Amanza Walton Desir Sheds Light on Plight of Afro-Guyanese at National Action Network Convention

Guyana’s parliamentarian Amanza Walton Desir made an appearance and delivered a powerful address at the National Action Network’s Annual Convention hosted in New York City from April 12-15, 2023. The four-day summit which ends tomorrow was attended by nearly a dozen Biden Administration officials; Vice President Kamala Harris will attend tomorrow.  Notable names like Tyler Perry, Kerry Washington, Magic Johnson, and other leaders in entertainment, business, civil rights, education and other fields, gathered to discuss the state of Blacks in America and the Diaspora and to galvanize a global Civil Rights Movement.

Desir, who was invited to the summit, started by sharing her background and the current state of Guyana, the newest oil producing nation on the block, and the fastest-growing economy in 2022. She highlighted that despite tremendous wealth in the country, the Afro Guyanese population, which makes up about 30% of the population, was not experiencing a good life. Desir emphasized that the Afro Guyanese population had been made to suffer the brunt of what was currently emerging to be a totalitarian regime. She mentioned incidents of police brutality and racism that have occurred in Guyana, including a young man being shot in bed by the police line next to his wife and an Afro Guyanese police woman being spat upon and called a monkey.

Desir went on to stress the commonality of the conditions faced by the African diaspora and the need for all to come together in the struggle. She expressed her gratitude towards the National Action Network and Reverend Sharpton for their initiative in taking the struggle internationally. Desir firmly believed that working together, the people of the African diaspora could share triumph and overcome their shared tragedy of slavery and trauma.

The National Action Network’s Annual Convention included several panels, plenary addresses, and events aimed at empowering not just Black Americans but also African people in the Diaspora who continue to live under oppressive policing and government policies.

One of the more intriguing panels kicked off on April 12, with Ben Crump leading a panel on police reform with the families of Tyre Nichols and other Black men and women killed by police. The panel featured parents of Tyre Nichols, who was fatally beaten to death by Memphis police officers earlier this year, as well as Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, and Wanda Cooper Jones, the mother of Ahmaud Arbery. The convention will host Vice President Harris who will deliver a keynote address on Friday, while several cabinet secretaries from around the globe addressed the thousands of attendees throughout the convention.