The journey…from Los Angeles to Salvador to Accra

Our June 2023 events, held at the beautiful Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles, were potent explorations of healing and possibility. The program included a Black men’s gathering and an open-to-everyone gathering.

One emergent focus was Black men’s tenderness and need for nourishing connection that honors their aliveness. This is a revolutionary conversation on a theme invisible in public discourse. 

In Salvador, Brazil, we also held a Black men’s gathering along with open-to-everyone gathering, plus other small convenings. Honoring Black women is a bright thread in this work. Our Brazilian partners spoke of their grief and frustration over the high level of violence against Black bodies, especially Black women, in Salvador. Men and women spoke of their commitment to peace, unity, women’s rights and women’s well-being. 

Many ideas for ongoing projects arose, which will be led by Brazilians. For example, community leader Tiago Azeviche of Salvador, Bahia (who also went on participate in the Ghana journey) is leading ongoing gatherings of Black men to explore healing and liberatory practices.

Three Black Men Documentary Film

From the beginning of this project, we envisioned creating a film. Filmmaker Sienna McLean LoGreco, Director of Photography Tony Hardmon and their team joined us on all three continents, gathering compelling footage of this unique journey, and the documentary film is now in production. 

Learn more about the Team/Production below.

This film follows three visionary Black men as they search, retrace and explore themes of community, family, spirituality, as well as reflect on Blackness—how it feeds us, shapes us, inspires us, births us—in community with others.

Please enjoy this early teaser reel: 

We invite you to join us in manifesting this documentary film through your donations and sponsorship. 

Why this film now? 

This is a vital story to tell at this moment. The film offers a vision of healing which deconstructs narrow conceptions of Blackness in order to uncover the beauty, wholeness and vibrancy that live underneath those projections.

In the documentary, we get to know each of the three men—how they move as community leaders, as well as their personal stories and who they are as people. 

As the film unfolds, we engage with the men and community members through rituals and other spiritual practices, encountering history and place, honoring the ancestors, and delving into shared inquiry and necessary conversations.

In Salvador, our team was spiritually anchored by a historic Candomblé temple—Ilé Àṣẹ Ìyá Nasò Ọka, or CasaBranca—led by three Black women elders, and founded in the 1800s by three free African women. It was clear that the ocean-deep resilience of these Afro-Brazilian communities is sustained by the deep remembering held by these practitioners. This fed into our evolving sense of how cultural containers can carry multigenerational medicine. We saw this as well in a Quilombo community we visited. (Quilombos took shape as groups of enslaved Africans escaped to form free communities in remote forests and mountains. These settlements actively resisted slavery and preserved African traditions, passing them through the generations.)

Join a wave of healing that is sweeping across three continents. Support powerful storytelling and the spread of these inspirational stories so thousands can experience their transformative impact. This is your time to invest in our collective liberation.

To discuss your donation or for other questions, please contact CHL Director Victoria Santos at vsantos@commonweal.org

In December 2023, the Three Black Men journey traveled to Accra, Ghana for a profound encounter with the African homeland. Our group of travelers connected with Ghanaian community members and ritual practitioners of African spirituality for this part of the journey. Our time in Ghana included touring the Dubois Center, which evoked deep reflection about Black visionaries. The stunning Asenema waterfall invited cleansing and renewal, with traditional priests leading libations. The group explored the medicinal resources of the land and, at a Vodou shrine, learned from the shrine priest about African spiritual technologies and practices—tools given by our ancestors.

A wrenching and powerful experience in the center of the journey was a ritual ceremony at the Cape Coast slave dungeons, the departure point of so many abducted Africans. After ceremonial washing of our feet, hands and faces, we wore white and walked barefoot through the streets of Cape Coast to the dungeons. There each of us entered into our own unique experience, grieving, praying, visioning, reflecting and connecting with the ancestors.  

As we integrated the raw intensity of this encounter over the following days, our journey was balanced and leavened with drumming, dancing, hugs, delicious Ghanaian food, many rich conversations in community gatherings with Resmaa, Bayo and Orland, and opportunities to both digest the experience and touch joy. 

Looking back at the Ghana experience, Victoria reflects that, “Ghana was very much about connecting those of us who traveled from far and wide with the people in Ghana who joined our journey. There is healing in this reconnection. And this journey is also about the earth and the future. How do we collectively deepen our connection to magic, our communities, our strategies, and our resilience, to create a thriving future here on this sacred earth?”