Birmingham

Languages

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On Saturday 17 March, we held our second event at Birmingham City University (BCU), entitled ‘Reparation for Afrikan Enslavement: Beyond National Boundaries, Toward International Solidarities’. The decision to host this event in Birmingham relates back to the Abuja proclamation, since this led to the foundation of the Africa Reparations Movement UK in Birmingham in December 1993, under the late Labour MP Bernie Grant, and resulted in the publication of the ‘Birmingham Declaration’.

BCU has also become the first UK university to offer an undergraduate degree in Black Studies. This second meeting was attended by around 50 participants, including UK-based activists and scholars, as well as international participation by the CARICOM Reparations Commission (the Guyana Reparations Committee) and solidarity messages sent from Ghana.

Like the London meeting, it included an exhibition of activists’ work, entitled the Sankofasafarinta exhibition, but was this time preceded (on Friday 16 March) by a meeting of RepAfrika, the youth-led auxiliary fellowship of the INOSAAR. After opening addresses by Eric Phillips (Guyana Reparations Committee), Esther Stanford-Xosei (Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe) and INOSAAR and RepAfrika representatives, three parallel workshops were held to discuss different themes relating to internationalization:

  • Workshop 1: Working across National Boundaries
  • Workshop 2: Creating Global Legitimacy: Winning Hearts and Minds
  • Workshop 3: Connecting International Reparations Movements and Pan-Africanism

 

Video documentary: INOSAAR Birmingham

 

 

Afrikaviwo

 

An ABLODEVAVA@OSIBISAFARI contribution to the OSIBISAFARI Planet Repairs Intercultural Explorations With Afrikan Youth and their Communities of Resistance for Environmental Justice

An Edutainment of Resistance Song by INOSAAR and INOSAAR-RepAfrika members, Nyoefe and Koku in Accra, Ghana, who perform together as ABLODEVAVA. This song is one of their special ABLODEVAVA@OSIBISAFARI contributions to the OSIBISAFARI Planet Repairs Intercultural Explorations With Afrikan Youth and their Communities of Resistance for Environmental Justice (OSIBISAFARI-PRIEWAYACOREJ).

It translates as follows:

Afrikan Children must live forever; chorus.

Children of Afrikan Heroes must live forever.

Kwame Nkrumah's Children must live forever.

Haile Selassie's Children must live forever.

Muammar Gaddafi's Children must live forever.

Unity is strength that's why a single broom cannot sweep,

One hand can never clap.

Patrick Lumumba, Jomo Kenyatta, Amilcar Cabral, all Children must live forever.

Afrikan Children must live forever; chorus.

Afrikaviwo