This closed conversation brought together domestic workers (DW) and feminist allies across regions to share knowledge about DW and how to support their strategies for Emancipation.

As we enter a new age of capitalism, patriarchy and militarism, with undeclared wars across the world, it is important to take stock of the situation for African and Black women in various locations, as well as how we understand their struggles within the broader system of capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy.

It is through music and art that we allow ourselves to imagine new possibilities.

As I reflect back on my experiences as a girl and woman, and what living in a deeply patriarchal, prejudiced, sexist, racist, ableist and ageist society means, I wonder often about what influenced my [feminist] politics. Was it the ostracizing? The unjust beauty standards for women? The countless times I heard and lived stories of surviving violence? These all added up. But the ability to look at different struggles and forms of oppressions and draw connections strengthened my feminism, as did my willingness to empathize (and not sympathize). These are all elements of “breaking the silos,” building solidarity and forming a sense of sisterhood.

We invite all to join us at the table, eat with us, sit with us, learn with us, grow with us…be with us as we co-create, and nourish our Black Feminist Futures.

In the lead up to the first Black Feminisms Forum, This is Africa will be publishing a series of interviews, features and articles about Black Feminisms. First up, Maggie Mapondera sits down with renowned activist, scholar and thinker Gay J McDougall, a member of the BFF’s Working Group, to talk about the struggles faced by women of African descent the world over.

While Colombia’s peace talks continue in Havana, Cuba, back home in the region of North Cauca, Black Colombians have found their cries for access to their ancestral lands met with tear-gas and rubber bullets.

Personal Reflections on the 4th African Feminist Forum.

The Movement for Black Lives, or as it’s more commonly known, #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) in the United States, has grown beyond a call to action in response to police brutality and the extrajudicial killings of Black people—Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and too many others—to a movement that challenges multiple layers of racial inequality.

Nou Led Nou La. I see you.

That is the basis for the historic gathering of over one hundred Black feminists from around the world happening in Bahia, Brazil in September 2016.  I see you.