which form a vital part of the reparative process and go far beyond paycheques to individuals and governments.

    I look forward to hearing from you on this urgent matter in due course.

    Yours Sincerely

    [YOUR NAME & SIGNATURE]

     

    Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign International Steering Committee Spearhead Team (ISC-SMWeCGEC)

     

     

    Posted in INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AFRIKAN REPARATIONS, MAANGAMIZI RESISTANCE, PREFIGURATIVE POLITICS, REPARATIONS, Reparatory Justice, Uncategorized | Tagged Afrikan Heritage Community for National Self-Determination, Afrikan Reparations, AHC-NSD, British Government, GAPP, Genocide, Global Afrikan People's Parliament, Grassroots lobbying, Houses of Parliament, INOSAAR, International Network, Lobbying, Maatubuntujamaa, Nothing About Us Without Us!, PARCOE, Pempamsie Plan, People Power, REPARATIONS, Reparations Agenda, Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations, Social Movement, Speaking Truth to Establishment Power, Tax Fraud, Template Letter to MPs | Leave a comment

    INOSAAR: A FORMIDABLE NEW BLOC IN BUILDING THE ACADEMIC COLUMN OF THE ISMAR!

    Posted on October 5, 2017 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

    INOSAAR 3


    The International Steering Committee of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (ISC-SMWeCGEC) sees this laudable contribution of the emergent INOSAAR as a major new development of the intellectual arsenals necessary for tackling Afriphobia and other manifestations of the genocide/ecocide; particularly its mentacide within and beyond educational institutions which are some of the most mentally devastating crimes scenes of the still ongoing Maangamizi for which holistic reparatory justice is urgent.

    Article photo: Opening panel discussion at the launch of the INOSAAR on 21st October 2017 featuring:

    1. Professor Joyce Hope Scott: Opening remarks on behalf of the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR)
    2. Esther Stanford-Xosei, ‘Activist/Researchers in Perspective of Afrikan Communities of Reparatory Justice Interest’
    3. Dr Nick Draper, ‘Researching Reparations from European Perspectives: Ethics and Accountability’

    Kofi Mawuli Klu: Questioner

    The INOSAAR network events being organized are specifically designed for people who are already part of a social movement or researchers invested in related fields. As such, participants should have a track record in reparations-related activism and/or research (for example, by engaging in attempts to stop contemporary manifestations of the Maangamizi and other forms of external reparations or internal self-repair), and/or independence struggles, the pan-Afrikanist movement and/or anti-racism campaigns.

    Read on to find out more about the INOSAAR ‘Principles of Participation’.

     

    INOSAAR logoV2-page-005

    PRINCIPLES OF PARTICIPATION

    International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR)

    Although the INOSAAR was launched on 21st October 2017, these principles were revised in November 2017

     

    Overview

    The International Network of Activists and Scholars for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) is a collaborative project that is being coordinated by the University of Edinburgh (UK) and Wheelock College (Boston, US). This work is being funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Research Networking Grant and falls under their highlight notice relating to the UN International Decade for People of African Descent (2015–24). Its purpose is to create an international network dedicated to reparations and other forms of transitional justice for the enslavement and genocide of peoples of Afrikan descent, the invasion of the Afrikan continent by colonial powers (notably France and Britain) in the quest for new areas of political and cultural influence and economic expansion, and the subsequent oppression and deformation of Afrikan identity that arose from this. The network will seek to explore this subject through the rich variety of research specialisms within both the arts and humanities and the social sciences, and will do so in collaboration and consultation with grassroots activist groups engaged in the struggle for reparations and government-linked groups capable of influencing social change.

    Background and Rationale

    On 5–7 November 2015, Professor Joyce Hope Scott (Wheelock College) and Dr Nicola Frith (University of Edinburgh) coordinated a major international conference entitled ‘Repairing the Past, Imagining the Future: Reparations and Beyond’. The conference marked two important dates in the abolitionist calendar: the two-hundred-year anniversary of the first international agreement to abolish slavery during the Congress of Vienna of 1815; and the 150th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment through which slavery was formally abolished in the US. These two anniversaries provided an important socio-political context in which to discuss the subject of reparations from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, while exploring the different national contexts in which social movements linked to reparations are operating. Importantly, the conference also included a number of UK-based activist groups who voiced concerns about the asymmetrical power relations at work when academics, operating within elite institutions, engage with reparations. They called upon academics to acknowledge these power imbalances and pay attention to what Choudry explains as the tendency of ‘professionalized “experts” or university-based intellectuals’ to ignore, render invisible or overwrite ‘the voices, ideas, and indeed theories produced by those engaged in social struggles’ (Choudry, 2015). As such, they called for the promotion of a more egalitarian space for knowledge exchange and collaboration that would set out ‘to recognize how power and inequality shape context’ and understand how ‘academics situated within powerful institutions are inevitably implicated in the social inequalities that result’ (Croteau, Hoynes and Ryan, 2005).

    These calls lie at the root of our current project to unite the efforts of scholars and activists in a combined quest to contribute positively to advancing the question of reparations for Afrikan enslavement. We are committed to a non-extractive process of ethical scholarship that recognizes the existence of a grassroots International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) to which we are accountable. We also recognize the inextricable links between the ISMAR and the Peoples Reparations International Movement (PRIM), and are willing to learn from the cross-fertilization of scholarship, principles, strategies and tactics, and from the common and diverse experiences which shape their various constituencies, thinking and practices as pro-reparations forces. [1] This document outlines our shared principles of participation and a working framework of ethical scholarship that will seek to address some of the failings and oversights of Euro-centric academic endeavours and ensure the longevity of our partnership going forward.

    Building the INOSAAR: Aims and Objectives

    The central purpose of the INOSAAR is to assist in the consolidation of a growing Afrikan global reparations movements by uniting activists and scholars, and developing a strong youth-led base to ensure the sustainability of this movement. We do so in full cognisance of the history of these movements, most notably with reference to the pan-Afrikanist struggle and its desire to unite the Afrikan continent, to unify Black people and to bring an end to racism, as well as the Abuja Proclamation of 1993 which calls ‘upon the international community to recognize that there is a unique and unprecedented moral debt owed to the Afrikan peoples which has yet to be paid’.

    Our nine stated aims and objectives are as follows:

    1. To develop a more coherent research agenda for understanding reparations across disciplinary boundaries and address the inadequacy of scholarship outside of Afrikan-American and nation-centred contexts;

    2. To improve the recognition of knowledge-production partnerships between scholars and activists working on Afrikan reparations and to establish a partnership that is enduring and international;

    3. To provide opportunities for researchers and activists to engage in a process of bilateral knowledge exchange, with the longer-term view of contributing positively to the work of grassroots and activist organisations and the building of the ISMAR in link with the PRIM;

    4. To support the development of youth and student engagement, involvement and proactivity, notably through the creation of a youth-led auxiliary fellowship of the INOSAAR, popularly named in short as RepAfrika, and through the establishment of a related mentorship scheme;

    5. To build the INOSAAR in order to support the work of activists and scholars by providing global legitimacy and visibility to the broad spectrum of viewpoints in the reparations debate and the diversity of their exponents, particularly as state and non-state actors;

    6. To support the struggle for the voluntary repatriation/rematriation for peoples of Afrikan descent to any Afrikan country of their choice, with due respect for indigenous communities and their own reparations interests, through the granting of citizenship, the removal of visa and customs requirements, and the creation of socio-economic, political and cultural reinsertion programmes in harmony with those already domiciled in such countries;

    7. To establish a recognisable network consisting of registered participants with a commitment to adhering to its rules, principles and obligations;

    8. To impact positively upon public and political (mis)conceptions about reparations (for example, the false idea that reparations are some kind of ‘paycheque’) by providing academically rigorous outputs of use to academic and non-academic audiences, and by supporting the development of decolonizing curricula of reparatory justice;

    9. To ensure that each of the four inaugural events organized through INOSAAR and its partners, starting in London, then Birmingham and Paris, and finally Porto Novo in Benin, form one continuum in our collective efforts to advance the question of reparations.

    To assist with the process of building this network, we are working with different academic and activist partners based in Europe, Afrika, India, the Caribbean, Latin America and the US (see below). Network members and other participants will engage in a series of four workshops and conferences to stimulate discussion, with emphasis being placed on bilateral knowledge exchange between activists and scholars operating within different national contexts. Events will be organized in collaboration with our partners in London (21 October 2017) with the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE), in Birmingham (17 March 2018) with Birmingham City University, in Paris (16–17 May 2018) with the Centre International de Recherche sur les Esclavages (CIRESC), and in Porto Novo in Benin (19–21 September 2018) with the Association pour une réparation globale de l’esclavage (APRGE) and the Musée da Silva. These events are designed to impact positively on academic–activist working relations and to lay the groundwork for future collective action. They aim to work through, and acknowledge areas of tension, while working towards shared and more expansive definitions of reparations that are inclusive of cultural and transnational approaches. Calls for papers and other forms of participation will be circulated through the network prior to each event. Funds have been put aside to assist with the transportation and accommodation costs for a limited number of those without institutional support.

    Principles of participation

    Principles relating to participants

    1. The events being organized are specifically designed for people who are already part of a social movement or researchers invested in related fields. As such, participants should have a track record in reparations-related activism and/or research (for example, by engaging in attempts to stop contemporary manifestations of the Maangamizi and other forms of external reparations or internal self-repair), and/or independence struggles, the pan-Africanist movement and/or anti-racism campaigns;

    2. Participants must be committed to taking part in any necessary follow-up work;

    3. Participants must be prepared to engage in cross-community and cross-disciplinary dialogue with other reparations knowledge-producers;

    4. Participants need to be prepared to submit their work to intellectual scrutiny in recognition of the fact that we all have partial knowledge;

    5. The network and its participants need to show their commitment to accountability and transparency, and to be accountable according to these principles to ensure that everyone is working from a shared basis of understanding.

    Principles relating to shared values

    • Mutual respect and reciprocity: participants will be open to, and interested in learning from, each other. They will recognize the value of each other’s knowledge and experience in order to meet the aims of the project. This will include offering people a range of incentives to engage, which will enable us to work in reciprocal relationships with professionals and with each other, where there are mutual responsibilities and expectations;

    • Equality: everyone has assets. Co-production starts from the idea that no one group or person is more important than any other group or person. Everyone is equal and everyone has assets to bring to the process, such as skills, abilities, time and other qualities;

    • Equity in collaboration: the INOSAAR will develop a culture of equal value and respect for all disciplines. For shared learning to truly be effective, all those contributing knowledge must feel valued and respected as equals at the table;

    • Cognitive justice: the INOSAAR will uphold justice of equity in all knowledges, with no one form of knowledge privileged over another;

    • Politics of resourcefulness to develop solidarity: the INOSAAR will adhere to the ethical principle of resourcefulness, meaning that we will purposefully channel resources available to different members (such as time, research funds, technology, expertise, networks etc.) with a shared aim of designing and answering questions of importance and direct benefit to academic and activist participants; [2]

    • No racism or xenophobia, including Afriphobia, will be tolerated.

    Principles relating to recognition

    • Recognize that there is a social movement/s for reparations and this requires certain ethics that are expected when working and researching this movement/s. Referred to here as the ISMAR, in link with the PRIM, such movements are viewed as a generators of concepts, analyses, theories and inquiries. Researchers must acknowledge and take seriously the ethical responsibility to respect the ontological and epistemological frameworks of knowledge production that emerge from the ISMAR, in link with the PRIM;

    • Recognize the existence of historical (and contemporary) reparations work, research and other initiatives at regional, national and transnational levels and that reparations scholarship and action is informed by intergenerational knowledge; [3]

    • Recognize that research and theorizing are fundamental components of many social struggles and movements for change, and that these movements are significant sites of knowledge production. Link to this, there is a need to recognize the intellectual labour that underpins reparations organizing and activism. We also need to recognize the importance of learning not just about the experiences and actions of activists, but also about their ideas, knowledge and theoretical outlooks;

    • Recognize that knowledge production is being advanced by diverse sections of grassroots academia and others from the global academic commons, and has its own institutional formations, such as the Afrikan Reparations Transnational Community of Practice (ARTCoP), grassroots reparations education and outreach teams of the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign in partnership with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee, etc.;

    • Recognize and respect the role of grassroots researchers and scholar-activists, and avoid the imposition of researcher-led categories by seeking to understand the ISMAR and other reparations movements according to their own analytic or descriptive terms. As such, respect the capacity for people to speak for themselves, to posit their own vocabularies, cartographies and concepts of the world, and to articulate their own categories of analysis. To support this, the INOSAAR will develop an annotated lexicon of (in)acceptable terms;

    • Recognize and respect endogenous and Afrikan knowledge systems, the elders and the ancestors, while being mindful of the fact that such knowledge is often transmitted orally. As such, respect Hampâté Bâ’s adage that in Afrika, ‘when an old person dies, a library burns’ (UNESCO, 1960). Wherever possible, INOSAAR events will begin with prayers and libations led by a spiritual leader;

    • Recognize the existence of multiple forms of knowledge, the benefits of co-producing knowledge as an interactive rather than extractive process, and the value of different methods of knowledge dissemination, presentation and use;

    • Recognize the importance of the arts as valuable forms of (embodied) knowledge and their potential in terms of therapy, healing and repair;

    • Recognize the interconnectedness of all we do as part of this network, including the various workshops, while understanding that the goals of activists and academics are often different;

    • Recognize and minimize power dynamics among and between network participants.

    By adhering to these principles, we aim to reflect on the following questions:

    1. How should we define the following terms: knowledge-production; co-production; reparations; scholar; activist; scholar-activist; social movement-building?

    2. How best do activists and academics work together?

    3. What are the potential benefits that result from successful collaborative efforts?

    4. What are the barriers to meaningful collaboration between academics and activists?

    5. How do we overcome the obstacles that make collaborative work difficult?

    6. How do we as theorists and practitioners establish mutually beneficial collaborative relationships?

    7. What does ‘good practice’ in a co-production project look like?

    8. What does co-production in relationship building look like?

    9. How do we value knowledge across disciplines and across domains of practice?

    10. How do we harmonise our distinct understandings of what it means to make a contribution?

    11. How do we minimise the possible harmful impacts of resource and status differentials, among prospective network members?

    12. What lessons can we learn from existing efforts to bridge the academic-activist divide?

    Roles, Responsibilities and Decision-Making

    Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator

    Dr Nicola Frith (University of Edinburgh) is the principal investigator (PI) and Professor Joyce Hope Scott (Wheelock College) is the co-investigator (Co-I). The PI and Co-I will be responsible for the general running of the network. The PI is specifically responsible for the overall management of the project and its budget, while both will assist in the following tasks: organizing the workshops and conferences; liaising with network members, project partners, activist groups, and other interested persons and institutions; assisting with website design and content; collating information to update the website, including the online curatorial project; preparing summary documents and the public report; writing a book proposal for a co-edited volume; and co-writing any academic publications.

    Activist, Research Institutions and Other Partners

    The first workshop in London is being coordinated in collaboration with PARCOE through which engagement is being developed with the ARTCoP as a special grassroots academic interest network of the ISMAR. In this initiative PARCOE is represented by its co-vice chairs Kofi Mawuli Klu and Esther Stanford-Xosei.

    Workshops 1 and 2 in Birmingham and Paris are being coordinated with our two European institutional partners: Birmingham City University (BCU) (Kehinde Andrews, Lisa Palmer) and the Centre international de recherches sur les esclavages (CIRESC) (Myriam Cottias, Nathalie Collain). BCU has just launched the first undergraduate degree programme in Black Studies in the UK and CIRESC is the main centre for slavery studies within the French Republic and has recently launched a new cross-institutional project on reparations, entitled REPAIRS. [4] Both institutions are providing meeting venues free of charge and are contributing by devoting their time to assisting with the organization of the respective workshops.

    The final conference is being held in Porto-Novo in Benin and being organized in collaboration with the APRGE, and with the support of the Musée da Silva and King Kpoto-Zounme Hakpon III of Porto-Novo, who in 2013 made a public apology for the role his ancestors played in the slave trade. The Bight of Benin was a primary site for the transatlantic slave trade and is home to an important UNESCO world heritage site, the ‘Porte de Non-Retour’ (‘The Door of No Return’) at Ouidah. Significantly, the government of Benin has a division in the Ministry of Culture for the ‘Return and Reconciliation of the Diaspora’, which has facilitated the repatriation of peoples from Brazil, Haiti, Guadeloupe and Martinique, many of whom will be participating in our conference alongside dignitaries, notably the Kings of Oyo, Bè and Accra. On 3 June 2017, the APRGE and the Musée da Silva hosted a pre-colloquium in Porto-Novo, generously funded by Karim da Silva, which resulted in the collation of demands linked to reparations.

    Network Members

    The INOSAAR is intended to be a growing network and we are seeking to expand our membership with active participants who adhere to our mutually agreed ‘Principles of Participation’. During the initial grant-writing phase, the PI and Co-I approached activists and academics based in the UK, France, West Afrika, the Caribbean, US, Latin America and India who are known to be engaged in the struggle for reparations. After winning the AHRC Research Networking Grant, additional members and interested parties were added to the distribution list. The construction of the website map (see below) will lead to the addition for further contributors to the INOSAAR.

    Research assistant and webteam

    We currently employ one research assistant, Lucie Madranges, who is funded through the University of Edinburgh Knowledge Exchange and Impact scheme. Lucie is collating important information for the website and is assisting with the translation (English to French; French to English) of key documents. The website is being constructed by a team based at the University of Edinburgh under the leadership of our website designer, David Oulton. Lucie and David both have prior experience of working on this subject having been involved in the construction of a website dedicated to memories of enslavement and activist groups based in the French Republic. [5]

    Decision-Making Processes and Consultation

    As noted above, each of the workshops are collaborative efforts between different partners. At each stage of the organization, decisions are made either through face-to-face or interactive meetings (minutes are available). Smaller decisions in terms of the daily running of the network are managed through regular telephone meetings between the PI, Co-I, research assistant and webteam. Wider consultations with the INOSAAR are conducted through a dedicated email address (inosaar@ed.ac.uk) to which the PI, Co-I and research assistant have access. Key items for consultation with partners and/or the INOSAAR include: principles of participation; website content and construction; workshop content and creative ideas for presentation; written outputs, notably the reports that will follow each of the four events and the final report summarizing our collective findings. Centrally, we are concerned with building relationships and a community that is based on cooperation, empowerment and the alleviation of power differences among parties, that engages in creative and innovative ways to solve problems, and that give equal weight to the voices of all participants. [6] To that end, decision-making is a shared responsibility among the INOSAAR. The global expansion of the network will require the development of other supporting organs for effective steering and decision-making at various levels, conducive to the achievement of the aims and objectives of the INOSAAR.

    Communicating and Disseminating Our Collective Work

    In order to produce work that is of use to activist and grassroots organizations, and also contribute to changing public perceptions about reparations, we are creating a website and will be compiling a downloadable public report.

    The website will provide an important virtual space in which communities and members can actively participate in discussions and upload presentations prior to, during and after the events. More broadly, it will serve as an educational tool to combat public and political misconceptions about reparations, and an archival space to showcase past and present reparation movements across the world. It will also include a fully searchable map with information about researchers and centres, and activist organizations in operation today.

    A public report will be written up towards the end of the project and will present a historical overview of the diversity of reparation movements and outline practical strategies for moving beyond theory and towards the implementation of reparative strategies and solidarity building. Based on rigorous academic research, it will broaden the case for reparations, and will be developed in collaboration with activists and government-linked groups to support their social and educational work and political campaigning at national and transnational levels.

    Data Co-Ownership

    Importantly, data produced through the collaborative efforts of the INOSAAR is co-owned by its members. Through the website, we will be developing an archival repository documenting our efforts, which will include materials that have been developed in consultation with, and are for use by, the INOSAAR and its members. The website and its related documents will clearly state the co-produced and co-owned nature of this work.

    Useful Contacts

    INOSAAR: inosaar@ed.ac.uk

    Dr Nicola Frith: Nicola.Frith@ed.ac.uk

    Professor Joyce Hope Scott: jscott@wheelock.edu

    #INOSAAR

     

    Footnotes

    [1] The People’s Reparations International Movement (PRIM) refers to the collectivity of a broad alliance of social forces among peoples all over the world, consisting of a broad array of constituencies, with a range of ideological orientations, working in diverse ways, and acting with some degree of organization and continuity to: obtain redress for historical atrocities and injustices, which have contemporary consequences; repair the harms inflicted; and rehabilitate the victims in the process of effecting and securing the anti-systemic objectives of reparations.

    [2] See, in particular, Kate Driscoll Derickson and Paul Routledge, ‘Resourcing Scholar-Activism: Collaboration, Transformation, and the Production of Knowledge’, The Professional Geographer, 67 (2015), 1–7.

    [3] For example, in the UK, it is important to recognize the foundational work and frameworks of the Sons of Africa, the Garveyite Movement, the Pan-African Movement and its Congresses, anti-colonial activism, the Rastafari Movement through to the Africa Reparations Movement UK, and the 10-point platform that was advanced by the Black Quest for Justice Campaign in 2003 as part of the legal action and extra-legal strategy adopted to implement the 2001 Durban Declaration, as well as other follow-ups, such as the programmes of action arising from the 2002 African & African Descendants World Conference Against Racism and the UN Decade for People of African Descent, the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March etc.

    [4] See both the BCU and REPAIRS website: http://www.bcu.ac.uk/courses/black-studies-ba-hons-2017-18; https://repairs.hypotheses.org.

    [5] The website is entitled Cartographie des mémoires d’esclavage, http://www.mmoe.llc.ed.ac.uk/fr.

    [6]  Elmar Weitekamp, ‘Reparative Justice: Towards a Victim-Oriented System’, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 1 (1992), 70–93 (p. 86).

     

     

     

     

    Posted in INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AFRIKAN REPARATIONS, ISMAR, PRIM, REPARATIONS, Reparatory Justice, Uncategorized | Tagged Battle of Ideas, Cognitive Justice, Establishment Academia, Grassroots Academia, Grassroots Leadership, Groundings, Indigenous Knowledges, INOSAAR, Knowledge Co-Production, Movement-Building, PRIM, REPARATIONS, Social Movement | Leave a comment

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