The two-day, Black Feminist Herstorical, 2019 #FromNO2Love International Forum was recorded in its entirety. You can view all of the videos, with captions, on the schedule page, or on AfroLez® Productions’ YouTube and Vimeo channels.

Black Feminist Herstory

There wasn’t a more significant time to lift the courageous, intergenerational, diasporic Black voices in NO! The Rape Documentary, and love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse anthology than now. Fall 2019 marked both the 25th anniversary of the first pre-production meeting for the internationally acclaimed documentary film, NO!, and the publication of the love WITH accountability anthology. Each of these works are groundbreaking, prevention resources that unwaveringly center diasporic Black survivors of adult rape and child sexual abuse. To commemorate the convergence of these milestones, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, the award-winning director of the film, and the editor of the anthology, partnered with the University of Pennsylvania, the Just Beginnings Collaborative, Feminist and Gender Studies Program at Colorado College, Scribe Video Center, African American Museum in Philadelphia, Leeway Foundation, and other sponsors/partners to present, #FromNO2Love: Black Feminist Centered Forum on Disrupting Sexual Violence in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 31, 2019 - November 1, 2019. The gathering lifted the long-term and new survivor-led work that addresses, disrupts, and works to humanely end child sexual abuse and adult rape in Black and marginalized communities.

In June 2020, eight months after the herstoric #FromNO2Love gathering and while the world shut down in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Aishah won the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for best LGBTQ anthology for love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse (AK Press, 2019).

#FromNO2Love attendees/presenters (alphabetical order): Liz S. Alexander, Sultan Ali, Esther Armah, Bahamadia, Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Luz Marquez-Benbow, Amadee Braxton, Joan Brannon, Aminata Cairo, Edxie Betts, Sevonna Brown, Joel Byrd, James Claiborne, Pat Clark, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Carole Nawo Crawford, Adrienne Davis, Nicole “Kqueen” Denson, Kia Steave Dickerson, Lex Draper, Orleana Clark Edwards, Cecelia Falls, Paul Farber, alicia sanchez gill, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Adenike A. Harris, Nikki Harmon, Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Linda Janet Holmes, Monique S. Howard, Audree Irons, John L. Jackson, Jr., Tanisha Esperanza Jarvis, e nina jay, Denise C. Jones, Grace Sanders Johnson, Barbara Kigozi, Gail M. Lloyd, Tonya Lovelace, Thea Matthews, Tynesha McHarris, F. Reanae McNeal, Tina Morton, Sharon Mullally, Chevara Orrin, Faith Pennant, Evelyne Laurent-Perrault, Mel A. Phillips, Jey’nce Mizrahi Poindexter, Rachel Afi Quinn, Ignacio G. Hutía Xeiti Rivera, Dorothy Roberts, Lynn Roberts, Loretta J. Ross, Sonia Sanchez, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, Michael Simmons, Tyree Cinque “DJ Drama” Simmons, Karen Smith, Janine Spruill, Amita Swadhin, Farah Tanis, Deborah A. Thomas, Salamishah Tillet, Scheherazade Tillet, Tashmica Torok, Malik Washington, Traci C. West, Dagmawi Woubshet, Giscard Xavier, and Tamara L. Xavier

All scheduled #FromNO2Love events were free and open to the public. Each of the three venues were wheelchair accessible, and there was ASL interpretation.