For information on the 2022 SRDC Summit, click here.
Every year except 2015 (during an organizational reset) and 2020 (due to the COVID-19 pandemic), SRDC has met for its annual International Summit. The Organizing Committees from the different states meet to share their progress with their organizing plans, exchange ideas and work on how their local efforts will coalesce into a national and an international strategy to bring the voice of the Grassroots Pan-Afrikan Diaspora to the World Stage.
Organizations from Canada, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe and the Middle East also attend the Summit, making this a truly international collaboration among Pan-Afrikan organizers.
The location varies from year to year, with a different local organization taking on the host duties each year. Below, we will share a brief description of each Summit and the primary work that was done in each, along with a number of images from the Summit that year when available.
2007: Washington, DC, Howard University
The first SRDC Summit was held at Howard University in Washington, DC, in September 2007. At this Summit, the first Pan-Afrikan Agenda was developed from the local Community Town Hall Meetings that had been held in California, Washington State, Ohio, New York, Maryland and South Carolina. Delegations from Central America, Canada and the Caribbean were also present, and four representatives from the United States were selected from the group of local elected state representatives, who would travel to the African Union Summit as part of a 20-person delegation from the Global Diaspora in the event that the AU were to officially approve Diaspora representatives.
2008: Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University
The second SRDC Summit was held at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, in the early fall of 2008. We were able to meet the Ohio organizing team and Council of Elders, further clarify the organization’s mission and forge greater familiarity with each other’s state organizations.
2009: Seattle, Washington State, Antioch University
The 2009 Summit, held in Seattle, Washington State at Antioch University, saw the opportunity to greatly enhance SRDC’s mission. Special guests were the President and Vice President of the World African Diaspora Union (WADU), Ambassador Dudley Thompson and Dr. Leonard Jeffries. Ambassador Thompson and Dr. Jeffries regaled us with anecdotes and analysis of important historical events in which they had participated. SRDC had sent a group to the WADU Summit in Atlanta that previous summer, and WADU was invited to the SRDC Summit so talks on a possible cooperative agreement could be finalized. While that agreement was not made official, SRDC’s friendship with Ambassador Thompson and Dr. Jeffries continued. The Summit itself featured a continuation of the process of building SRDC’s national and international strategy, with Washington State, California, Ohio, South Carolina, New York, Maryland, Canada, Central America, the Caribbean and our sister organization in Europe represented. The local Zambuko Marimba Ensemble entertained us during the Summit, and an impressive array of community and local artists welcomed the delegates on the first evening of the Summit with musical and dance performances.
2010: Charleston, South Carolina, Dockworkers Union Hall
Perhaps the largest Summit yet, the Charleston, South Carolina Summit was held in the late summer of 2010. Several important issues were dealt with at this Summit, not least of which were some internal concerns that affected how members with different perspectives and organizational philosophies would interact.
2011: Baltimore, Maryland, Great Blacks In Wax Museum
Maryland hosted its first SRDC Summit in 2011, choosing the Historic Great Blacks In Wax Museum as the meeting site. California, Washington State, South Carolina, the Caribbean, Central America and (of course) Maryland were in attendance. The Ohio contingent was not able to attend, but a delegation from the New York area was able to attend the Summit for the important organizational planning meeting that Sunday.
2012: Nashville, Tennessee
In 2012, SRDC found new friends who formed an organization based in Nashville, Tennessee, under the leadership of Sis. Gloria Conley. That same year, the Tennessee Organization offered to host that year’s Summit. All of SRDC’s state organizations attended, but it would be the last time delegations from Ohio and New York, both of which ceased official operations within the following year, would attend.
2013: Los Angeles, California
At the 2013 Summit, held in Los Angeles, California, an important decision was made: SRDC’s response to the continued delay in establishing the African Union’s implementation of the Diaspora Initiative that resulted from the AU’s failure to ratify Article 3(q) of its Constitutive Act. The bureaucracy that was blocking the success of SRDC’s mission led the organization to amend its Mission Statement, as a result of which our goal was now to establish the voice of the Diaspora in the “international arena” as opposed to limiting ourselves to doing so through the African Union. Though the AU would remain the primary vehicle through which SRDC would seek to make its voice heard, it was felt that, in light of a continuing debate among AU officials as well as many Africans about the status of the “Historic Diaspora”, we owed it to our Diaspora constituents to establish that voice through whatever opportunity arises, be it the African Union, the United Nations or an independent Pan-Afrikan Diaspora civil society collaboration.
2014: Los Angeles, California
The 2014 Summit in Los Angeles was a scaled-down event, as many of the local state organizations were unable to travel to California. The result was a one-day meeting as part of the Pan African Business and Trade Conference, an SRDC-affiliated event.
2016: Carson, California, Pan African Business and Trade Conference
After hot holding a Summit in 2015, the organization hit the “Restart” button in 2016, with a two-day event, again in California, as a more significant part of that year’s Pan African Business and Trade Conference. This meeting inspired a resurgence in enthusiasm, which had been drained by a combination of delays in the AU’s process of ratifying Article 3(q), occasional attacks from misguided rival organizations suspicious of our efforts, and the fatigue that results when “ordinary people” encounter unexpected resistance to what, to us, seemed the only reasonable strategy: bring our different organizations together to cooperate on how to move Global Afrika forward.
2017: Nashville, Tennessee
The resurgence continued in 2017, as the Tennessee organization hosted its second Summit. While several of our international partners were unable to attend, organizations from California, Washington State, South Carolina and Maryland attended.
2018: Baltimore, Maryland, Great Blacks In Wax Museum
Maryland hosted its second Summit at the Historic Great Blacks In Wax Museum in 2018. The newly-formed Maryland Council of Elders co-sponsored the Summit with the Maryland SRDC Organization. Not only were organizations from California, Washington State, South Carolina and Guadeloupe in attendance, there were also delegations from The Gambia, Liberia and regional African organization AFRIDU. Europe was represented by Dr. Barryl Biekman of the African Unity African Diaspora Sixth Region (AUADS), who has been working with the African Union as well as the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent. Afrikans in the Middle East were represented by Dr. Khazriel Ben Yehuda of the Middle East African Diaspora Unity Council (MEADUC). Also present were Queen Mother DeLois Blakely, who has been deeply involved with the United Nations in favor of Reparations and her representative, Baba Kujenga Ashe. Baba Mwalimu Kwasi-Quiaja Amsata, North America Coordinator of the Pan African Federalist Movement (PAFM), made an important presentation about PAFM’s work and how SRDC and PAFM could work cooperatively in pursuit of Afrikan unity and uplift. Another important part of the Summit was the inclusion of several cultural events, including a play that was performed at Coppin State University and two events, one on Wednesday evening and the other on Saturday evening, that were sponsored by the Teaching Artist Institute and Sis. Kim Poole. Overall, an impressive combination of local activists, members of the Baltimore grassroots community and visitors from Pennsylvania and New York made this one of SRDC’s most successful Summits.
2019: Charleston, South Carolina, Dockworkers Union Hall
The 2019 Summit, held for the second time at the Dockworkers’ Union Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, marked an important milestone: the official launch of the SRDC Liberia Library Project, done in partnership with Liberian grassroots organization Sehwah. Madame Louise Siaway, founder and president of Sehwah, had been building a relationship with SRDC for several years, In 2018, Professor Horne (California), Baba Kumasi Palmer, Baba Fred Lincoln and Mama Deborah Wright (South Carolina) had traveled to Liberia to pave the way for the building of the country’s first Public Library, meet several officials there and participate in a community celebration. Now, Madame Siaway was at the Summit with a delegation from Liberia to take one more official step towards the implementation of the project. Delegations from California, Washington State, Maryland, Central America and the Caribbean were present. Due to several local emergencies, the Tennessee delegation was unable to attend but remained connected to the mission.
2021: Monrovia, Liberia
The 2021 SRDC International Summit was held November 8-13, 2021 in Monrovia, Liberia. This was the first International Summit SRDC held outside the United States. This Summit was held as a joint program of SRDC and Sehwah-Liberia, Inc., a grassroots organization in Liberia founded by Madam Louise Siaway. Check out the articles on the 2021 Summit here and here.
The partnership between SRDC and Sehwah-Liberia began in 2015 with the launching of the Library Project Initiative, which is described below and in greater detail here. Over the last several years, the organizations worked together on three important projects in Liberia:
- Pan African Virtual Summer Camp and Cultural Exchange: The Virtual Summer Camp was held during the months of July and August of 2020. About a dozen high school students in the United States (Maryland) participated, along with over 40 Liberian students, in an online summer education program, led by Madam Louise Siaway in Liberia and Mama Maisha Washington, a veteran educator and member of the Maryland Council of Elders and SRDC Maryland Organizing Committee, in the United States. Instructors from both countries led virtual classes on environmental science, project management, linguistics, information technology, yoga, African dance, coding, Swahili, cooking, oral history, African geography, culture and astronomy. The resulting cultural interaction between students and instructors from Liberia and the United States was designed to help broaden the students’ view and vision of Africa, leading to more effective communication, along with developing skills in project management, compromise/consensus, negotiation, decision making and problem solving. The students who completed this summer program successfully would then become a part of the first phase of building the Library in Monrovia, Liberia. Sadly, Mama Maisha passed on to the Honored Ancestors suddenly in October 2020. We hope to be able to duplicate the effort in following summers to properly honor Mama Maisha and her great work as an educator of African children on both sides of the Atlantic. More information on the Virtual Summer Camp can be found here, and check out the article announcing the Maisha Washington Education Scholarship Fund.
- COVID-19 Food Distribution Drive: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the 10th of April 2020, the Government of Liberia declared a State of Emergency, coupled with a Nationwide Lockdown. In the wake of this State of Emergency, Sehwah and SRDC launched a food distribution drive to supplement the government’s efforts in providing food assistance to the needy people. This campaign mainly targeted the most vulnerable such as children, elderly men and women as well as the people living with disabilities. According to Madam Louise Siaway, who personally led this effort, the recipients of the food donation have been very grateful and thankful to the Sehwah-SRDC partnership for thinking about them in this time of serious health crisis and its adverse consequences. Along with the food, we also donated face masks as well as bottles of hand sanitizer. For more information, including the full report on the food distribution effort, click here.
- The Liberia Library Project: Back in 2015-2016, SRDC-South Carolina Facilitator Baba Kumasi Palmer and Madam Louise Siaway began to promote the idea of establishing the first-ever public library to serve the West African nations of Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Conakry, to be based in Monrovia, Liberia. This project also represents an historic opportunity for African Descendants in the Diaspora, particularly the United States, to re-establish and strengthen ties to the Mother Continent through the nation that was established as a destination point for African People who had been freed from the bonds of slavery in the United States. This project has grown into an opportunity to establish real, on-the-ground connections between the Mother Continent and the Diaspora and to advance SRDC’s primary goal of bringing the resources, expertise and voice of the Diaspora to the World Stage for the advancement of Africa and her Scattered Black Children around the world. In 2018, a delegation from SRDC, led by SRDC’s International Facilitator Prof. David Horne, traveled to Monrovia, Liberia to meet with local Elders and community leaders and to bring the project to build Liberia’s first public library closer to fruition. As this historic meeting was taking place, Baba Kumasi Palmer was leading an effort to gather donated books from across the United States to help jump-start the establishment of the library. While plans have been discussed and made for obtaining a plot of land for the library and preparing plans for the building, the book-donation drive has continued. See our article on the book donation project, our post on the Liberia Library Project and our Library Project Page for more details.
Other issues discussed in the 2021 Summit’s Workshops included Dual Citizenship, Land Ownership, Business Development, Agricultural Projects and SRDC’s Core Mission and Plan. More detail about the 2021 Summit can be found here.
2022: Panama City, Panama
The 2022 SRDC Summit was held from Thursday, September 22 through Sunday, September 25, 2022 in Panama City, Panama. Since SRDC does not have an organization in Panama, this amounted to “virgin territory” for our organizing efforts. A number of the hoped-for attendees were not able to secure travel visas to attend the Summit in time, but some of them were afforded the opportunity to connect to the Summit virtually via Zoom. Activists from the Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, The Netherlands, Liberia, the United States and, of course, the host country of Panama were in attendance, with others from the United States, Tanzania, Ghana, Guadeloupe and other locations connecting virtually.
The Summit was a success overall. There were a couple of occasional technical connection issues, some people were not able to attend who we hoped to see, some who we expected to see on Zoom didn’t make it and a few of the important participants who did come were delayed in arriving for the first day or two, but the re-connection with several Central American Pan Afrikan activists and organizers was accomplished. There is some hope that an SRDC organization or an allied effort can be set up in Panama for the first time. This Summit was, in fact, focused on re-establishing and strengthening connections between SRDC and Pan-Afrikan organizations in this often-overlooked part of the Pan Afrikan Diaspora.
Presenters included the President General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League Rehabilitating Committee 2020 (UNIA-ACL RC 2020), Baba Akili Nkrumah,
Mr. Melvin Brown, who facilitated the holding of this Summit in Panama and showed us some of the sights of his country, Dr. ChenziRa Davis Kahina of the Caribbean Pan African Network (CPAN) and SRDC, Dr. Edly Hall Reid of Costa Rica, who represented the Central American Black Organization (CABO)/Organizacion Negra Centroamericana (ONECA), Professor David L. Horne, International Facilitator and Director of SRDC, Dr. Barryl Biekman, founder and Director of the African Union African Diaspora Sixth Region Facilitators Working Group (AUADSFWG) Europe, based in The Netherlands, Mama Neema Abena James, an Afrikan Diasporan living in Tanzania, founder of the Sixth Region African Diaspora Alliance in Tanzania (6RADAT) and East Afrika SRDC Facilitator (on Zoom from Tanzania), Dr. Hamet Maulana, who works with Afrikan Diasporans in Ghana to work toward establishing citizenship (on Zoom from Ghana) , local Rastafari-connected activists Black Queen Selassie, Honorable Empress Yesury Nurse, Afropanamanian Afro Latin American Leader and Founder of Good Music Pro, and Ras Bukie, Rastafari Cultural Ambassador, Chairman of the Rastafari Global Reasoning Jamaica, University of West Indies and President of Good Music Pro, Madam Louise Siaway of Sehwah Liberia, who was in attendance with a delegation of activists from Liberia, and a short presentation about the Town Hall Process that is the local organizing tool for SRDC (and, frankly, what separates SRDC from most other Pan-Afrikan organizations) and Cooperative Coalitions.
Bro. Haki Ammi, President of the Teaching Artist Institute (TAI) traveled to Panama from Baltimore and was able to participate over the main conference days of the Summit, as well as log several reports back on Facebook, and an excellent article on the Summit and other travels he made during the month for The National Black Unity News, a Baltimore-based Black-run online and printed publication.
We got the chance to connect with a couple of businesses in Panama, specifically Afrikan-owned restaurants where our able Panamanian guides and Summit participants, Mr. Melvin Brown (the official host for the Summit), Ras Bukie and Black Queen Selassie took us to dine and to meet the owners so we could get an idea of “life on the ground” in Panama. We were also treated to a cultural performance by the Congo Dancers during the Thursday Welcoming Reception to start the Summit off on a good note.
We took a tour of the Panama City area, including the Panama Canal and the neighborhoods where many of the working-class and struggling citizens, many of whom are Afrikan-Descendant, live (which, we were told, is also the birthplace of legendary boxing champion Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran). Several photos we took on the tour are included in the slide show below.
We also got to visit the recently inaugurated statue of The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey in Panama City’s Cultural and Ethnic Communities Plaza, which stands alongside statues of Confucius and Mohandas K. Gandhi. Black Queen Selassie and Ras Bukie were a major part of the work to have the statue placed here, and they succeeded in this effort just a couple of months ago. We were able to spend some time there on Sunday afternoon after the Summit was completed and pay proper respects.
We returned to our respective homes from the 2022 SRDC Summit in Panama City ready to recommit to the process of Organizing the Diaspora to take our collective voice to the World Stage. SRDC is currently making plans for our next Summit. As for location of the 2023 Summit, the current frontrunner is Atlanta, Georgia, returning to the Continental United States after holding Summits in Monrovia, Liberia and Panama City, Panama the last two years. While we remain committed to our international mission, we must not forget, as a Pan-Afrikan Diaspora organization founded and based in the United States, that the organizing work that will bring our collective grassroots voice to the International Arena must begin at home. We must make critical connections to our Sisters and Brothers in Afrika and throughout the Pan-Afrikan Diaspora, but we will not succeed in our important work if we ever forget our connection and responsibility to The People On The Ground Where We Live.
