Maryland Organizing Committee, Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus
State Facilitator: Bro. Cliff
Representatives: currently vacant
Observers: currently vacant
Council of Elders: the Maryland Council of Elders (see below)
The Maryland Organizing Committee of SRDC was established in the year 2007, after its future Facilitator, Bro. Cliff, attended a Pan Afrikan Town Hall Meeting in New York City in January of that year to become familiarized with the SRDC Plan and Mission. After being inspired by the organizing efforts of then-New York Facilitator Elder Adunni Oshupa Tabasi NuNu Afua Frie-Frie II, and subsequently returning to New York City to interview her at greater length, Bro. Cliff decided to move forward with the effort to spread SRDC’s message of Organizing the Diaspora to the Pan-Afrikan Community of Maryland. Sadly, by the end of that year, Elder Adunni passed on to the Honored Ancestors, and the organizing effort in New York has been a struggle ever since. But her powerful example continues to inspire those of us who carry on with this difficult but necessary work.
The Maryland Committee began a series of organizing meetings which produced a formal Organizing Committee in the summer that included Bro. Cliff as Facilitator, Bro. Cliff and Mama Maisha Washington as Representatives for the State of Maryland and several organizers that included Nana Njinga Ohema Akomfo Nyamekye, Baba Imhotep Fatiu of PLM, Bro. Heru MeriTef of local recording artists Precise Science, Mama Sayyida Toure and several others. An official Council of Elders was not empaneled at that time. This representative team would attend SRDC National Summits in Washington, DC in September 2007 (Howard University) and Columbus, Ohio in 2008 (Ohio State University).
The 2009 Maryland Organizing Committee amounted to something of a “restart”, with new energy being introduced to the Committee by Bro. Ikeme Demessae. He and Bro. Cliff would be elected as Representatives in 2009, with Mama Victory Swift as primary Observer. Bro. Cliff and Bro. Ikeme would attend the July 2009 Summit of the World African Diaspora Union (WADU) along with several other members of the SRDC Secretariat from across the United States, including SRDC International Facilitator Professor David L. Horne from California. Bro. Ikeme and Bro. Cliff would also attend the 2009 SRDC Summit in September in Seattle, Washington State. That year, SRDC also empaneled a Council of Elders, which included, among others, these prominent Elders of Baltimore, Maryland Pan-Afrikan struggle:
Nana Njinga Ohema Akomfo Nyamekye
Baba Yahya Shabazz
Babatunji Balogun
Mama Akoma-Odo
Baba King Obadele
Baba Ade Oba Tokunbo
In 2010, the Maryland Organizing Committee remade itself yet again. Bro. Ikeme went to pursue other endeavors, and the organization met several other young, powerful activists over the next several years, including Bro. Heru MeriTef (Precise Science), Sis. Kim Poole (Teaching Artist Institute) and Bro. Tafari Melisizwe (Afrikan Youth Alchemy and The Indigenous Lens). During these years, Bro. King Obadele became more of a key player, traveling to Los Angeles, California to participate in the 2013 SRDC International Summit with Bro. Cliff and to make an important contribution to the clarity of SRDC’s mission.
2014 represented a bit of a lull in organizing efforts, although the organization continued to meet and made presentations in this, previous and succeeding years at Kwanzaa programs sponsored by the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement (PLM), one of the Baltimore area’s strongest activist organizations, as well as an event in Washington, DC to commemorate the life of recent Ancestor Nelson Mandela that was organized by Ms. Evelyn Joe, a Cameroonian Afrikan living in Montgomery County, Maryland who has held a number of events in the area.
In 2015, the Maryland SRDC Organization participated in several African Union-oriented events, including at the AU Mission in Georgetown, Washington, DC on May 29, where Bro. Cliff, Bro. King Obadele, Sis. Kim Poole and several young artists from Baltimore made brief presentations with Afrikan Diaspora activists from across the United States and other areas of the Global Diaspora; and at a Baltimore-area hotel in November that also welcomed Afrikan Diaspora activists from across the Diaspora as well as African Union officials Dr. Joseph Chilengi and Dr. Jinmi Adisa. These two AU-oriented events were organized by Ms. Evelyn Joe, who at the time had been working closely with AU officials.
After the September 2016 SRDC Summit in Los Angeles, California, the Maryland Organization hit the ground running in mid-2017, holding five (5) Pan-Afrikan Community Town Hall Meetings at the historic Arch Social Club in West Baltimore’s Penn-North neighborhood. That area was still recovering from the trauma of the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore Police two years before as well as a history of underdevelopment and underservice in the community. After the fifth of the Town Hall Meetings, two things were accomplished: the establishment of a Maryland Pan-Afrikan Agenda that had been developed through extensive discussions with attending community members, and the empaneling of what would become the most proactive and organized Elders Council we had seen, which would name itself the Maryland Council of Elders. The members of the Council were:
Baba Rafiki Morris
Mama Maisha Washington
Rev. Mother Marcia Bowyer-Barron
Mama Abena Disroe
Baba Yahya Shabazz
Baba David Murphy
Mama Victory Swift
Baba Kenyatta Howard
Dr. Ken Morgan
Baba Ishaka-Ra-Hannibal-El
The Maryland Pan-Afrikan Agenda can be viewed by clicking below:
Maryland Pan Afrikan Agenda December 5 2017
The Maryland Council of Elders created their own Web Site (Home | Maryland Council of Elders (wixsite.com)) and Facebook Page ((9) Maryland Council of Elders | Facebook), and sponsored celebrations of Afrikan Liberation Day in May and Garvey Day in “Black August” every year, as well as several Town Hall Meetings of their own, discussing important issues of the community from crime and violence to police misconduct and surveillance. The Council was also instrumental in the success of the 2018 SRDC International Summit, which was held in November 2018 at the Historic Great Blacks In Wax Museum in East Baltimore. Several SRDC Town Hall Meetings were also convened in 2018, with the Maryland Council of Elders presiding over the proceedings.
The years 2019-2020 did not include many Town Hall Meetings, but that time was significant because of the launching of two ambitious projects. The first was the holding of several meetings of project engineers, designers, architects and library scientists to formulate plans for the building of the first-ever Public Library in the history of the country of Liberia. The project is slated to take several years to complete, but a plot of land in Liberia’s capital city, Monrovia, has been established, Memoranda of Understanding are being drawn up, and plans have been made to enlist architects and engineers to help in developing designs for what is intended to be a state-of-the-art library to serve the countries of Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone. The second was a Virtual Summer Camp that was held during July and August of 2020 in Liberia, under the auspices of Sehwah-Liberia and its founder Mama Louise Siaway, and in Maryland, all under the leadership of the Maryland Council of Elders’ Mama Maisha Washington, who was also active once again in SRDC.
The Maryland Council of Elders and the Maryland SRDC Organization would encounter misfortune, however, as Baba Kenyatta Howard was forced to leave the Council due to family emergencies; Bro. Charles Jackson, a regular contributor to the Maryland Council of Elders, passed on to the Ancestors after a brief but difficult illness; and Mama Maisha Washington suddenly transitioned to the Ancestors on October 20-21, 2020. The current CoVID-19 pandemic has also hit the community hard, as several local activists and Elders have fallen ill from this insidious disease. But, with strength from the Creator and a determination that only strong faith in the struggle can provide, we will come out of this current challenge in 2021 ready to move Forward Ever, Backward Never.