Join 20 advocates for an exploration of love, justice, healing, at the…
– 1ST-EVER VIRTUAL –
BLACK DIASPORA JAM
To Be Held
OCTOBER 14, 15, 17, 18 AND 20
9:30-11:30 AM PST / 12:30-2:30 PM EST
VIA ZOOM
Apply Today!
Priority deadline: September 26, 2020
Final deadline: October 2, 2020
This Jam is for Black Identified folxs only
The Black Diaspora Jam is being organized in the spirit of hundreds of years of resistance, rebellions, resilience, creation, and celebration. A critical component of Black Liberation has been spaces for respite for Black folks to envision and reimagine what is possible in the midst of the moment. 2020 exacerbated many of the issues that have plagued the Black diaspora for centuries, Black people worldwide still live amid white supremacy, are still incarcerated and enslaved en masse, are still criminalized, significantly impacting our lives regardless of class, education or socioeconomic status. We also understand that despite this reality, the gifts we have inherited through our lineages are critical to the quest for our liberation. The Black Diaspora Jam will explore how our forebears’ wisdom can help guide us to navigate the current challenges that face the Black community today. Through this Jam we hope to create space to clarify how to move forward in this familiar yet very different political landscape while diving deeper into the complexities of the many identities we each hold.
Amid international pandemic and global uprising, it is critical that we get clear about the tools we need and are using to make sure Black-identified people are thriving, not just surviving. We stop to see how the work of slowing down, reconnecting to ourselves, to each other, re-energizes, reframes, and realigns our work in ourselves and our communities. The work of the Jam is about cultivating radical compassion, connecting to nature, being present, deep listening, and recognizing the power of play in order to touch into intimate places of tension as well as questions around our role in collective liberation and creating communal prosperity.
Why a Black Diaspora Jam Now?
What does being Black mean? How can we explore and celebrate the diversity in the unique experience? What does being responsible to Black communities look like? How can we support each other in remembering the magic and power that helped our people survive?
The Jam is an opportunity to explore these questions in an environment of healing, connection, and re-humanization. It is a reminder that our interdependence is an essential part of our nature, and of weathering this storm, and the storms to come. It’s a chance for us to come together, learn, draw from our commonalities and heal across our divides to be able to bring all of who we are to the table to create a vision of the world in which we want to live.
What Is a Jam?
The Jam is not a conference, seminar, or a typical meeting — it is something unique. It is dedicated time at a beautiful retreat center to think and feel deeply about transformation in this field, in our world, in our communities, and in ourselves. There are in-depth conversations and there is a lot of fun, art, and creativity. There is dancing and embodiment, group explorations, and co-creations, as well as solo time and internal reflection.
The facilitation team has co-organized and co-facilitated dozens of Jams and has been planning towards this Jam since long before sheltering in place necessitated it to become virtual. Though we/they have a lot of Jam experience, we/they will also be fully participating in the Jam. We/they will be bringing our/their questions, too.”? Our facilitators are participants as well; they don’t have all the answers (or maybe any of them!). What they do offer is a variety of ways for each of us to arrive at our own answers — and new questions. We’ll use a number of processes and tools and experiment with different ways of being together, all aimed at strengthening our self-awareness, our ability to communicate and work through conflicts, and our ability to vision and put these pieces together. We see the Jam as a co-learning journey of the collective experiences, questions, powers, and differences of everyone who attends.
The Jam works on three levels:
- On the personal level, we enter into an open space to reflect on our life journeys and what makes us who we are today. Here, we have an opportunity to deepen our purpose, ask meaningful questions, eat nourishing food, unlearn our fears and blocks, access our hearts, and open our minds to move more boldly in the world.
- On the interpersonal level, we come together to share our cultures, our creativity, our collaborative spirits, our stories, and our struggles across similarities and differences so we can deepen in our understanding of and connection to each other. We practice slowing down as we learn to re-humanize ourselves and each other.
- On the systemic level, we become clearer about the importance of our work in the world and its potential for even deeper and more meaningful impact.
Every Jam is an open space where the gifts and needs of the people who show up can emerge. For the 2020 Black Diaspora Jam, we anticipate exploring and deepening into these questions:
- How can we support each other right now?
- How do we support Black families, Black children, and Black youth?
- How can we resource each other before what promises to be one of the most important elections of our times?
- What does it mean to be Black and to be responsible to Black communities?
- How can we explore and celebrate the diversity of our unique experience(s)? How do we explore, remember, and utilize the magic and power that has helped our people survive?
What questions are you bringing to the Jam? ALL your questions are welcome.
Who is the Jam for?
Because we seek to bring together as diverse a group of Black Idenifted Folks who are engaged of any of the following
- Active in groups, community, organizations or movements working for thriving, just and sustainable futures
- Committed to using your privileges and resources on behalf of your values
- Willing to ask big questions, share your truth, listen with an open heart, be open to paradox
- Seeking to love, dream, and live in integrity.
If you identify as ANY of these things! The 2020 Black Diaspora Jam is for you!
Who Is Organizing the Jam?
The Jam is being sponsored by YES!, an organization dedicated to connecting, inspiring, and collaborating with change-makers through exploratory and innovative programs that meet the evolving needs and opportunities of our world. This inaugural Black Diaspora Jam will be facilitated and organized by several alumni across the Jamily:
Austin Willacy is a veteran member of The House Jacks with whom he has produced 10 full-length albums and completed multiple world tours. For the past 20 years, Austin has directed ‘Til Dawn, Youth in Arts’ award-winning teen a cappella group that empowers youth to find their voices in many ways. Austin is also an award-winning singer/songwriter with 4 CD’s and 2 EP’s to his name. His music is soulful and raucous, tender and comic. Austin’s music has been featured on “The Sing Off”, “Road Rules”, an Australian ad campaign and three feature film soundtracks, including Thrive, a documentary with over 80 million views. He’s appeared in Rolling Stone and has performed with icons such as Bonnie Raitt and up and coming artists like Jem, Vienna Teng, Rachael Yamagata and Amos Lee. Austin recently won a 2018 Posi–Positive Music Award–for Best Original Song in the Social Justice category. Austin is an organizer and facilitator for YES! and a former board member for Rainforest Action Network and the Freight & Salvage. He is one of the co-founders of the Arts for Social Change Jams in the US, Turkey, and India.
Jocelyn Jackson’s passion for seasonal food, social justice, creativity, and community is rooted in a childhood spent on the Kansas plains, where her diverse, vibrant family would sing a song before sitting down at the table to share a soulful meal. Since then, Jocelyn practiced law, taught environmental science and ethics, became a yoga instructor, writes, and creates performance and visual art. Her inspiring international experiences include serving in the Peace Corps in West Africa, and teaching in an ecovillage in Southern India. She’s presented on the principles of community nourishment at Court Bouillon in Southern France, and back home in Oakland for the Fusion of Food and Yoga series at Anasa Yoga. Jocelyn is beginning her sixth year of full hearted cooking. She founded JUSTUS KITCHEN and co-founded PEOPLE’s KITCHEN COLLECTIVE to continue to create food experiences that inspire people to reconnect with themselves, the earth, and one another. And she still starts every meal with a song.
Whether by capturing special moments from behind the lens, or taking a firm stand on the frontlines, Jovan Julien aims to be a light in the world. After 21 years of living in the north, Jovan Julien moved south in 2010 after graduating from school. Since then he has called Atlanta, GA home. He works in the same city and regionally working on building intersectional movement with organizers, community members, and friends grounded in a practice of Beloved Community. His work often has him moving between the US South and the Caribbean as he brings his skills, passions, and dreams into being.
Lillian Hanan Al-Bilali has been inspired to deepen her understanding of how diverse communities can become more interconnected and, particularly, how shared experiences create space for dialogue — ever since she participated in the 2010 Leveraging Privilege for Social Change Jam. Since her college years, one of her most consistent passions has been issues of youth empowerment. Her student activism at Hampton University focused on societal inequalities especially in regards to substandard education and high incarceration rates for youth of color. Following graduation, Hanan became an administrator at Children’s Arts and Science Workshops (CASW), a non-profit agency in New York City. Here, she mentored young people from the Washington Heights and Harlem communities by preparing them for college and for the work force. Currently living in New York City, Hanan received her Masters in Social Work from the University of Michigan. Her concentration in Social Policy and Evaluations allows her to focus on strengthening services offered through the non-profit sector at the state and local levels. She continues to make people her priority as a committed collaborator with organizations and initiatives that support underrepresented communities.
Demarris Evans works as a Restorative Justice Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco. She is also a lecturer at San Francisco State University in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies. Her focus is on racial equity and restorative justice. Demarris worked as a trial attorney in Public Defense for over 20 years. She lead the racial justice unit in the San Francisco Public Defenders Office and practiced in several different collaborative courts with a restorative justice lens. She has previously worked as an instructor in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Phoenix. Demarris was a member of the San Francisco Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Task Force where she chaired the Bias and Policing Subcommittee. Demarris also teaches mindfulness through the lens of equity, healing and human potential. She is a graduate of the Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College, the Warrior One Mindfulness in Law Teacher Training Program and the Dedicated Practitioners Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a co-facilitator for the Law and Social Change Jam and the Re-Storying Justice Jam offered by YES! And she is on the Board of Directors for the Mindfulness in Law Society where she heads the Equity and Inclusion Division.
Cost and Logistics
The tuition for the Zoomy Jam is offered on a sliding scale of $50- $300 to support honorarium for organizers and facilitators. We never want money to be a barrier in participating in a Jam, so we will do everything we can to make it work for you to attend. If cost is a barrier to you, contact us and we will work together with you to find a way. Some partial scholarships and work trades are available. We can also create a flexible monthly payment plan that can be as low as $10 a month. If you have more resources, additional donations above the event price help us provide scholarships to support the broad spectrum of participation. It’s is the diversity of the Jams that make them thrive. Donations above the tuition are also tax-deductible.
Application and Deadlines
If you want to join us in co-learning, collaborating, and co-creating connections to tackle the current challenges across the Black Diaspora and a fresh vision of what’s possible here, please complete the application today.
Priority deadline for applications is September 26, 2020.
Final deadline for applications is October 2, 2020.
We have space for 20 people and are aiming to bring together a diversity of folks from within our Diaspora.
If you have any questions that this invitation does not answer, and/or need any more information, please do not hesitate to contact us at blackjaminfo@gmail.com.
Looking forward to Jamming with you!
Austin, Demarris, Hanan, Jocelyn, and Jovan
The Black Diaspora Jam Organizing Team
APPLY TODAY
Any questions? Write to blackjaminfo@gmail.com