Had a wonderful time with Integrated Care 24 (IC24)as their keynote speaker, sharing the platform with the intrepid yet graceful Natasha Johnson. What an honour! What a joy!
The architect of the ‘Sharing Stories’ event was the organiser extraordinaire, Sylvia Stevenson. If you do not know this immense leader who along with her several roles runs her own charity, The Joshua Academy, and is a champion of human rights and inclusion, then you need to check her out and keep her on your radar.
Sylvia got me to share a momentous story that began with the life of the enslaved African, Harriet Bailey. I focused on three iterations of her life.
The first was the discovery of her 7-year-old son, Frederick Bailey, who was separated from her at birth as was the norm for newborns to enslaved African women back then. He later (while he was on the run) became Frederick Douglass. She could only spend 6 months visiting him because her life was prematurely cut off.
The second iteration was when Frederick Douglass gave a famous abolition speech in Bristol (1845), the spirit of which fed into the next iteration.
Indeed, the third was the toppling of the statue of the Slave trader, Edward Colston, albeit 175 years later in 2020.
My point was this. Any kind of love that seeks to mobilise justice, fairness and honesty is political love. This is what drove Harriet to cross the incorrigible terrain of 24 miles (return) every dusk and dawn for (the) 6 months.
Political love is the earnest decision, driven by a belief in the human spirit, to right the wrongs you see. This is because justice is what love looks like in public. Therefore, don’t ever discount the political love of a mother.
If you want to learn more about this kind of political love that I do, then drop in for a chat, won’t you?