This Sunday in Amsterdam an international group of Black Women will hold a conference at the Kwakoe Festival in Amsterdam’ s Bijlmer Park in the VIP tent. Here is the conference program schedule:
– 13:30 Welcome
– 14:00 Opening remarks by ZAZO
– 14:05 Opening remarks by mayor Elvira Sweet
– 14:10 Spokenword by Dayenne Denneboom
– 14:15 Workshop Black Consciousness by Rosemary Ekosso
– 14:30 Break and performance by Carol Denise
– 14:45 Introduction Black European Women Councill by Tiye International
– 15:00 Workshop Black Businesswoman by Sandrine Joseph
– 15:15 Panel discussion with an international panel
Panel members
Carmen Breeveld (Suriname/Netherlands)
Ginette Perine Bebeung (Germany)*
Cheryl Donovan (US)*
Lesley-Ann Brown (Denmark)
Adrianne George (Sweden)
Jurne Azubiah (UK)
– 15:50 Poem by Lesley-Ann Brown
– 16:00 Business Market/ Hour (brief thank you/ network drink/ socializing
– 17:00 Jazz+Soulband, Shyne Speakerlox olv Miles Tjon
Contact: blackwomenconference(at)aesn.eu
*To be confirmed
Evryone should have a voice in every unjust situation. Here is a poem that speaks to that:
If African American Speeches Did Not Exist
If African American Speeches did not exist.
Then the speech I have a dream
By Rev. Martin Luther King
Would not have become Americas civil rights theme
or
What Frederick Douglass stated
Which would have been a lost
Stand by those princple
Be true to them, On all occasions
In all places, Against all foes
at whatever cost
If African American Speeches did not exist
Booker T. Washington Could not insist
That the laws of changeless justice
Bind oppressor with oppressed
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast
or
Sojourner Truth Ain’t I a woman
Would not have been heard
nor Shirley Chisholm or Rosa Parks
Most eloquent famous words
If African American Speeches did not exist
The different cultures in the world, would not have met
Langston Hughes or Mary Mcleod Bethune,
WEB Du Bois, just to name a few
Thurgood Marshall against the Supreme Court Judges
And now Barack O’bama’s Speech
when he accepted the Democratic endorsement
If African American Speeches did not exist
Where would we be as a society
This poem could not even fit
Because this is an African American Speech
Through the art of poetry