Partners

The first African Diaspora Directorate partner, outside of our co-founding organizations, is Keys of the Kingdom United Methodist Church Black Methodists for Church Renewal Chapter.

This what was said by the Chapter President, ” On August 25th 1619, 20 enslaved Africans were brought to Point Comfort in the English colony of Virginia—this site is now part of Fort Monroe National Monument.

The 400 Years of African-American History Commission Act, signed into law January 8, 2018, established a 15-member commission to coordinate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colonies. The Commission’s purpose is to plan, develop, and carry out programs and activities throughout the United States We at the Keys of the Kingdom UMC (KOKUMC) through our chapter of the Black Methodists for Church Renewal (BMCR) plan to implement them at local level.

The chapter President is Hershel Daniels Junior, who is also Church Trustee Chairman, who organized it under Pastor Vera Cole’s KOKUMC leadership for community action. 

Our strategy for those churches willing to join in Civil Society Working Groups based on the Universal PeriodicReview (#UNUPR) of the United States of America (#USA) in 2020.

For us, at the local church level, it is based organized around organizing at the grassroots around a model that empowers solutions in fact based on public-private partnerships that leverage the national capacity of the church. We understand that the General Conference entrusts to the General Board of Church and Society responsibility to implement the Social Principles (¶ 004, 2012 Book of Discipline). 

Furthermore, we understand that “In order that we may faithfully implement the Social Principles in the worldwide United Methodist Church, Church and Society seeks a process that will theologically and ethically strengthen their world-wide relevance and encourage greater implementation of the Social Principles.”

Having read the working papers on the new Social Principles to be introduced for [a] vote in 2020 we subscribe to the thoughts given in the working papers,  “ We encourage the church to advocate and work for social structures and compensatory programs to redress long-standing, systemic social inequities. We affirm the right of persons in members of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic communities access to equal and equitable opportunities. and We further believe private and public economic enterprises must take responsibility for the private and social costs, i.e., the larger societal impacts, of doing business.”

The operational statement for this ask of the Church is based on the Friends of the African Union on this past Juneteenth (June 19th, 2019), were we pledged,“We as Citizens of the United States of America who are decedent from Africans made new citizens in 1868,150 years ago, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish equality of justice, insure domestic tranquility,provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the equal blessings of liberty to ourselves and our future generations, do ordain as organized civil society and establish this month a working group to establish a 150 year (2019-2169) #150BlackFolksPlan that is to deliver its work by August 25th 2019. This date is the 400th year anniversary of the landing of the first Africans in the English colonies in 1619 at FortComfort, which would later become part of the state of Virginia, one of the founding states of the United States of America. The current over 37 million Americans who are Decedents of America’s African slavery who were born here. For the most part, we are the product of intentional disconnect from the lands that our ancestors. They were sold from and experienced the “door of no return” and or were born as the product of our slavemasters, like the Jefferson males, who raped their women slaves and then enslaved their children and grandchildren. We now have a chance to address that legacy through our actions in the creation of the African diaspora Directorate.”

I look at our chapter of the BMCR would be promoting the Church to form Civil Society Working Groups at district levels on the Universal Periodic Review of the United States of America in 2020. As the church is in consultative status with the UN ECOSOCC the local church than create solutions for the USA, instead of restating our Human Rights problems. My church will do this in support the UN Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights and its application to Africans in the African Diaspora in the USA and their condition worldwide as stated by the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent Report on the USA in 2016. It is our plan to have at least 400 Working Groups that are founded by UMC Congregations to respond to theUnited Nations Universal Periodic Review (#UNUPR) of the United States of America (USA) in 2020 by August 25th 2019.

Here is the report delivered to the KOKUMC Church Council last Sunday. 

Our second partner is Vision Works in the 2020 Universal Periodic Review of the USA on INJUSTICE