BLM France: Black and Brown Women’s Fight for Racial Justice

Thursday, September 29, 2022 | 5:00 PM EST | ICC Auditorium, Georgetown University Main Campus

Presented by Gender⁺ Justice Initiative, Black Women Radicals, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Dept. of African American Studies and French and Francophone Studies.

Join us in welcoming Rokhaya Diallo, Maboula Soumahoro, and Jean Beaman for a conversation on racial justice and police violence in France. The discussion will center Black and Brown women leading the fight against systemic racism and violence. Diallo and Soumahoro will highlight activists such as Ramata and Fatou Dieng as well as Amal Bentounsi. These families who lost their brothers to police violence are fighting for accountability while mobilizing a movement nationwide. Amal Bentounsi launched the collective “Emergency our police kills” and the “March for Dignity and Justice”.

About the speakers:

Rokhaya Diallo is a renowned journalist, author, filmmaker, and antiracist feminist advocate, who has fought tirelessly against racial and gender discrimination in France and beyond. She is the author of a dozen books and writes a monthly column in the Washington Post, covering issues of racism and sexism in France and abroad. She hosts a podcast with Grace Ly called Kiffe Ta Race (Binge Audio), a show which critically examines issues of identity and race. She is the Georgetown Gender⁺ Justice Initiative’s inaugural Researcher-in-Residence for 2021-2024. Follow on Twitter: @RokhayaDiallo and Instagram: @rokhayadiallo.

Maboula Soumahoro is a scholar, Afro-feminist, and associate professor at the University of Tours. This academic year, 2022-2023, she is an international visiting professor at the African-American and Africana Studies Department of Columbia University. A specialist in the field of Africana Studies, she has conducted research and taught in several universities and prisons in the United States and France and was most recently the inaugural Villa Albertine Resident in Atlanta. She is the author of Black is the Journey, Africana the Name (Polity, 2021). This book received the FetKann! Maryse Condé literary prize in 2020. Follow on Instagram: @maboulasoumahoro.

Jean Beaman is an associate professor of Sociology, with affiliations with Black Studies, Political Science, Feminist Studies, Global Studies, and the Center for Black Studies Research, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a visiting fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences for 2022-2023. Her research is ethnographic in nature and focuses on race/ethnicity, racism, international migration, and state violence in both France and the United States. She is the author of Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France (University of California Press, 2017). Her current book project is on suspect citizenship and belonging anti-racist mobilization, and activism against state violence in France. Follow on Twitter: @jean23bean.

More about BLM France

This event is free and open to all. All attendees must wear a mask.

Accommodation requests can be made at genderjustice@georgetown.edu.

If you are not a Georgetown affiliate, before you visit GU, please read the instructions and complete the steps below:

To help protect the health and safety of the Georgetown community, including our guests, all visitors ages 12 and older to University-owned or operated buildings must be up to date on COVID-19 vaccination (i.e., primary series and, when eligible, an additional dose), or attest to having a medical or religious exemption from being vaccinated.

Please follow the steps below that are required before your visit.

Step #1: Anytime between now and the day before your visit, please submit documentation showing you are up to date on COVID-19 vaccination with a vaccine authorized for emergency use or granted approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the World Health Organization (WHO). Acceptable proof of vaccination includes, but is not limited to:

CDC COVID-19 Vaccine Card
WHO Vaccine Booklet
Documentation provided by a healthcare organization or country

Note: If you are not up to date on COVID-19 vaccination but attest to having an appropriate medical or religious reason for not being vaccinated, you will be able to indicate this as part of Step #1 and proceed with the process required to visit our campus. You will be required to submit to the University proof of a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours prior to your arrival time on our campus when you submit your health attestation on the day of the event.

Submit documentation: https://gucovid.force.com/visitor/s/?event=VE5316

Step #2: Assuming successful completion of Step 1, you will receive a short health attestation form via email on the morning of the event date (for multi-day events, you will receive this email on the FIRST DAY of the event ONLY, regardless of which day you are attending). Please complete this form, attesting that you are symptom-free before coming to campus. If you indicate any symptoms consistent with COVID-19, you will not be permitted to visit a Georgetown-owned or managed campus or building until you are symptom-free.

Your event or meeting host will be able to monitor your progress on Step #1 above, and they may contact you if they see that you have not yet completed this step ahead of your scheduled time on campus. While event hosts are not provided information about your COVID-19 vaccination or your religious or medical exemption from vaccination, they are notified of the outcome of any COVID-19 test required by the University in connection with a claimed exemption and whether you have reported having COVID-19 symptoms or being in close contact with anyone who has tested positive.

Tagged: black women; feminism; racial justice