The interest in this Convening has exceeded our expectations. To accommodate all who are interested, the program will be available on YouTube. Go to the AAPF Channel at 7 pm EST to participate. https://www.youtube.com/@aapolicyforum/streams
The live program will be posted at 7 pm EST, not before.

It was Angela Davis who taught us that freedom is a constant struggle and that we must continue to work for it even when we don’t yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it is going to be possible. We are now at that moment, where we must hope beyond hope and believe that freedom and change are possible. We must plant the seeds for trees that will never give us shade. We must believe, as Maya Angelou wrote, that every storm eventually runs out of rain. We are in the midst of a storm and it has been raining for the past 93 days or 406+ years (depending upon how you see this country).

We are now less than a week away from marking the first 100 days of this current administration and it has been a period of instability, chaos, and confusion. It has been a whirlwind of executive (dis)orders (EO), massive layoffs, tariff wars, and small acts of resistance.

As Kimberle Crenshaw noted in her editorial about the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” EO that took direct aim at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, (“NMAAHC”) among other Smithsonian museums, it is a “part of Trump’s wide-ranging assault on ideas and institutions that have become forbidden as divisive and anti-American.” This EO is in line with the assault on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and furthers this administration’s antiblack agenda designed to erase our history and discard our cultural relics.  The erasures are not mistakes or oversights, they are part of a larger campaign to dismantle democracy and restore many (if not all) of the white supremacist ideology that was used to govern this country. We are sitting at the edge of a precipice, marking the remaining moments as we slow slide into a “technofascist hypercapitalistic” reality. *

This is a moment where resistance, well-planned and properly executed, is needed.

This is Our Moment.

To that end, ASALH has partnered with the Freedom to Learn Network—a coalition of civil rights organizations including the African American Policy Forum, the National Urban League, the National Council of Negro Women, the Legal Defense Fund, the Lawyer’s Committee, among many others—for the National Week of Action, a week of activation around the country to clearly state #HandsOffOurHistory, which will feature two main events:

• April 30, 2025: Second National Convening on ZOOM: an urgent conversation to provide an assessment of what the first 100 days has meant for racial justice.

During the convening, ASALH’s National President Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead and AAPF’s ED Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, will be in conversation with:

• Melanie L. Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable
• Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League.
• Shavon Arline-Bradley, president and chief executive officer for Nation Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
• Barbara Arnwine, president and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition

(*Coined by journalist Nafeez Ahmed, in his article “technofascist hypercapitalistic” is the new hybrid authoritarianism that is happening with this administration as they work to fuse corporate power, state force and neo-reactionary ideology, which has painstakingly reconstructed Nazi-inspired eugenics for the post-Nazi digital era.)