An Intimate Reckoning with Global Black Masculinity
Connecting men through art, poetry, sound, story and ceremony.
Greetings, greetings global Emotional Justice family.
On A Personal Note
The BBC. BAFTA, harm, humanity, and global Black Masculinity….
What does it mean to heal harm, and heed history? I’m a former BBC journalist, and their failure to remove language that is a horror story for global Black people is reflective of their structural failures on race, racism, and accountability. That two Black men were expected to remain calm and carry on is also reflective of a world where Black trauma is expected to be absorbed, the truth untold, and the toll unnamed. It is part of how we strip humanity from Black men. We can’t heal a harm we don’t name, or heed a history we don’t know.
Esther…..
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Masculinity. Power. Trauma. Healing. MOVING MASCULINITY is an invitation to shape a notion of power that centers domination, to one that centers development. We treat masculinity as a governing system that embodies how power – and powerlessness – functions, fails or flourishes. Healing with the framework EMOTIONAL JUSTICE is a call to move from data and theory and into the world of practice and world-building.
With MOVING MASCULINITY THE EMOTIONAL JUSTICE DIGITAL VILLAGE, the focus is to build Emotional Infrastructure. The world of social, emotional learning and leadership spoke eloquently of ‘Emotional Intelligence’. Can you have emotional intelligence without emotional literacy? We live in a society where you can be intellectually eloquent, professionally credentialed and emotionally illiterate all within one body. This is about POWER and POWERLESSNESS; it’s about humanity – who is afforded it, and who has been stripped of it. Re-assigning full humanity means doing emotional work… step into the world of MOVING MASCULINITY.
SAVE THE DATE: APRIL 2026
2 Cities | 2 Countries | 2 Continents
NEW YORK CITY & ACCRA
THE GHANA SCREENING
YOUR SPECIAL INVITATION:
MOVING MASCULINITY
An Artist Statement | A Film Screening | A Panel
FEATURING
ALEX KWESI AFARI | KOBBY GRAHAM | SAMUEL LAMPTEY | DERICK BOTSYOE | WILLIAM PLANGE
Masculinity in Ghana is shaped by tribe, culture, history and ethnicities. Those influences powerfully form a masculinity that is practice, policed and performed. We’re excited to engage with the visual lens of Alex Kwesi Afari as he walks into his world of masculinity with MY LENS, and hear from KOBBY GRAHAM, Cultural Strategist, Scholar, Writer; SAMUEL LAMPTEY – Act for Change working on Men’s Programs; DERICK BOTSYOE, Men For Social Change; WILLIAM PLANGE – No Human Is Useless. This panel reflects our focus on walking in and with community to drive change.
VENUE | TIME | DATE
THE MIX, OKODAN ROAD, OSU, ACCRA
APRIL 18TH 6PM
ENTRANCE IS WITH RSVP ONLY
RSVP LINK:- https://bit.ly/movingmasculinityaccra
THE NEW YORK SCREENING
YOUR SPECIAL INVITATION:
MOVING MASCULINITY
A Narrated Film on Memory | Masculinity | Emotional Justice
Weaving Poetry | Sound | Story | Ceremony
Narrated & Directed by Esther A. Armah
Featuring:-
IBRAM X KENDI | DIALLO SHABAZZ | DARNELL MOORE | SIMON FREDERICK
WADE DAVIS II | CEDRIC BROWN | OBBIE WEST
THE SCREENING & DIALOGUE
April 29th at 6pm
Dolby Screening Room
1350 Avenue of the Americas
New York
ENTRANCE IS WITH RSVP ONLY
RSVP Link:- https://bit.ly/movingmasculinitynewyork
Masculinity in America is shaped by legacies of untreated trauma from enslavement and white supremacy. The legacies linger. They stripped humanity from Black men, and created delusional notions of supremacy within white men. America is haunted and hunted by both. This film centers Black masculinity and is an invitation to reassign a full humanity. That means naming the harm to be healed, and reckoning with the history that haunts.
