THREE BLACK MEN on the World as Ritual /368
Artwork by Jon Marro for the Three Black Men tour (left to right) Resmaa Menakem, Bayo Akomolafe, Orland Bishop
This week we are thrilled to bring you a special conversation from a dear friend of the podcast Bayo Akomolafe. Recorded while in Ghana for the Three Black Men Tour, this conversation features the voices of Bayo Akomolafe, Resmaa Menakem, Orland Bishop, Victoria Santos and Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin, all of whom were involved with the conversation and presentation of the Three Black Men tour.
In 2023, Resmaa, Bayo and Orland shared space as they visited three cities across three continents, tracing a diasporic route in reverse from Los Angeles in The United States, to Salvador in Brazil, and finally to Accra in Ghana.
Through the tour, these three visionary Black men, sharing their leading edges, are inviting us into a radical re/imagination of how we respond to our time. They sense into emergent possibilities, triangulating toward a synthesis of new forms, new magic, and new directions.
This conversation touches on the community of care that Bayo, Resmaa, Orland, Victoria, and Omon contributed to and experienced across the tour, the lessons they learned from this undertaking, and visions for what is to come. As each conversation partner emphasizes, “Blackness” is about far more than pigmentation. It is a call to re-story the world, to reimagine possibilities. Together they discuss the cracks, callings and visions that invite us into a paradigm shift that none of us could imagine alone.
“The world is a practice. The world isn’t just a world containing practices. The world itself is a practice. The world is ritual...”
In their beloved writings and teachings, these explorers investigate community, racial and social justice, individual and collective trauma, ritual and healing, new cultural forms (the promise of the monstrous) and deep interior capacities. Their theme connects vibrant conversations on matters of embodiment, explorations of the sacred and the ancestral, and visions of other places of power and alternative futures.
Learn more about the tour at https://www.threeblackmen.com and https://www.centerforhealingandliberation.com.
♫ The music that opens and closes this episode is by 808 X Ri and with courtesy of Leaving Records, the music breaks you heard today are “XVI. Boundless, Timeless,” “VII. Ghalani,” and “VI. Searching” by The Growth Eternal.
Orland Bishop is the founder and director of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, where he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge. ShadeTree serves as an intentional community of mentors, elders, teachers, artists, healers, and advocates for the healthy development of children and youth. Orland’s work in healing and human development is framed by an extensive study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology, and Indigenous cosmologies, primarily those of South and West Africa.
Resmaa Menakem is an American author and psychotherapist specialising in the effects of trauma on the human body and the relationship between trauma, white body supremacy, and racism in America. He is the founder of Justice Leadership Solutions, a leadership consultancy firm, where he dedicates his expertise to coaching leaders through civil unrest, organizational change and community building. Menakem created Cultural Somatics which utilizes the body and resilence as mechanisms for growth. He is the best selling author of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racializes Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies and was described by On Being’s Krista Tippet “activates the wisdom of ancestors and a very new science, about how all of us carry the history and traumas behind everything we collapse into the word ”race” in our bodies.”
Bayo Akomolafe is the Chief Curator of The Emergence Network, a speaker, author, fugitive neo-materialist com-post-activist public intellectual and Yoruba poet. But when he takes himself less seriously, he is a father to Alethea and Kyah, and the grateful life-partner to Ej as well as the sworn washer of nightly archives of dishes. The convener of the concepts of ‘postactivism’, ‘transraciality’ and ‘ontofugitivity’, Bayo is a widely celebrated international speaker, teacher, public intellectual, essayist and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. He is also the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains.’
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin is the founder and creative director of TAC (The Art Concept), born in Benin City, Nigeria. Omonblanks is an interdisciplinary creative producer and “ambassador of entanglement” who, like water, takes on the shape, form or position needed to actualise projects and experiences. His Life-Practice is centered on participatory and social-practice, Omonblanks sees the body as a memory collector and everything he does takes on roots-life of its own.
Victoria Santos’ work is rooted in a far-reaching vision of human potential. She has a deep commitment to our collective liberation. Her work emphasizes intersectional awareness, individual and collective healing, and compassionate action. She is the founder and director of the Center for Healing and Liberation. An organization focused on healing, wellness, and racial Justice practices. Additionally, as founder and co-executive director of the BIPOC ED Coalition, Victoria is part of a cultural change movement that prioritizes health and wellness. Victoria advocates for more resources to flow towards BIPOC-led nonprofits and calls in philanthropic partners and other allies to reimagine their roles and commit to working with BIPOC-led organizations in more powerful ways. She is the co-creator of the BIPOC ED Sabbatical program and the Respite and Restoration program in Washington State. Victoria knows the power of community and the wisdom that can emerge from it. Her work is guided by the deep knowing that everyone is needed, and that when we offer each other our compassionate listening, we cultivate our collective freedom. Victoria is a Spanish-fluent Afro-Latina immigrant born in the Dominican Republic living on land of the Snohomish people – although somewhat nomadic as of late.
Episode References
C.L.R. James | Caribbean Historian, Marxist Critic, Pan-Africanis
Mahmoud El-Kati - History - Macalester College
Aimé Césaire | Surrealist Poet, Negritude Movement & French Caribbean
Reading Recommendations
threeblackmen.com
The Center for Healing and Liberation
SUBSCRIBE & Listen
Subscribe to For The Wild RSS →
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or another platform →
For The Wild is a gathering place for ideas and solutions ensuring that the growing body of work that we steward remains accessible to the public. If you want to see us continue, or perhaps are especially moved by the episode you are listening to today, please become a monthly sustaining member through our Patreon or consider making a one-time donation directly to us through our website. To stay up-to-date on our work, sign up for our newsletter.
For The Wild is a slow media organization dedicated to land-based protection, co-liberation, and intersectional storytelling. We are rooted in a paradigm shift away from human supremacy, endless growth, and consumerism. As we dream towards a world of grounded justice and reciprocity, our work highlights impactful stories and deeply-felt meaning making as balms for these times.