✊🏿 Online and Offline event:
This event can be followed both as an online live-cast and as an offline event in our largest cinema hall in Studio/K. The live-cast can be watched for free here: https://www.twitch.tv/studioklive. Tickets to visit the event can be bought here: https://tinyurl.com/y5b9lkqc. 50% of the income will be donated to the #Telema movement (https://www.telema.org/).
✊🏿 About Congo Week:
Since 1996, 6 million people have died in in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from genocide, war-induced disease and famine. The largest loss of life since WW2 in the heart of Africa has been largely overlooked. An especially striking fact since the world's technology, including computers and phones, largely run on the blood-soaked coltan that is mined from the conflict-region. This is why Congolese activists and students initiated Congo Week in 2008: an international week of events, actions and fundraising in solidarity with the Congo (https://congoweek.org/).
✊🏿 Our speakers:
Jean Marie-Kalonji|
Jean Marie-Kalonji is one of the youth leaders of the #Telema movement filmed in the Al Jazeera documentary Back to Kinshasa. Currently, he is the co-ordinator for the Quatrieme Voie (Fourth Way) movement inside the DRC, as well as a human rights lawyer and director of the Andree Blouin Cultural Center in Kinshasa, where future Congolese leaders are trained in the tradition of Lumumba.
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja|
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is a professor of African, African-American, and diaspora studies at the University of North Carolina and the author of many books, including The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History and Patrice Lumumba. With the recent change of power in Congo, Nzongola-Ntalaja has been a government advisor to the new Tshisekedi government.
Patricia Lokwa Servant|
Patricia Lokwa Servant is born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Congolese-American radio host of CongoLive!. She is an educator affiliated with the Association of African Students in the Diaspora (AASD), United Partners of Hope (UPH) and the Crossway Community (CC), with particular experience in assisting and educating recent African migrants and economically disadvantaged single mothers. Patricia is also a Development Consultant with the Friends of the Congo and the founder of Congo Love, an organisation promoting Congolese culture.
Stephanie Collingwoode Williams|
Stephanie Collingwoode Williams is an anthropologist, social worker and activist. Raised in Ghana, she has studied in the Netherlands and Belgium, where she has been involved with various climate justice movements and anti-racist movements, such as Code Rood and Kick-Out Zwarte Piet (blackface). Recently, she has been active as a spokesperson for the Belgian Network for Black Lives and was involved in various actions against the glorification of Belgium's colonial history in Congo. She is a also active as a youth worker and community builder in Anderlecht (Brussels), focussing on public space.
Olivier van Beemen|
Olivier van Beemen (1979) is an investigative journalist and the author of Heineken in Africa. In his many years investigating the Dutch multionational he encountered numerous scandals: from tax avoidance, high-level corruption and sexual abuse to links to genocide and other human rights violations. Van Beemen is currently writing a PhD on Heineken in Africa at the department of political sciences at the University of Amsterdam.
Joseph Wilde-Ramsing|
Joseph Wilde-Ramsing is a researcher at the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), specialized in the mining, energy and finance sectors. He is a co-ordinator for OECD-watch and regularly supports communities affected by corporate human rights violations. He is the lead-author of the recent report Time to Start Caring About Cobalt, documenting how the biggest insurance corporations of the Netherlands have invested heavily in Cobalt-related industries active inside Congo.
✊🏿 Our moderator:
Beylula Yosef|
Beylula Yosef is a poet, social worker and activist. She has been a volunteer for the Vluchtkerk and the Black Archives, among others, where she set up the I, too am Vu campaign and a Tribute to Nelson Mandela. Yosef is also the co-founder of Pak je Avond, an alternative party to the Dutch Blackface tradition and Afrispectives, a platform for art and stories from the African continent.
Practical info:
Date: Sunday 18th of October, 17.00-19.00
Location: Timorplein 62, Amsterdam
Follow the Facebook event for updates: https://www.facebook.com/events/1594179387423459/