Rally at the UN to Denounce Trump’s Anti-Africa Insults

For Immediate Release

IBW Will Join #ProudAfricans Coalition at Feb. 15 Protest

NEW YORK, N.Y — #ProudAfricans, a coalition of African, Caribbean, and African-American human rights and professional organizations, including the Institute of the Black World 21^st Century (IBW), will lead a protest rally outside the United Nations Headquarters at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Park in New York City on Feb. 15 to denounce the recent racist and bigoted anti-Africa comments by US President Donald Trump. The rally will also highlight the past and continuing contributions by people of African descent to the creation of wealth and prosperity in the United States and other Western countries.

In addition, the coalition will denounce the brutal exploitation of African migrants whose plight was highlighted in a recent CNN expose showing auctions of African migrants who have been enslaved in Libya.

At the UN rally, the coalition will raise public awareness of the thousands of young Africans who continue to drown during desperate voyages across the Mediterranean to seek employment in Europe because the economies of their own countries have been ravaged by policies imposed by the World Bank and the IMF in collusion with corrupt regimes generally maintained in power by US and European governments.

The coalition will issue a set of demands under the framework to The White House, the United Nations, and other International organizations to address the socio-economic and political marginalization of Africans and African descendants all over the world. The #ProudAfricans Coalition was brought together by the United African Congress (UAC), a New York-based organization representing African immigrants in the U.S. under the leadership of Dr. Mohammed Nurhussein, Chairman, and Sidique Wai, President and National Spokesperson.

“We are Africans of diverse backgrounds from across the continent and the diaspora who are proud of our heritage, who have come together to denounce strongly, without stooping to his level of depravity, the vile and racist characterization of people of African descent by the current occupant of the House that enslaved Africans built,” said Dr. Nurhussein, a retired physician.

“As an Immigrant from Morocco and as a human rights activist and community organizer I also denounce the hateful words used to describe my beautiful motherland Africa,” said Ms. Souad Kirama founder and director of New Horizon Center for Advocacy and Development. “We are here in this wonderful newly founded coalition to say it loud and clear #ProudAfrican!”

“As President of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and Convener of the Pan African Unity Dialogue, I am proud to stand with our sisters and brothers in the diaspora in repudiating the foul-mouthed insults that spewed recently from the current occupant of the White House. We will not be disrespected,” said distinguished CUNY Professor Ron Daniels, one of the chief organizers of the protest rally at the UN.

“Donald Trump represents the kind of racism towards Africans and African immigrants that we see around the world today. As the world now knows from the recent CNN expose, Africans are even being auctioned into slavery in Libya. This is the 21st century and we will not stand for it,” says Bourema Niambele, a leader of New York City-based African Diaspora Coalition for Justice, one of the protest organizers.

The rally is expected to draw large numbers of people from the continental African immigrant, African-American, Caribbean-American and Latino communities from the Tri-State area and across the nation.

The coalition’s priorities are anchored by the framework of “Protest, Policy, Power” and speakers will challenge the current socio-economic policies that negatively impact African communities at the local, national and international levels and will offer a number of solutions. In so doing, participating organizations will broaden and deepen their alliances for unified actions moving forward.

In addition to United African Congress (UAC), the protest rally is endorsed by The Institute of the Black World 21st Century, Give Them A Hand Foundation, African Diaspora Coalition for Justice, Nextmedia.tv, The Black Star News, African Women Solidarity Action for Development, African Hope Committee, African Commission of Newark, New Jersey, and the African Human Rights Commission.