The Black African Liberation and Community Development (BALCD) Workshop
BLCD is now Black African Liberation and Community Development (BALCD). We are no longer Black Liberation and Community Development (BLCD). We have merged African Liberation and Black Liberation. We are enthusiastic about this.
Only colonization, genocide, and slavery separated us from each other.
We have a lot of work to do to make our “coming together” go well for all of us. We are committed to doing this work in reality—not romanticizing it or skipping over the difficulties that are bound to show up.
We just finished a great BALCD Workshop. Three hundred people registered. We did good work on domination and subordination patterns, U.S. oppressor patterns, and more.
A number of things helped make the workshop go well:
Well-functioning support groups. The support groups were small. We provided training and support for the support group leaders in advance. An assigned coordinator supported the support group leaders.
Teaching teams. Every person in the workshop was in a group of roughly twenty-five people led by a teaching team. The teaching teams began meeting early this year. They also met just before BALCD to discharge and plan their classes. The leaders of the teaching teams included the BALCD Regional Reference Persons, the Black International Liberation Reference Persons (ILRPs), Black ILRP apprentices, and other leaders. We had two meetings each day. I led the first meeting each day for everyone at the workshop. The teaching teams led the second class. These small classes focused on the fundamentals of clienting and counseling.
The Ubuntu Pairing System. This system was developed in Southern Africa to increase people’s access to workshops. It connects people who have a stable Internet connection with people who don’t. If someone loses their Wi-Fi connection, they can remain connected to the workshop by calling their Ubuntu partner on Signal or WhatsApp or another agreed-upon App. The partner puts their phone on speaker so their Ubuntu buddy can hear the meeting. The Ubuntu System made it possible for many more people to be present for most of the workshop. There were many connectivity issues. Some homes and villages lacked electricity. There were storms in various parts of North America that caused connectivity problems. Many people attended the workshop on their phone. People were determined to not miss any part of BALCD.
Our tech team. Rachel Noble led the tech team. She and the team did a wonderful job—miraculous, almost—in helping so many people stay connected. We learned a lot. For example, we learned how to organize the scheduling so that someone was always available to help people get back into their group, session, or class when a poor Wi-Fi connection dropped them out.
A focus for the workshop. We focused on creating lives outside the context of the oppression. We looked at our individual lives and liberation journeys, and the liberation journey for us as Black African Heritage People.
Individually, we are beautiful, brilliant, powerful, completely good, loving, lovable, and completely connected. We took note of the flourishing civilizations and accomplishments of Africans before the arrival of Europeans. Many African Heritage People (and others) have been led to believe that Africans had no written languages and were illiterate until the arrival of the Europeans. This is not true. For example, manuscripts from the Universities of Timbuktu describe studies in biology, astronomy, and mathematics. Scholars from Greece and many other parts of the world came to study at Timbuktu’s Sankore Mosque and University, the oldest continuously operating institution of higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The notion that Europeans brought civilization and literacy to Africa has been internalized by many African Heritage People, along with European standards of beauty, preferences for European languages, and so on. This happened during a particular historical period.
Rather than be preoccupied with what Europeans did, we decided to focus on discharging the internalized oppression that shows up in our minds and in our lives in the present time. We decided to discharge feeling bad about ourselves and reclaim pride in who we are. We decided to commit to having regular sessions and to interrupting the ways that we enact patterns of colonization, genocide, and slavery in our daily lives. We decided to remember that there is no shame or blame for our ancestors or for us. We always did the best we could.
We decided to be deliberate in our liberation journey. We are excited about the work we did together. We look forward to continuing the work together.
Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
(Present Time 209, October 2022)